The Old Republic

[QuiDormit]

How was MxO not linear?

There were about 10 different building types. Missions were ALWAYS held inside buildings and never occurred out in the open world, or in the clubs, or anywhere except the predetermined "mission areas." There were only six different mission types to choose from (or was it five?) to run to do basic EXP gain. Then there were the weekly crits that took place in the same type of building and the same general district for each person. That's pretty linear.

Then there were the Live Events where LET characters wouldn't say a word until one of the player characters said the right phrase to lead the story forward. I remember standing around waiting for 15+ minutes at a time while people talked and talked and someone FINALLY said the right thing to move the story forward.

TOR is bigger than MxO due to all of the planets. Also, as you go on and get higher in level, the areas open up more and more.

I'm not saying TOR is better (I am), but I am saying that MxO was far more linear than you give it credit for. In the beginning, sure MxO wasn't linear, but they had a FULL dev team who could run LE's.