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Star Wars Galaxies - Release Date Announced
DCookie writes "It's official! The highly-anticipated PC MMORPG, Star Wars Galaxies, is set to hit the shelves on June 26th. The NDA for the Beta will most likely be lifted in the next few days as well, so be prepared for more info about the game soon!" The press release also has info on the subscription plans, which range from $12.00 to $14.99 monthly, depending on how many months you buy at once - the game will retail for $49.95 and include one free month's play.
No amount of tweaking will make this game fun. If you've played any other MMORPG, this will feel like the same thing.
This place is "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters". If you know anything about nerds, you will know that Star Wars MATTERS, whether or not it is free.
I'm also in the beta and agree. The game performs very well, but is way to complicated and requires too much time to get anywhere.
I really tried hard to like the game, but it's just too tedious.
This site is reader driven. You know some news, submit it already.
Plenty of free game information has been posted here. It so happens the commercial game community is much more vibrant, for much the same reasons that the commercial movie industry is more vibrant than the non-commercial one. (Looked at all the credits for a recent game lately?)
There is no reason to pay for distribution. With a game like this, Sony and/or Lucas could EASILY distribute the game online or directly. If the game has any hope of success, they'll have to be making enough money to reimburse the development costs.
That's right because bandwidth is free.... oh wait.. it isn't. Even if they set up a bunch of servers on high speed connections and add bit torrent links there is the problem of distribution, and it's expenses. It may not be as expensive to provide the game in a downloadable format, or it may be just as expensive, I haven't seen any formal statistics on the subject. It is obvious however that there is a cost associated with both the traditional method of distribution and internet distribution. It also completly ignores those people that cannot download the images due to a lack of adequate bandwidth. Of course you could distribute in both mediums, but that will probably increase the cost of traditional distribution due to decreased volume. I have a hard time believing that those increased costs will be offset by any reduction in cost due to internet based distribution.
I've said this a dozen times already, but I guess I'll say it again. There are plenty of people willing to pay the full retail box price and still pay the monthly fee for these games. If nothing else, why should these companies change the model if they don't feel they are losing a significant number of customers. The fact that a few people bitch about the price of the boxed copy and don't buy the game is probably not the biggest concern of the bean counters when it comes to the bottom line as that group of people is clearly in the minority. If they weren't I'm fairly certain we would start seeing alternative distribution methods. If you don't think that these companies are willing to change thier distribution methods go take a look at the box sizes of older games and then compare them to the newer smaller boxes you see on all the store shelves. It may have taken a long time for that to happen, but it is progressing rapidly at this point. If enough people decide that they aren't going to play the games because of the initial cost the distributors may reduce the initial cost. Until then don't expect anything to change.
If you want to know for you sure you might want to contact Funcom as they had downloadable versions of AO though at the full retail price. Though I doubt they will give that information out.
I'll play the first game with no leveling tred mill. I have a life, pure and simple. I can't afford to keep up. I might be able to fit a marathon 6 hour run during the weekends, but when it comes to the weekdays 1 hour is being optimistic. Simply put, I can't keep up with a 16 year old kid with no job, no girlfriend, and nothing better to do who can play over 40 hours a week. So I have simply stopped trying. As soon as a MMORPG comes out that appeals to me even though I will never be able to pump 40 hours a week into it, I'll buy it. Until that day, screw MMORPGs. I want a game to play in my spare time, not a game that replaces my social life.
I bought Sims Online and I can tell you why it sucked horribly.
The user interface is great, but the way it connects to the world is horrible. There is no immersion. They didn't even TRY to facilitate immersion.
Honestly, for the 25+ million dollars they spent on this game, it doesnt look like it. There is no free form movement. "Zones" like you see in other MMO's are a single city block. You can't even walk from block to block without zoning.
If you work your way past that you have to spend time trying to get a house and a lot of other things right off the bat, but it just isn't fun.
Im on the treadmill of life all day long. I sure as hell dont want to come home from work and do it over again...
They focused to much on the "real" and not the fantasy that players want to experience...