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Star Wars: the Old Republic Launches
Today marks the official launch of Star Wars: the Old Republic, a new MMOG from BioWare, EA, and LucasArts. The game's population has been building throughout the week as players who pre-ordered were granted early access, but now the gates have been thrown open to everyone. By using the Star Wars universe and a 'story-driven' approach to MMO gameplay, BioWare hopes to draw in a new group of players who don't typically consider themselves MMO gamers. Since the game is still largely unexplored, comprehensive reviews have yet to be written, but Shack News has a write-up about the early game. An article at Eurogamer discusses whether this sort of game launch marks the end of an era for the MMOG industry — the game's budget is estimated to be as high as $100 million, and it relies on a traditional subscription model when many games are making the switch to free-to-play.
Its going to be too full of Star Wars fans. I learned my lesson from the Sony Star Wars MMO.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Subscriptions or other revenue generating methods have been traditional since games went multi-player past the point where a server in some guys basement was sufficient. Costs money to run these games, so they cost money to play.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Played the beta. WoW Improved with lightsabers. Same old borefest. Yes, I know there are companions and mass effect style conversations. Things are slightly different and improved. Yay. Stop pretending it's this awesome new MMO experience. It's not.
You see, I'd love to be playing this, but at 60 for the game and 15 a month, that's just too rich for my tastes.
I think the game itself should be free and downloadable, then charge a monthly fee for the online access. I'm going to wait for the cost of the game to come down :(
But damn, it's so tempting to buy ...
Things update and the game keeps progressing. In the past you would play the game and beat it and thats it. Wait for a sequel and buy that one. With so many millions paying monthly you have extended content that is not possible otherwise
http://saveie6.com/
The title doesn't really fit....
My suggestions:
- Return of the Grind
- A new quest
- The sleep deprivation strikes back
Yours, Martin
And fully voiced quest interactions with very good writing.
I personally burned out on WoW a good while back. Several months before Cataclysm came out I quit playing. When it came out I resubed and leveled one character from 80 to 85, but then quit again shortly thereafter. I've tried many of the free-to-play games, Rift, EVE Online, and many others in the meantime. Nothing grabbed my attention.
I got early access to SWTOR 5 days ago and have already played at least 15 hours and can't wait to knock off work so I can play again.
I can honestly say that I see myself leveling at least 1 character of every class to max just to see the quest chains. Its that good.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I've played beta. I won't be rushing out to buy this. As a previous poster said, it's WoW with Blasters/Light Sabers.
What a waste of Bioware talent and a Star Wars License. They would've been much better off using the Mass Effect 2 combat system as a basis. Instead, it's no different than the hundreds of WoW like clones out there ... EA wanted this game to cut into WoW... The sad thing is they will succeed because there are millions of people out there willing to play WoW with a Star Wars skin on it.
I'm disappointed to say the least. I anticipated much more from Bioware. If the game mechanics were anywhere near the quality of the cut scenes, I wouldn't be posting this. There seems to be very few gaming companies ready to break any molds in the MMORPG realm. EVE Online is one of few, and that game came out in 2003.
Hopefully I'm wrong, and my beta impression was due to limited time in the game. But I fear it's what it is, and what could've been a game I would be playing for years is one I'm just going to pass over.
"This is wow with light sabers"
No it is not.
Disclaimer: I have not played the game yet, and my opinion is based on reviews and people who have played the beta.
World of Warcraft is based on a fantasy world where you can participate in it as time goes by. SWTOR is a world based on YOU. You are the center of attention and the choices you make constantly change the quest tree and storyline. For example you can play single player and the game will be different than if you play in groups according to www.arstechnica.com.
Another difference is your companion system is very advanced. At level 15 you have your own personal robotic servant too kind of like 3cpo who can help you do your profession gathering, and even your companion can go to the auction house for you and sell things while you are at work. The companions can eventually leave if you have enough dark side points or if you are an ass to them. They can even fill in for a raid while you wait for more players. They are much more than actual pets.
In essence Wow has more atmosphere and story with much richer environments that seem more realistic (sun, moon, nightime, weather, weeds moving in wind etc) while STWOR is an interactive movie with you as a star where there are no saves and the story keeps changing and so the quests. You can have 2 of the same jedi or sith, and depending on lightside or darkside points you will have different quests. Add that to playing ina guild and you will have 2 more different quest, gear, and talents.
http://saveie6.com/
Lots of other "big" titles that launched recently have since gone free-to-play. Star Wars Online and DC Universe Online are recent examples. I give SWTOR a year (more than the average due to the Star Wars name) before they start letting people in free. They might not call it "F2P" but at the very least they'll have playable trial accounts that expose 75% of the game.
Skip Franklin
It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black. -- despair.com
I've had access since last Tuesday. I'm currently at level 24 (out of 50) and so far the story has been enjoyable. It does not feel like a grind, in fact most missions to kill x # of creatures are just bonus quests that you can easily skip.
The game is not revolutionary and they did take most of the best features from WoW. I really enjoy it.
Right now the only thing negative I have to say about the game is the artifcial cap they put on every server. Almost every server had a 20+ minute queue to log in during peak hours last week. My brother said he had to wait 10 minutes at 10am this morning to log in. If I have to wait more than a couple minutes I will be raising hell.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Well let's assume 9/10 went to marketing and executive bonuses and go from there :-P
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Napkin math:
200 employees (random guess, but my gut says that's a low number)
x $75k per year (another random guess, but I don't think it's absurd)
x 5 years in development
= 75 million. Add in marketing, management, and server costs, and you might be there.
Oh, and don't forget license fees. I won't speculate on what Lucas is charging them, but I bet it's mindboggling.
My other sig is clever.
Dont forget the quest chains are always different depending on your choices and lightside vs darkside points. Infact there are lightside and darkside quests too and then they change again if you group a lot with your guild.
You can have 4 sith inquisitors and will have a completely different story line for each one with dark/light and solo and group alts. Cool stuff
http://saveie6.com/
Waiting queues on all early-access servers, up to 1:15 on the German servers at this time despite grand announcements that this will not happen to them. They are also claiming that they increased server capacities today, which, as far as I can tell was either by an insignificant amount or an outright lie.
I predict that this will either kill Bioware or at least bring them to the brink.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
What a load of crap, as someone that played in 2 of the betas for SWTOR and is in the game now as an imperial agent, "Wow with light sabers and laser guns" is actually a perfect description. The game is much richer in story with a lot more effort put into the quest dialogue and story but apart from that it is a skinned version of wow. It is a nice change but even as a star wars fan I don't think this game will last as the "just another wow clone" syndrome will hit this game hard within a few months.
As another poster said - voice acting. LOTS of it. That and CGI - and writers, etc. It took a lot of people a lot of man hours to develop this. That said - $100 million doesn't seem all that bad. Last I heard their pre-orders alone were approaching 3 million. Some of those are collectors editions and digital deluxe, but even at $60 a pop for the regular edition x 3 million is $180 million. There's other material costs involved there, but I'd wager that the initial sales alone will makeup for the development budget. They'll make their profit off of sustained subscriptions, which I'd wager they'll maintain a lot of.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Guild Wars is probably the most underrated MMO in history. Way better story and graphics than WoW, it was free to play from the beginning, and moving a character between servers was as easy as a drop-down menu (allowing you to easily play with friends on different servers, something that should have been standard on all MMO's a long time ago). And yet it never got the attention it really deserved.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
the game's budget is estimated to be as high as $100 million
What in the world could they have possibly spent that on?
My guess: 2 Death Stars and franchise rights from Lucas.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I agree %100. I was in the last beta weekend and logged 10 hours playing to level 15. WoW with lightsabers and blasters and speeders instead of flying horses. Want to know why this game is an epic fail? There is no free space flight. It's all scripted combat on rails. DUMB. The name of the game is called STAR WARS... yet your ability to have a war amidst the stars on your own terms does not exist. I canceled my pre-order shortly after the beta weekend. Will wait for the first expansion that adds free space flight.
With 20/20 vision and their nose pressed against the screen - as an adult I can apparently get lost - their interface is composed of a font so tiny that I can't read most of it which is a bit of a problem even though quests are spoken, you still need to read stuff... this is where the kids butt in and say you can adjust the chat font size - and I have to compose myself and point out, ITS THE WHOLE DAMN INTERFACE - tooltips, skill trees, subtitles, their 'codex' (and no, you can't just change resolution, they make sure to scale it so it remains at the same visual size regardless of actual resolution)
You'd think in this day and age the technology to adjust font size wouldn't be totally unheard of? Apparently Biowares programmers feel this is to abstract a concept, or perhaps they only want kids to enter their hallowed halls. The rest can bugger of back to WoW.
Well ok then.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
So not only didn't you try swtor, you didn't try wow either, eh?
"World of Warcraft is based on a fantasy world where you can participate in it as time goes by. SWTOR is a world based on YOU. "
So is Wow - yes, if you stay away for long enough (and we are talking real world years) yes there will be progression without but (and so presumably here will in swtor) but the whole point is that YOU the player get to meet all the leaders, all the leadersin the world get to know you and your name.
In swtor you are NOT going to meet Vader, or Skywalker, Princess Leia or hang out with Yoda.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The difference here, is if this is like any other beta, you signed a non-disclosure agreement when you were handed beta. While you may not care about that, reputable news sources generally don't break those kinds of things, because they will get sued for it. That's if they even agreed to it in the first place, which I doubt any did.
After my BF3 experience, with the game launched early to compete with MW3, I would never
buy another EA game again. Horrible cheating, crashing, clunky origin interface.
Time to starve the beast. Don't buy the games and make ea vanish as it should have ages ago.
GW1 sold around 7million copies and is now a major franchise. A few things it didn't bring to the table was a persistent, instanced world and large (20+) player 'raiding'. Both of these have been addressed in the sequel that just entered beta testing... and still with no monthly fee.
SW:TOR bring the RPG back to MMORPG. But I think GW2 has the chance to be truly revolutionary -- it destroys the 'holy trinity' model, no monthly fee, and the graphics and gameplay look to be a substantial improvement over the current generation of 'hotkey' MMOs.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
I think one of the long term players from beta who is a friend of mine put it best.
"I played the entire early part with my friend. We share start point for our characters, so we can "watch" each other's plot lines. So I walk with the quest giver NPC, and he says "Now that we're finally alone..." and my friend's character is right next to me. Jarring".
The best question was "so if this truly is MY story, why are there twenty guys who look just like me talking to the same NPCs and doing the same quests?"
Fact is, you just can't make a good, immersive story about a "hero that stands above the crowd" in an MMO. You have to be one of the masses, and by extension, not really a hero that stands above others. When MMO's pretend it's not so, like TOR and some of the new/remade zones in WoW, it looks silly and breaks immersion in a very bad way.
Difference is, WoW doesn't hype it up as a major selling point. TOR does, and while it works for people who are experiences with MMOs and don't really expect anything truly new, just an improvement, those who actually do expect something new end up sorely disappointed. Which is what happens to people who believe that TOR is not WoW with lightsabers. Because in the end, under all the extra fluff, there's still going to be twenty guys who have a story largely identical to yours right next to you reminding you that you're not the "hero that stands above the crowd" that game tries to make you believe you are.
MUDs preceded MMOs. They were also by and large F2P.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD
I think people (management) are finally starting to realize that they can charge $1 for a stupid hat that doesn't effect game play and people will buy it...
Actually, as someone who's been there for a week or so now, I can tell you that you can hardly tell. I haven't run into much nerdiness about anything movie-related. If anything, it comes across more like a bunch of KOTOR fans, plus the occasional (and frankly expected) "OMG IT'S WOW WITH GUNS!!!111eleventeen" trolling.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There is no free space flight. It's all scripted combat on rails. DUMB.
WHAT
That was the single best thing about SWG. How could they fuck THAT up?
Also as someone who actually plays it, I think it's inexact. It's like calling Skyrim "Fallout 3 with swords."
The only similarity to WOW is that both are games in the same genre. So, yes, certain mechanics are going to be shared between the two, by necessity. Some because frankly, they're part of the whole MMO premise, and some because we have a decade and a half of figuring out what players like and what players don't like. In a new game you want more of the former and less of the latter.
And it's not even a bad thing. We had an attempt at ignoring everything that other MMOs showed that works or doesn't work. It was called Tabula Rasa. Yeah, Lord British thought he's so great that he can simply wipe the slate of everything that had been learned in a decade of MMOs and reinvent everything his way. It wasn't much fun to play for most people who've tried it and it bombed badly.
And really, most of that stuff isn't even particularly specific to WoW. As someone who's played half a dozen MMOs before, I don't see why I should reduce a whole genre to one game. It's called MMO, not "WoW clone". You could just as accurately say it's Everquest 2 with lightsabers, or City Of Heroes with lightsabers, or, really, whatever.
The classes for example are not really clones of WoW, suprisingly enough. The companions mechanic is also not very WoW. Actually branching available quests based on what you did before (e.g., alignment) is also not very closely mirroring any WoW mechanic I can think of. Having a choice of how you want to end a quest is also not very WoW-like. Etc. The point is that it's different enough to feel different and interesting, and in the end that's all that matters.
As for what happens in a few months, meh, nothing is for ever. I bought a game, not entered a marriage and made a kid, you know? If it stops being fun to play in a few months, for whatever reason, I'll move on then. And hey, at that point I will have got a couple of months of fun. Am I right?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Deluxe version still available of course!
And to think my attitude to EA had mellowed in recent years...
Well, yes. Guild Wars wasn't designed to be an MMORPG (the creators initially referred to it as a CORPG -- "cooperative (or competitive) online RPG"). Everyone mistook it for and insisted upon calling it an MMO anyhow, and eventually they stopped attempting to correct people. But yes, in terms of gameplay, it was all instanced -- they basically took the "chat rooms" of Diablo II Battle.net realms and moved them in-game into cities, but it was otherwise like D2 realm play -- you left the city and were in your own instance of the zone with only your teammates, and possibly a few enemy teams if it was PvP. There was no persistent world. At the end of the day, it was no more an MMO than Diablo II Battle.net realms had been an MMO, because that was the model they were basing it on. It should be noted that they released just shortly after WoW. They had no idea just how popular the MMO market was going to become, and thus it's understandable why they weren't planning on making one to begin with. GW2 is basically their attempt to take their ideas and making an actual MMO out of them -- it's probably what GW would have been if they'd realized an MMO was the way to go.
As for the trinity effect, the gameplay in GW won over every similar game I've tried precisely because there were no tanking per se. It was pretty much impossible for one character to draw everyone's aggro (there are no "aggro" skills in the game), nor any characters suited to the role of simply soaking damage while everyone else dishes it out safely. Tanking in that sense simply doesn't exist in the game. They still had and needed healers, but short of body blocking there was no real way to keep creeps off the "squishies" -- the usual tactic for protecting healers and caster was to block and try to delay enemies reaching them, and when that inevitably failed, to simply quickly kill whatever was attacking them. It did help that Warriors had the highest consistent DPS, rather than the lowest as in the case in games where proper tanking exists, and as such could usually hold an enemy's attention once they got it, but since all battles were basically group on group, that wasn't of huge value.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Err... early MUDs tended to cost a lot to set up, but were run as curiosity projects as universities. I also remember MUDs that did charge for access, such as Avalon (still in existence: http://www.avalon-rpg.com/ ), although many came with other services, for example Terris ( http://www.legendsofterris.com/ ) came with OnLive in the UK, then went to AOL, before becoming independent.
Most of the early MUDs ran as processes on university servers used for other things, used up very little system resources, and the software was almost inevitably open source. Since they tended to run on unused server resources that otherwise would not be used, yes, they usually did not cost a lot to set up.
Okay, I brace yourself not to laugh, but I've gone back to the MUD FAQ...
"Because of their size and their constant computational activities, servers can be extremely CPU-intensive and can even be crippling to any other work done on that computer. Even if they're not CPU-intensive, most MUDs can take up a fair amount of disk space - anywhere from 10 to 90 megs, which could impact the other users on the machine. Do not ever run a MUD server on a machine illicitly or without express permission from the person responsible for the machine. Many universities and companies have strict policies about that sort of behavior which you don't want to cross. "
- http://www.mudconnect.com/mudfaq/mudfaq-p2.html#q9
The point being, when MUDs were the main form of multiplayer online gaming, they were not trivial in hardware requirements.
And yes, I'm sure your mouse does have more storage than that these days...
Cheap to setup? moderate internet connection? MUD's were running around long before the internet was commonly available with even low baud rate modems and they cost a lot in computer resources to run. They were commonly snuck onto university systems and were a hideous waste of space and resources,.
Worth noting that WoW's world has been dynamic since 3.0. It helps the problem a bit by making it appear that your actions in fact influence the world. In WoW, you can for example do a few quests in a small allied base as a part of effort to build up, and after a while, base will enter a next phase and grow. Essentially it means that there are different versions of the base in the same place, and your questing progress determines which one you get to access.
It still doesn't remove the "there's ten other guys doing the same thing" issue though, but in most cases that doesn't matter because quests themselves are often structured as either "adventurer, you're doing a small part in large scheme", or quests lead to hot-join events where you are asked to "go join an event" and the event happens in intervals, and your joining of said event doesn't really impact it. You can make it faster by helping, or you can just stand next to characters and watch. The event will occur in spite of your participation, which on other hand is quite immersive in terms of "this is a functional, living world with or without you", but also removes the possibility of being a central hero. You get to interact with central heroes, and often help them, but you never are one.
I played the TOR beta a few weeks ago. KOTOR started you out as a hero of the republic in the mist of a battle between the two most powerful people in the galaxy, with the fate of the entire universe resting in your hands. The game literally starts with a bang; huge explosions are the first thing you see, before you are instructed that the ship you are on is about to explode, and are directed to the escape pods. There is an immediate sense of urgency, tons of action, and memorable characters. I was hooked from the first line of dialog.
TOR starts out with 20 min of loadscreens and prerendered CGI cutscenes featuring an endless stream of unnamed forgettable characters and overused cliches. Ninja jedi, pirate sith and cowboy bounty hunters. Then they let you create your character.
There are 4 classes for each side, and 4 races each class can choose. Each race has male and female, 4 body types, 6 heads, an extremely limited slider for eye colour and skin colour, and the option to chose between a few different tattoos and accessories. All of which are incredibly ugly. I wanted to be a twilek bounty hunter, but that combination is not available so right off the bat I had to make a choice between playing a class I didn't want, or a race I didn't want. After 10 min of exploring all the different choices I settled on the least ugly of my options, a cyborg bounty hunter. Who turns out has nothing to do with any of the people shown in the opening cutscene. Instead you start out as a low level nobody, working for some other low level nobody, doing something that happens every year.
The star wars scroll informs us that the main story line centers on an event known as the great hunt, which is the space bounty hunter equivalent to the super bowl. Every year all the bounty hunters get together and hunt stuff. Not exactly the most exciting plotline, but whatever, lets get to the blasting people, right? Not quite. Pan camera to landing spaceship. Exit my bumbling teen character, who makes his way through a bustling starport to the bounty hunters office, I guess.
After 15 min of meaningless dialog with wooden characters and exploring the starting area I get my first mission. I have to rescue a someones brother from a gang. So I head out and on my way I run into someone who has another quest for me. So I stop, and converse with the fellow, and convince him to allow me to assist him in his great task. The task of course, is to kill 0/6 mobs.
So I head out into the street and down an ally towards where my quest indicator is leading me. I see a group of thugs standing idle in front of the door I am supposed to go into. So this is it, I draw my blaster and like Han Solo, I shoot first! 45 min into the game I kill my first mob. Gunned down in cold blood, from beyond its agro radius. It respawns almost immediately, so I kill it 5 more times. Quest complete! I level up. Then I run through the door convince the gang members inside to free person I was sent to rescue. I head back, killing a few more people on the way. I turn in the quest, I level up.
I am totally bored at this point, and decide that bounty hunter may have not been the best choice. So I reroll, and try another character. Sith inquisitor, twilek. Maybe this will be more interesting? It is not. It is the exact same quests, but in a different setting. Instead of a city and gang members, its a sith temple and slugs.
Typical conversation...
Questgiver: So are you the new guy?
Option1 : Yes, I am here to help!(+1 lightside)
Option2 : I guess I am.
Option3 : Yes, and if you cross me I'll kill you.(+1 darkside)
Questgiver: Well I just hope you good enough for my quest.
Option1 : Yes, I am up to the task!(+1 lightside)
Option2 : I guess I am.
Option3 : Yes, I am. And if you cross me I'll kill you.(+1 darkside)
All the ingame cutscenes suffer from horrible pop-in, and have a global chat overlay. If you are going to break immersion why even have the cutscene to begin with? The h
Dungeon Tactics : Free Open Source SRPG