SWTOR

[Lantyssa]

Knowing myself, I will still next->next->finished my way through the lore, then ask in guild why the hell we're in an instance trying to kill *person who was fully explained by the lore during the entire leveling process*

As if it matters.  You'll be max level before public release.

[Fordel]

Kild likes to pretend he is a power gamer, but ends up doing it wrong anyways because he'll miss the obvious two feet in front of his face then spend 10 years defending his failure. 


There's roughly zero reason to rush to cap in this game, almost no one gives a shit about world firsts in WoW as it is, less then no one is going to give a shit about it in SWTOR.

I think people may end up staying up all night anyways because they'll get sucked into their class quests or whatever. Like we won't see Sjofn anywhere but online for at LEAST as month 

[Sky]

6am, 5am, 5am, 1am

 

Quite happy it isn't distributed through steam!

[Dren]

I'm playing EQ2 right now and am finding the massive amounts of quest text to be very tedious.  I welcome this "feature" of SWTOR.

So instead you get to watch 60 seconds of a cut scene to get the kill 10 foozles quest.

That's ok if I can esc out of it if I want.

[Fordel]

I think we discussed this a bit already, but going forward, the big hurdle is how the fuck do they intend to keep up with new content to deliver.


There is a LOT of god damn talky talky, like a metric fuck-ton. I don't think they were exaggerating when they said it was 8 billion novels worth or whatever the real figure was. Even with all the ways they can save/reuse talky talk bits, it's still a enormous amount of writing and voice to generate.



Blizzard can't keep up and all they have to do is get Metzen to growl into a mic in the office for 30 minutes, How is Bioware(Austin) going to handle it  

[Kirth]

I think we discussed this a bit already, but going forward, the big hurdle is how the fuck do they intend to keep up with new content to deliver.


There is a LOT of god damn talky talky, like a metric fuck-ton. I don't think they were exaggerating when they said it was 8 billion novels worth or whatever the real figure was. Even with all the ways they can save/reuse talky talk bits, it's still a enormous amount of writing and voice to generate.



Blizzard can't keep up and all they have to do is get Metzen to growl into a mic in the office for 30 minutes, How is Bioware(Austin) going to handle it  

I think they said at one of the cons they already have a ton of  VO to patch in. but really, how hard can it be to record a few hours of dialog.

[Fordel]

Not sure if serious.

[eldaec]

Not hard at all, but only if they are configured for continuous writing and recording - they basically need the same organisation as for a soap opera.

If they have done what every prior games publisher ever has done, and not even thought about post launch content generation, then yeah, this will fall apart fast.

[Sky]

In BWA's favor, they probably have it down to a science by now, and a lot of the actors they are using are very active industry talent.

(eldaec, it is quite difficult to do well, that's why most games have garbage VO)

[eldaec]

Yes, well, lots of things are difficult to do well in the sense that you need to have staff with relevant skills, this is why we pay people money in exchange for goods and services.

That isn't the same as unaffordable if properly organised, or the same as saying it is an unreasonable expectation.

[LK]

I can speak to that. They don't just record the voice and blammo it works for the game. The amount of post-production work to make the voices work is an extremely time-consuming process. Part of Bioware's strategy here is to release with so much content, but I can't help but wonder if that'll be there undoing if they can't keep up as time goes on.

[Murgos]

If they have done what every prior games publisher ever has done, and not even thought about post launch content generation, then yeah, this will fall apart fast.

They've talked about this issue a little already.  They claim to be doing something entirely different which is to keep pretty much the entire development team around as the live team and that they have quite a bit planned on a continuous basis moving forward.

If true it could really push the game over the top.

[Shatter]

If they have done what every prior games publisher ever has done, and not even thought about post launch content generation, then yeah, this will fall apart fast.

They've talked about this issue a little already.  They claim to be doing something entirely different which is to keep pretty much the entire development team around as the live team and that they have quite a bit planned on a continuous basis moving forward.

If true it could really push the game over the top.

I smell year end bonuses

[Kirth]

Not sure if serious.

Perhaps I should have added, for a company that has already recorded 145 terrabytes of voice over already.

[kildorn]

If they're running on "we have a dickload of content ready", they're going to run into the wall of ohshit we're out.

The question isn't how much capacity you have here, it's growth versus consumption, and their target consumption rate. Trying to go "oh lol, the endgame will take months to reach" has always backfired as you weren't planning around people who play 23 hours a day.

Legitimately, they need to design around people who play 3 hours a day, maybe 4 days a week to feel like they always have content (and you can probably reuse a lot by making 80% of it the same scenes, and having 20% side scenes only seen by X side or class so people replay for the other aspect of the story)

I'm curious how they do it, honestly. VO takes a long assed time. And it's hard to keep management going with the idea of a full sized production staff working on new content for a game for years.

I'm sure I'll enjoy this quite a bit in my own way, I just have this Valve feeling in the back of my head, where the switch to episodic content would totally allow them to have shorter gaps between games :P

[Shatter]

Im hoping that they are putting future / ongoing content to the front on priority.  If like Rift they can continue to introduce new content at regular intervals they should be fine but I dont have a lot of confidence that the content that will exist when the game goes live will be so sufficient that they wont need to add anything within the first 3 months or so.  Problem with most MMO's is they spend the first month of launch putting bugs and exploits down, tweaking and optimizing, etc that content isnt big on the agenda.  You need to actively work on both, not one or the other. 

[Sky]

 They claim to be doing something entirely different which is to keep pretty much the entire development team around as the live team and that they have quite a bit planned on a continuous basis moving forward.

Daniel Erickson's stock reply is "I'll still have a job here next year." The writing team isn't going anywhere soon.

As far as consumption, some people will burn through it quickly, same as usual. If you skip dialog and don't like alts, you'll be out of content at some point. If you dig the story, take part in a lot of the side activities, and like rolling alts, then it'll be a different story.

Rift is aiming for a different audience. I tend to read quest text in every game, but in Rift it's just so bad even I skip it almost every time. Much easier to pump out the kind of stuff they're doing on short cycles. TOR is definitely going to be longer release cycles, hopefully an annual cycle like EQ2.

At this point, my list of concerns about TOR is very short.

[Ingmar]

Sounds like someone needs some remedial KOTOR play assigned for this week's homework.

Oh please do not get me started on the writing in that game. The meagre sliver of humour I managed to inject into my previous snarkiness will be consumed in a giant flaming pyre of contempt.

I don't think we can be friends anymore. 

[Chimpy]

Not sure if serious.

Perhaps I should have added, for a company that has already recorded 145 terrabytes of voice over already.

You have to know exactly what they mean by 'recorded' though. My guess is they are inflating how much they have for the game by counting every take. Sure, they probably have a fuckton of stuff that is edited and ready for use, but I am sure that the amount of material that they have "on file" that will never be used is many times what they are going to use.

They also probably are counting the straight up un-compressed voice tracks, not the compressed in game audio. 16-bit, 44.1kHz sampling (CD Quality) of one channel, a minute of sound is right around 5MB. Most modern recording is done at 24-bit and with sampling rates up to 192kHz. A minute of audio at that quality level is close to 33MB. Doesn't take long for that to add up.

[Reg]

At this point, my list of concerns about TOR is very short.

You're still in the honeymoon period though. I'm confident that most of Bat Country won't last past the first 30 days as usual.

[Morfiend]

At this point, my list of concerns about TOR is very short.

You're still in the honeymoon period though. I'm confident that most of Bat Country won't last past the first 30 days as usual.

This is Starwars. If we can get a thread to 400 pages I'm sure most will late 2 moths. If only to bitch about it. 

[Nebu]

Anyone remember the glowing WAR beta comments?  How long did that last?

[Kirth]

Anyone remember the glowing WAR beta comments?  How long did that last?

Right about tell tier 4. and my 145 terabyte comment was a subtle joke about install size...

[Sky]

I'm confident that most of Bat Country won't last past the first 30 days as usual.

That's what BC does. I'm sure many here will tear it apart and hate it. That's what f13 does.

[Kirth]

I'm confident that most of Bat Country won't last past the first 30 days as usual.

That's what BC does. I'm sure many here will tear it apart and hate it. That's what f13 does.

anyone who expects otherwise is in for a shock.

[Morfiend]

We are united in our hype, and then again united by our crushed dreams and anger.

[luckton]

New trailer with some fresh footage: http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/signs-war

New raid page: http://www.swtor.com/info/systems/operations

And the bottom picture confirms the new rumor of a Hutt-themed raid.

[Sky]

We are united in our hype, and then again united by our crushed dreams and anger.

I've never been hyped for an mmo. At least, not since UO.

[luckton]

We are united in our hype, and then again united by our crushed dreams and anger.

It builds community 

[Nebu]

We're usefully cynical.  

[Rasix]

At this point, my list of concerns about TOR is very short.

You're still in the honeymoon period though. I'm confident that most of Bat Country won't last past the first 30 days as usual.

Luckily, for some of us, our content consumption speed has slowed dramatically.  I doubt I can hit max level in a MMO in a month anymore.   If this plays out like Rift (I'm pretty sure this'll do better than Rift here), it'll be just me late at night making snarky comments to an empty guild chat.  

[luckton]

Some notes from the live panel at NYCC

- 15 dungeons at launch, with end-game hard modes. (because fuck lore)
- No LFD feature yet
- Visual change with morality path is in, but won't affect the look or actual ability of skills used.
- Release date moved up to 12/20/11

[Fordel]

If LFD doesn't go in at launch, I'm guessing it goes in the first big patch.

[luckton]

If LFD doesn't go in at launch, I'm guessing it goes in the first big patch.

That, along with dual-specs and other stuff, apparently.  We'll call it "The WoW Patch" 

[Rokal]

I'm worried about how well they're keep up with patches too. This is Bioware's first entry into the MMO space, and their DLC releases for non-MMO games have been heavily delayed/pretty awful. I don't have much confidence that they're be able to update aggressively with high-quality content.