SWTOR

[Sheepherder]

Blizzard almost bankrupted themselves during WoW's development?

I remember hearing it somewhere but can't find a source, I'll keep dredging.  Dismiss it as retardation if you like.

[Murgos]

Dismiss it as retardation if you like.

Done.  Along with the tech-support guy has a money hat sillyness.

[Ratman_tf]

A "Bioware" studio made of recycled failed MMO development studios has a snowball's chance in Hell.

Just busting out this game's pedigree smashes hope into tiny bitzies. 

[tkinnun0]

The more I read, the more I know this will be my game of choice if only their focus on PVP is nonexistent.

[Sheepherder]

Done.  Along with the tech-support guy has a money hat sillyness.

That was just facetiousness, in reality they have to make do with felt.

I still can't find where I heard this rumor.  Maybe just internet wankery derived from the Vivendi buyout.

[Trippy]

Blizzard almost bankrupted themselves during WoW's development?

I remember hearing it somewhere but can't find a source, I'll keep dredging.  Dismiss it as retardation if you like.

Vivendi Games was losing money big time, relatively speaking, during this period but not because of the Blizzard. And even if Blizzard was somehow losing money for Vivendi Universal (which they weren't) it's not that would bankrupt a media company as huge as VU.

[UnSub]

Blizzard almost bankrupted themselves during WoW's development?

I remember hearing it somewhere but can't find a source, I'll keep dredging.  Dismiss it as retardation if you like.

Vivendi Games was losing money big time, relatively speaking, during this period but not because of the Blizzard. And even if Blizzard was somehow losing money for Vivendi Universal (which they weren't) it's not that would bankrupt a media company as huge as VU.

Vivendi had a lot of issues starting in 2002.

Vivendi disclosed a corporate loss of €23.3 billion in its 2002 annual report; the worst loss to date for a French company.

2002

    * VU began facing financial trouble. It responded with financial reshuffling, trying to shore up media holdings while selling off shares in its spin-off companies.
    * Reduced its stake in Vivendi Environnement to 40% and sold its stake in Vinci Construction.
    * The flamboyant company's Chairman and CEO, Jean-Marie Messier (who had overseen the most dramatic phase of Vivendi's diversification) resigned. He was replaced by Jean-Rene Fourtou. The company then began reorganizing to stave off bankruptcy. The company announced its strategy to sell non-strategic assets. Its largest single shareholder was the family of Edgar Bronfman, Jr., who was head of Seagram at the time of the merger.
    * Sold its stake in Vizzavi to Vodafone, with the exception of Vizzavi France. It also sold 20.4% of Vivendi Environnement's capital to a group of investors, and its stake in North American satellite operator EchoStar Communications Corporation.
    * VU sells Houghton Mifflin to Thomas H Lee, Blackstone and Bain consortium for US$1.66bn. [3]

Blizzard was sucking down a huge amount of money for a MMO that was running over schedule - it was plausible that Vivendi could have cancelled the whole thing. Vivendi's financial issues in 2002 are also the probable reason that the 10 year contract they signed to do a Marvel MMO only lasted three years before Microsoft picked up the deal. My understanding is that Wolfpack was doing pre-production work on the Marvel MMO and that screenshots exist out there somewhere of it, probably in a print magazine.

[Lucas]

Coruscant will be a playable planet:

(camera footage from PAX)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtNs4hXRu7I

Given what little we know about the nature of the game, I think it is safe to assume there will be several public and instanced (small and larger) subzones, just like Taris in KOTOR: awesome background scenery, but very few reachable areas.

[amiable]

The PAX footage left me with a whole lot of questions. Notably they totuted the awesome new group dialogue mechanic along wiht a "choices matter mechanic."   They did not however resolve how those choices are made in group settings....

[UnSub]

The PAX footage left me with a whole lot of questions. Notably they totuted the awesome new group dialogue mechanic along wiht a "choices matter mechanic."   They did not however resolve how those choices are made in group settings....

Earlier comments indicated groups decide by a vote with the most votes winning. So don't have your lightside Jedi join up with darkside Sith or the peer pressure will have them doing meth and killing younglings before you know it.

[AutomaticZen]

Earlier comments indicated groups decide by a vote with the most votes winning. So don't have your lightside Jedi join up with darkside Sith or the peer pressure will have them doing meth and killing younglings before you know it.

Which frankly makes sense.

[Venkman]

Well, the Sith/Jedi combo is a bit extreme. I doubt they'd ever allow that type of grouping.

But the point of mixed-faction players within a decision tree is interesting and still complicated. Someone wants to be neutral good while another neutral evil. Do they never end up being allowed to group for group quests? Or will they be allowed to opt-out of the impact of their vote so only some people in the group get impacted by the results? Or, does the act of opting-out mean they get dumped from the group and potentially some sort of faction adjustment as a result (+honor for ditching from a group that wants to assassinate?).

Still too many questions.

[Ingmar]

Um... did I miss a piece of news where they said you could group at all cross-faction? I thought their campaigns were completely separate.

[Lantyssa]

We can't let facts get in the way of hyperbole about why a game is going to be terrible.

[Venkman]

Um... did I miss a piece of news where they said you could group at all cross-faction? I thought their campaigns were completely separate.

It's specifically about the group missions. Seems like every time some insight about them comes out, more questions are asked than answered.

It's not about whether the game is going to be good or not. The success of SWTOR is completely independent of group missions anyway. That's not a big attractive feature, merely something to debate endlessly

[tmp]

Trooper gameplay footage from PAX (starts at 0:15 or so)

[Fordel]

God, their animations reek :(


Also way to die demo player 

[Mattemeo]

God, their animations reek :(

I'm seriously hoping it's 'placeholder' grade animation. Either that or Bioware have somehow regressed a decade in game development on an aesthetic level. You really don't want to see the Smuggler's current run animation. If you ever thought WoW's human male carrot-ass run was bad...

[taolurker]

The animation wasn't the only thing that stood out in that clip... Did anyone else see the mobs warp through a wall and then magically reappear in front of the barrier? That'll make for a fun MMO game.

[Hoax]

Yeah that looked like it was far from playable, the mobs warped, the death animations didn't go off at least once, animations looked fucked up.

[Fordel]

Also, that is far from a BFG announcer guy.

[Merusk]

God, their animations reek :(

What, your hips don't swivel like a turret when you're running around? 

Also, that is far from a BFG announcer guy.

It didn't really look too much bigger than the gun he had equipped before.  I was expecting them to pull out a Dark Trooper gun or that Missile Launcher thingy the Clone Troopers ran around with in the Tartakovsky Clone Wars series.  Instead it was.... another rifle. 

The whole thing looked a little.. hm.. rounded, too.  The walkers in particular looked like some sort of chibi-ized version of an animated version of the walkers you see in the movies.

[eldaec]

This is what, a year or so from launch?

I'm surprised they are sharing so much footage tbh.

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

If it's placeholder stuff they are showing then it's WAY too soon to be showing it. First impressions matter.

[Malakili]

Reminds me of fallen earth running animations.

[Venkman]

I would bet large that this is final footage, that they don't have terabytes of "real" assets they suddenly push live in the magic fix-everything launch-day patch. The videos don't do it justice, but rarely do they for an MMO anyway. I do think they should dial it back and perhaps virally distribute some form of playable experience. Not MMO per se, but some new way to talk to people who otherwise see WoW colors in SW lore.

The other vibe I'm getting from the videos is that they seem to be trying as hard as possible to throw enough "looks like SW" stuff to not alienate the millions of SW fans they hope to get but who never played KOTOR or KOTOR2. There's definitely a SW style that works thousands of years prior; but the stuff they've been featuring in videos really looks to be positioning almost Storm Troopers, almost Walkers, almost Tie Fighters, etc.

[eldaec]

The biggest doubt I have over this project is that they continually gloss over the multiplayer aspect.

So far the only evidence we've seen that this s a multiplayer game (let alone massively multiplayer) is a group of two.

Increasingly, it looks like Hellgate with more art assets.

[Sheepherder]

So...

...Those blasters really don't have much for stopping force, do they?

[UnSub]

Um... did I miss a piece of news where they said you could group at all cross-faction? I thought their campaigns were completely separate.

Every class might have a separate campaign, but you can invite people to do missions / take part in them.

Some other lore I've seen in SWOR points to a kind of treaty between Sith and Jedi, so cross faction teaming on some missions isn't necessarily out of the picture.

Lantyssa - I don't think this game is going to be terrible, but it is going to be a massively single player game that I can't see BioWare maintaining the content output for it over an extended period of time. And I see a lot of these early claims people going nuts over - it's pre-suck Star Wars! With voice overs! - as not having a lot of meat behind them.

[Lantyssa]

The "It's going to be awesome!" crowd is just as stupid, though less annoying, than the "This is going to be shit because..." crowd.  We don't know enough because they've barely released any solid details.  It's still way too early.

The speculation about how the game is a failure because we've seen a couple of scripted clips showing off one aspect in an alpha build is tiresome.

[Merusk]

So...

...Those blasters really don't have much for stopping force, do they?

About as much as any game that uses hitpoints and guns.  Two systems I hate seeing mixed, even if the game is awesome.

[Zane0]

I don't know. The reflexive white knighting I've seen for this ramshackle, frequently bamboozling single-multiplayer-whatthefuck rpg can be equally tiresome to behold, I find.

[Zane0]

.

[Velorath]

I don't know. The reflexive white knighting I've seen for this ramshackle, frequently bamboozling single-multiplayer-whatthefuck rpg can be equally tiresome to behold, I find.

If you'd rather read page after page of how much a game sucks, there's always the Warhammer sub-forum.  Personally I find it a bit of a waste how much time some people here spend discussing shit they don't like.

[Margalis]

Hating on Star Wars if pretty fun, given that it's the most overrated anything of all time, ever.