f13.net

Reported by TenTonHammer (http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/73904) by way of CasualGaming.biz (http://www.casualgaming.biz/news/29159/SOE-working-on-casual-Star-Wars-MMO).


CasualGaming.biz seems to think this is viable because of "SOE’s recent success with casual MMO Free Realms, which has enjoyed a staggering uptake and is currently turning heads in the MMO sector." However, they link to their earlier article (http://www.casualgaming.biz/news/28764/Free-Realms-hits-3-million-users) about FR hitting 3mil users as a mark of success. Sure, for a subs-game, that'd be news. But as we discussed back then, not so much for a freebie game relying on some small percentage actually paying anything.

This would logically be based on Clone Wars so as to not take on SWG nor SWTOR.

All hearsay though at this point, but I figured worth mentioning anyway.

Clone wars. I bet.

Free Clones!  :grin:

It'd sell well to my son and nephews.  They fucking love Clone Wars.

I'd play.  Love Free Realms and have an Asajj figure sitting on my desk.

3mill subs just means that if 1% payed on average 10 cent a month they would have made 3 thousand dollars...oh wait :ye_gods:

Exactly.

On topic, I love Clone Wars. It's the Star Wars I wanted after Ep 4, and the kind of entertainment I can still get behind. Clone Wars would give me a reason to play a FR game. While I appreciate what FR is and is trying, I just don't care about the world enough to be interested in the parts.

Given the disaster that is SWG, I just can't imagine that Lucas is signing another contract with SOE.

Why not? It was Lucasarts' intervention that resulted in the CU and the NGE. They obviously have no lock on sensible moves.

You have no idea how hilarious that comment is and will continue to be for like 10 more minutes as I giggle about it.

Jim Ward.

He hasn't been with LA for some time, he is currently running for congress where his mastery of running things will really be useful.

That's not the point.  Jim Ward (i.e. Lucas Arts) called the shots for everything that went on with SWG.  While SOE may have built a shitty house, Lucas Arts told that what popsicle to put where and when.  Besides SWG made (and probably still makes) Lucas Arts money.

What Snake said.

I've got a bad feeling about this.

Really Simberu was LA's idea?  Sounds crazy to me.

I always figured that Lucas was a disruptive influence and all that stuff, but somehow I don't see any corporation anywhere blaming it on themselves when there's a convenient scapegoat in the form of the game publisher. That was more of my thought.

SimBeru wasn't Lucas's idea. Lucas's original idea was to let Raph do his thing. Then reality set in. Then deadlines, then WoW. LA looked at that and went, "we need that demo, let's turn SWG into WoW with SW icons". The rest is history. And the entire time the game was dismantled into the Frankenstein's Monster it is now, there were LA flacks telling the playerbase, "no, this is for your own good, we're making the game more iconic!"

This is so weird.  :uhrr:

I'm getting an odd feeling of deja vu.  Not sure I can put my finger on it.  In any case, I want to be on the ground floor of this thread...either it'll be locked by the end of the day, or simply beginning its journey towards one hundred pages.

(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1739972/web-images/no-darth_vader.jpg)

I love this thread!

(http://www.deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/star-wars-geek.jpg)

I'm just going to put this here so I can say I was here before page 96.

Clone Wars era never interested me. "Here's a buncha patsies fighting an arranged war where you already know the outcome and who's gonna die!" Meh.

Isn't that...ALL of Star Wars?

Will I be able to do this?

(http://www.nexuszero.net/Img/clone_wars.gif)

The game which lets you pull that off will give money hats to everyone involved.

That looks great for a single player game.

If a Star Wars Single Player game ever looks like that it will almost assuredly play like Dragon's Lair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lyPl8wv7PA

(http://www.variety.com/rbidata/photogallery/variety/24746.jpg)

Did you say casual?

Yeah, but the whole Clone Wars setting just... doesn't matter. I mean, what am I going to play? A Jedi defending the Republic that's going to wipe it's ass on democracy and have him taken out to be shot like a dog when the war is over? A separatist fighting for the right to... uh... trade routes or something in a war where my entire faction are the unwitting fall guys and literally the in-universe pre-determined designated losers?

There isn't really any of the sort of fun black-and-white good and evil Star Wars usually banks on. It's just a bunch of patsies slaughtering each other while the guy with all the real power sits behind a desk and rubs his hands together. Which I suppose makes it the most realistic war in the whole IP, but still. Doesn't get me excited.

So a PvP MMO.

Also a good argument for why one might want to avoid an established IP altogether when producing a game of this type.

That's kind of like the problem I'm having with the alleged "plot spoilers" for Warcraft.  Having a duplicitous douchebag leader who tricks the main character is not fun for the player, when they can see it happening to their characters but can't do anything about it.  At least with Clone Wars, you know that the big "screw you, I was evil all along" event isn't going to happen in the game.

I don't have any issue with it. Knowing how WW2 ends doesn't automatically make all the games based around it suck.

The Clone Wars time frame is just "step 2" in a 3 step plan.

Yeah, but how many of them make you play as the Nazis?  I think the issue is less "I know how it's going to end" and more "everybody loses."  The Trade Federation sucks and dies.  The Republic falls apart and becomes the Empire before being ultimately defeated by Ewoks.  In a Clone Wars game, EVERYONE is going to want to play a Jedi, and the Jedi get screwed over worse than anyone else.

The end game is seeing how many blasters your character can deflect before you get killed by storm troopers   :oh_i_see:

I'm sure you can play as Nazi's in at least a few of the hundreds of WW2 games made.


I want to be a Trooper dangit!

Y'all talk about "knowing how it ends" as if the norm of MMOs is to actually advance their meta-stories.

That.

Plus, SW has always been about the IP, not the individual cleanly wrapped resolution of a plot. That's as old as the IP being kicked off at the fourth episode. So I gotta laugh at any concern about being dropped into the middle of a story that's already being told and already has a foregone conclusion in a genre where every single game forces you to do the same.

Just 'cause all the NPC Jedis die when Order #whatever gets issued doesn't mean my PC Jedi doesn't happen to escape to some backwater planet and live happily ever after.

YOU UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF FAN-FIC.

If it was fanfic, there'd be two jedi on the backwater planet, probably both guys.

Along with their trusty Bantha and its soft, soft hair. 

My fanfic would be about a Jedi secret agent who has to go back in time and regain his force. He would be called Obi-Have.

I seriously hope you're not proud of that joke.

Wouldn't that be Obi-Had?

Againakin.

It's an Austin Powers joke, don't overthink it.   :why_so_serious:

It took me a while to get. Then I felt dirty for laughing.

Try saying it out loud very slowly.

For some reason I was reading it in a Kenneth Williams voice and it seemed funnier that way than as an Austin Powers line.

Ok, I lol'd. Yes, I am just not all that sophisticated :-)

(http://iria.chem.uh.edu/smiley/huh.gif)

It took me a while, until I realized I had to mispronounce have.

In a WW2 game you at least have clearly defined good and evil sides. We know that in reality the good side triumphs, but there can be a sort of subversive pleasure in pretending to rewrite history so the bad guys win. The clone wars thing, on the other hand, is just a bunch of dupes fighting a war they all lose. Not only is your side fucked, but you don't even get to shoot at the parties responsible.

It can work if it's a good enough game, but it's not a portion of the IP that has ever lent itself to getting into in my opinion.

I like Ahsoka Tano and kinda bummed out cause I know she is worm food.

Obi-have. Austin Powers.

Say it phonetically. O-bi-have.

If you really can't get it, think have as in "haver". Probably easier for a Brit to get the joke.

I say it with all kinds of accents and don't get it.  Did he say his own name so mangled they sounded alike?

Every four letter word (or name) starting with a consonant and ending _AVE is pronounced one way. (Pronounce it that way)

Except  "have".  :uhrr:

Nah, all this build-up around her she'll get to be one of the special characters who goes into hiding or some such instead of winding up blasted by clones.

OH BEHAVE.
OBI-HAVE.

There.

My nerdsense tells me Anakin's little apprentice will go into hiding and then magically turn up in some EU book to hang around with sixty year old Luke Skywalker.

Thank you for actually saying it.  I came up with that one at some point, but didn't see how it made sense with the rest of what Righ said, so I just kept looking for the joke.

Austin Powers loses his mojo and goes back in time to recover it in the second movie I think. It's probably a good thing if you don't remember the Austin Powers movies.

It would require watching them to forget them.