f13.net

http://kotaku.com/5552522/free-realms-meets-star-wars-in-clones-wars-adventures

Sony Online Entertainment draws back the curtain on Clone Wars Adventures, taking the successful formula established with its free-to-play, family-friendly MMO Free Realms to a galaxy far, far away. Check out the first trailer here!

Rumored in March and due out this fall, Clone Wars Adventures is a massively-multiplayer online Star Wars game for kids, families, and casual gamers. After achieving massive success with its first family-friendly MMO, Free Realms, SOE applies the same business model to the Star Wars universe.

Based on the popular cartoon, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the game will feature a wide variety of gameplay, including lightsaber duels, starfighter battles, tower defense, and droid programming puzzles. There's even a collectible card game built right in.

"Clone Wars Adventures is the ultimate destination for fans of The Clone Wars series and will bring the action and excitement of the show to players online so they can experience The Clone Wars universe firsthand" said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment. "We've worked with LucasArts and Lucasfilm to create a virtual world that is seamlessly integrated with the TV series and a true extension of the show. It's also just flat-out fun to play."

The game will be completely free-to-play, with players able to spend SOE's Station Cash on special items and equipment. A subscription will also be available, giving players access to additional content for a small monthly fee.

Free Realms is a dangerously addictive game, mixing the socialization of an MMO with a constant barrage of engaging mini-games that can see even the most mature gamer (or me) playing long into the night. Add the Star Wars license to that winning formula, and we're pretty much doomed.

I believe the nomenclature is F2P.

The title of this thread makes me think of FTP sites. That'd make a neat niche competitive game - one player tries to host a bunch of FTP sites, and the other player has to crack FTPs to dump 0-day stuff on, while avoiding detection for as long as possible.

Fixed....thx.  I knew something was wrong when I typed it but I was having a brain fart

Well, shit.

I know.  We finally have our WoW killer.

I wonder if my 6 year old nephew's parents are going to let me buy him a laptop for this. This could be serious moneyhats for SOE if it plays even half as well as their Free Realms.

My 5yr old daughter *loves* Clone Wars... she's going to go apeshit.

Not only does my son love Clone Wars, but I tend to like it too.  As long as it's not totally kiddy-fied, I could see both of us playing it, though he'd better get used to the idea of mowing the lawn, and any other chore I can think up.

Crap, my Son's going to be so into this.

And Lucas's influence is felt on another generation who will no doubt be good customers of their merchandise for decades to come.

Oh damn.  Bye.  It was nice knowing y'all.

I like the Clone Wars show, and well as a SW geek that trailer didn't look half bad.

Years ago I was arguing with a friend who said that old Smed was a moron, I told him he was probably sitting on a master plan to take over the world. I think I was right.

So I wonder if this is the SW release that was 'leaked' last year.  My money says, yes.   Is SWTOR even looking like it'll be out this year at all?  If not. wow way to take some wind out of those sails.  Sub fee in my SW single-player story when this is free? Roofls.

I really get the feeling that years and years of hard learned lessons are letting Sony come on real strong now.

Money Hats!


-edit- The gameplay visuals look just like the Cartoon, that's actually pretty cool!

I'm pretty sure that SWTOR was stated as not being released before March 2011.

I haven't been keeping up lately with Star Wars lately, is this based on the version of clone wars that takes a shit on Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars?

Based on the visual style, it appears so...   :uhrr:

How badly did the storyline change between the two versions?

I like the new version of Clone Wars better than Tartakovsky's.

So it's a derivative of a derivative product made by a company that's discovered the only people vulnerable to its games are kids?

SOE and Star wars deserve each other.

I'm thinking moneyhats. One trailer and a short description and I already have more enthusiasm than I ever had for SWTOR.

Sad but true. Or maybe not sad.  I dunno.  They should just use the tag line  "Free Realms, but a setting you like, coming this Fall"

Anyone surprised that Lucas even let SOE touch another Star Wars MMO after SWG?  Im sure the luncheon to convince to license them again involved naked women, alcohol and midgets

But will there be STORY in this MMO?

More importantly, will there be creature handlers?

Or they just said, "No, no.. Koster doesn't work here anymore."  :awesome_for_real:

I guarantee there will be creatures(pets) in the C-Store ;)

Please don't tease about that.  I've already had my heart broken once.  I have the rancor statue to prove it. :cry:

There will be pets, sure, but it won't be the same.

No mention of Sith, i assume no pvp either.

That looks about 1000x more fun than SWTOR.  And it has space combat, which I'm 95% sure SWTOR won't have.  

Clone Wars is a neat show.

SOE sucks balls.

Pass.

Don't know about WoW but we certainly have our SWTOR killer.

This trailer certainly does blow away the equivalent SWTOR efforts. Even the graphics are better.

I'm already starting to prepare for my padawan dance party.  Yoda has already offered to DJ

Oh poop, Star Wars Bejeweled. There goes the lunch hour.

I could of sworn I saw a SW Tower Defense game in there.

Fully intended from the show's perspective.  This was all one big masterplan from the get-go.  And I'm not just saying this from speculation, but from leaks and old "wink wink" interviews.   If you connect the dots you suddenly feel like a puppet.

Aannnnnd, I have a little brother who's a FreeRealmer and a Star Wars fanatic (even plays the minis game).  I feel a disturbance in his school transcripts.

I missed the tower defense, but it wouldn't surprise me given there are several in Free Realms.  There is a quick shot of a Jedi class mission progression spanning several planets and space.  A shooting gallery, cameos with the major Clone Wars characters, space combat, speeder bike races, etc.  FR already has housing and pets plus other mini-games, so I expect lots of those.

Now, the question is will it let us pick from a variety of races and will we finally have a Star Wars games where droids are prevalent?  Can we 'wear' races like costumes, or will we be stuck with one from the many potential options?  Given they're hyping it with the show, limiting races to just a handful may not make sense.  I hope.

(http://bulk2.destructoid.com/ul/174991-/republic_defender%2004-620x.jpg)

You did, where you fire the turrets yourself it seems, and in full 3d.


The assets for the show have allways looked like they were real time render compatible, i would not even be surprised if most of the show was using real time techniques in the same vein as KAENA: THE PROPHECY (http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/kaenatheprophecy/)

I assume this is just Free Realms copied then re-skinned/re-quested?

Well... at least it's free.  :oh_i_see:

Presumably it uses the same engine and some of the mechanics that allows.  As for the details, no idea.  Hopefully combat is more involved.

It will be interesting to see SWTOR's Design philosophies go toe-to-toe with Clone Wars Adventures and see who comes out on top.

Hint: the launch of this game will not help SWTOR's subscription numbers. Bioware and Sony will be fighting for the same market share and Lucasarts will laugh all the way to the bank, which is probably karma given how abused their properties were with SWG.

You really think so? I can easily see playing both or neither of these games.  And the super hardcore Star Wars fans will probably just play both.   I don't really seem that as competition to each other at all.

Agreed.  I also think that SWTOR will have a slightly different audience than the traditional MMO, as it will likely pick up old KOTOR players who care little or nothing for the MMO parts and are looking to playing KOTOR 3.  Not saying they'll get exactly what they're looking for, but they'll still try it out.

If you're going to be funny, at least try to be informed.

this isn't your father's SOE

I'm pretty sure the two games are going for different age and interest demographics.  Any overlap will be because of people that like variety and have a love of all-things Star Wars.

There's no reason people couldn't play both, it's not like they are competing for the same sub dollars. Really, if they wanted to be REALLY evil, they could make achievements in one game grant bonuses/perks in the other!  :why_so_serious:

FWIW, they made a smart choice in lead designer for this project. Matt Higby had been in charge of special events on EQ2, and came up with all kinds of little mini games and interesting mechanics that were quite popular with players (the rainbow lights you could get treasure from, the goblin lottery, and tons of other fun stuff). He's the perfect choice for a game based around a collection of short, fun games like this.

As for whether CWA will be a cash cow for SOE, it depends on how well they've learned from FreeRealms. Smed has been very public about how they didn't monetize FR properly at launch, costing themselves huge revenue potential. My bet is that they will do a much better job this time around and will have a consideralbe financial success on their hands.

>they didn't monetize FR properly
Is this just code for "There was too much 'free' in Free Realms."?

I think it means shake them down, then free play.

Instead of free play, then shake down, Or banana suit popups.

(http://www.freerealmsinsider.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=405&pictureid=3762)

I thought there was too much emphasis on subscription and too little on SOE points.

I imagine it's considerably more complex.

There's a real art to monetisation. There's very evidently an amount that people are perfectly happy to pay for each type of microtransaction but then no more. We've seen angry player criticism of a number of monetisations: Oblivion's horse barding came out when people weren't ready for $2.99 for a piece of fluff armour. Runes of Magic's $10 basic mount was indignantly protested by a section of the player base although enough of them accepted it to pave the way for WoW's very successful $25 mount. Left for Dead 2 suffered a player boycott. Champions Online charging for respecs got people cross, not because the charge was out of line with other microtransaction charges (cf account transfers) but because the idea of paying for respecs was new and strange.

There are some general rules then it's this - it's safe to copy what people have got used to in other games and even add a little bit. At one point a monthly sub of $15 was new strange and unwelcome. I quite happily played Diablo 2 when Ultima Online started because I didn't see what the $15 was for and didn't particularly want to pay it.

Monetising for children is an especially fine art. The sneakiest method I've heard of was one Jesse Schell mentioned at DICE
http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/dice-2010-design-outside-the-box-presentation/
What the developer is doing is giving children free access but allowing them to accrue store points that can only be spent if they subscribe. The free game is fun enough to keep them playing but there's a growing treasury of store points that they can buy loads of cool things with if they can just persuade Mum to pay a sub.

Not all monetisation has to come from players. Advertisers, lead generation companies and marketing people are very interested in accessing game player bases. This is a particularly sensitive form of monetisation as DDO's offerwall fiasco demonstrated.

It really is an area where the industry is taking rather clumsy baby steps and companies are occasionally provoking outrage as they fumble their way through this new science. It doesn't help that some of the steps are just plain stupid (US Allods players rather objected to paying ten times what Russian Allods players pay - who knew?). As a result developers are proceeding with a great deal of caution and know very well that this caution is causing them to leave money on the table.

However the fact that the industry has moved from a paradigm of everyone knowing how much games cost because they all cost about the same to a paradigm where each game that is produced requires its own monetisation means that we are heading into a period of massive change.

I'm sure that Clone Wars won't have a pricing structure quite like any other game before it, it will be unique as SOE continue to experiment and push. That doesn't necessarily mean giving away less for free - the notional nirvana is a game that is hugely accessible but draws people in to spending Magic: The Gathering level sums to play at the top level. (I spent about £5000 on Magic during the 18 months I played it).

And of course the more the industry chases that nirvana the more pressure will build up in the player base for something cheap and fun that doesn't shake them down every chance it gets.

It's going to be an interesting decade in games marketing.

Double post sorry.

I am not sure the trend is a good thing (nor am I sure your predictions are correct).  The micro transaction phenomenon irritates me.  Give me what I want, not your funny money that will invariably not spend in proper lumps.  Paying a subscription is cut and dry.  Even simply direct payments for content is at least specific.  The entire trend strikes me as an attempt to fly below the 'spend with responsibility' radar.  Shame on those people for being careless, shame on the company that encourages it.  Make a bunch of items really cheap.  Hey, why not buy some?

Target kids?  Really?  Do we need another Kwedit scheme?  What is next?  A pity the trend will continue.  Chalk it up to lack of impulse control I guess.

I much prefer microtrans if the prices are reasonable.  I average less a month for Free Realms with the $5 sub and the occasional store purchase than any other MMO I might sub to.  And it's extra easy since SOE has had a couple of double-your-station-cash periods.

If someone else wants to spend more, that's their own budgetary problem.  As long as it's fluff and the game is designed so it can still be enjoyable without a huge cash outlay, I'm okay with that.

As best I can tell, F2P titles (in general) are doing fantastically out of the current economic situation. Players still get to play without paying if they want while there are heavy spenders who subsidise a lot of other player costs.

Sub-based pay systems front load the costs - you have to pay up front and then 'earn' your fun back. Fee unlocks give you more control - don't like something, don't pay for it - but being able to pick and choose comes at the price of constantly being presented with things to buy and fewer 'free' updates.

Devs like sub fees because the revenue is easier to work out, but I like F2P in some ways because it forces devs to keep producing content. There are plenty of examples of sub titles resting on their laurels / having large breaks between updates and just letting the sub fees roll in.

I kind of agree with Lantyssa. It's easy to demonize microtransactions given the lacklustre and sometimes downright horrid implementations thus far. I think players have every right to be sceptical, since in most cases the item shop has added very little perceived value, and in worst cases only served as a thinly-disguised monthly fee and a mandatory cost for surviving a massive grind. But done non-intrusively, they're not so bad.

Also, Stabs might have been wordy, but he is right about one thing: It's early days, and the potential for improvement is massive.


It's also a metric for the devs, and one more outlet for players to cast their vote. I like the idea that by purchasing something from the item shop, I'm endorsing specific content. In their small way, my in-game decisions influence the direction the game is heading. Obviously buying a set of fluffy bunny ears doesn't apply, but things will get more interesting once we start seeing more games where we can purchase content modules. Expect to see a lot of blunders there too.

I waited a long time to do this...
lolololololololololololololololololololol

That would be me, laughing, at all the folks who put massive hate on SOE over SWG decisions and were certain of a future that did not include SOE and LA playing nice together again.

Sorry, that was kind of rude, but some of the folks who can still get frothing mad about SWG years after the fact and this is humorous since I'm now an outsider.

(edit for context: It's taken me that long to have time to look and find this, sorry for the late laugh)

I'd also like to say that everyone who is complaining about microtransactions being the Devil needs to stop and count the pennies. It's not what folks on a board like this want, but those games imported from Asia are kicking the Western/subscription based MMO's in the pants. On derivative games that only fools would grind right?

They may not be what we want, but we are a minority - one that continues to shrink each and every month. F2P makes good money fast and encourages a light development model. The games come to market faster, profit faster, or die quick before they cost hundreds of millions.

That's business win.

It's not what we want.

This, to my mind, is the biggest plus.  The all in MMO development strategy is going away, its just failed too many times to be worth the risk at this point.

While historically F2P games have tended to be more cheaply made (which is part of the reason for their poor reputation) there is no reason to believe this will continue to be the case going forward.

Take Turbine. Turbine are converts to the F2P model in all sorts of ways. They believe it makes them more money. They believe it's fairer for their customers (owning, not renting). They believe they are the market leaders in F2P in the West.

If they have a triple A, huge budget MMO in development what business model would you expect them to launch it with? Subs?

Also you only need to spend huge amounts of money if you're trying to do a project like SWTOR. SWTOR emphasises story that is pushed to the players, not the players' individual stories (charcterised by Bartle as "I fell off Weathertop"). It's essentially an interactive film more than a game. Ultima Online wasn't expensive, nor was Asteroids, nor was Civilization.

This I'd like to know.

My personal thoughts on developing a sub model for a MMO goes like this: is my title better than WoW? If no, charge less than $15 a month. If yes, charge $15 a month. Either way, charge for the box to recover development costs and have an item shop since that's just gravy.

F2P just drops the monthly returns in favour of the item shop and selling more boxes / expansions more frequently.

OK, let me clarify.

Ultima Online was expensive by 1995 standards. Garriott was interviewed recently on Massively's 100th podcast and explained that the publisher only allowed them to do it because it was Ultima, that the idea of a MMO wasn't appealing but cranking out yet another Ultima game was sure money from the people who bought every sequel. He goes on to say that they quickly hit one HUNDRED THOUSAND players (pronounce it like Dr Evil pronounces one MILLION dollars) which gave them a huge profit.

Compare and contrast the announcements by EA that SWTOR needs 2 million subs to break even and has 50 novels worth of content each line professionally voice acted.

By today's standards Ultima Online cost peanuts.

I thought UO launched with a Pay by the hour system.

You sure? I know the beta was paid.

UO was $10/mo. iirc.

Yeah, UO was not charging hourly.

Perhaps you're getting it mixed up with dial-up fees back then, which many times were hourly.

Fixed.

In any event I was talking about development costs, how much the game cost to make rather than the cost to players.

How expensive UO was compared to now requires some sort of inflation calculation - since UO launched the 'average' cost of game development has increased many fold.

Now, SWOR will still likely be more expensive on that comparative basis, but the gap won't be as great.

And then there is Clone Wars Adventures, which will be comparatively cheaper still and puts SOE in a better place to make money from a new SW title.

Comparing a game that made a fat profit at 100k subs to a game that is projected to need 2 million subscribers to be a success should be an inflation-proof comparison.

Development costs have risen but so has the amount of money MMOs extract from their players.

SWTOR wanted to be an expensive big budget game.

Holy shit, have we really progressed to the point where we don't remember what UO cost the player each month???  :ye_gods:

DDO and LOTRO don't prove that you should do AAA budget games for F2P. Turbine isn't the market leader in the West either. The market leader is one of those companies pusing the Asian MMO's that are F2P and have high production quality, and make a mint. Turbine is just one of the Western companies who is really starting to figure that out.

Their bragging point is that they are learning faster than others about what works in this market. SOE is definitely making that adjustment, but the EQ franchise does not yet have a F2P option, so they aren't as up to speed. Others, if they are considering it, are just as forced as Turbine was with DDO.

Big budget is fail as a plan, unless you are an established studio with the funds to suck it up off of other games. The studios who try to come out the gates and play for millions are making bad business. They would be better served to think in smaller packages and release something that can profit at 100K subs and iterate, iterate, iterate. What's better? One game that needs a million to break even, or ten that need 100,000 each?

I'm calling the second option win.

Even in that ten, most will fail, but the odds that a few of them will carry the load is much higher.

Going back to the subject in this thread, that's exactly what folks are speculating about CWA right? That it's Free Realms in a new package?

I never decided the business at SOE so don't read too much into this - but I think that's a wise idea. Cheaper, faster, and easier to profit from. Win, win, and win.

/tirade :)

Very much so.  While I am the resident Free Realms fan-girl, a lot of that is for design decisions and as a role-model for what to do right.

From an entertainment perspective, it's the most casual I have ever played an MMO(G for Stormwaltz) before.  Yet they make from from me averaged out than probably all other SOE games averaged out over the years, including a long-time SWG sub.

So the future is a bunch of small-scale F2P MMO's like all those Asian ones I see in banner ads and stuff, which are incredibly hard to distinguish themselves and are as disposal as toliet paper? Nexxon, GPotato, etc.

I actually saw a new one called Aika (http://aika.gpotato.com/landing/) that looked interesting but I was afraid to click past the trailer.

Grim buddy, did you leave SOE ?  If so, can you say who manhandled you away?

I'm hoping that there will be companies that do games for adults, but yes, I think that's the general notion, build one engine, reskin it and toss in a few systems and run it cash shop for a lot fewer people than a WoW. I don't really have a problem with the structure of the business, just that most of the examples we've seen of it have been aimed at children or Koreans.

Give me an adult aimed EQ3 with more sophisticated combat and group and raid content stuffed into the Free Realms framework and I'll be very very happy.

I'm worried about games created under this new paradigm being like my experience with Frontiersville so far: every action generates a spammy popup trying to get your friends in on the action and notify them of the most frivolous shit. It's not the game wanting me to do something; it's the company that created it, speaking through these digital entities. Like Iron Man advertising Dr. Pepper, or any number of scenarios where the evil entity assumes the guise of a normal person and manipulates the main character into performing an action that will benefit the entity.

It infuriates me and ruins my game experience.

Yes.  The [redacted] would imply no.

Yeah, I work for Zynga now - on FarmVille.  :grin:

The [redacted] went up at my request while I was in that magical place where I didn't work at SOE and wasn't due at Zynga. I called it "vacation!" and it was good.

To Numtini's point about the games needing to be for adults, I think there are and that we would differ only on semantics. The diversity of games being cranked out of Asia is pretty wide, but they get lumped into one general "Bah, it's Korean!" stereotype. :D

Dear gods, FarmVille really is taking over the world.

Sounds more like "we've given up competing with blizzard". Companies have spent either more (Warhammer) or a significant percentage yet met little success. This is because the games they released were fundamentally flawed due to their poor design not something inherent in the market. I'd probably lump SOE in there if they released something that wasn't a pop-cap like kids game... maybe they'll release the agency one day. There's too much emphasis on flashy, consumed while levelling, content and too little thought on providing a stable foundation and plan for evolution. Heck, APB looks like a lot of cash has been invested but most of it seems to be on flash and I really wonder how they plan to evolve it or keep the game fresh. SWTOR may well be in this category too.

Indeed the champion of your scheme would be cryptic with their shallow pump and dump masterpieces. The problem of course being that their retention is far too terrible to actually fund meaningful iteration on the product. So they strip the team to work on the next product and the game slowly dies.


That's because a lot of them are fairly terrible and digging through the mass to find the potential jewel is way too hard. Assuming they are all pretty but shallow grind-fests is an eminently defendable heuristic.

WoW (plus the huge number of other competitor games) gives new titles little time to shake out some of their poorer / unpopular design decisions, which means the new MMO enters a negative loop as it is unable to pay back its immense development costs. It isn't surprising that titles are starting to compete on price as a result and going smaller to start.

That may be what it sounds like, but I personally would rather phrase it as "Blizzard was an accident, even by their own estimations they went above and beyond hopes; if you are spending money and hiring people to make one of these damn games, why not try to do it in a way in which you can profit? That way you don't screw the pooch, your investors, and your employees when your game does not sell millions and you have to scale back staff and serve the much smaller audience you were more likely to get."

The goal of business is to make a profit. If you don't have a cash cow rolling already, in a HUGE way, or have very deep pockets of your own to fund the Next Big Thing, you should go with simpler expectations and make a smaller game that is great at a few things, and rake in the cash from the people who want just that. Please who you can and they will be happy customers, try to please everyone and you will fail 99% of the time.

Cryptic is not the champion of my scheme, Champions and Star Trek were targeting millions. They didn't get them.

EVE is the champion of my scheme if I had to pick a winner.

Huh?  Neither were were robust content launches that marked previous AAA attempts. Its hard to think that either was attempt to dethrone WoW.  WAR and AoC and where the last attempts.

But didn't eve crash and burn and get sold back to the devs by the publisher? I always figured it was a success largely because the publisher ate the loss.

Win for creators, win for fans, loss for corporate middlemen = WIN

 :grin:

Higher budget doesnt mean better games in most cases with MMO's, it just means more free lunches. 

Congrats ole man.


I wonder if Grim and Schild will ever bother to look each up in the corp directory.

Things that make tons of money in their industry do that.  Hence his evangelization of the F2P, cash for fun, quick to publish model.

This. EvE flopped at launch and it was only because Simon & Schulster Games sold the rights back to CCP rather than cancelling the title entirely that EvE is still around.

Runescape is the champion of your scheme - started simple, got the money coming in, improved over time. Problem is that this model really only seems to work if you are among the first to market on your particular platform unless you can include / beat every other feature offered by your competitors.

Finally, Cryptic didn't plan for millions of players. They planned for a couple of hundred thousand. Alleged profitability for both titles kicked in at 100k active accounts or so (according to public statements).

Actually, I have been onto the merits of F2P since about 2004 when I was still doing the (paid) web journalism for gaming thing. I couldn't find writers to explore the first wave of F2P from Asia, so I did. I figured out that they may have been looked down upon by Western gamers, but secretly they had impressive numbers.

So I kept watching.

They have their flaws, as do any games, but there was something to learn and yes I'm completely insensitive to the "OMG a cash shop is so evil!!" point of view. Play and don't give them money and you can enjoy that free part or go play a subscription game, there is still a market for it and a smart studio could carve a very profitable niche.

Quick to publish isn't a newer thing for me either.  We have all railed about how insanely stupid it is to have a game in development for years and years while you try to build the new awesome. It pisses down a lot of money and the tech generations move so fast that you end up scrapping your work more than once.

Start simple, build fast, and iterate newness on top of it.

You can't blame Zynga there though. Blame Disney.

ToonTown launched as a very simple game that was feature complete (all features in the game worked completely from beginning to end and no new features were needed for it to be a complete game). In the years since they have added a lot to that game and made it even deeper, but they only did so after the revenue stream was set and rolling - proving the value in reinvestment.

Sounds like smart business and good games to me; but I'm an evil capitalist.  :grin:

I've been in the "everyone but Blizzard is just fuckups" camp all along. Every piece of crap MMO that comes out sells a million-plus boxes to bored WoW players wanting something new, but collapses after everyone realizes it's a festering shitpile. Then we have to listen to a bunch of industry types sublimate their shame by going "No no our 4% retention rate is the norm, Blizzard is just a freak of nature! Nobody else could ever make a successful subscription MMO! That's like some craaazy business model that would never work!"

Mythic, Funcom, Turbine, etcetera? Collections of hacks who enjoyed some success because no one competent had entered the MMO space yet. If they had been forced to make... say... console games, their general boneheadedness would have put them all out of business years ago.

Several MMO sites are reporting it will launch September 15th, two days ahead of the third season of the show.

The Clone Wars Adventures site itself has finally been updated.  It has a place for beta key redemption.  Unfortunately I haven't found any place which has them yet.

So, have they said anything about beta? I've been eagerly awaiting this one.

(http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/underpants-gnomes.png)

Yup. I have no real problem with F2P, microtrans, RTM, whatever the fuck is the new industry buzzword this week. I have a problem with businesses that miss the important step: Offer something people want.

I've heard nothing about beta and very little on the game itself.  I've been checking the site periodically and today was the first I had noticed any changes.

"Cuppycake" just posted on Facebook not more than 5 mins ago that the Beta has gone live and is open for everyone.  Head to the site and sign up if you're interested.

http://www.clonewarsadventures.com/

:heart:

You're my hero, Merusk.

Well, I tried it. It wasn't bad but it seemed to mostly be just a collection of mini-games and some stuff to buy for your character. It wasn't an MMO in the sense of wandering around and killing stuff/questing.

 :awesome_for_real:

Club Penguin. With Jedi.



My boy is going to love this!

I felt pretty much the same way.  Free Realms with a Star Wars skin would be kind of fun for me, but the "Online Virtual World" in this game is limited to, like, six rooms on Coruscant or something which acts as a lobby for the games.  I might have been playing the wrong games, but I didn't see anything that could even handle two players, except the lobby areas (which you have no reason to go to since I think you can access every game and store from a menu anyway), which makes this seem kind of odd for a multiplayer title. *shrug*  Not for me, I guess.

I don't think you're the target demographic for this. It plays just like Club Penguin, Moshi Monster, Pixie Hollow and other kid-oriented games of that type - a social hub with mini-games, avatar customisation, decoratable house, pets and so on.  Haven't found any multiplayer games yet either but haven't tried the duelling or racing games yet.

It'll be a time waster, but not a primary game as is.  I do hope they open up some worlds and combat eventually.

Vu was ready to shoot me 'cause of how talkative the mouse droid is.  "F1-V3L"

The mini-game where you get to fling Jar Jar into the air and keep him afloat with multiple explosions, collisions, and beatings is genius.

I guess it's out now? Wow. Not much fanfare there.

http://www.clonewarsadventures.com/

This isn't the game you are looking for.

No, no it's not. Not even my son, who likes free realms and loves the Clone Wars, likes it really.

On the plus side, SOE are less likely to be able to screw this up to the same magnitude as they did with SWG!

Played this a bit last night. It only takes moments to get playing so that a huge plus. Anyone interested in seeing a highly refined entry system, should check it out. The combination of art style, requirements and incremental downloads make this thing very snappy to get into and going.

Beyond that, its a but restrictive on what you can do, join and buy now are at every turn with it. The UI is a bit funky in places, but that you can easily overcome with more use. Played a few games too, some standard collection of quick, web like games and old classics.

I can understand why they designed it as they did.  Mini-games are the heart of Free Realms, and the effort it takes to craft a world, classes, and a couple of quests to put those mini-games into are a huge amount of effort for the perceived gain, however I don't see CWA providing any stickiness.

I had no problem subbing to FR from the month it opened and buying the lifetime membership.  Great design (really amazingly well done, even if not your thing) and I felt I got my money's worth all along, unlike many MMOs I played.  This though?  I don't see it having retention for anyone without something... more.

Yeah, but I think you may be more inclined to need a "wold" though, the target (the kids that watch the series) may not be. This thing has a built in fan base, Free realms didn't.

We'll have to see since the beta forums were of course populated by an older demographic.  There were a ton of "it should have been Free Realms with Star Wars" and "my kid loves Free Realms and Star Wars but lost interest in five minutes" posts.

Well yes, what little buzz we had here was "Free Realms but with Star Wars? Sign me up!" They obviously failed to deliver.

Wow.

Amazingly bad. Low to middling quality Star Wars versions of free flash games with boring lobbies between them. No story to follow, no world to explore, no quests to complete, nothing spectacularly fun to do. In sampling all the games (only two of which seem to be at all multiplayer other than the common scoreboard) I had gathered enough Republic credits to buy every single thing that can be purchased without becoming a member.

Understanding that to mean I'd won the game, I uninstalled.

Free Realms was a charming little jaunt through a world full of fun things to do with various daffy rewards for doing them. So much to do, in fact, that it was hard to keep focus. This was a good thing. Clone Wars wants you to pay money to play the fun part of anything... and tries to convince you that the fun is real  by showing you the slow, boring, not particularly challenging portions of uninspired games.

Disappointing.

Disappointing is an understatement.

Indeed. The graphics were bright and exciting, voice acting was charming, the animations a delight... the thing reeks of development cost. Except there's nowhere to play. It promises a war-torn world of adventure, and then before giving you a real mission it boots you out onto the floor of a shopping mall with a video arcade. I hope, for everyone's sake, that this wasteland was cheaper than it looks.