f13.net

Guildwars 2, SWTOR, Diablo 3, and the secret world all seem to be playing a game of who will flinch first. I'm beginning to suspect some of these titles won't release this year.

Love to hear peoples guesses for open betas, and release dates.

Pretty sure the only one of those that's on record as releasing this year is SWTOR.  Secret World is april next year, at the soonest, assuming they don't blink.  Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3 are both done when they're done, neither of which are likely this year.

GW2 was never going to be on target this year. The earliest credible estimates I ever heard were next Fall.

If SWTOR can open beta by some time in November, I think they release fine.  D3 and GW2.. no idea unless they enter public testing around the same time frame. I haven't really even heard about people testing either in a closed fashion at all.

I am expecting SWTOR by the end of the year, and Diablo 3 in Q2 2012. No clue on GW2, and I can't bring myself to care even slightly about TSW.

When will TSW release? It's Funcom, so it'll likely be too soon.  :why_so_serious:

With all the doubling-down EA/BW's been doing with TOR, to not release this year would be a huge slap in the face.  That said, I fear that the final release quality of the game will not be what the devs wanted, but release will please their EA fiscal overlords.  I think they're serious about having some great beta weekends in September and October.  I don't expect a full open beta, nor a huge influx of permanent testers...too much is riding on the 'story' aspect of this game, which is already getting spoiled enough by current testers.

Guild Wars 2 looks too damn shiny to be just an alpha/beta, but I guess the benchmark does get raised as time marches on.  With all the systems they're wanting to put in place at live though, I'll put money on the aforementioned fall of '12, with a long stress beta over the late-spring, entire summer.  If TOR doesn't force-grip the population as expected, this will be the next big thing.

Diablo 3 will be like all the other non-MMO Blizzard games; who cares?  It will put all Blizzard employees in money-hats for another decade.  Their only competition is Torchlight 2, which is surprisingly acting like Blizzard used to act than Blizzard actually is.  If the Torchlight devs can really exploit their competition by highlighting the keys things like $20 price tag, LAN-support and classic dungeon crawler feel, they could be a serious threat.

Secret World is too damned secret and mysterious to make an educated guess, which makes me wonder if FunCom even knows when it will be ready.  No one's even replied to my post in the TSW thread about what the game's plot/concept is even about...since I kinda view myself as an average, non-hardcore type of MMO gamer, I can imagine that a lot of people my type have the same issues.  Paired with FunCom's  :awesome_for_real: history with MMO releases, I really don't care about the game at this point.  They need to be a little more open about the game if they want to start getting some serious interest in it.

As for some of the others not mentioned...

WildStar: Wish this had been released earlier...I have no idea what kind of market it hopes to get in a world post-TOR/GW2/etc.  Based on PAX info, I'd say beta early next year.
PlanetSide 2: Summer/Fall next year, to compete with GW2 as the sci-fi alternative.
Titan: Soon...

Funcom has already announced a release date for TSW

I would love to see their internal schedule.  I wonder if there's an entry for "miracle patch" one day before launch.

You mean their "Pay Monthly for Beta" date?  Yeah, April 2012 would be good enough.  An actual release-release date? I'd say whenever they go Free 2 Play  :awesome_for_real:

They won't be a serious threat.  In fact, I think the 20 dollar tag makes them in less direct competition, if you like ARPGs, there is no reason you can't buy both.

Secret World is Funcom so anyone who has had a functioning pulse within the past decade knows to avoid Funcom betas and especially Funcom releases.

You do not want to touch that game until 6 months after launch. At earliest.

GW2 looks too good to be true, SWTOR is WoW so the beta started about 4 years ago, and D3 is going to get me fired and divorced. I think that's a good summary.

I expect GW2 to fall on its face with the crappy control system from GW1.  :grin: I think they can release at any point in time and do well, though I'd imagine they'll avoid launching too close to TOR. Feature list looks great, no monthly fee.

Funcom...is Funcom. I wish them well, but I'll keep my distance until I hear otherwise. I see no reason why they won't release on schedule.  :oh_i_see:

Diablo 3 - steam xmas sale 2013 (or never if not on steam). Not my thing.

TOR...I think they'll release before the year's end and I hope it gives them enough polish time.

Yeah I wouldn't hold your breath on Blizzard stuff showing up on Steam anytime soon.

Anyone else look at the thread title and think that it was about a new Advice Animal meme?

No...I expected it to be some post from a mod crying about us being bad again with beta information, and that we needed to cut it out or be destroyed.

Better than anal release chicken I suppose...

start a poll

SWTOR -- Nov
D3 -- Dec
GW2 -- Q3 2012
TSW -- Q4 2012
anything else?

But what if the only game you care about on that list is SWTOR? 

Set sail for disappointment?

Nope, that would have been if I still contemplated following TSW.

I'm guessing D3 in time for Christmas, possibly January 2012.  TOR I expect November or December because of release pressures.  I don't have any idea about TSW because I've paid 0 attention to it, same with GW2.

But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea, thou wouldst meet the bear in the mouth...

Oh, that way madness lies.

Having played gw2, it's control scheme is as good if not better than any mmo out there.  It's a hybrid between action and hotbar diku, tab target gameplay.

You will love it.

Also:

Swtor is nov
D3 is before xmas
Tsw is funcom
Gw2 is spring (may) next year.  Though I could see fall too.

TSW is like bringing an ugly girl home from the bar. Its not pretty, and will probably suck, but you might be surprised and have a good time while drunk.

SWTOR is like bringing your exgirlfriend home. Its the same thing you have been doing for years, just in makeup and a new dress.

*Edit
Forgot my release guesses.

SWTOR - November 2011
D3 - Q1 2012
TSW - Q2 2012
GW - Q3 2012

Good conversation, however.

And GW2 is like that awkward girl who seemed nice enough but you never got to know well.  Only now she's back, smoking hot, intelligent, fun, and it turns out she'd really like you to get to know her better.

SWTOR - early December
D3 - also December
GW - Q2 2012
TSW - Don't care

And she has a twin sister?

Problem with GW2 is I have this feeling you're going to find out she's a Fundie Racist once you get to know her better.

But then I wasn't a fan of the first GW at all.

This analogy is quite odd.

Indeed.  

Disliked GW.  Only MMO I can remember putting down faster was Horizons.  At least didn't pay for that..

You should try some of the F2P ones on Steam if you want to test that limit!  :grin:

GW2 has a lot of things that look cool, and I've always liked their artists in particular. That said a lot of what I liked in GW is gone in GW2 to at least an extent (ability hunting, heroes/henchmen...) so I'm less hyped about it than some people.

I wanted to love GW. Gorgeous graphics, great developers, no sub fee, full instancing so I didn't have to involve myself in any social interaction, flat power progression, it had it all. I bought every expansion and played maybe 20 hours total. Just never "clicked" for me, it never triggered that part of my brain that says "you must play this".

No jumping.

If GW2 were a sci fi game, I wouldn't even be thinking about any other game.  But right now I'm just so sick of the fantasy genre it's hard to get any kind of enthusiasm for it, no matter how shiny it looks.

Don't think this isn't part of it. The control scheme was absolutely that of a 2d game. It felt like it.

Look at some of their concept art - it's probably half sci-fi-esque.  Heck, it even has an engineer!!

That was about my experience with GW as well, and some of the parts I liked (henchmen, heroes in theory although by the time they rolled around I accepted I would just never love GW like I wanted to love it) are missing from GW2, so I am not expecting it to heal the sick and raise the dead while riding on a T-Rex. Plus NO MESEMERS NO PEACE so they had better announce those guys if they want me to even try it.  :oh_i_see:

So did Warhammer.   :why_so_serious:

GW2 has no draw whatsoever for me.  Just not my thing, besides I am sick of fantasy MMO's at this point.

 :ye_gods:

She only wants to talk, however.

Can we continue the awkward "games as girlfriends" descriptions?  :grin:

D3 is the alt-girl who is going to leave you wondering what the hell happened when you wake up 4 days later, muscles aching and having missed 3 days of work.

TSW is the mysterious quiet girl who promises a lot, but it may turn out her secret is that she's a man who laces drinks with GBH.

It's getting creepier.

The only thing worse than fantasy is fantasy with guns.

I hate to say it, but I'm pretty sure that makes you retarded and more than a little bit unstable, clinically speaking.

Diablo 2- was fine for a couple runs, didn't really care to play it online.  Nothing really special to me about Diablo 3 either.  I would have done a couple runs through it but Blizzard's decisions on the game killed it for me.

GW- played it, bored me.  Couldn't care less about GW2. 

TSW- I was interested in it, but I have no faith in FunCom.

SWTOR- It's Bioware, it's Star Wars, it's not a fantasy MMO.  I've been waiting for something me and my friends could agree on moving into.

As someone who's getting his ass kicked by the economy, I have to make choices in what I play.  I don't have the luxury of picking up every game that looks shiny. 

I think D3 will beta this year, possibly in October, more likely November. If open beta starts as early as October then they may even go live before the end of the year.

I agree with Malakili that Torchlight 2 will be no competition for it whatsoever. It might be a decent game at a decent price point but it ain't gonna sell millions of copies and have people playing it for 5+ years and 4 expansions.

Torchlight 2 is fun. Played it at PAX. Pretty much everything I had issue with they addressed in some way. (Faster player movement speed!)

SWTOR will be out before the end of the year, whether it's ready or not. It'll be polished enough, I predict, but not BioWare polished.

Diablo 3 will be early 2012. TSW will be fall 2012. Not sure on GW2.

GW2: 1st qtr 2012
SWTOR: 4th qtr 2011 and will be a big pile of shit. Someone said it nicely earlier in this thread where it's the x-gf that just doesn't shut up now in their new dress and make up.
Diablo 3: Mid 2012 and Activision is making me care less and less with each bit of new info I hear about
TSW: Late 2012 but I won't care until mid/late 2013 when Funcom fixes its crap

At this point, the only games I'm waiting on are Prime Online, GW2, and Firefall.

It's not that people don't 'care' about the other games, IMO.  It's that TOR is, of all the games on the horizon mentioned here, one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) star here.  Both from conceptional and financial points of view.  They have the brains, the brawn, and backing.  TSW already fails due to it's developer/publisher history, GW2 seems too good to be true, and Diablo 3...I don't even know why that was thrown in here, honestly.  It's not an MMORPG.  It's a single-player, non-subscription game with a strong multi-player element, but it's not a persistent-world game.

I agree that we should be mindful of other options and not close ourselves to just one almighty game, but when your options are

1: Visible, clearly there and almost within your grasps cake (TOR)
2: Cake that could be a lie (GW2)
3: Badly-baked and possibly moldy cake (TSW)
4: Pop-tart (D3)

...I don't blame anyone for just concerning themselves with option 1.

Sign me up for the 'couldn't give a toss about TOR' camp. I've done WoW, and WoW in space has zero appeal to me right now.

I don't think people will grasp the reality of the situation until they are sitting there, watching their dude (w/lightsaber) crouch down next to a cage and "release" some "hostage" or some shit. Which, by the way, just involves mousing over the thing and watching the mouse cursor change to a gear (w/progress bar).

It's just reskinned WoW in the same way that the Koreans would reskin something. Except if you thought fast quest text was a must-have mod, boy are you in for frustration. Plastic-people yap at you for several minutes or you mashing the  "1" key as fast as humanly possible.

Cynics, the lot of you. Stop shitting on our dialogue wheeling savior!

I honestly believe SWTOR will give WoW a run for its money.   

Disclaimer:  I thought at the time WAR would do well.  And I am just a random dude on the intenet so most likely I am wrong.

I can't wait for the NDA to drop.

It's ok...many of us thought this as well, mostly because Mythic's British hype-man was a rather convincing fellow.  Anyone seen that guy lately?  Or did he disappear like most one-hit wonders?

I find the TOR pre-hate amusing.

I think Diablo is a pretty meh franchise, but I'm hoping D3 is an awesome game. I thought GW1 sucked total ass (the controls!) but I hope GW2 is an awesome game. I loved Tortuga, and I hope Funcom learned that they almost had an amazing mmo on their hands.

But people love to pre-hate them some TOR. I apparently can't grasp the situation.  :oh_i_see:

Actually, he's working at Bioware last I heard. With the SWTOR team. He was flogging the game with some stormtroopers in Korea or something like that.

Well they're all working at Bioware now, since the Mythic name got deleted during EA's summer reorganization.  I just figured for all the hype and :drill: he did, he would have kept the momentum going, but alas, once the game went live, it's like he fell off the Earth.

It's no less justified than all the pre-froth. I don't hate TOR per-se, but everthing I see about it it so familiar and unremarkable after years of WoW. It is an apparently unimaginative game riding on the back of one of the world's biggest franchises; doing well should be their default outcome based on the IP alone. Anything less than WoW-level subs points towards a lack of polish on their point.

Also, I am a lot less of a fan of Bioware than a lot of people here. I haven't really connected with any of their games since the Baldur's Gate series.

See what you did there?

I find the fanboism of these new MMO's even more amusing.  I'm looking forward to TOR and will gladly hand over my money when it releases.  Even with that being the case, I'm not deluded about what I'm likely to get for my money.  If Bioware manages to exceed my expectations, then they get more of my money.  Gladly. 

No

Mark took his cut from the EA buyout of Mythic and retired.   I can't blame him, I'd certainly do the same rather than deal with a bunch of neck-bearded man-children for the rest of my life.   :why_so_serious:

I think SWTOR has the potential to do well.  As always it will come down to the execution and the details.  WAR Failed on both.  It wasn't engaging, it was buggy as fuck-all, its world felt too lifeless with a color palette that was still too muddy brown and it never got simplicity in it's mechanics right the way WOW had. (And has since failed at.)

People are tired of WOW the same way they were tired of EQ, but that doesn't mean they're tired of the game type.  The same lot were bitching early-on that WoW was just EQ with a prettier skin and minor changes and it was doomed.   I laughed at the time and said DIKU was 30 years old at that time and people hadn't tired of it yet and I still feel the same.

Don't make the mistake of pushing your own tastes on to another product, particularly a mass-market one.   Very few people here find anything mass-market appealing, but since you're in the minority that means games shouldn't cater to you when trying to make the money they're going after.

Not Mark, think big white sunglasses and lots of raising of one's voice even when it wasn't needed.

Paul Barnett?

Anyone who believed a word out of Barnett's mouth got what they deserved.  The accent couldn't make up for the used car salesman vibe.

Why?

People play WoW already. Their friends play WoW. Just like every other Wow reskin in the past few years, why would people play "WoW but not as good"?

I was very disheartened by the last few SWTOR videos. It just looks so damn generic.

GW2 - no real interest

TSW - need to read up on this

D3 - Losing interest due to long lead time plus the "always online/no LAN play/moneyhats" stuff.  Might grab it when it's gone on sale.

TOR - Skeptical because of the Origin thing, but if the story is robust, I would like some sort of closure to KotOR 1&2.  Those two games are the ones I've replayed the most in the last 20 years.

The Origin thing, while itself should be taken out back and flogged, was resolved by the Bioware devs a few weeks ago.  It will not be required in order to play/patch the game.  It's just going to be the only way to get the game digitally at launch (and the foreseeable first few weeks/months post release).

Because there are plenty of people out there who believe WoW is irrevocably broken and would like to play another version of it with some actual story that makes sense?

Winner!

Thats all well and good, but it doesnt make it a WoW killer. It makes it something that will bleed off those players. Nothing I have seen from SWTOR says to me that its amazingly better or different from WoW to really draw a huge customer base.

You will draw some of the players with "STARWARZZZ!!!" and some with "Like WoW, but not WoW" but thats not how you give something a run for its money.

Don't get me wrong, I hope it will be fun, I have it preordered, I am just really worried about it after seeing the last few videos and previews. I mean, if the best thing you can show looks sort of stale and boring what does that say about the rest of the game?

You do realize that was exactly the same argument against WoW when it trumped EQ, right?

If the brief history of MMOs has told us anything, new MMOs which seek to displace an existing one by siphoning off its playerbase rarely do well, because the players carry the grievances that split them from the old game with them, while retaining a heavy investment in their past game. TOR has to break new markets, and get new players in, however the pool of potential MMO players is a lot smaller now than when WoW came around. TOR can be a success, but to do so it cannot simply be as good as WoW. WoW got it's head start by being better for a mass audience (arguably) than everything else around at the time; it didn't become a success by carbon-copying the existing format, it added a lot of polish. As it stands, from everything I have seen, TOR lacks that special polish, and is facing an audience who are much wiser to MMO mechanics, and critical of what they expect from a game.

As I say, I don't doubt it will be a success. I just don't see it retaining people well past the first three to six months.

Yeah, it was exactly the same, except for not.

WoW copied the diku gamestyle of EQ/DAoC, but it did a lot of things. Mostly better than previous games. As with all the games released, they are competing with WoW as it is now. With years of polish. So "the same but with much less polish" just doesn't sound amazing.

Now compare that with everything we know about GW2, they are taking a lot of what is sucky in the current crop of MMOs and trying to do something different. Honestly, I think if ether of these games has a chance to be a WoW killer, its GW2 moreso that SWTOR just due to the fact that GW2 is at least trying to be better.

You know what WoW did that beat EQ? They billed themselves as more casual, showed that you could actually do quests instead of mindlessly grinding in pve, and they were stable. They also promised pvp as some point in the future. That's pretty much it. They had the IP, a slight tweak, and an easier format.

Now, the big bad in the market is WoW itself. Main complaints against it is that it's lost a sense of community, that the grinds are obvious in their questing lineup, that they have catered too far to the hardcore, and that don't have any semblence of a story that makes any sense.

SWTOR is trying to improve story-telling, make a game that's friendly to pickups and casuals with lower grouping numbers, and polish it so that it runs smoothly. They also have an even more well-known IP than blizzard.

The table is set. Can they expand beyond just MMO fans to Star Wars fans and beyond? Who knows.

 :oh_i_see:

It's a canon MMO

(http://www.corbisimages.com/images/SF5571.jpg?size=67&uid=e79dea93-ffe4-479b-a310-6e2ab40a955e)

You think I don't know that, you knucklehead?!

 :nda:

If WoW is irrevocably broken, why would I want to play a clone of it?

Hmmm, so I can buy a boxed copy and skip the purported spyware?  Might be an option...

Pretty much the option I'm going with.

it's what I did

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Old-Republic-Pc/dp/B001CWXAP2

WoW wasn't an exact clone of EQ, nor will SWTOR be an exact clone of current WoW. I would like to play a version of WoW where they took all the bullshit out they implemented. Imagine anything they put in where they wanted things to be "meaningful" and that's what I don't want.

Mechanically, perhaps. I expect that a fair amount of imagination is necessarily involved in the story side of things.

Man, seriously. I never got why anyone liked him in the first place, he was obnoxious and sleazy.


I'm cool with Star Wars WoW, because one of my biggest complaints with WoW currently is the story (I use this word loosely) being a gigantic turd. There's a lot about WoW I like, but there are things I either don't like or have lost patience with, that SWTOR seems like it will not have and/or improve upon. It will also help, of course, that nearly everyone I enjoy playing MMOs with plans to at least try it, so even the social part (although most of my MMO friends have left WoW, so WoW has even lost THAT claim) is covered. But I have never pretended to not enjoy the hell out of the "diku" thing (I played on an LP MUD though :oh_i_see:), so I don't think it's a giant crime when a MMO is one.

I agree with Sjofn. For me it's a DIKU game is just a simple backpack to put stuff in. WoW has piled so much stuff into that backpack that at this point it's just not fun to for me carry around anymore.

I just want to put it all down, pick up a new shiny new empty backpack, and start over.

 :ye_gods:

That means I'm wrong!

 :oh_i_see:

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

You all do realize, that this thread has now used up two pages worth of SWTOR talk that could have been apended to the mega thread. I am dispoint(ed).

The thing for me with TOR, is that I know its going to be WoW all over again. I actually would love to go back and play WoW again right now - but the last couple times I've tried I've been hit in the face with the fact that the game has been running for six + years. Nothing like going to the auction hall with my untwinked 10th level newbie looking for that last piece of Defias Leather, and finding it there for 80 Gold. Back when I played WoW, my level 50 Hunter never even reached 80 gold.

I fully admit to liking the ding gratz style of gameplay. Diku games have it, Diablo style games have it. It's human nature - the regular reward makes me happy.
Now add in Bioware style storytelling, which has generally been my other favorite motivation to play games in the last ten years, and yes, my anticipation level is high.

As for Diablo 3, I'm actually really shocked that there are people out there that didn't think Diablo 2 was the Robot Jesus. The only other franchise I can think of that got more replay out of me would be Civ.

Release date wise. I'll be shocked if ToR isn't out pre Christmas. Diablo 3, its Blizzard, they'll release it three years after whenever everyone expects them to, and it will still do fine.

You guys saying that you want to play WoW again (not a diku with WoW elements; WoW. In SPAAACCEEEEE) are not going to want to do it all over again once you actually start.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth after two months is going to be amazing.

Yeah.. see.. I enjoy DIKU.  I've done it again and again and again for almost 15 years now.  I know what it is, I know what to expect and I'll enjoy it.  Telling me otherwise is like telling a hardcore FPS player they're just replaying Doom for the billionth time.  Or a Diablo player that it's just another loot pinata they're going to be bitching about inside a month.  Or a magic player that it's just a resource card game and Pokemon is cheaper.

If you don't get it, that's fine.  Doesn't mean you're right.

I am perfectly happy "doing it all again." Shit, I do it all again in WoW right now. I have a level 76 mage I've been leveling.  :why_so_serious: But I know once he hits cap I'll have nothing to do again because I am tired of the five mans, I've stopped raiding, and PvP is silly to do (although I do it on my paladin still, because lol overpowered holy paladin never dies). WoW in Space is a whole mess of shit I haven't played through!

Yah, I did it all again in Rift, and that wasn't even good leveling content for the most part.  Some of it was Vanilla WoW bad.

It's a new MMO.  I have to play it.  It's a sick addiction that I have.  I played AC2, AO, and Horizons at release.  My baseline is already so low that just about anything affixed to a DIKU standard will provide me with hours of entertainment!

Same.  I enjoyed my time in Rift, but in the way they were addressing the end-game at the time, along with other factors, I could see the writing on the wall.

My interest in somewhat moved by their single-player dungeon proposal...

Yah, I may be back for that.  That's on my perennial MMO wish list.

You're not following me. Ordinarily, I'm in complete agreement. But what you're all saying is, "Yeah, I don't mind playing 80% WoW with some 20% new shiny to shift things around a bit." I'm saying (hypothetically because :nda:!) what if the game is literally a carbon copy of WoW? What if it's basically exactly the same? What if the story you're banking on is every bit as insipid and stupid as WoW's? And what if there really is a full dialogue tree for every single kill ten rats quests, which are even more common than WoW?

Because all you guys are banking on a game that may very well not exist and you're doing it with a conviction that almost beggars belief.


What'd you do, last two months? Three? Because I'm not certain if two month fly by nighters are going to make up the cost of this monstrosity. Which is entirely my point: it's not that you dudes aren't going to have a good time in short bursts or that it's automatically awful. I am saying that you guys salivating at this are going to do the same thing you do with 99% of the games that get hyped up here, which is play for two months and then piss off to something else. And everyone else will, too.

And thus you've hit upon the only true entertainment left in MMOG's.

Not enough love in the world for that comment.

I guess I can see if you didn't enjoy WoW, or don't even seem to understand why other people did/do enjoy WoW, this might be a confusing thing.

This damned NDA needs to drop already. It really does.

There are like 10 other people in the beta who have made a point of saying they pre-ordered based on their feelings from the beta. I expect after the NDA drops everyone's opinions about whether or not they're going to buy/enjoy are probably going to remain about the same.

Not precisely the point. I want to talk about specifics during my time in it and why I feel the way I do. I don't care if you buy it or not. I know you're going to buy it.

Well you hardly need the NDA drop to shout into the void, if that's what it is just going to end up being.

EDIT: Honestly I think you're just wrong about people going into this (at least mostly) with their eyes closed wishing. We all pretty much know what it is going to be, we've done this dance before. Your disconnect seems to be to be not understanding why someone would want something familiar-but-new. There's a real danger in tweaking a formula too much - look at all the bitching here about DA2, or Cataclysm.

How noble of you.  Not only are you trying to protect us from our own inability to judge whether we'll like a game or not, based on a mountain of information (including leaks and hours upon hours of gameplay videos), you're also concerned for EA that we won't stay subbed long enough for them to make their money back.

I don't think this point can be discussed anymore without going into NDA territory. I don't know MA's reasons, but I can understand why he wants to talk about the game.

Yes, how dare someone talk about video games on a video game discussion website?

I'm with schild.

I've come to precisely the opposite conclusion with the same data.  So I am going to say that we are talking a matter of taste here.

Given that schild's opinion is that everybody looking forward to SWTOR is a retard with no taste in games (followed by some shit about hypocrisy), my anticipation to hear your thoughts is reaching new heights.  I don't object to you talking about games, but fuck off with your "you guys only think you know what you want" shit.

Guys guys guys....this needs to end here and now. every post we go further into this thread is one less that we could be piling on to page 300 of the real swtor thread. someone lock/merge before this gets out of hand and we have two thread to get to 300 post prior to November.





 :grin:

Also:


Congratulations, you have just described every Star Wars movie.  I am not playing a Star Wars MMO to have the equivalent online experience of reading The Brothers Karamazov.  I am playing a Star Wars MMO so I can swing a light saber, shoot a blaster and force choke-a-bitch with my wife and friends in an environment that does not demand a full time job equivalents worth of dedication.  

What the heck are you expecting out of this game?

Also, liking or not liking story content is about as subjective as it gets. If you listened every time someone on f13 thought something had a dumb story, you would never consume any entertainment product ever.

You obviously have some reading comprehension problems. I'm not saying you don't know what you want; that's not my damned business. I'm pointing out that some of you are 100% convinced you know what you're getting with this. You are wrong.

Re: story. Oh, I don't have expectations of a decent story. Star Wars is pretty dumb. I'm talking strictly about what everyone ELSE'S expectations are. In this very thread, folks are talking about how they're pretty excited because Bioware can tell an engaging story! That it will be meaningful! Twists and turns!

I'm confused...most people are expecting wow in space with lightsabers and they are wrong because its just going to be wow in space with lightsabers?  :uhrr:

Did you like KOTOR 1/2? Y/N

The answer to that question will give you a pretty good idea of whether you like bioware stories or not.  I do not think anyone in this thread was claiming otherwise.

You have no reason to believe the quality of storytelling will be substantially different for this game.   :nda:

Some of us wouldn't even get to play the same games. ;D

MA is building himself up for a time where he gets to say "I TOLD YOU SO!" but when that point comes people will not really care because people are probably going to be having a good time.

Some people may very well be banking on that.  I'm telling you I'm flat-out not.  If it were 100% WoW with a reskin I'd be fine with that.  I said I'm not tired of the formula.  You're telling me, once again, "yes you are.. you totally are and you just don't get it man!"

No. I'm not.  I get it.  I don't care. Unless it's Cataclysm-level stupid on grouping and instance mechanics I'm fine with that.  Really.

Those looking for more than that will bitch.  However, they'd have bitched that "swg did things this way" or "UO did them this way" or fuck, even "Vanguard/ CoX/ Whatever did them this way."   I don't care, not a whit. I never enjoyed SWG combat or mechanics. UO was a non-starter for me and Van/CoX/ Whatever can take a toss because they entertained me for all of a month at best.

Meanwhile, the "bullshit" that is WoW kept me subbed for 6 years until they started sniffing up their own ass about things needing "meaning" instead of "fun."   So yeah, even if it's just a 100% clone of TBC/ WOTLK era WoW with 0 Bioware story,  I'm good with that.

I'm beginning to bore even myself here with this circle. But here's the argument for the game:

"I like diku. I like diku in space. WoW did a lot of things right but I'm not so sure about WoW now. SWTOR looks like it's WoW with just enough changes to rekindle my interest. As well, I really like Bioware's attempts at bringing meaningful storytelling to the genre! I want some bigger zones and more expansive storytelling, where I feel like I matter. I am positive that I am getting those things."

Now, there are a few things wrong here. One, the self-assurance that THIS TIME it will be different is slightly grating. Dudes saying they played the beta and it made them pre-order gets a rousing, "YES IT IS GOING TO BE AWESOME!" The few of us stating that maybe this is a bit premature gets a hearty, "WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TALKING THIS SHIT?" It's official forums level fanboyism.

The second, bigger thing is that the argument surmised above? The base assumptions (like a streamlined WoW, good storytelling, conversation wheel that matters, choices that change my storyline, big neat zones, etc, etc) are at least 50% wrong. You are not getting those things. They do not exist. Obviously I can't say which of those things, in my experience in beta are right and which are wrong. But some of them are wrong. Dead wrong.

That's why I want the NDA to drop. I have never seen a company say so little about their game while seeming to say so much.

For the record, I don't hate it. But, again, I can't write a post beyond "some of this is misguided" and "I was in the beta" without breaking the NDA.


edit: Pfft... this entire forum's existence is based on saying I TOLD YOU SO about something or another.

I'll also walk back the bit about you guys not wanting to do it all over again. If you're content with a 100% WoW clone all over again? If this game is that (and I'm not saying it is!), then who am I to judge?

Ohhhh I think I get it now, I know your type. you just hate games and hate that anyone could find anything enjoyable about them. I'm not sure where you are deriving the level of fanboyisim but from what I've been reading the level of expectation is down to earth and not  :drill: .

I think you're wrong about one thing here; if the numbers were reversed you would not see the interest level that you do, IMO. That is to say, if it was one guy saying THIS IS AWESOME and ten guys saying  THIS SUCKS BUT I CAN'T TELL YOU WHY :nda: I think the tenor of things in the MMO forum would be different. But you are kind of the lone voice of concern here (amongst known beta participants, anyway), other than schild - but we all know he lives in a land of absolute-black-and-white-either-it-is-the-best-thing-ever-or-it-is-total-shit opinion when it comes to games.

That may be fair.

I also hate diku so much I am about to go play LOTRO until my eyes fall out while getting blisteringly drunk. I sure do hate MMOs!

and despite what schild says he will play the shit out of this when it comes out, at least for a few weeks. If my other launch experiences with him are anything to go by.

But will he buy a lifetime subscription?

Just your tone reminded me of an old wow guildie, was always complaining about some aspect of WOW (raiding, questing, gear, class balance, etc...) played at least 10 hours a day and was one of our highest attendance raiders. rarely I would see him in a good mood, cept after he got loot.


Isn't LOTRO that wow clone with a solid IP and a decent story progression for you character?  :why_so_serious:

And the fact that I can still get stoked about that instead of remotely excited about SWTOR should tell you more than a 10k word dissertation ever could.

edit: Seriously, I've been comparing the two in my head constantly. The way they tell their respective stories is worthy of deconstruction.

Only after the NGE.

(Please don't ban me!  I've got two week off.)

Could you point to a single post where folks (on f13) who are saying positive things about this game even hinted that this was something they:

A.  Want

and

B.  Are expecting?

No offense, but I think you are projecting your expectations on the rest of us.

I don't know what to think.  Lotro held my attention span for about 2 days after I hit the level cap.  If you prefer it to SWTOR, then a) we have very different taste in games or b) I shouldn't have preordered SWTOR.  

I'm going to hope that a) is correct.  

I swear I saw someone talk about how much they were looking forward to larger, more open zones than the current WoW paradigm. And the storytelling stuff is basically everywhere. As for my expectations, I had and have basically zero.

Not into quote splitting but re: LOTRO. If you're saying that LOTRO held your attention for two days after you capped how is that at odds with a general feeling that people are going to get pretty bored with it by the two month mark?

I wasn't drawing any conclusions about anyone but myself.  I don't care if any of you like it or not.  Bat Country never lasts longer than a month no matter what we play.

And we may just have different tastes in games. I'll say that I definitely preferred the way LOTRO told its main story to how SWTOR tells its story. That's fairly subjective but I think a few people might be surprised at how shallow SWTOR's technique is once the shiny wears off.

So if if bioware set the game during the original trilogy where you were always a few steps behind the heroes you would like it?

We've seen plenty of examples from various demos (and leaks for some of us) as to how SWTOR tells its story.  Beyond that I don't think anybody has any illusions about how Bioware tells stories.  I imagine most quests with a story in SWTOR have a dialog option or two at the start, one or two at the end, and on occasion might have a dialog sequence somewhere during the quest as well.  Regardless of what you choose, the story will proceed more or less the same way, with the most long lasting and noticeable ramifications being that later on various NPC's might be alive or dead based on your choices, but nothing that will really affect your game too much.  Maybe a combat sequence or two will play out differently based on some of the examples they've shown.  I'm basing this entirely on how Bioware had done story in KOTOR, DA, and ME.  Obviously since MMO's don't have an end, we'll generally miss out on the "here are the big choices you make at the end of the game" stuff those other games have done, but aside from that, I'd imagine that SWTOR handles story more or less the same.

No he isn't, because even the shittiest of the movies had a better fucking story than WoW at this point. That is how bad WoW's story has gotten. It wasn't good, uh, ever. But it is really, really awful now. BioWare at least has actual writers. So it might be insipid and stupid, but I'm willing to bet if nothing else the NPCs I interact with will have some semblence of a soul.


EDIT: I should probably make clear the "how" isn't that big a concern for me, because I expect roughly what Velorath described in his post. I am seriously not asking much on the story front, either, just that it be vaguely coherent.

Yes, because that is the only possible difference in the way the stories might be told.

Maybe he's trying to say that SWTOR also has a green Kryptonian Mary Sue Jesus character for the head writer to masturbate over?

Your the main character (sw) vs a support member who is mostly off screen (lotro). that's how I see it , correct me if I'm wrong I really only sunk a few months into lotro.

Whether that's true or not (it's not) is irrelevant to what I was saying.

What's terrifying is that character is still slightly less :uhrr: than another character they introduced in the comic that is just ... lurking. Offscreen. Waiting for his chance.

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/03/25/the-sunk-cost-fallacy/

I don't think it'll be so easy to pull WoW subscribers away from WoW for a game that is WoW.

If you want to swing light sabers and force choke bitches, you should look elsewhere. Maybe Kinect or the Wii.

Here you're just going to be pressing 1 or 2.

edit: Further, from teh same site, the more people tell a person they shouldn't like WoW, the more they'll like it - http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/

I'm just burned out on the genre; I don't see the appeal of any MMOs right now. My feeling is that a fair few people will discover they are more burned out than they think when they jump into SWTOR and hit the level grind again. I guess these will be more people who are endgame raiders or PvPers rather than altaholics (Sofjn  :heart:, who I have little doubt will love the everloving shit out of TOR), since they are typically already heavily invested in a game, and returning to square one probably has less appeal than TOR can sustain.

MA is right that a fair percentage of F13ers will not make it past the three-month mark, but that is how f13 does, so....

If I were to sum up my feelings: I think TOR will be a competent and economically successful game, I just don't think it will have the same cultural impact, economic success or genre-defining legacy of WoW. THere are currently 67K posts in the WoW forum.  I will be surprised if TOR makes 15K before hitting the graveyard. Part of this is the f13 effect; but WoW managed to break that for a lot of us, but I think that ship has sailed for too many potential MMO gamers, and the novelty has gone, the shiny isn't there, and TOR isn't doing enough novel or innovative things to be the next genre leader.

 :drillf:

It does sort of seem like it's a game FOR me, doesn't it?

Like 20k of those are just me telling Paelos he's wrong about something though.

And yeah, f13 people will quit this game like crazy. That's what we do with MMOs around here.

To sum up, people burned out on mmo will play it for two or three months. We gotta get these kids to Vegas.

Most of us are just trying to recapture that spark of MMO awesomeness we haven't experienced at length in a long time.  The excitement of a new release tends to bring it out for a while, but in the end they just seem to get old again.  I think a lot of us here have explorer tendencies, and the newness taps into that. 

It's why I don't join f13 guilds anymore. lol

Nah, I'm one of them too. But there's just not much to talk about whilst  :nda:

Fire Thrall is best Thrall.

Seriously.  There should be a quest arc where Thrall-ala-Firelands-raging-so-hard-he's-totally-going-to-punch-a-kitten shows up in Orgrimmar with %playername and clubs Garrosh like a baby seal for being such a goddamn douchebag.  Instead we get a story about his bushwife.  Fucking Metzen.

I could deal with that whole thing, honestly. I just question the when and where of it. We didn't need the Aggra & Thrall character wankery to be connected with the Firelands whatnot. This is what makes it all so infuriating to me. Even when they do something not 100% awful story-wise, they completely fumble the delivery to make sure it does make the trip to Shittown after all.

Heh; that was my point though. People here held on to WoW and EVE, because they did something right that I haven't seen other games do. It's quite hard to pin down.


It's a Bioware MMO, they probably couldn't have done better for you. (I am still baffled how you manage to replay games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect, I couldn't even make it through DA:O once...)

Also you were right about WoW's lore sucking donkey balls.

Garrosh is a better Warchief than Thrall ever was. So there.  :-P

That's very interesting. Reading that I now see that that was the main driving force that kept me playing EVE for so long, embodied in the skill training system.

Feels like less of a draw in WoW since if you stop playing for some length of time your character only gets weaker relative to everyone else's characters until such time as you re-sub and grind up the latest levels/gear. The deficit can be recovered, unlike in EVE where being unsubbed for any length of time results in a permanent, unrecoverable skill gap.

What most players seem to miss in EVE is that for any given role the difference between 6 months and a year of skill points is only a few percent. You don't fall behind but you do just pick up fewer roles.

Logically, yeah I totally understood that. I was also well aware of how much more important the players skills were than the characters - flying tacklers in 0.0 frig packs taking down BS's reinforced that mightily too.

But that didn't stop my brain from resisting the unsub urge because I'd lose out on skill training... stupid human brain!

He isn't impressed with SWTOR, so he must hate games.

Man, the other dude hit it on the head. The most fun you have with MMOs is watching all the ridiculous hype and premature ejaculations yet again followed by the crash and burn yet again.

We've been through this before. Not once, but several dozen times.

This time, it will be different!

You see anyone in this thread (or the other) who says anything positive about swtor does so with a tone of cautious optimism, and yet those of you who feel your saving us from the mistake of maybe having a few months of enjoyment in a video game have painted the positive as frothing fan boys.

That's because our server is hosted in the great state of hyperbole.

Not really.

Yeah, "I like DIKUs, BioWare, and WoW, so I'm cool with BioWare's Star Wars WoW" is totally blind, insane optimism.

I guess we need to preface every single post with a disclaimer about how we aren't expecting the game to be Robot Jesus descending from the Heavens to obliterate WoW and be our favorite game which we will be subscribed to forever and ever.

That's what sigs are for.

Also:


I don't care if you think it's the best thing ever or will be. But let's not pretend here, okay?

Oh, for heaven's sake, the fucking running gag lately is "Sjofn would have sex with a BioWare game if it took on human form." It's like there's context for that comment or something!

But man, you sure caught me, yeah?

To make it easier for everyone, how about you just put a link to one of schild's old PS3 exclusive fanboy froth posts (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=12915.0) in your sig.  Anytime you need to remind yourself of the difference between optimism and raving fanboy lunacy, you can click on it to remind yourself.

Auuuuuustiiiiiinnn!

That is a pretty amazing thread.

Even BioWare Austin, man. Although BioWare Austin might have to take me out for dinner first.

2008.  Things were different then. 

Yeah, in 2011 we'd need a half-dozen people who dislike racing games to shit it up.

I'm pretty sure that was a thinly-veiled grouse about multiplayer being the primary focus of games these days.  In which case; :heart:

Just looked up 2008, and yup. My attitude towards SWTOR was the same then as it is now. But don't mind me, clearly raving fanboy lunacy only applies to games that are already out (the GT5P thread) vs 284 pages and a 6 page succession thread about a game that isn't out or even in widespread beta that was born from the hellmaw of a team that shouldn't have been allowed to make another MMOG.

What was Bioware's first?

A not-insignificant portion of WAR's team came over to Bioware once they merged. WAR has the Bioware name on it now, if I'm not mistaken.

The Bioware team collectively /vadernoooooooo at the same time. 

Also, D3 needs to launch.  I'm getting frothy.

It doesn't.

A not-insignificant portion of the early SWG-management and Shadowbane team went over as well.

Back then, Bioware Austin wasn't even 1% the Bioware you know and love. Now it might be about 1%. Maybe.

WAR wasn't even on the radar as part of the team when I was trying to make it clear to all of you that this is not f'ing Bioware.

I went poking around and it doesn't seem quite as clear cut as all that. Not, mind you, that it's as clear cut as I thought, either. Their forums are plastered with Bioware logos, for instance, and they're often referred to as Bioware Mythic in official documents. And they definitely had people migrate over to Austin; I remember the hub bub here when it happened.

My poking around reminded me that the whole sordid mess is presumably going to be handled by the same subscription team that charged WAR subscribers five and six times last year.

Yeah, God knows you'd never be a fanboy over a game years prior to its release.  That'd be like getting hyped up over Diablo 3 back in 2008 despite the fact that by the time the game comes out, it will have been over a decade since the last one, and Blizzard North is gone and virtually every person who has a credit on D2 has moved on from Blizzard (which has released exactly one non-WoW product since 2004).

Yep, it's exactly like that. Absolutely. Blizzard sent every Blizzard employee away and got rid of a strong heritage of polish and shine and tight game design, moved to a city that has produced a metric boatload of mediocrity in the last decade and proceeded to hire a rogue's gallery of people who aren't fit to run or make a game. And viola, we got Diablo 3.

Exactly like that.

Stop being a dick for the sake of being a dick.

Vogel aside, the fact they picked up some MMO blognescenti "devs" from that place still baffles me.  So yeah.  /squirm

No, it's not exactly like that.  It's completely different circumstances that are causing Diablo 3 to look more and more like shit each time something is revealed about it.

Ok.

Diablo 3 looks fine, except for the silly armor bits. It won't all be silly armor though.

Even if it is, who cares, LOOT AHOY!