SWTOR

[schild]

Let's say that it's nothing more than a prettier version of KOTOR, but it's parts 3 through 8 and with co-op.  That's enough to get my money and that of probably a few million other people.

Wouldn't that have required, you know, Bioware or Obsidian to make it? Just saying, since you obviously didn't read the thread.

Look, I understand that's what you want, but isn't pining for MMOG brilliance best left to the professionally blind - i.e. MMORPG.com, etc?

[Velorath]

Look, I understand that's what you want, but isn't pining for MMOG brilliance best left to the professionally blind - i.e. MMORPG.com, etc?

You might remember Cautious Optimism.  It's somewhere there in that middle ground between Complete Cynicism and OMG FROTH! that you seem to have forgotten about.

[schild]

Look, I understand that's what you want, but isn't pining for MMOG brilliance best left to the professionally blind - i.e. MMORPG.com, etc?

You might remember Cautious Optimism.  It's somewhere there in that middle ground between Complete Cynicism and OMG FROTH! that you seem to have forgotten about.

Cautious Optimism is based on history.

1. MMORPGs meh are more often than not.
2. Star Wars games are total crap more often than not.
3. Take the teams track record, the IPs track record, and realize that it's more than likely NOT going to be what we would want from such a game.

And then add optimism.

I'd love for this team to do something awesome, but drawing any line in the sand between awesome and not awesome is simply raising the bar too much for them.

Too many cooks in the kitchen, too many employees, an unreasonable speed of both growth internally and public showing of the game externally (still too early for a gameplay video, despite how fast they got it together).

In other words, at the end of the day, it seems like I'm the only one possessing any sort of cautious optimism about it.

I want it to be awesome as I had a love affair with the previous Star Wars MMOG (and I have extreme disdain for the IP in general), but I'm not gonna shed any tears when it's not.

What Cyrrex is doing is called dreaming.

[Cyrrex]

Maybe it is dreaming, but that footage looked an awful lot like a KOTOR game.  And yes, I've been reading the thread. 

Anyway, the only thing I know for sure is that I will buy it.  That it will be any good really is just hope at this point.

[Surlyboi]

I'm with Cyrrex on this one. I may once again feel the painful sting of the MMOG herps, but hey, Star Wars will get me every time.

[Hayduke]

Doesn't look much like KOTOR to me.  Looks more like Mass Effect after getting clubbed with an EQ2 by four.

[schild]

EQ2 by four.

rofl

[lamaros]

I'm with Cyrrex on this one. I may once again feel the painful sting of the MMOG herps, but hey, Star Wars will get me every time.

So you are admitting that your hope is entirely irrational and that you're just that much of a sucker?

Maybe it is dreaming, but that footage looked an awful lot like a KOTOR game.  And yes, I've been reading the thread. 

Anyway, the only thing I know for sure is that I will buy it.  That it will be any good really is just hope at this point.

See above.

There is no reason to think this game will be any good at this point. At all.

[Venkman]

I'm excited for what this title could be, but there's no way to make an assessment of what it actually is right now. But if we could only talk about stuff that existed or kept ourselves to mere fact, well shit, there'd never even have been whatever BBS some ancestor of someone here was on  

As to potential business success though, they need to get a LOT more people into the Old Republic IP than currently are. As far as I can tell, both KOTORs together sold just over 3mil units. For all they say they're doing here, 3mil wouldn't be enough by far. We're not talking Warcraft IP or Blizzard reknown here, and TOR isn't delivering to today's Clone Wars fans nor to the ep4-6 ones.

[UnSub]

That's a good point - I wonder how many people closer to launch are going to be asking "Where's Luke? Can I be a Skywalker?".

To some extent the freedom of the Old Republic gives BioWare Austin a lot of flexibility, but there will be some kickback over it being a tangential Star Wars universe when the game gets closer to launch.

And also when they announce piddling details like how it actually plays and design decisions involving microtrans.

[Triforcer]

There is no way it will be just microtrans.  Why do that, when you can get on the sexy new bandwagon of charging a full sub fee and withholding content to RMT at the same time?  ITS THE PERFECT SYSTEM. 

[schild]

For some reason, and this is probably entirely wrong, I have a feeling they are going to raise the bar on subs to $19.99.

[Lantyssa]

If they do then it better be the best game I've ever played while offering me sandboxy activities to boot.  I'd happily pass it up at that price point.

[Herring]

I'm sure it'll lose all of its magic when you hear the same voice actor doing random NPC #505.  If it even had magic in the first place.

I know they kept stressing that they wanted the PC heroes to be able to take on several guys at once for "heroic combat", but no one in the gameplay videos seemed in danger at any point.  I hope things actually get even a little more difficult, because spamming the hell out of AOE crowd control abilities and hitting things until they die is going to get old really fast.

[schild]

I hope things actually get even a little more difficult, because spamming the hell out of AOE crowd control abilities and hitting things until they die is going to get old really fast.

I'm not gonna support Austinware in doing this, but I spent 1 year and 8 months spamming the hell out of AOE crowd control and poisoning things until they died in SW:G.

[Herring]

I hope things actually get even a little more difficult, because spamming the hell out of AOE crowd control abilities and hitting things until they die is going to get old really fast.

I'm not gonna support Austinware in doing this, but I spent 1 year and 8 months spamming the hell out of AOE crowd control and poisoning things until they died in SW:G.

Was it fun?  If they can make it fun, all the more power to them.  As far as the gameplay videos went, I just wasn't very interested.

[Hawkbit]

After the experiences of AoC and WAR along with the failhype of Aion, I'm not going in blind on MMOs anymore.  It better be robot jesus for $19.99.  Not that I'm disagreeing with you.  

What I'd be very interested in seeing is how Blizzard would react to a smaller game launching at a price point higher than theirs.  

[stu]

Maybe Blizzard will drop to $12.99/mo. *chortle

Looks like BioWare is going for Ben & Jerry's, but all I see is Blue Bell.

[VainEldritch]

I dunno, as a star wars fanboi myself, I feel just the opposite.  Everyone shouldn't be heroic in the star wars universe, like I said before, every smuggler is han solo, every bounty hunter is boba fett, every jedi is (young) obi wan.   That doesn't really seem to jive with the spirit of star wars at all for me.

Isn't this exactly what they said for NGE? When they ripped out all of the classes and boiled the leftovers down to the dregs and called them "ICONIC" classes, so even at character creation and in your character progression "wheel" (*pukes*) you were presented with pictures of Luke or Han or (surely the most "ICONIC" of all) 2-1B medical droid - yowzer.

Well, call me an ICONoclast if you will, but I don't like it. Moves the game away from the notion of "living life in the Star Wars universe" and firmly into the pureed, diluted, easy-to-swallow garbage that high street thinkers have been told they need to have a good time.

*simmer*

[Triforcer]

I have no idea what you just said.  I thought I spoke English, but apparent I am only versed in some obscure dialect only spoken in Ohio and Tokyo. 

[Velorath]

As far as I can tell, both KOTORs together sold just over 3mil units. For all they say they're doing here, 3mil wouldn't be enough by far.

If by as far as you can tell, you mean numbers from vgchartz that were pulled out of some guy's ass because NPD releases back then didn't contain the number of units sold, and don't account for PC sales at all (despite the fact that even today Kotor 2 is still being carried by most retail stores that sell PC games, and Kotor 1 was recently packaged in with Battlefront, Republic Commando, and Empire at War).

Edit:  In fact, from Bioware's own website Kotor 1 has sold over 3 million alone (across PC and Xbox).

[Lucas]

I have no idea what you just said.  I thought I spoke English, but apparent I am only versed in some obscure dialect only spoken in Ohio and Tokyo. 

Yeah, he kinda reminded me of Morte from PS:T :P

[Hindenburg]

Moves the game away from the notion of "living life in the Star Wars universe" and firmly into the pureed, diluted, easy-to-swallow garbage that high street thinkers have been told they need to have a good time.

You're an idiot.

[Venkman]

Edit:  In fact, from Bioware's own website Kotor 1 has sold over 3 million alone (across PC and Xbox).

Which is where I got the "over 3mil" number from. I figured that between remembering KOTOR2 not being as good, hearing it not selling nearly as well, BioWare not having been involved in the development, and them not specifically mentioning how successful the sequel was on that page, I'd just round to somewhere mid 3s.

VGchartz is like the MMOGchart of the video game world

[VainEldritch]

If they do then it better be the best game I've ever played while offering me sandboxy activities to boot.  I'd happily pass it up at that price point.

Yeah, well - I'd happliy pay that for what you say, or double what they need to charge per month to make this thing work, to make up for the cash shortfall incurred when most of the mini-brained wankers are filtered off by the higher price point.   

[WindupAtheist]

I dunno, as a star wars fanboi myself, I feel just the opposite.  Everyone shouldn't be heroic in the star wars universe, like I said before, every smuggler is han solo, every bounty hunter is boba fett, every jedi is (young) obi wan.   That doesn't really seem to jive with the spirit of star wars at all for me.

Then don't expect to ever enjoy a Star Wars MMO. No one is going to make a game where 80% of the playerbase is forced to play useless dipshits just to foster some obscure sense of Star Warsitude.

Yeah, well - I'd happliy pay that for what you say, or double what they need to charge per month to make this thing work, to make up for the cash shortfall incurred when most of the mini-brained wankers are filtered off by the higher price point.   

They're never letting you into Goonswarm. Go away spy.

[VainEldritch]

[They're never letting you into Goonswarm. Go away spy.

 
 

[Velorath]

Which is where I got the "over 3mil" number from. I figured that between remembering KOTOR2 not being as good, hearing it not selling nearly as well, BioWare not having been involved in the development, and them not specifically mentioning how successful the sequel was on that page, I'd just round to somewhere mid 3s.

So you made up numbers.  Good to know.

[Sophismata]

I have no idea what you just said.  I thought I spoke English, but apparent I am only versed in some obscure dialect only spoken in Ohio and Tokyo.

Ah, clever.

[eldaec]

For some reason, and this is probably entirely wrong, I have a feeling they are going to raise the bar on subs to $19.99.

Just by the by, if they added a whole Kotor's worth of Edmonton quality story content every couple of months, which you played in Diablo/Hellgate style with a SW skin, I'd pay $19.99 to dip in and out from time to time.

(obviously they won't achieve that and the game will be denned in record time, but if they did, that'd be cool)

[Triforcer]

Dev on the boards reveal that- SPECIES OTHER THAN HUMAN WILL BE PLAYABLE!

Well, that satisfies their substantive info release quota for the fiscal quarter.  I'm sure the weeklong series of four-hour meetings debating whether to say that there were multiple species was pretty tiring, the devs should take a vacation. 

[lamaros]

For some reason, and this is probably entirely wrong, I have a feeling they are going to raise the bar on subs to $19.99.

Just by the by, if they added a whole Kotor's worth of Edmonton quality story content every couple of months, which you played in Diablo/Hellgate style with a SW skin, I'd pay $19.99 to dip in and out from time to time.

(obviously they won't achieve that and the game will be denned in record time, but if they did, that'd be cool)

You know what else you can buy for $19.99 a month? Heaps of stories that are actually well written! Woah!

Story! Oh dear golly.

[eldaec]

You are essentially arguing that the idea of story based rpgs suck?

Well ok. Good for you.

[Lucas]

Dev on the boards reveal that- SPECIES OTHER THAN HUMAN WILL BE PLAYABLE!

Well, that satisfies their substantive info release quota for the fiscal quarter.  I'm sure the weeklong series of four-hour meetings debating whether to say that there were multiple species was pretty tiring, the devs should take a vacation. 

Selkath 

[lamaros]

You are essentially arguing that the idea of story based rpgs suck?

Well ok. Good for you.

If they call it an MMO / design it like an MMO and charge $19.99 a month for it. Hell yeah I am.