Beta testing and release chicken

[Sjofn]

Also:

What if the story you're banking on is every bit as insipid and stupid as WoW's?

Congratulations, you have just described every Star Wars movie.  

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.

[Modern Angel]

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?

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

[Nevermore]

Also:

What if the story you're banking on is every bit as insipid and stupid as WoW's?

Congratulations, you have just described every Star Wars movie.  

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.

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

[Kirth]

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?

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

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.

[Modern Angel]

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

[Sjofn]

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

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

[Nija]

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/

[K9]

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  , 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.

[Sjofn]

(Sofjn  , who I have little doubt will love the everloving shit out of TOR)

 

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

[Ingmar]

THere are currently 67K posts in the WoW forum. 

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.

[Sky]

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

[Malakili]

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. 

[Evildrider]

THere are currently 67K posts in the WoW forum. 

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.

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

[Mosesandstick]

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.

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

[Sheepherder]

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.

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.

[Sjofn]

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.

[K9]

THere are currently 67K posts in the WoW forum. 

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.

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.

(Sofjn  , who I have little doubt will love the everloving shit out of TOR)

 

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

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.

[Simond]

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.

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.

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

[apocrypha]

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

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.

[eldaec]

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.

[apocrypha]

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!

[FieryBalrog]

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   .

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.

[UnSub]

This time, it will be different!

[Kirth]

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   .

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.

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.

[Ingmar]

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

[Modern Angel]

You see anyone in this thread (or the other) who says anything positive about swtor does so with a tone of cautious optimism

Not really.

[Sjofn]

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

[Velorath]

You see anyone in this thread (or the other) who says anything positive about swtor does so with a tone of cautious optimism

Not really.

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.

[Modern Angel]

That's what sigs are for.

Also:

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

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

[Sjofn]

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?

[Velorath]

That's what sigs are for.

To make it easier for everyone, how about you just put a link to one of schild's old PS3 exclusive fanboy froth posts 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.

[Sky]

"Sjofn would have sex with a BioWare game if it took on human form."

Auuuuuustiiiiiinnn!

[Modern Angel]

To make it easier for everyone, how about you just put a link to one of schild's old PS3 exclusive fanboy froth posts 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.

That is a pretty amazing thread.

[Sjofn]

"Sjofn would have sex with a BioWare game if it took on human form."

Auuuuuustiiiiiinnn!

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

[Soln]

To make it easier for everyone, how about you just put a link to one of schild's old PS3 exclusive fanboy froth posts 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.

That is a pretty amazing thread.

2008.  Things were different then.