Bioware Austin.. damm more Dragons.. or Lightsabers?

[Montague]

Because all of the JtL people are at Spacetime Studios?  Maaaaaaaybe they will put it in there, but I don't think it's a design priority.  You could do EVE of the Old Republic well or World of the Old Republic well, but not both together.  This is all guesswork since I don't have any inside info.  I suppose it is possible, however, since all of these people live in Austin and some of them are even married to each other... which is why schild says the things he says.  It is likely it will be Yet Another MOG from the people who brought us UO and SWG.  I'm hoping it won't but I only have history as a guide.

Also see WUA's comment.

I get what Schild is saying, but are we really at the point of pattern of failure here? I mean, how many successful, quality MMO's are out there? WoW and... what?

If somebody wants to make a quality MMO, who the hell do they hire? I mean there's only so many ex-WoW developers to go around. Would it be better if they brought in some wet-behind-the ears interns whose names aren't attached to games that have been less than stellar but also don't have the first clue of the pitfalls and logistics?
 

[AcidCat]

I liked the gameplay. Tedious in some places, like most RPG's, but still fun. And tons more fun than most MMOG combat.

I also really like KOTOR's gameplay. So yeah, I would love to see it translated to MMO format.

[Yegolev]

I'm pretty sure hiring people who have never worked on a MOG before is not the best idea ever, if you are planning on being a HUGE SUCCESS.  You are right in that the medium is pretty young and getting together a group that actually knows what they are doing is pretty fucking hard, but that's why I say what I do.  Something super-awesome will come out one day.  Maybe it's this Biowaustin thing, especially since a lot of them have probably worked on a MOG before.  /shrug

Also, this isn't going to be D20 Online.  Read Ubiq's blog or a recap of his AGC'07 talk and it should be apparent that he's working within the established MOG framework we have all grown to love since we watched Aradune dance around outside Freeport.

I know he's been reading this thread, so maybe he will correct me.  That would be neat.

[eldaec]

I liked the gameplay. Tedious in some places, like most RPG's, but still fun. And tons more fun than most MMOG combat.

I also really like KOTOR's gameplay. So yeah, I would love to see it translated to MMO format.

Hit flurry.
Mob dies.
Listen to pre-recorded speech.
Repeat.

Ok, there are a few interesting battles prior to becoming a jedi, but honestly, KotoR lives or dies by the story and the conversation sequences. Translating them to a MMOG format and delivering sufficient content for extended subscription would be a hell of a job.

[eldaec]

Oh, and put me down in the 'include space combat plz' column.

As of right now it is SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS since anyone released a passable space combat game.

And it's a little over eight years, or two thousand nine hundred and forty five days since the last good one.


It's as if someone stood up on 30th September 2000 and said, 'yep, take the rest of your life off boys, we've finished this genre, no need to do anything else ever again'.

[WindupAtheist]

Schild, I'm genuinely curious so don't freak out, but how did a guy like you even end up playing... uh... that other Star Wars MMO... in the first place?  I'm just curious because you dismiss the idea of a hypothetical KOTORO being any good so quickly, and yet you didn't catch the shit-stink coming from the old game that even I was able to smell.

[schild]

I like crafting.

I'm pretty sure I've been pretty clear on this.

Also, I had a shitload of free time and a roommate that would play it with me in college.

[Yegolev]

Whatever Biowaustin makes will have crafting.  Of some sort.

[Soln]

someone just digest this 11 pages and interview for me?  we know what they're doing or not?

[Merusk]

Oh, and put me down in the 'include space combat plz' column.

As of right now it is SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS since anyone released a passable space combat game.

And it's a little over eight years, or two thousand nine hundred and forty five days since the last good one.

Umm k name both games please, because I don't have them it seems and my joystick is lonely.   Last space combat game I bought was X-Wing Alliance.. which is OK, but it's no TIE Fighter.

Also, even as big a Star Wars fan as I am, I'm forced by SW Game history to agree with the haters in this thread.  There have been far, far more flops than gems and the bulk have been this side of the LucasArts-as-dev days.  Eldaec makes a very good point about how combat in KoTOR actually ran.  It was the story and the characters that made the game, not the combat or the shinez.  Something that will not make it into the game outside of a few character interactions, or perhaps some fantastic quest text you'll all be bitching about how derivative of game xyz it was 3-6 months after release.

  The other point I'd like to state is: so many of you all fucking bitch about DIKU this and DIKU that.. but KoTOR is a D20 game.  The fucking GRAND-NEPHEW of the DIKU format via daddy AD&D, yet here you are asking for another game to use it.   It's incredibly fucking amusing.

[Velorath]

Oh, and put me down in the 'include space combat plz' column.

As of right now it is SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS since anyone released a passable space combat game.

And it's a little over eight years, or two thousand nine hundred and forty five days since the last good one.

Umm k name both games please, because I don't have them it seems and my joystick is lonely.   Last space combat game I bought was X-Wing Alliance.. which is OK, but it's no TIE Fighter.

Last decent games I can remember in the genre are the Colony Wars games on the PS1.

[stray]

Not space combat, but anyone who liked Wing Commander would like the Ace Combat games. Same formula pretty much.

[Venkman]

Oh, and put me down in the 'include space combat plz' column.

As of right now it is SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS since anyone released a passable space combat game.

And it's a little over eight years, or two thousand nine hundred and forty five days since the last good one.

Umm k name both games please, because I don't have them it seems and my joystick is lonely. 

One of them has got to be Freespace 2. The timeframe fits, and it was the last decent space combat sim I've played. If not for how ratched it was to the ground game and DIKU, JTL (SWG) could have applied too. That was much more recent.

[Ubiq]

Anyone can write anything on a blog.

It's much more telling to read his game credits:
Games Credited

    Shadowbane (2003), Ubi Soft Entertainment Software
    The Sims: Online (2002), Electronic Arts, Inc.
    Meridian 59 (1996), 3DO Company, The

Also, I hear he drowns puppies.

[Dash]

People saying it's gonna suck before it's even technically announced crack me up though.

Why?

What do you know about the game's lineage?

Are you saying I'm not qualified to take a laser accurate guess at quality based on heritage?

I know very little about the games lineage, by which I am guessing you mean who is working on it?  I read the Bioware talk on 1up and from that I gather that Gordon Walton and James Ohlen are working on it among others of course.  Wiki tells me Walton worked on SWG, and Ohlen was lead director of KotOR and Baldurs Gate II.  I've played all 3 games and loved 2 of the 3, SWG never got me hooked.

So beyond that you can go ahead and learn me why Bioware Austin automatically means a suck game, I'm curious to know.

I'm not saying you are or are not qualified, no idea.  I do know that it's honestly funny to me to hear people go on about how EA means a failed game.  I'm looking at The Orange Box and it has a little EA thingy on it.  Or because so and so is involved in it the game will therefore blow.  I can understand it if you're talking about a very few individuals but just because some dude worked on a game you hated doesnt mean everything he touches will suck.

[Margalis]

Anyone can write anything on a blog.

It's much more telling to read his game credits:
Games Credited

    Shadowbane (2003), Ubi Soft Entertainment Software
    The Sims: Online (2002), Electronic Arts, Inc.
    Meridian 59 (1996), 3DO Company, The

Also, I hear he drowns puppies.

I think the fact you compare drowning puppies to working on those games speaks for itself.

[stray]

I'm looking at The Orange Box and it has a little EA thingy on it.

Publisher.


Not that I'm an EA hater (skate is cool), but it needs to be said anyhow.

[UnSub]

someone just digest this 11 pages and interview for me?  we know what they're doing or not?

If the wishes and tears of gaming fanbois can make something happen, then yes, KotoRO is coming out.

Otherwise: still a rumour.

[schild]

Anyone can write anything on a blog.

It's much more telling to read his game credits:
Games Credited

    Shadowbane (2003), Ubi Soft Entertainment Software
    The Sims: Online (2002), Electronic Arts, Inc.
    Meridian 59 (1996), 3DO Company, The

Also, I hear he drowns puppies.

Moby Games doesn't have a "trivia and other obscura" section. But I'll look into adding that.

[SnakeCharmer]

At any rate, surely BioWare had their fill of the pains of working with LA during KOTOR, and wouldn't want to go down that road again.  Not to mention Gordon Walton and the other exSWG devs they have working on it and their prior experiences with LA.  Granted, I'm merely tossing this out there and have no idea what goes on inside their respective melons, but I've never heard (privately) of any positive working experience with LA (layers and layers of beaurocratic bullshit to get the smallest thing even 'fixed').

Besides, who woud really want to carry the baggage of thousands of exSWG players constantly yelling "Back in SWG, we did it this way and it was soooo much better"?  I'll concede that every dev thinks that their design documents they've been working on since they were kneehigh to a grasshopper is THE set of design documents to rule them all and can fix every ill that fates an MMO and draw in hundreds of thousands of millions of subscribers.

[WindupAtheist]

At any rate, surely BioWare had their fill of the pains of working with LA during KOTOR

Was the development of KOTOR reputed to be painful in that way?  I mean, it was a very successful game and presumably made them some nice money.  I don't really see it as a reason for BioWare to go "Let's not do THAT again!" unless there was some kind of epic agony involved.

[stray]

Well, they didn't do it again actually.... But that has more to do with them wanting to spend more time creating original properties outside of D&D and Star Wars. I'm not sure what Snakecharmer is talking about. I've heard them say nothing but good things about Lucas Arts. That they didn't mind the approval process because they were huge star wars geeks themselves. They had resident designers who were already obsessive about that stuff to begin with.

[Velorath]

The other point I'd like to state is: so many of you all fucking bitch about DIKU this and DIKU that.. but KoTOR is a D20 game.  The fucking GRAND-NEPHEW of the DIKU format via daddy AD&D, yet here you are asking for another game to use it.   It's incredibly fucking amusing.

D20 some major differences from the standard MMO DIKU format.  Most importantly, AD&D and D20 have never really had any form of agro.  Battles tend to be more tactical because you can't guarantee enemies will attack the character with the best armor and hitpoints by spamming various taunts and agro grabbing abilities, so you have to come up with other means of keeping everyone safe (either via distance, use of terrain, protective spells, healing potions/medpacks, etc...).

Of course they could always change it to make it more like typical MMO combat, but the fact remains that one could make a D20 MMO that doesn't play like most DIKU's.

[WindupAtheist]

Merusk had a certain point.  But given how poorly the "virtual world" version of a Star Wars MMO played out, I'm willing to tolerate some Diku this time around.

[Velorath]

Merusk had a certain point.  But given how poorly the "virtual world" version of a Star Wars MMO played out, I'm willing to tolerate some Diku this time around.

I don't think Merusk's comparison of D20 and Diku had any sort of point at all, but then I've also never liked the way the Diku label gets thrown around either, as it doesn't really have much of anything to do with most of the problems people have with most MMO's.

[Merusk]

Straight-out DIKU has no aggro whatsoever. It was very much like a single player RPG where the 'closest' got attacked, except 'closest' in a DIKU meant the person first into the room.  Aggro is an EQ artifact that has been added-in to the mix due to the 3d nature of the game and the inability for mobs to behave intelligently otherwise.

It's a computer game, not a p&p run by a DM, you're going to have some abstraction.

Also, quit hiding behind the strawman.  Folks who would wail and gnash-teeth over any other game coming out with the same mechanics - REGARLESS of what you want to label them as - are getting tight in the shorts over it.  It's still fucking amusing.

[Reg]

I want to know if Ubiq actually enjoys drowning puppies or if he is just doing it for his art?

[Trippy]

Straight-out DIKU has no aggro whatsoever. It was very much like a single player RPG where the 'closest' got attacked, except 'closest' in a DIKU meant the person first into the room.  Aggro is an EQ artifact that has been added-in to the mix due to the 3d nature of the game and the inability for mobs to behave intelligently otherwise.

I can't remember if the base Diku code had it but I played on plenty of Diku-derived MUDs that had a taunt command.

[Dash]

I'm looking at The Orange Box and it has a little EA thingy on it.

Publisher.


Not that I'm an EA hater (skate is cool), but it needs to be said anyhow.

Yah understood, valid point but we dont know what EA is going to do with Bioware.  I can see being skeptical but to call out the sky is falling is a bit much imo.  When we hear EA is putting it's mitts into the game and mucking around then fine.

[Rendakor]

Straight-out DIKU has no aggro whatsoever. It was very much like a single player RPG where the 'closest' got attacked, except 'closest' in a DIKU meant the person first into the room.  Aggro is an EQ artifact that has been added-in to the mix due to the 3d nature of the game and the inability for mobs to behave intelligently otherwise.

I can't remember if the base Diku code had it but I played on plenty of Diku-derived MUDs that had a taunt command.

They also had hate lists, and mobs changing target based on them. I'm also unsure if these were in straight DIKUs. I played mostly SMAUGs, so maybe they were a feature of that code base, but certainly not an invention of EQ.

[SnakeCharmer]

At any rate, surely BioWare had their fill of the pains of working with LA during KOTOR

Was the development of KOTOR reputed to be painful in that way?  I mean, it was a very successful game and presumably made them some nice money.  I don't really see it as a reason for BioWare to go "Let's not do THAT again!" unless there was some kind of epic agony involved.

Well, they didn't do it again actually.... But that has more to do with them wanting to spend more time creating original properties outside of D&D and Star Wars. I'm not sure what Snakecharmer is talking about. I've heard them say nothing but good things about Lucas Arts. That they didn't mind the approval process because they were huge star wars geeks themselves. They had resident designers who were already obsessive about that stuff to begin with.

We had two SWG devs in our guild in the early days of SWG, and I got to be pretty good friends with them during the course of about 6-9 months.  Publicly, they'd always say "it's a fantastic thing working with LA yadda yadda yadda".  Privately, they'd mentioned on more than one occasion how much they hated it.  One of them was fairly high up on the dev food chain.  The other was 'just' a coder/programmer.  Later on, we had several former SOE/SWG people in different other betas that we'd gotten into.  Naturally, at times, the convo switched to SWG. 

Naturally, publicly they're going to be putting on the window dressing for PR purposes.

[Yegolev]

Merusk had a certain point.  But given how poorly the "virtual world" version of a Star Wars MMO played out, I'm willing to tolerate some Diku this time around.

The above statement is why people work with LA.  If some studio managed to make a Star Wars MOG that wasn't actually a pile of shit sans peanuts, they would end up lighting cigars with $100 bills earned from the eager wallets of people who just can't help themselves.  It's great to attempt innovation and good gameplay whatnot, but let's be honest here: if someone reskinned EQ1 with a Star Wars theme, they would would have lots of return for minimal investment.  Camping the Ewok highway in North Tatooine?  It's gold, Jerry!

[Salamok]

Merusk had a certain point.  But given how poorly the "virtual world" version of a Star Wars MMO played out, I'm willing to tolerate some Diku this time around.

The above statement is why people work with LA.  If some studio managed to make a Star Wars MOG that wasn't actually a pile of shit sans peanuts, they would end up lighting cigars with $100 bills earned from the eager wallets of people who just can't help themselves.  It's great to attempt innovation and good gameplay whatnot, but let's be honest here: if someone reskinned EQ1 with a Star Wars theme, they would would have lots of return for minimal investment.  Camping the Ewok highway in North Tatooine?  It's gold, Jerry!

shit half the work is already done, after all EQ already had light sabers!

[Yegolev]

I'd submit that 85% of the work is done, actually, assuming you would spend a large amount of time on the reskin.

[WayAbvPar]

I would definitely pay a monthly fee to murder Ewoks all the live long day.