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LucasArts, BioWare Announce Partnership
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Oct 30, 2007 12:35 PM
from the just-announce-it-already dept.
from the just-announce-it-already dept.
Given the swirling rumours of a KOTOR MMOG, it should come as no surprise that BioWare and Lucasarts have announced they're teaming up for a project. They don't give any really concrete details, other than to say it is 'a ground-breaking interactive entertainment product'. They've also "launched a cobranded Web site, www.LucasArtsBioWare.com. 'Through our previous collaborations, we know that BioWare has an impressive ability to blend gripping stories with technological advancements, and we believe that our upcoming product will deliver an experience that will span the traditional boundaries of video game entertainment,' LucasArts president Jim Ward said in a statement. "
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KotOR2 (Score:2, Insightful)
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You will find the Internet is full of surprises. At long last the community effort to restore the missing ending is nearing completion [team-gizka.org]; it appears that the main functionality is fully armed and operational, although there are a few exposed thermal exhaust ports they're working to clear up before the public release.
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Re:KotOR2 (Score:5, Funny)
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ground breaking? (Score:2)
Re:ground breaking? (Score:4, Interesting)
"But you have to have a challenge!"
Yeah, has any animal smaller than a skyscraper ever been a challenge to a guy with a gun or lightsaber in Star Wars? What? No?
Then leave the wilderness crap out of it, thanks. Elephant-sized animals should go down to one blast, like a level 1 critter in World of Warcraft. This is Star Wars, not reskinned EverQuest.
And we won't even get into the issue of a Jedi being either weak but omnipresent among players, something you have to spend months unlocking, or hard to unlock and weak. Good luck solving that issue.
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And we won't even get into the issue of a Jedi being either weak but omnipresent among players, something you have to spend months unlocking, or hard to unlock and weak. Good luck solving that issue.
I can only think of a couple real solutions.
.5% of the population can be Jedi. It would require both time and skill to become a Jedi. Jedi would be quite powerful - but the downside to becoming a Jedi would be that you could die permanently, creating an open slot for someone else to become a Jedi. Or at least be reverted to a "normal" character upon dea
1. Simply don't allow anyone to be a Jedi.
2. Create a limited number of Jedi "slots" based on the population of the shard/realm. Like say for instance only
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1. Nobody buys the MMO, as everybody wants to play a Jedi. Game fails
2. People buy the MMO, because they think they can become Jedi. They find out that they have to be hardcore to become Jedi
2a) Casual gamers quit, game fails b/c revenue from hardcores isn't enough to keep it open
2b) Casual gamers complain until Lucasarts forces Bioware to let everybody become Jedi
The problem is, Jedi are rare, and ha
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1. Nobody buys the MMO, as everybody wants to play a Jedi. Game fails
2. People buy the MMO, because they think they can become Jedi. They find out that they have to be hardcore to become Jedi
2a) Casual gamers quit, game fails b/c revenue from hardcores isn't enough to keep it open
2b) Casual gamers complain until Lucasarts forces Bioware to let everybody become Jedi
Or you make every PC a jedi and make different types of jedi and make normal people NPC's or cannon fodder. Almost everyone wants to be a bad ass jedi so let them. You make your money fulfilling peoples wishes not ignoring it or making it hard.
Re:ground breaking? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:ground breaking? (Score:4, Insightful)
As for ripping down big buildings, that's not very star-wars either. The biggest things we see being thrown around easily are girders. You can lift an x-wing with concentration, and that's it. The force has its limits, and in a world where it's plentiful, there are other ways to balance it.
Parent
Re:ground breaking? (Score:4, Funny)
Yoda: "Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship."
Actually, that quote would be better written for Yoda as:
"Size matters not. Look, me at. By my size, judge me, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. The Force, my ally is, and a powerful ally it is. Creates it, life does, makes it grow. Surrounds us, its energy does, binds us. Not this crude matter are we, no, luminous beings. The Force around you, you must feel: here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. The land and the ship even."
Mangled, his syntax is. Begun, my impression has. Difficult times lie ahead for my wife. Talk like this, I will.
(As an aside, the best Yoda impression I ever saw was a 6'4" Scotsman with a beard like a rhododendron who said that Yoda reminded him of a randy French dwarf in a porn movie. "Take this, you will. Hee hee hmm. On you face, it will be.")
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But speculation doesn't come from nowhere, and they haven't denied it (which, if they were a person, is as good as confirmation, but who knows?), so I'm thinking that some
Well, think of it this way (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Blizzard also wasn't known as a MMO company, heck nor as a real RPG company either, before WoW. What people wanted Blizzard to announce at the time was Starcraft 2 or maybe Diablo 3. People were actually massively disappointed when Blizzard announced a MMO. (For an admittedly extreme reaction, see the VG Cats strip where Aeris mugs the Blizzard guy that announced they'll make a MMO. I'm sure a few people fancied doing that.) It sounded like something they'll surely botch, and a waste of manpower which could have been better used for something they were good at.
Needless to say, it currently has about 20 times more players than Everquest at its peak, and EQ2 peaked even lower.
2. Actually, WoW is very much playable as a single player RPG too. It does have about twice as many quests for either faction than is needed to get a player to level 70, it has more story and actually better texts than, say, Morrowind, and has more content than 10 Oblivions or so. It's certaily not _the_ best single-player RPG, but it's better than a lot of stuff we were perfectly content with, and even with the monthly fees still it's more content/buck than most.
In fact, that's my main problem with it: over time it's become increasingly difficult to find a real group for anything else than an endgame raid. Oh, you'll find a level 70 guildmate who'll be happy to run your latest alt through the Deadmines. Or even a perfect stranger if you ask nicely. (God knows I too have ran perfect stranger newbies through a ton of low level instances just because they were polite and well behaved and said "please".) But that kind of group does nothing to me. I want to feel like I actually contributed something to that group, and not like, say, may support-character priest was twiddling his undead thumbs while a level 70 mage was nuking the NPCs in wholesale.
Anyway, it _is_ used as, basically, a semi-single-player game by the majority of the population. They group when they really have to, then bugger off back to playing single-player as soon as it becomes possible. (Let's just say that even 90% of the people who were swearing that the massive level-60 MC raids are the meat of the game, went back to soloing 60 to 70 as soon as the portal to the Hellfire Peninsula opened.) The average WoW player _is_ playing a single player game with some multi-user chat channels built-in. Sorta the same as Unreal Tournament included an IRC client, except this time it's available right during the game.
So basically, even if you're a SP player, don't discount it yet just because it's MMO. A MMO can also be a good single-player game, and I wouldn't be surprised if Bioware gets that part even better done than Blizzard. In fact, if anyone can dethrone Blizzard in that one aspect, Bioware is probably the safest bet.
3. Well, allow some of us SW nerds our moment of hope, will you? Some of us awaited the launch of SWG like it's the second coming of Obi Wan. Some people kissed their wives, said goodbye to their friends, and expected to never be seen again in RL once a SW MMO opens.
And, frankly, it only appealed to a minority in the first place and disappointed everyone else. Yes, the (old-style) SWG fans will point out that it had its advantages over other MMOs at the time, such as allowing more customized characters. And I'll concede that. It had some damn good idea. But the rest sucked more ass than the vaccuum toilets on the space shuttle. It was a SW game launched without spaceships _or_ jedi, for a start. And on the ground it was a baren sandbox that made some of us look back on even the old UO more favourably. It was a DIKU with graphics and a lot of computer-generated terrain. _Empty_ computer-generated terrain, where Raph Koster expected players to just create content by role-playing with each other... without even being given much tools or props for that. Add the constant bugs and heavy-handed dev/support team, and it wasn't much fun except for a minority of the most hardcore SW fans.
A
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MMOG :) (Score:2, Interesting)
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If Blizzard was able to
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Also blizzard does not have a name like Star Wars in the title. Yeah War Craft is an household name and so is Star Craft but it does not compete with Star Wars. On that note I wonder if blizzard strikes back with a Star Craft MMOG?
Star wars fans don't necessarily overlap MMORPG fans. Warcraft fans were likely diablo fans which have a significant overlap. Star trek would have enough greater overlap because both MMORPG fans and Star trek fans apparently suffer from obsessive compulsive disorders.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2, Funny)
What could possibly go wrong?
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What could possibly go wrong?
PETA could find out and put a stop to the whole project.
I miss the old LucasArts (Score:5, Insightful)
Now they just make star wars games.
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I miss the old LucasArts (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, when they made good star wars games.
Now they just make bad star wars games.
Offcourse, if you are really old, you remember Lucasfilm Games as a flightsim company. Kids these days and their new fangled adventures. You want adventures, you go to Sierra.
Another company that went down the crapper.
Actually I have no idea if it was adventures or flightsim that came first.
** Crosses fingers and chants "XvT MMO" ** (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:** Crosses fingers and chants "XvT MMO" ** (Score:4, Insightful)
So... why don't they release a (traditional twitchtastic) X-Wing title?
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No more MMOs! (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of my favorite games ever are CRPGs... Morrowind, Fallout 1 & 2, Vampire: The Masquerade and Bloodlines, Darklands (old school as hell, but one of the best games ever; we need a remake with a less-clunky interface. I'd pay new-game prices for it), Planescape: Torment, etc.
My wife's a much bigger RPGer than I am, and any trip to the PC game section of a store will draw complaints from her about how every RPG with an interesting-looking box turns out to be yet another damned MMO on closer inspection.
Re:No more MMOs! (Score:5, Informative)
Broken Hourglass
Drakensang
And of course Bioware's Dragon Age
Probably there are others.
Parent
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Broken Hourglass looks especially interesting. I'll have to keep an eye on these.
Well, where is the money? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at happened to poor Oblivion when it dared to charge people for a small upgrade, why they were nothing more then common fraudsters.
Meanwhile a small company called Blizzard is raking in several times what that horse armour costs EACH month PLUS they charge 5-6 times for an upgrade. Oh okay so their upgrade is a lot bigger, but people been paying them a monthly fee for years and they still want more AND get it?
Companies got to be asking themselves why they spend years on a product that if it is a big hit might make them a small fortune once while they can also spend that time making an MMO and if it is a hit make more money then they can dream off.
On the other hand, will this be an MMO? With Star Wars Galaxies still running and it still having a lousy rep and neither company having any experience (except lucasrts with destroying one) with MMO's?
We shall see. But MMO's are here to stay, because Blizzard has shown you can get some serious money from them.
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Monkey Island (Score:2)
Hell, even re-release the first two on Xbox Live Arcade and I'll be happy. LeChuck's revenge was my favorite.
So, Star Wars Galaxies 2.0? (Score:4, Informative)
I like MMO's and I liked SWG. For a while and then something happened. Through various design choices AND player actions the game got ruined.
To explain I have to tell you how SWG worked. Like most MMO's you picked a race, sex and apperance, and a class. HOWEVER that last choice had little meaning as you could pick up all the classes with just little bit of money at the start. Unlike the rigid class structures of the Everquest clones (Ultima Online is a seperate beast) in SWG your character could advance in any skill set if he/she used it. If you wanted to advance in pistol class, you had to buy the skill class of pistoleer, and then just use pistols to kill something.
The precise arrangement was a little complex but it allowed you to combine several skill sets together to make your character. Want to be a robot building sharpshooter? A medic with a big sword? A bounty hunter with passion for cooking? A jedi... ah well we will get to that. But more or less, you could.
You had the base skill set of ranged combat (pistol, carbine, rifle (and something I forgot)), melee (unarmed, sword etc) (It has been a while cut me some slack) and support skills like medic, crafter and scout.
The idea was that you would pick those skills that most suited your style of play. For a short time in the games history it worked. A lot of players had a bit of scouting skill to help with gathering resources, some had some medic skills to help with healing even if their main intrest was combat. While others took on the role of pure fighters, secure in knowing that others in their party could heal them in exchange for taking the brunt in a fight.
It more or less worked, skills sets were varied and most were of real use.
What you have to remember was that SWG had far less of the rigid level system that other games have. If you wanted too, and could afford the modest fee you could go straight to fighting rancors, sure you would be eaten, but you could.
SWG did NOT have the quest system, instead you got generic missions of the level of your party and went out to kill spawns. While it sounds less intresting then quests, it helped with one thing. Finding a group, I never had a problem. Granted this was because EVERYBODY hunter naff's but at least you didn't spend an hour LFG. NOR because of the mixed skill sets did you have to beg for a healer to join you.
Once in a while, a group would form to hunt rancors. There were no uber elites back then, just ordinary playrs with varied skills sets seeking fame and glory. A rancor group was a time to prepare, to get your best medicine from stall, repair that armour and get all your equipment checked out.
Once ready, you left, to arrive on a dark world where EVERYTHING could kick your ass. The only way to survive was in a group and to use ALL the skills you had. The best time I had in game was doing deep into rancor valley with a small group, taking shelter among friendly animals (who if a rancor came near would attack, yes my friend MMO critters who have fights amongst themselves) and hunting. Camping out, a small lighted area under a night sky while the trader tried to find some resources so the medic could make some more stimms.
Ah yes, SWG was FUN. It was adventuring.
And then, the doc buffs. SWG had some unusual systems and one was that armour reduced your recovery rates to the point where you wouldn't heal or even were simply unable to wear the armour. To counter that, there were buffs in the forms of food, but the doc buff was introduced to allow the heaviest armour to be actually used. And sony miscalculated. Because resources were dynamic in their quality, the quality if the doc buff depended on the materials players combined. THe results were far more powerfull then intended, with a decent quality doc buff, costing 20k you could walk up to a rancor nest, tap it and just area attack away, spawning rancors until the nest was destoryed and you were surrounded by half a dozen dead beasts. Who needs a jedi now?
The doc buff
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The game wasn't ruined with doc buffs for me, as I was completely unaffected. It was ruined when there were 50 other dancers competing for "views" in the same cantina and in a different group.
It was nice when I had the option to "allow" people to benefit from my healing skills (by blacklisting them before they walked in and choosing manually to unlist them) and could buff them, and they actually began tipping.
Then the next week it seemed like, it was popular knowledge that ever
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SWG had one fatal design flaw, the HAM system. Most of the combat problems were the result of kludgy fixes to try and deal with a poor design. Doc buffs to allow heavy armor were a kludge to accomodate the fact that armor reduced your HAM. By shoving the effects of armor, weapons, special abilities, and the damage you abosrb all into the same pools of points, it made the game a nightmare to balance. Raph Koster overthought how combat should work. For d
Wake up, Gabe (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:I have to wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
1- don't accept a reward: +2 light side 0 credits
2- accept reward: 0 light side 1000 credits
3- Eat his children and take his credits: 1000 credits +2 dark side +3 hp
I felt they could have nuanced it a bit.
Parent
Re:I have to wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the chief problem is that RPGs are classically driven by the quest-issuing NPC. He's the guy who stands around in the marketplace saying 'Oh, won't somebody help me', and who gives you a quest when spoken to. Most of the sidequests revolve around helping these guys out.
What's the dark side option going to be? Kill him on the spot and just take the reward, that's one way, but makes the dark side game rather short and uninteresting. Better is an option like 'Turn him over to the bounty hunters who are the cause of his troubles and get a larger reward'. KOTOR had a fair few decent dark options - sell the medicine to the profiteering gangster rather than the doctor, say. KOTOR 2 was better - Kreia had some rather nasty teachings to impart, if you let her.
But in the end, I'm with the Korriban storekeeper. Why does everyone get the idea that 'dark side' always has to mean 'hooligan'?
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Probably after the Warhammer release party.
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You mean Bioware is actually making a sequel to one of it's games without porting it to a substantially worse company? I actually wonder if new Bioware owner EA will affect this at all though...
Bioware is a developer, they don't decide which studio a sequel goes to. Lucas Arts did. Even then Obsidian didn't cock up KOTOR2 by themselves, what happened is for one reason or another lucasarts chose oblivion (likely cheaper) but pressured them to release before it was ready. Bioware didn't give in to such pressure in the past. this may be different now that they're EA Bioware.
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I'll fart Gold Rose Petals before Duke Nukem Forever comes out.