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Knights of the Old Republic MMO Confirmed
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Jul 18, 2008 04:12 PM
from the long-time-coming dept.
from the long-time-coming dept.
Zafsk writes to tell us Gamespot is reporting that in a surprise move from E3 2008, EA's CEO John Riccitello announced that the long debated BioWare MMORPG is going to be a Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic sequel of sorts. Currently the KOTOR MMO is slated for a 2009 release. "BioWare's first Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic game was released in 2003 for the original Xbox and PC, and was named the year's top RPG by GameSpot. An Obsidian Entertainment-developed sequel was released in 2004 and 2005 on the same two respective platforms. Both critically acclaimed games are set several thousand years before the events of the Star Wars films, and cast players as adventurers who eventually become powerful Jedi Knights."
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Big shoes to fill (Score:5, Funny)
If only it could be as good as Star Wars: Galaxies...
Re:Big shoes to fill (Score:4, Insightful)
You've been modded properly ;-). SWG was a lot of fun initially till it started out to be a non-paying job. Oh frick, my house is crumbling - oh frick gotta check on my machines. That and they sacrificed their current user-base in search of a new market (Blizzard is great at this - they don't alienate their current users while getting new users to sign up at the same time..mostly).
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Re:Big shoes to fill (Score:5, Insightful)
They need to take the original SWG, update the graphics, and rerelease. No other MMO is half as deep or customizable as that was. It just needed a dev team that would patch bugs instead of just looking stupid.
The last thing we need is another mod for WoW (I'm looking directly at you LoTR).
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Re:Big shoes to fill (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree totally. I loved the original. My first experience with it was hanging out in the Mos Eisley cantina, playing music and socializing. The huge variety of professions (and not just different combat types) made for a very deep and varied play experience. I mock what it's become because I miss it so much.
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Star Wars Galaxies was the last big name MMO title to actually be innovative (compared to other graphical MMOs).
Unfortunately a buggy release, and poor appeal to mainstream MMO players limited it's numbers. Ultimately it was destroyed when it was dumbed down to be a clone of every other MMO on the market.
I hope they at least follow SWG and bring back roleplaying to MMORPG
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If some ever gets the realm vs realm thing done properly (not Warhammer, sadly) then choice and flexibility and world impact are totally possible. Although the first thing that would need to change would be the ridiculous power level differences between low and high levels. I don't see any big company having the cojones to release an MMO where
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Its called a recession. Welcome to today!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing that bugs me about the KotOR story line is it implies a very, very lengthy period of technological stagnation.
It is as if the technological capacities of all sentient species simultaneously "capped out," and all that was left was to apply the same principles on successively grander scales.
The universe ran out of novelty and room for new discoveries. That kind of makes me sad.
It's a staple of SF. Read Asimov's Foundation, for exmaple. Star Wars never struck me as a universe where lots of new research was being done, and long periods of technological stagnation or even retardation are common in many SF settings.
Re:Thousands of years (Score:4, Informative)
Just to clarify, by middle ages I meant what is usually called the early middle ages or the dark ages [wikipedia.org]. That's from approximately 500 AD to 1000 AD.
Of course the dark ages might not have been as dire as it's made out to be but it definitely was a period of slow or negative technological growth.
I don't think that's actually the case. Before 500 AD, Saxons, Franks and all those other Germanic tribes didn't build anything bigger than a farm or a wooden fort. After 1000 AD, they built huge gothic cathedrals. Construction technology definitely advanced during that period. Especially for the Germans, who were not the direct descendants of the Romans of Greeks (who did have impressive construction tech, but still not good enough for a gothic cathedral).
Between 500 and 1000 AD, Charlemagne founded his empire, invented the feudal system, and built lots of great cities. Vikings roamed the seas and travelled further than anyone before them. Metalworking improved, resulting in better armour and weapons.
It may not have been a very civilised age compared to the Greeks or Romans, but technologically, lots of interesting stuff was happening.
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"Eventually" become powerful Jedi knights... (Score:2)
"Eventually" in this case means after a couple months of training presented in a brief montage...
Seemed a bit wrong, but in retrospect I guess that's all Luke Skywalker got, too...
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Well, the training is one thing, but you also have to run a bazillion errands on the wookie home world where you have to watch the same cut scene at least 6 times.
That's a real midichlorian booster.
If we can't play it with real light saber Wii (Score:3, Interesting)
If we can't play it online using gaming consoles with light saber emulators, like that of the Wii controller, it's just not going to be very good.
Half of the appeal is in emulating light saber battles.
Re:If we can't play it with real light saber Wii (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:If we can't play it with real light saber Wii (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm assuming you never played the original Knights of the Old Republic, a d20-based role playing game. Yeah, I don't know how that couldn't be fun online without waving around a wiimote.
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Re:If we can't play it with real light saber Wii (Score:4, Funny)
When you played the table-top game it didn't involve you waving around your 'wiimote'?
Guess that was just us then...
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Because no non-Wii game has ever done melee combat right? Please.
I spent countless hours duelling other players on Jedi Outcast and Academy online. Not because I wanted to be a wookie (I loathe, hate, despise Star Wars and have zero interest in anything do do with it, including this MMORPG) but because they really got the mouse-controlled saber battles right. It was intuitive and easy to pick up, but took real skill to master and players could actually come up with fighting styles that were completely th
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That just means you should aim for those first. Sheesh.
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Sorry your self confidence is so low that you actually care what you look like while you're having fun. You really ought to see a shrink for that, you have some severe mental issues if so.
Will this Star Wars MMO have a label (Score:2)
That lets the world know that, as an environmentally responsible company, BioWare has made this game without any of the toxic chemical known as RaphKosterite?
That particular additive is bound to make a game that calls itself Star Wars without any of the baggage of actually being Star Wars... Perfect for making a semi-space based Sims game.
With all apologies to Sir Alec Guinness (Score:5, Funny)
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of hours of my free time suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
Trend in the industry? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Trend in the industry? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I was just thinking the same thing for the opposite reason. MMOs have a watered down grinding gameplay, they can't match the depth and complexity of a single player RPG. They're also a lot worse at telling stories. How can you have a good 'teenage kid discovers he's the chosen one and saves the universe' story, when there are thousands of protagonists?
MMOs are popular, not because they're better than single player RPGs, but because they have a good gimmick. To the hardcore fan, the single player, turn based, often tactical CRPG is obviously superior.
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Re:Trend in the industry? (Score:5, Interesting)
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But there are 100 people who think the gimick is fun for every hardcore gamer. Which market would you go after?
WoW will eventually save us all, when *everyone* gets tired of grinding and there isn't a market for that stupid model any more, we migh finally get an MMO with some actual depth of content.
Re:Trend in the industry? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually it's a little of both.
Single player MMO play is horrible, they have stories and gameplay about as complex as what you'd find on an Atari 2600.
"Raid" co-op type gameplay is very complex, in depth, and more interesting; though not necessarily more fun, depends greatly on implementation.
Why does everybody need to be "the chosen one"? Han Solo had a pretty interesting time, characters who weren't Frodo had important roles in LOTR. So long as each character has a unique and interesting heroic path their stories can make them compelling heroes.
In fact you don't even need to be a hero, there was a large fanbase for SWG because it was a good sandbox game. Roleplaying doesn't necessarily mean playing a hero, just look at all the people who roleplay in forums without stats and numbers. Good roleplaying can just take the form of adopting a different character from yourself, just look at all the folks at the renaissance festival, sometimes it's fun being random serf #214.
MMOs are popular because of their communities. For many it's socializing online, with a neat little goal for you and your friends to work towards.
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MMOs are popular, not because they're better than single player RPGs, but because they have a good gimmick. To the hardcore fan, the single player, turn based, often tactical CRPG is obviously superior.
It depends on what you expect to get out of the game. I would suggest that MMOs are popular because they offer something different than the single player CRPG.
Having said that, too many people go in to MMOs with the idea that they get to be the wunderkind center of the world. Or that they get to "win" the game. Or any number of other artifacts of single-player games.
The two are very different vehicles.
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I prefer MMOs for sheer scale of the games. I get bored with single player RPGs, but with an MMO I have access to months if not years worth more of game play.
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No, it's for the money.
When OSI came out with Ultima Online and realized they could get $10 USD a month from everyone, they stopped making every other game.
UO is still going TEN YEARS later.
The other companies aren't stupid. They see that they can make more money selling MMO subscriptions than just selling games.
Plus, if you say it's got lots of online content, then you can dial back the graphics, which lets you stop alienating all the long-time PC gamers who stopped playing the "get a new computer every ye
Great - a decent star wars game at last (Score:2)
since the idiot developers of star wars : force unleashed think that forcing people to play one side of the saga (evil until the end, only switching to good optional) is something attractive to all gamers (probably because they themselves are badass wannabees), i can just skip force unleashed and get to a better balanced game instead.
to all you game developers there - when you do a career optional game, forcing the player to continue with a career until the end and
WTF is the summary on about? (Score:3, Funny)
Then I read the blockquote. It refers only to previously released games. WTF? Can't you at least give us something about the planned MMO in the summary?
I don't know who you are "Zafsk" (if that's your real name), but I resist your crude attempts to force me to RTFA.
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Why'd they have to ruin that? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd been playing through KOTOR II on the PC recently (good luck achieving that on Vista; you have to replace a bunch of dlls in the game directory to get sound to work); the storyline, the influence system, everything is just absolutely spectacular.
I'd really hate to see it become another crappy MMO; I just want to be able to sit down at the end of the day and pretend to be a leet Jedi for a while. Turning that into an MMO really ruins that if you don't have the time to commit to the damn thing.
No info (Score:2, Interesting)
Bioware MMO? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I can see why LucasArts chose BioWare to make the Star Wars MMO, as they've
Amnesia (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but how are they going to explain a whole world full of amnesia patients with a dark mysterious past?
Re:Difference? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Difference? (Score:5, Funny)
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There are attackable Gungans in SWG... but it's hardly worth the suckyness of that game to kill them.
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That would be the Something Awful planet.
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Abuse is through the door, line on the left, one cross each.
Re:Difference? (Score:4, Funny)
So there's a chance I can kill Jar Jar's great great great great great great great great great great grandfather and make it so the prequels never happened? This really could be a WOW killer, it would be the most popular MMO in history if that was an option.
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Re:Difference? (Score:4, Informative)
Please provide links to info for all the other Star Wars MMO games in development by or licensed out by Lucasarts?
The only other Star Wars games I know of in the works are NOT MMO games.
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Penny Arcade called this out many years ago, but I'll be damned if I can find the strip. It is kind of amusing to think on it, though. Any PA nuts out there that can find this please?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/03/29/ [penny-arcade.com]
Re:The second one was not critically acclaimed (Score:5, Funny)
There was an ending on the second game?
I don't remember an ending at all. You just fly off into the nebula and then
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Re:The second one was not critically acclaimed (Score:4, Insightful)
Lucas should really have his arse whipped for the state of the franchise. FTFY
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Re:The second one was not critically acclaimed (Score:4, Funny)
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This is the second post on here talkin' about EA busting balls to force Bioware to make something. The other being about them forcing Bioware to make an MMO, which they were making over a year before the EA merger.
To clarify, EA had no say in the previous KOTOR projects. It was between Bioware/Lucasarts for the first one and Lucasarts/Obsidian/Bioware (offering tech support/advice on the toolset) for KOTOR2.
Now if you meant it was Lucasarts brass that HAD TO HAVE THE GAME OUT NOW then OK, I've heard that pl