SOE Also Making a New Star Wars MMOG? 49
Hand Solo writes 'Ten Ton Hammer has an inside scoop on SOE making a new browser-based MMOG based on Star Wars. Rumor is that it will be run on the Free Realms platform. This is generating a lot of buzz around the net. Quoting: 'Former and current Star Wars Galaxies players can still remember the sting of the 'New Game Experience' that changed the face of that game for everyone. SOE has repeatedly said that they have learned from their mistakes, and plan to not repeat them. If SOE isn't expressly targeting the hardcore segment this time around, they (unlike BioWare) won't have quite the same initial level of expectations to deal with. Don't let us give you the impression that SOE plans to take on BioWare, and their highly anticipated MMOG debut, The Old Republic, particularly given the engine the game is rumored to be based on. More plausible is that it will be based off the Clone Wars CGI animated film, offering a more stylized approach to the universe. "
Browser Based? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Browser Based? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Browser Based? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on how you define "browser based". Quake Live really just uses the browser as a launch platform, it's not as if the game is written in JavaScript. The question is whether this MMOG will be purely run inside the browser, with 2D graphics using GWT style libraries, or will it be like Quake Live which i'd conjecture isn't really browser based.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Rocco: "Hey, Doc, I've gotta buy you, like, a proverb book or something. This mix and match shit's gotta go."
Re:Browser Based? (Score:5, Funny)
The Cartoon Network's FusionFall MMO is more accurately browser-based, since it uses a Flash-like rich-media plugin.
SOE? (Score:3, Funny)
Sony... of... Europe? Seriously, I can understand not expanding the acronym in the title, but maybe something in the summary? I have no idea what SOE expands to in this particular context.
Re:SOE? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot -- Marketing For Cheap (Score:2)
It's like a press release about an alleged apple product that may or may not have past the point of "thought experiment". Only this time, it's for Sony. Please tell me you charged them to post this article, otherwise it's just really, really sad...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, but its still "News for Nerds" (perhaps not "stuff that matters"). It involves A) MMORPGs and B) Star Wars, both of which nerds tend to like.
Correction it involves a MMOG, MMORPG would be expected to have RPG elements while a MMOG doesn't have to.
Re:Slashdot -- Marketing For Cheap (Score:5, Funny)
By contrast, a MMOG has elements of both Mman and Dog. They are, allegedly, their own best friend.
_MORE_ stylized? (Score:1)
TOR is already stylized!
Re: (Score:2)
Well, yes, but in the SOE version each character will be visualized as a weeble-wobble.
I wish them the best... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
And what travesty did Sony Online Entertainment commit towards Neon Genesis Evangelion?
Re: (Score:1)
SOE has repeatedly said that (Score:4, Interesting)
FTFY.
They've said it before, and they might just say it again. This company is near the top of awful companies I've worked for - promoting some terrible people into management, and promoting terrible business practices. I played SWG the night before it came out, and TWO of ten quests worked...Good luck, you'll need it!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
lawl (Score:1)
Since when is Bioware going hardcore? (Score:5, Interesting)
The poster seems to claim that Star Wars The Old Republic is going hardcore, but that just seems to be a wish from a lot of WoW players, there is little indication this will be true.
For those who are lost, hardcore has become term in the MMO market to describe those players who like World of Warcrafts end-game raiding system. In this system there are a series of dungeons populated by though bosses you fight with a group that drop 1 piece of armour each time. You need said armour piece to stand a chance in the next dungeon. Since only one piece drops for a group, you either got to be very lucky or repeat the dungeon multiple times. Say it is a 24 man raid, then you need to do the raid 24 times for everyone to get it. To support this, complex point systems have been created (Suicide kings and others) to arrange who can win what and when.
Some would call this a grind, doing the same thing over and over for a piece of gear that will just enable you to do the same again in another dungeon. Other call this hard. The idea is that hard and a lot of work are the same thing. Hardcore for some means "though challenge" for others it is closer to "spending lots and lots of effort". Gear in WoW is "special" because it would have either cost you a lot of time or you been very lucky on the rolls. Sadly, for some, this is translated into skill.
The debate on hardcore vs "easymode" then becomes that certain gamers who are willing to spend a lot of time into a game get upset if EVERYONE gets that special item just by completing a quest. It is not the thougness of the quest that is the issue but that in quest mode EVERYONE gets the reward, not just one person. There for in quest mode if a special item is rewarded, you only need to do it once.
Some people (like me) claim that the people who can sink a lot of time into a game are kids with little else happening in their lifes. They get upset when normal people with jobs and responsibilties can get as far in the game as them. If everyone can achieve the same, then they are no longer special.
For an MMO developer it is a though choice. There are a LOT of kiddies out there (and please note, being a kiddie has NOTHING to do with your real age) but there are also a lot of carebears out there. Ideally, you want both to pay for your game but that is unlikely to happen. So, you got to make a choice and it doesn't matter what choice you make, the other side will claim that you are failing because of that choice. Yes, some people claim WoW has failed because it only attracts the "kiddies". I wish I had a failure like that.
Almost every new MMO forums will be overrun by basically two groups. On the one hand the people who think the sandbox MMO's like Ultima Online and (especially in this case) SWG should make a comeback and on the other hand the WoW kiddies who think WoW is so great every game should be a carbon copy.
Bioware has "competed" against Blizzard before. Baldur's gate vs Diablo. Yeah really, both are RPG's so obviously they compete against each other. Read some players posts on the subject. Plenty a diablo player slams the heavy talking in Bioware games and many a Bioware player calls Diablo gameplay an endless boring hack&slash. In reality, the games are of course completly different and will generally appeal to different people. Only the true gamer, the totally cool and fantastic (like me) will play both games and enjoy them for what they are and not for what they are not. Yes, I am that good, worship me.
But when Kotor came out, many a diablo player posted that it should have less talking and more slashing.
And the exact same thing is happening right now with SWTOR.
Bioware has not been extremely clear on exactly what the gameplay is going to be like in SWTOR. But what they have told so far is that there is going to be a LOT of story and the you make choices similar to the ones we have come to expect from Biowares single player RPG's. Raiding often forms the endgame in an MMORPG (well, it does in WoW and WoW is
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Just in case anyone reads the original comment and thinks it's accurate, it's not. I'm not sure if the poster dislikes WoW and just likes to trash talk it, or if he's never played WoW and is speaking out of ignorance, but basically the comment couldn't be more wrong.
The term "hardcore" does not have anything to do with absurdly grindy loot rules, or anything of the sort. Hardcore refers to the game mechanics, and to how tightly tuned the boss encounters in the game are. A "hardcore" MMO is one that would re
Re: (Score:1)
The challenge in raid content is getting the entire raid force to work cohesively together as a group. In a 'hardcore'-leaning game, this cohesion needs to be very tight for the group to succeed. In a casual-leaning game, a more rag-tag group of players is often able to succeed.
Hardcore groups of players rely on their members to consistently show up for raid times and to pay attention during raids. Bo
Re: (Score:1)
Interesting points, but I think you downplay the role of role of playing time in the 'hardcore' mentality.
The challenge in raid content is getting the entire raid force to work cohesively together as a group. In a 'hardcore'-leaning game, this cohesion needs to be very tight for the group to succeed. In a casual-leaning game, a more rag-tag group of players is often able to succeed.
Hardcore groups of players rely on their members to consistently show up for raid times and to pay attention during raids. Both of these points correspond to play-time - hardcore players are both more likely to be playing on a given night and less likely to need to AFK at a critical time.
I've played on both sides of the fence, in race-to-the-top guilds and yeah-we'll-do-that-if-we-get-around-to-it-next-year guilds, and I'd say that play-time is given more attention than it deserves.
It's true that to be successful, you have to have a schedule. A lot of people balk at this, because they aren't accustomed to it with video games. But MMOs aren't like other games. Persistent teamwork is required to make anything happen. Is someone a hardcore thespian if they go to mandatory rehearsals for th
Re: (Score:2)
As others have already pointed out, WoW was never as hardcore as some oldskool MMOs like Everquest,
See, I used to play Everquest, and I would have never used the word "hardcore" to describe it. It seemed a lot like a simplistic kids' game to me. It was enjoyable in parts, but the only thing that would differentiate the "hardcore" player from the casual would be the amount of time spent playing the game. That seems like a fairly useless metric to me.
I guess I just don't get this whole "hardcore" thing. There's nothing hardcore about playing a video game. A better word might be "obsessive." I think this is
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with your points, but it's difficult to read when you mix these two words:
tough = resilient
though = despite the fact
Re: (Score:2)
First off, hardcore is one of those terms that is in the eye of the beholder. To many, nothing in WoW is hardcore (including end game). Hardcore really just tends to be the type of person who schedules times to do raids with their guild.
Next, inaccuracies. Each boss (in raids) drops multiple items, not just
Yeah right (Score:3, Interesting)
That is a blatant lie and should not be spread.
If they had learned from their mistakes they would REVERT the NGE and restore SWG to its former glory, but they're ashamed of doing what the customer wants.
Does anyone have any stats on the number of people still playing versus the number of people playing prior?
It's a huge difference.
Re: (Score:2)
No figures to back this up, just my recollection of numbers from reading various posts on the subject, but I believe the game reached a peak of about 350k prior to the NGE (although I have no idea what that was at when the NGE hit), and it has about 50k right now across all servers. For its time it was immensely popular, but the constant inept shifts made by management and designers who really were completely ignorant on the subject of MMO design, decimated the population.
The NGE was the single biggest mist