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Role Playing (Games) Star Wars Prequels Games

Star Wars: The Old Republic Launch Date Announced 125

Posted by Soulskill from the fully-operational dept.
BioWare announced today that their upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, will launch on December 20 in North America, and December 22 in Europe. They've released a new trailer for the game, and reiterated that they'll be throttling logins early on to prevent server instability. Gamasutra recently spoke with SW:TOR project lead James Ohlen about finishing up the game and preparing it for launch. He said, "We're also focused on game balance for combat, for itemization, for the social systems. We've been running a lot of tests, we're getting a lot of feedback on the game. And when we get that feedback, we use it to make tweaks and changes. We're not making major changes now, we're just making changes that we can."
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Star Wars: The Old Republic Launch Date Announced More

Star Wars: The Old Republic Launch Date Announced

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  • It looks like on the twentieth of December, though we might not be on the same server, we'll be battling the force of our $enemy. I look forward to it, ladies and gents!

  • Eh (Score:2)

    by Niris ( 1443675 )
    It looks cool, but I still can't convince myself to pay a monthly fee for a game that I've already purchased. Plus DC Universe Online will be free to play by then, and I'd really rather do the microtransaction bit.

    • Re:Eh (Score:4, Informative)

      by Sperbels ( 1008585 ) on Saturday September 24, 2011 @01:32PM (#37502820)
      It's real simple. You've bought the game client with the understanding that the game requires a service to play. It takes money to maintain the service...therefore a monthly fee. Why do people have such a hard time with this? Do you think Ultima Online would still be around it you just spent $20 on the game client 15 years ago and had been using the service daily ever since? No. The money to maintain the service based on the sales of the initial game client would have dried up a long long time ago. And most of that money went to paying back the initial development costs anyway.
      • That being the case, imho, they shouldn't charge for the client. Either charge once for the application *OR* a monthly fee.
        • Dude! It's a business. They make it as cheap as they can while still allowing for a decent profit. It takes a lot of money to make and maintain an MMO. They're not all just sitting around laughing about how badly they screwed their customers while drinking cognac and lighting Cuban cigars with twenties.
          • As cheap as they can?
            $60 upfront (cheapest version) and then a monthly fee?
            By the way, they also announced the amount of the monthly fees: http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20110924 [swtor.com]

            - 1 Month Subscription: $14.99 (£8.99/€12.99)
            - 3 Month Subscription: $13.99 per month (one-time charge of $41.97/£25.17/€35.97)
            - 6 Month Subscription: $12.99 per month (one-time charge of $77.94/£46.14/€65.94)

            • Do you have any reason to believe this is too expensive? Given the enormous development costs...and no guarantee of sales or number of subscriptions? What makes you think they'll even get back their investment?

              • "Do you have any reason to believe this is too expensive? Given the enormous development costs...and no guarantee of sales or number of subscriptions? What makes you think they'll even get back their investment?"

                No kidding.

                How much would it cost to go out with a gf to AppleBees for dinner and drinks? Jokes aside about slashdotters not having a gf ... I am guesing $85 right there.

                That is for 2 meals, a few drinks, and a few hours of entertainment right? That is not even a fancy restaurant either.

                You can play

                • You are correct in that video games are cheap compared to other forms of entertainment.
                  I'm just surprised with the pricing difference between MMOs (especially this one) and other games.
                  The monthly fees are supposed to pay for the development of new content, and the cost of running the servers, but:
                  - then, why do you have to pay for expansion packs, if you already paid for new content?
                  - I'm pretty sure their servers do not cost $15 per player to run.

                  • - I'm pretty sure their servers do not cost $15 per player to run.

                    Well, no, probably not. There are a lot of factors in the actual cost. $15 is just the industry standard.

            • EVE Online, that old standard, provides the client for free (including free upgrades whenever they launch an expansion pack), and charge ever so slightly less than those monthly costs. And unlike this new Star Wars game, they have niche gameplay and lacked a ready-made franchise fan base.

              I've nothing against MMO pricing in general, but Star Wars: TOR prices aren't exactly cheap.

              • True. But developing content for EVE is a lot cheaper than developing content for other games.

                • Perhaps true; it is a game with a lot of copy-paste content. But on the flip side, they are the proud owner of easily the gaming industry's biggest computer cluster (it has been speculated amply that it would likely hit the lower ranges of the Top500 list, if only they could meet the benchmarking requirements (which would involve multiple-day downtime)), and an immensely complex back-end software ecosystem in order to host what is really quite a unique set up (single-world persistence, no instancing). Which

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Fozzyuw ( 950608 )

            They make it as cheap as they can while still allowing for a decent profit.

            I'd hate to say it, but that's not an accurate statement. A business' goal (excluding non-profits/charity) is to make as much profit as possible, not merely a "decent amount". They do this by testing what how many people are willing to pay how much and picking a point on the curve that suggests the highest possible profit margin.

            They're not all just sitting around laughing about how badly they screwed their customers while drinking cognac and lighting Cuban cigars with twenties.

            I get your point and I agree with you that too many people just bash on business, assuming they're all heartless billionaires. In reality, there are many passionate people who ru

      • This would be the case for an MMO but this looks like just a singleplayer RPG with maybe a few cooperative missions. This is not the game you are looking for.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by WyzrdX ( 1390963 )
          You really need to do more investigating before you make assumptions. From what I have experienced in the Beta, this is every bit an MMO. Even more so than many of the ones available today.

      • Other MMOs have gone free to play, only WoW seems to be able to keep people subscribing in the long run. Is this game really $15 a month better than Lord of the Rings Online?

        And from what I understand, most of this game is single-player RPG content with lots of cut-scenes off the DVD, you're not actually getting much from the server anyway.

        • Not to mention Diablo2, which still gets patches now and then, has a pretty active userbase on the official servers more than a decade after it's release.

          And so far Diablo3 is being touted as an online play only game with no subscription. Although they are doing the microtransaction thing with the real money auction house.

          That said I don't mind paying for subscription games now and then. Recently I've been playing Lord of Ultima, which I don't strictly subscribe to but I do pay for ministers on a monthly ba

    • Well though luck for you then (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Saturday September 24, 2011 @01:35PM (#37502860) Journal

      And good luck with not paying road-tax for your newly bought car or having to keep filling it up with fuel.

      As for your TV, what a rip-off, 8000 euro I payed for mine and now they expect me to pay a license fee AND the cable company AND for blu-ray movies.

      You are perfectly correct in demanding for for about 40 euro a company keep a massive server farm running for years on end AND keep customer support on line every time you can't figure out a quest, all payed from the same 40 euro's.

      What makes people so detached from reality that they think games like this can be run for free? Are they so in capable of doing any basic accounting that they truly can't see that a product with ongoing costs must have ongoing income?

      Maybe to some its sound amazingly insightful that you are to cheap to pay 15 bucks for a piece of entertainment per month, to me it just says you are amazingly cheap. For most gamers it comes down to less then a buck an hour and quickly far far less. Only the internet is cheaper. Are you upset that when you payed for your modem the telephone company still wanted more money from you each month?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by seibai ( 1805884 )

        I think people think you can run a game like this without a monthly fee because Guild Wars did it, and Guild Wars 2 is going to do it.

        Guild Wars made plenty of money with that model too. The idea that you need montly fees in order to maintain servers is a useful one to the people who want to make more money on their MMO by charging you rent to play it. Please don't promote it. The reality is that maintaining servers doesn't cost that much in light of the margins on software.

        Oh, and "tough". Sorry, it was bo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Dahamma ( 304068 )

          Yeah, but Guild Wars isn't an MMORPG. They made a lot of decisions in their game design to keep server costs to a minimum. Those were some great decisions for what they wanted to accomplish, but it's a different type of game...

        • I think people think you can run a game like this without a monthly fee because Guild Wars did it,

          Guild Wars did NOT do it, because Guild Wars is a completely different kind of game. Most of it is instanced. Meaning, the game client can do most of the work. There's very little server CPU usage, and little bandwidth taken up. You can't compare the two.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Wildclaw ( 15718 )

            Guild Wars did NOT do it, because Guild Wars is a completely different kind of game. Most of it is instanced. Meaning, the game client can do most of the work. There's very little server CPU usage, and little bandwidth taken up. You can't compare the two.

            Interview with Jeff Strain, founding member of ArenaNet
            PC Games: "How do you plan to do this? Building such a complex world which is shared by all players without having monthly fees?"
            Strain: (laughing) "A very good question! Interestingly many people believe that the completely instantiated world was the reason for Guild Wars 1 to not need monthly fees. This is completely wrong! The existence or lack of a persistent world is totally unrelated to the running expenses which are needed to maintain an online

            • I think I have to call bullshit on this. They may claim they have some "innovative technology" that enables them to reduce running costs, but that doesn't change the fact that the architecture of their game requires very little in terms of server side infrastructure. Because of this they spend a fraction of what the other MMO's do on servers.

              They don't have magical software that suddenly erases all of their monthly server expenses. They have almost no server expenses to begin with.
              • And frankly this is all beginning to sound a little tinfoil hatish. There is no conspiracy to hide this "innovative technology" so that the non-F2P MMOs can continue to screw you out of a monthly service fee. It really does cost money to continue running a business after the initial development costs.

          • How much infrastructure is required to sit through a cut-scene in TOR, or go through the single-player campaign against a couple of enemies with minimal AI? You could probably host 99% of the game on the player's computer. You're paying for nothing.

        • Did you play Guild Wars? (Score:5, Informative)

          by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Saturday September 24, 2011 @04:00PM (#37503904) Journal

          Guild wars does not have a persistent world, it has a few chat room areas that are instanced to hell and back and then when you enter the game world itself you are in your own little instance with just your own people.

          (To those who do not understand this, an ordinary PC is perfectly capable of running a game world for a FPS. Even sharing that world with a few other people is not impossible, see all the self-hosted FPS games the PC was famous for). But start upping the number of people in the same game world and performance takes a nosedive. Years ago there was a FPS game that was supposed to support 256 players at once. Massive battles BUT also massive costs, because where previous FPS companies relied for online play on customer supplying the hardware and bandwidth, this company had to do it themselves. It is the reason there are virtually no massive FPS games out there, nobody can afford to run the server for free.

          GW runs a large farm of cheap cheerfull servers, each time a player or small group leaves the instanced chat room area, they enter their own small area that can be handled by ordinary cheap commodity PC hardware. Think off not just the CPU but also memory. Memory has a sweet point for price, if you can outfit your servers with 4gb at 50 or 8gb at 150 then if your server can make do with 4gb you save a LOT of money. And the memory difference for a full size persistent game world is far greater. Try 32-64 GB. Now look at your PC specs. Can it handle that? No. It can't. You need to go to server grade hardware and pay the price.

          Each GW instance is much cheaper to run then a persistent world for say WoW because the hardware itself is cheaper. GW can also re-use its hardware far more efficiently, each server does not care what instance it runs, if all of GW's player base wanted to play the same instance, all its servers would run the same instance for all the individual groups. Very efficient BUT not a proper persistent world as western style MMO's know it.

          Their customer support is also crap and they have no such thing as moderation.

          Comparing Guild Wars with say WoW is like comparing McD drive through with a full service restaurant.And before any GW fans bite my head off, I am not saying McD is bad because it is cheap, I am saying that because of the different style, its low price cannot be compared to a restaurant offering a different service level

          MMO's like AoC that use instancing are always slammed for it because people want to play in a big world, not their own little corner. Guild Wars took it to extremes. You can't run into another player during a quest or even socialize and meet up in the game world. No 100 man gatherings in GW.

          Your english is better then mine, your understanding of MMO's is a lot worse.

          If you want a clear example of costs, I played Lotro the most. I have had a number of encounters with customer support, all good to be honest BUT they each took about 5-10 minutes to resolve. Not a lot of time you might say BUT together they amount to a bit over an hour at least. How much does it cost to have a person spend 1 hour on a customer? Saleries vary a lot BUT it will come awfully close to 40-50 euro's even at the absolute lowest rates.

          So... how is the company supposed to fund the development of the game, pay for bug fixes and new content, server costs AND support when just my support needs alone cost more then the game cost? And that is even supposing that the full box price goes to the game company, which it doesn't.

          Really, when you claim you can run WoW and now SWTOR of the small sum a company gets for a box sales for years on end... you got to know that you are missing something.

          Play Guild Wars and play WoW, you will see they are VERY different games. Why then does GW charge a price when there are games I can play online for free by running them on my own machine! THIEFS!

          Margins on software in gaming... please, grow up. The 40 euro in the shop includes money that goes to the retaile

          • If any post deserves a +5, this one does. Very well said.

          • All of what you said makes sense, apart from I think you vastly overestimated what a support worker will get paid.. try more like 10 euros an hour :p

            • It's not the salaries that kill support, it's the costs. Where I work (I do phone support) our typical call is three or four minutes. Divide up all the calls we take by all the costs of the building, power, computers, software, training, etc. and those calls run about $7 each for us to take.

              A couple hundred bucks an hour per person on the phones is about average when you figure in all the costs.

              • How often do you replace the computers, software, and do training? At 200 USd per hour you'd pay for the computer, software and power for the whole year in a few days.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbet ( 1607261 )
        Games with a monthly fee tend to have frequent additions of new content and a more robust multi-player experience. There are lots of games that have a multi-player component that is free.

        • MMOs with a monthly fee still expect you to pay for expansions to get that content though. How many full games would you be able to buy off Steam with the subscriptions WoW players paid during ICC?

          Once you're at max level, assuming three months per raid tier, you're paying $45 for a handful of bosses. Is that really equivalent in content to a normal game?

      • 8000 Euro? I know you folks pay significantly more for electronics, but really? What type of TV is this and when did you buy it?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Snaller ( 147050 )

        Except your examples are not relevant.
        They could have chosen other solutions.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by DThorne ( 21879 )

        This is more about whiney, cheap internet bitching than a serious business discussion. Just look at the games industry, it's like movies or writing - you invest years of blood and sweat and either you come out the other end virtually bankrupt (most common), or you rarely get a hit and actually get a decent profit. This doesn't mean the monster distributors don't gobble up much of it, but then without them, you're highly unlikely to be a hit. The Minecrafts are the exception to the rule.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by N1AK ( 864906 )

        You are perfectly correct in demanding

        He said he didn't intend to buy a computer game which required both an upfront purchase and subscription; instead he said he'd choose an alternative that didn't. I don't know if that went straight over your head, or whether you felt the need to rant so produced a strawman to then attack for that purpose.

        Also, on the subject of what sounds insightful etc regarding money. Needlessly pointing out cost when referring to an expensive television you claim to own will only

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Snaller ( 147050 )

      Statistically most people end up paying a lot more on the microtransaction ones.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Fjandr ( 66656 )

        Some people pay a lot more. A small fraction pay enormous amounts, subsidizing those of us who feel no need to pay hundreds or thousands a month to play a game.

      • I paid for that stuff before simply as a thankyou for making the game free to play.. slightly perverse yes, but true.

    • You pay monthly for all your utilities do you not? If not, what strange utility company do you have that gives you unlimited service for one lump payment?

      • Sure I did but I didn't have a connection payment up front (though If you screw up enough to get things disconnected there would be I guess). So that's all monthly fees which doesn't qualify for the "I've already purchased" part in what you are replying to.

  • I cannot wait for this bloody game to finally release....

    • I agree. Not everyone likes dragons and swords and spells and faeries... fantasy is crap to some... space western and post apocqalypse are my fav themes. SWG was nice but I've learned to avoid MMORPG... it will be nice to watch others play, though.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I understand what you're trying to say, but claiming "fantasy is crap" and then saying your can't wait for a Star Wars based MMO is a little bit of a ludicrous statement.

        • Traditional fantasy is what I meant, and it of course is opinion. Traditional fantasy is LOTR type themes... dragons... elves... spells.

          • TOR has all those things, although they may be reskinned as something else.

            • You don't get me. In star wars a speederbike is your horse, a lightsaber or laser rifle is your sword, and some cool flamethbrower is your spells. Steroids are like enchantments....

              I realize the concepts are the same, my point is about the theme... space westerns and post apocalyptic themes are what I prefer... I don't like traditional fantasy themes... boring.

          • SWTOR IS traditional fantasy set in space. Its not as different as you would like it to be.

            • My point was the THEME, not the framework. Like I said, dragons, swords, spells... unappealing. Those are components of the THEME. The framework is fine by me. I said before, I like postapocalyptic and space western themes...

  • Meh. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by taxman_10m ( 41083 ) on Saturday September 24, 2011 @01:18PM (#37502738)

    Would have rathered KOTR III.

    I'm curious as to how big a game this will be. Is it fair to compare it with WOW or Star Trek Online?

    • But can we sue them? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Will this game include EA's new TOS provision that requires you to give up your right to engage in a class action lawsuit against them if they do something illegal?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Would have rathered KOTR III.

      The Lucas does not care, moneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoney.

      • Re:Meh. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by taxman_10m ( 41083 ) on Saturday September 24, 2011 @02:07PM (#37503150)

        Guess that explains all the Jedi too. Would be hard to make an MMO where being a Jedi was rare.

    • True to that. KOTOR III would me the greatest thing ever since KOTOR I.

      • I was thinking, was KOTOR the last great Star Wars game? There have been plenty games since but they all seem to range from poor to mediocre.

        • I thought KOTORII was better than the first, because it focused more on character development rather than the typical Star Wars style action/I-am-your-father revelation moments. The first game was about Revan's quest to find the Star Forge. The second game was about the Exile's quest to find him/herself. Not to mention, both games had HK-47.

          Also, I can't be the only one who wished they could have had a teacher like Kreia in real life.

    • It is KOTOR III. And IV. And V. And VI...

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by xhrit ( 915936 )
        Except its not. KOTOR had story driven quests and a deep plot. TOR is a hack and slash WOW clone.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Fozzyuw ( 950608 )

      Is it fair to compare it with WOW or Star Trek Online?

      I didn't play STO but if WoW and Knights of the Old Republic had a baby, this would be it. From what I've seen, you've got combat animations like KOTOR where there's actual interaction between fighters, not just timed swing animations but blocks, parries, etc. (like KotOR). Mixed with Dragon Age / Mass Effect like voice acting with dialogue option paths, and I'm speculating that it will have game play similar to WoW, solo friendly, relatively easy/n00b friendly, upgrade loot heavy, questing centric, as w

  • As far as server stability goes this is a really bad time for a game release. More people will be off work and home and able to play at 'off peak' hours on launch day and they will quickly find their infrastructure overwhelmed. I bet a lot of people who buy this game on launch won't be able to play it the day they get it from all the down times and such.
    • All the servers would get hammered in the evening anyway regardless of whether or not everyone is on vacation.

      Now that I think about, having people on vacation might actually be a good thing. People will have a chance to try it throughout the day and night that entire week. The load will actually be more distributed throughout the day and not just during prime time.

    • During the holidays, people got other obligations AND when they login it will be spread over the entire day not a massive spike after work hours.

      There may or may not be problems but people often forget just how much time normal people, not slashdotters, spend during weekends and holidays on social stuff. I know plenty of people who have more time off during the week then the weekend as it is all used to visit families or attend parties. Thank god I am a nerd so I get the entire weekend to myself... all alon

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Fozzyuw ( 950608 )

        With any new release, as soon as the flag is lifted, all the servers will quickly crash because all players will be racing to the login server. It's happened for every major MMO release. WoW was nearly unplayable for 2-4 weeks. Oh, I remember all the free game time they gave us. =)

        The holidays will help and hurt Bioware. It will help, as you pointed out, by allowing people to login more sparsely than during "primetime" like hours. It will hurt because it's almost assured that the servers will be down,

  • Not a Coincidence (Score:3)

    by jdpars ( 1480913 ) on Saturday September 24, 2011 @01:22PM (#37502760)
    Right after Diablo III gets a delay until at least January. I didn't believe the people saying there was a connection, but the timing here is more than a coincidence.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      More likely they're trying to avoid Skyrim. While not an MMO, it will still draw many of the same type of gamers, and many other types, into it's seemingly endless gameplay.

      I've never finished the main story of an Elder Scrolls game, and I've played everyone since the Original (Including Redguard and Battlespire!)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Macgrrl ( 762836 )

      Given WoW 4.3 is due on PTR this week according to blue posts, I wouldn't be surprised if it will hit the production servers early Dec.

      Even if it hits earlier, given the strong likelyhood that Bliz are going to announce the xpac @ Blizcon (21 Oct), they will probably just release a big chunk of expansion news the same week. Say a new race or profession, with a bucket of screen shots.

      Maybe even some beta news, but I think it would be a bit early of the public beta. They probably won't want the public beta to

  • It's like WoW... in SPAAAAAAAACE. (Score:3)

    by Gavin Scott ( 15916 ) on Saturday September 24, 2011 @01:32PM (#37502822)

    Honestly when I read about this game it sounds like the developers have exactly the same mindset that Blizzard does, so apart from new scenery and stuff, SWTOR hardly sounds revolutionary in any way.

    Quests, leveling, getting to max-level, raiding, limits on end-game content at launch, devs didn't want to allow talent respecs so that "player decisions will mean something" then later change their mind, attempts to encourage/force people to group up in order to do leveling content "because it's a social game and we think people should be social", battlegrounds, $15/month, etc.

    G.

    • the only MMO in the future that will do anything new is likely to be the World of Darkness MMO CCP is working on. As far as game studios goes they seem to be the only ones willing to take risks and try to innovate, even if what they do doesn't always work.

      • There is Blizzard's Titan MMO. I think that is supposed to be scifi.

        • I doubt we'll see anything revolutionary from Blizzard. Places like that play it safe. That means a WOW clone with slightly different game mechanics and lots of pretty new scenery. They've also said it's going to be "casual". Casual means themepark.
          • I used to think that way, but nope! Wrong! Blizz innovates and keeps on innovating. Proof is how all RPGs copied Diablo right down to the T and then D2 came out and it also got copied. And then the 2 RTS games. I'll agree that there was some prior art for RTS before Warcraft came out in the form of Dune and a host of other strategy games, but still, it did competitive RTS'ing right. Not even going to get into SC to any depth. Let's just say, that that's how any competitive game should be done regardless of

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        So since EVE Online is basically a spreadsheet with built-in chat, the most I'd expect from CCP is an MMO starring Clippy.

      • As far as game studios goes they seem to be the only ones willing to take risks and try to innovate

        Success tempers risk taking.

        • Greed tempers risk taking

          FTFY. If anything, success enables risk taking by giving you some funds to work with. Not everyone will take risks just because they have money, but it will make them feel more comfortable about doing so.

    • Re:It's like WoW... in SPAAAAAAAACE. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rinnon ( 1474161 ) on Saturday September 24, 2011 @04:23PM (#37504082)
      For the most part you are correct, but from what I played in the Beta, story plays a MUCH larger part in the game than in WoW. Every quest has voiced dialogue that is specific to your class, along with dialogue options, etc. The Dialogue wheel from Mass Effect shows up when you can select a dialogue. Sometimes you'll say things that get you Darkside or Lightside points. Will this matter hugely? No, not really, though apparently your LS / DS points will change some skills you can use.. Does the dialogue let you change the quests you'll be doing? No. Does it make accepting quests more fun? Absolutely. Skipping quest dialogue in this game isn't like skipping it in WoW, it would be like skipping it in Mass Effect. For me, this is a big enough difference to make TOR worth playing. Plus, they really took the dialogue seriously, which makes me take it seriously too. I found myself being on vent and saying "Okay, AFK, taking a quest." and muting vent, so I would be able to pay attention to what was going on. Of course, if when you play Mass Effect you just blast through the dialogue so you can get on with it, none of this will make any difference.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Swanktastic ( 109747 )

      Who cares? The same thing could be said of WoW and Everquest. Heck, If we travel back in time, there's probably some holier-than-thou nerd complaining that UO is just a MUD with graphics . The fact that SWTOR follows many of the coventions of the MMORPG genre is hardly an argument for (or against) whether it will be a bad game.
         

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Z34107 ( 925136 )

      The NDA keeps me from saying anything interesting, but you're wrong on just about all accounts. TOR has more in common with KOTOR than WoW, and has done some pretty interesting things so far.

      I know "it's a secret" isn't all that convincing, but give 'em a chance to release it before judging too harshly.

    • Not paying attention to WoW would be dumb, but it's like they just copied it exactly and decided to tweak a few things.

      Judging from some of the videos, combat consists of standing a couple of feet in front of a guy and repeatedly shooting him in the face until he's dead.

      Maybe that's a bit lame in sword/sorcery games too, but for some reason it seems to really stick out more in this case (and I guess all gun based MMOs).

      I'd rather play T'Rain

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by xhrit ( 915936 )
        Try Global Agenda. It is a sci fi mmo but it uses shooter mechanics where you have to aim your weapon at the enemy and dodge fire, not tab target nonsense where you facetank things.

  • Word of Warcraft Patch 4.3, "The Dragon Soul" release date to be announced.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Macgrrl ( 762836 )

      Soon

      Seriously though, Bliz never announce patch dates. The best we would get is being told that the servers are going down tonight to apply the patch.

      Given the 20 Dec is a Tuesday, the 13th or 20th wouldn't be a surprise.

  • NOOOOOOO!

    Kidding, quite excited if you can really measure up to KotoR.

  • No? Not trying that then.

  • I'll be signing up and playing a Jedi of some type. I will wait a month or so after release before bothering, though. I have yet to see an MMO worth messing with during it's first month of release. After the first month, there will be less lag, less crashes, more bugs fixed, and probably more content. Let others be the guinea pigs.

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"What man has done, man can aspire to do." -- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight

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