Star Wars: the Old Republic Launches 389
Today marks the official launch of Star Wars: the Old Republic, a new MMOG from BioWare, EA, and LucasArts. The game's population has been building throughout the week as players who pre-ordered were granted early access, but now the gates have been thrown open to everyone. By using the Star Wars universe and a 'story-driven' approach to MMO gameplay, BioWare hopes to draw in a new group of players who don't typically consider themselves MMO gamers. Since the game is still largely unexplored, comprehensive reviews have yet to be written, but Shack News has a write-up about the early game. An article at Eurogamer discusses whether this sort of game launch marks the end of an era for the MMOG industry — the game's budget is estimated to be as high as $100 million, and it relies on a traditional subscription model when many games are making the switch to free-to-play.
Re:So, when did subscriptions become traditional? (Score:5, Informative)
WoW 2.0 (Score:5, Informative)
Irking (Score:5, Informative)
You see, I'd love to be playing this, but at 60 for the game and 15 a month, that's just too rich for my tastes.
I think the game itself should be free and downloadable, then charge a monthly fee for the online access. I'm going to wait for the cost of the game to come down :(
But damn, it's so tempting to buy ...
Re:Irking (Score:3, Informative)
The first month is included, so it would be fairer to say that it's $45 for the game and then $15 per month. There are slightly cheaper 3 and 6 month plans available if you're planning on sticking around.
WoW with lasers (Score:3, Informative)
I've played beta. I won't be rushing out to buy this. As a previous poster said, it's WoW with Blasters/Light Sabers.
What a waste of Bioware talent and a Star Wars License. They would've been much better off using the Mass Effect 2 combat system as a basis. Instead, it's no different than the hundreds of WoW like clones out there ... EA wanted this game to cut into WoW... The sad thing is they will succeed because there are millions of people out there willing to play WoW with a Star Wars skin on it.
I'm disappointed to say the least. I anticipated much more from Bioware. If the game mechanics were anywhere near the quality of the cut scenes, I wouldn't be posting this. There seems to be very few gaming companies ready to break any molds in the MMORPG realm. EVE Online is one of few, and that game came out in 2003.
Hopefully I'm wrong, and my beta impression was due to limited time in the game. But I fear it's what it is, and what could've been a game I would be playing for years is one I'm just going to pass over.
Re:So, when did subscriptions become traditional? (Score:3, Informative)
"This is wow with light sabers"
No it is not.
Disclaimer: I have not played the game yet, and my opinion is based on reviews and people who have played the beta.
World of Warcraft is based on a fantasy world where you can participate in it as time goes by. SWTOR is a world based on YOU. You are the center of attention and the choices you make constantly change the quest tree and storyline. For example you can play single player and the game will be different than if you play in groups according to www.arstechnica.com.
Another difference is your companion system is very advanced. At level 15 you have your own personal robotic servant too kind of like 3cpo who can help you do your profession gathering, and even your companion can go to the auction house for you and sell things while you are at work. The companions can eventually leave if you have enough dark side points or if you are an ass to them. They can even fill in for a raid while you wait for more players. They are much more than actual pets.
In essence Wow has more atmosphere and story with much richer environments that seem more realistic (sun, moon, nightime, weather, weeds moving in wind etc) while STWOR is an interactive movie with you as a star where there are no saves and the story keeps changing and so the quests. You can have 2 of the same jedi or sith, and depending on lightside or darkside points you will have different quests. Add that to playing ina guild and you will have 2 more different quest, gear, and talents.
early access (Score:5, Informative)
The game is not revolutionary and they did take most of the best features from WoW. I really enjoy it.
Right now the only thing negative I have to say about the game is the artifcial cap they put on every server. Almost every server had a 20+ minute queue to log in during peak hours last week. My brother said he had to wait 10 minutes at 10am this morning to log in. If I have to wait more than a couple minutes I will be raising hell.
Re:So, when did subscriptions become traditional? (Score:5, Informative)
Dont forget the quest chains are always different depending on your choices and lightside vs darkside points. Infact there are lightside and darkside quests too and then they change again if you group a lot with your guild.
You can have 4 sith inquisitors and will have a completely different story line for each one with dark/light and solo and group alts. Cool stuff
.... and fails. (Score:4, Informative)
Waiting queues on all early-access servers, up to 1:15 on the German servers at this time despite grand announcements that this will not happen to them. They are also claiming that they increased server capacities today, which, as far as I can tell was either by an insignificant amount or an outright lie.
I predict that this will either kill Bioware or at least bring them to the brink.
Re:I give it 12 months until it's free to play (Score:5, Informative)
"Free to play" is a misnomer. It should accurately be "Pay to win" or "Pay to play well regardless of your skill level".
I hate it. It's a crappy way to do a game, and represents one of the more reprehensible expectations of sociopaths on this planet.
Aimed squarely at children (Score:4, Informative)
With 20/20 vision and their nose pressed against the screen - as an adult I can apparently get lost - their interface is composed of a font so tiny that I can't read most of it which is a bit of a problem even though quests are spoken, you still need to read stuff... this is where the kids butt in and say you can adjust the chat font size - and I have to compose myself and point out, ITS THE WHOLE DAMN INTERFACE - tooltips, skill trees, subtitles, their 'codex' (and no, you can't just change resolution, they make sure to scale it so it remains at the same visual size regardless of actual resolution)
You'd think in this day and age the technology to adjust font size wouldn't be totally unheard of? Apparently Biowares programmers feel this is to abstract a concept, or perhaps they only want kids to enter their hallowed halls. The rest can bugger of back to WoW.
Well ok then.
Re:.... and fails. (Score:3, Informative)
Early estimates put pre-orders at ~3M.
You don't need to be a mathematician to figure figure out that they will make money off of this title. Thus your prediction is far from correct.
I for one am impressed with what Bioware has added to an increasingly bloated genre. I know they will continue to do amazing things in the future.
PS. Turn down the hate.
Re:WoW 2.0 (Score:4, Informative)
(Some quick background - I beta tested and played SWG until the NGE nerf. I beta tested and played World of Warcraft up until about 18 months ago. I have also played multiple other MMOs including DDO, Ultima, Tabula Rasa, A Tale in the Desert, and so on.)
It actually IS this awesome new MMO experience, and please stop WoW fanboying by playing down the impact of the fully voiced universe and the fact Bioware has done what Blizzard did - borrowed from the best of in other MMOs and refined it. As dward90 says above, if you're skipping the voiced scenes then you're missing the point.
It is definitely NOT WoW with lightsabers - I don't see any orcs, goblins, or pandas running around. Oh? You mean it PLAYS like Word of Warcraft somewhat? Yes, it does. In as much as World of Warcraft played like Star Wars Galaxies, and Ultima Online, and Asheron's Call, and the other MMOs that came before it.
I have been in multiple betas of SWTOR and I have been playing since December 13th of early access. I can tell you now, this game has longevity and inventiveness on its side. It is fresh and new and compelling in ways that other MMOs "walls-o-text" quest/missions are not. It engages you in both your class storyline and in the world at large. It doesn't have the sandbox open worlds of an MMO like Galaxies or an RPG like The Elder Scrolls series, but there are hints that Bioware may be moving that direction as the game grows. The game is great visually and gameplay is engrossing. The mission/gather system is an amazing combination of previous MMOs like Eve and WoW. The crafting system is fairly solid, interesting, useful and will come into its own as more players inhabit the universe and expand the player economy.
As for the so-called "end game" that hard core players and game sites seem to want to focus on, well, that will be a while in coming for casual gamers like myself (although my main character is level 22 at this time). Those hard core players with no life and a caffeine drip in their veins can probably give you a review in another 5 days or less :-p My hope is that Bioware ignores their outcries when they consume the game inside of 14 days and start looking for something else. Your revenue stream is NOT the hard core players, it is the casual gamers who will play for years on end.
Actually... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, as someone who's been there for a week or so now, I can tell you that you can hardly tell. I haven't run into much nerdiness about anything movie-related. If anything, it comes across more like a bunch of KOTOR fans, plus the occasional (and frankly expected) "OMG IT'S WOW WITH GUNS!!!111eleventeen" trolling.
Re:So, when did subscriptions become traditional? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, yes. Guild Wars wasn't designed to be an MMORPG (the creators initially referred to it as a CORPG -- "cooperative (or competitive) online RPG"). Everyone mistook it for and insisted upon calling it an MMO anyhow, and eventually they stopped attempting to correct people. But yes, in terms of gameplay, it was all instanced -- they basically took the "chat rooms" of Diablo II Battle.net realms and moved them in-game into cities, but it was otherwise like D2 realm play -- you left the city and were in your own instance of the zone with only your teammates, and possibly a few enemy teams if it was PvP. There was no persistent world. At the end of the day, it was no more an MMO than Diablo II Battle.net realms had been an MMO, because that was the model they were basing it on. It should be noted that they released just shortly after WoW. They had no idea just how popular the MMO market was going to become, and thus it's understandable why they weren't planning on making one to begin with. GW2 is basically their attempt to take their ideas and making an actual MMO out of them -- it's probably what GW would have been if they'd realized an MMO was the way to go.
As for the trinity effect, the gameplay in GW won over every similar game I've tried precisely because there were no tanking per se. It was pretty much impossible for one character to draw everyone's aggro (there are no "aggro" skills in the game), nor any characters suited to the role of simply soaking damage while everyone else dishes it out safely. Tanking in that sense simply doesn't exist in the game. They still had and needed healers, but short of body blocking there was no real way to keep creeps off the "squishies" -- the usual tactic for protecting healers and caster was to block and try to delay enemies reaching them, and when that inevitably failed, to simply quickly kill whatever was attacking them. It did help that Warriors had the highest consistent DPS, rather than the lowest as in the case in games where proper tanking exists, and as such could usually hold an enemy's attention once they got it, but since all battles were basically group on group, that wasn't of huge value.
Re:So, when did subscriptions become traditional? (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, I brace yourself not to laugh, but I've gone back to the MUD FAQ...
"Because of their size and their constant computational activities, servers can be extremely CPU-intensive and can even be crippling to any other work done on that computer. Even if they're not CPU-intensive, most MUDs can take up a fair amount of disk space - anywhere from 10 to 90 megs, which could impact the other users on the machine. Do not ever run a MUD server on a machine illicitly or without express permission from the person responsible for the machine. Many universities and companies have strict policies about that sort of behavior which you don't want to cross. "
- http://www.mudconnect.com/mudfaq/mudfaq-p2.html#q9 [mudconnect.com]
The point being, when MUDs were the main form of multiplayer online gaming, they were not trivial in hardware requirements.
And yes, I'm sure your mouse does have more storage than that these days...