Knights of the Old Republic MMO Confirmed 179
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."
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).
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).
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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I have not been able to find the level of immersion that I enjoyed in SWG.
I miss it every day.
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Except that LOTRO is nothing like WoW, except very superficially. Many people claim it's very similar to AC1 (from same company) and that WoW also borrowed lots of concepts from it. So to say LOTRO is a clone of WoW without also saying that WoW is a clone of AC1/EQ1 is pretty naive.
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The last thing we need is another mod for WoW (I'm looking directly at you LoTR).
In the defense of LotRO, it is a damn good game. Not as good as WoW, but for a Tolkien fan like myself, it's pretty much a dream come true.
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Eve-Online is deep as hell. Nothing approaches it. But customizable? I think that CCP is promising to introduce in station characters and socialization elements as the 'next big thing' says it all. I've played quite a few MMOs, and really enjoyed Eve, but I never ever felt like an individual in that game.
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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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A Tale in the Desert is a roleplayer in that sense. Each "Tale" (currently on the third one, last I checked, but might be on the fourth by now) has the players work through a very time-consuming skill tree. The more players level up, the closer the civilization gets to the end of the Tale, at which point the next Tale begins.
Eve Online also allows quite a bit of player influence on the story. To have real influance, you almost have to be the leader of a large group of players, though that's somewhat like re
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The people that it appealed to was Star Wars fans. That is the player base it was originally written for, and that's the player base they lost with the NGE. And, when I say lost, I mean lost reputation, lost subscriptions, and lost their fucking minds. Lucasarts, and SOE tried to appeal to the WoW crowd, and lost the Star Wars crowd.
You'd figure with a game based on a proven fan based demographic that the companies involved wouldn't fuck over that demographic, but they did. Screw the mainstream MMO play
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More times than not the opposite is true, just look at the pile of horror that is the Star Trek licesnse
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Size 1 Infant shoes are indeed bigger than they look.
If you're an ant, that is.
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"If only it could be as good as Star Wars: Galaxies..." before the NGE.
There, fixed that for you.
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Its called a recession. Welcome to today!
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It's somewhat conceivable, if you buy the notion that certain laws of physics are absolutely unbreakable. Which is to say... space flight can't get any faster, energy generation doesn't get any more efficient... etc etc. So it's conceivable that an entire galaxy will get "capped out" because of basic logistics limitations and the fact that energy ain't free... and isn't getting any cheaper.
True. The two limits to technological development would be as you said, unbreakable physics, as well as cultural. If the dominant culture had a moral injunction against further research, you could see technology capped by force. See Mandarin China, Shogunate Japan, or the Imperium as presented in Dune.
The idea of technological stagnation doesn't strike me as oddly as the presence of futuristic hardware minus the sort of technology we've already developed. Galactica was funny about that, especially seeing as
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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.
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long periods of technological stagnation or even retardation are common in many SF settings.
Not just in sci-fi settings, there are numerous examples of it in the real world past. Take Europe in the middle ages for example, or China in the last half of the last millennia. Societies can easily reach a state where technology isn't viewed as important or technological advances get lost.
Just a few of the things that could cause this:
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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.
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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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).
Well, certainly at the end of that period there was technological growth but from what I've seen that sort of architecture didn't come about until the 12th century. The Europeans obviously retained some of their construction technology and build upon it but it took them quite a bit to get back to the level of the Romans. We are also talking about 2 entirely different regions of Europe, the Mediterranean and south verses the north. It's pretty easy to see that the Germanic and northern areas were in a per
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A lot of the really interesting stuff was happening in places that weren't Europe, though. Like almost all mathematical development.
People should stop pointing to European Middle Ages as a "dark age". Whenever it's brought up, someone always points out some development or another that "proves" that it wasn't a dark age. I think that's cherry picking, but a better example is the Greek dark age, a time period where Greece lost its original written language (later to be reinvented by borrowing from the Phoneti
"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.
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Many people will naturally want to be a Jedi, why choose a time period where the star wars kidies can't live out their fantasies?
I agree though, the character flexibility was amazing in SWG. Some people scoff "why would anybody want to be a dancer," but I had a few friends who found the social aspect of dancing/music to be much more fun than Baz Nitch cam
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)
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.
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.
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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.
Re:Trend in the industry? (Score:5, Interesting)
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How can you have a huge quest in front of you, but instead end up terrorizing the towns people and never get on to the actual quest in a CRPG?
This is one of the reasons why the Ultima series (in particular the 2nd trilogy) are some of the best CRPGs ever. :)
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And PNP RPGs are just watered down LARPs. Real men strap on plate armor and beat each other over the head with swords, until they become tired and pop over to Denny's for a burger.
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And CRPGS are watered down PNP RPGS. How can you have a huge quest in front of you, but instead end up terrorizing the towns people and never get on to the actual quest in a CRPG? Maybe that was just indicative of my play group, but we hardly ever found the actual quest, but still had fun.
Every played Baldur's gate II? There are tons of subquests that don't involve the main plot, and you can terrorize the inhabitans all you want.
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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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just look at all the folks at the renaissance festival
My eyes! My eyes! It burns!
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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'd agree with that. Mostly I'm a little bitter because the MMO RPG seems to have entirely displaced the CRPG. Fortunately, there's nearly 20 good years of CRPGs to catch up on. Maybe I'll finally get around to playing Pool of Radiance.
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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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Galaxies attempted to give the player a reason to be a average Joe with professions and a classless system. Although I didn't play it extensively I think like most players out there, if the developer give us a reason to be part of the Universe instead of being the Un
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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?
There are potential solutions to this problem. America's Army solved it in a minor way - how do you have a "good guys vs. bad guys" game when everyone has to be the good guys? Solution? All scenarios are crafted so that each side considers themselves the good guys, and see the other side as the durned terrorists. In the same way, I can imagine a PVP MMO where you and your party are the heroes out to stop evil, while all the other players are set up to appear to be Imperial stormtroopers/elite guards/whateve
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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.
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Indeed, only some dlls that need replacing.
You have to save often though, the game tends to crash a lot.
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Not to mention that I'm really not interested in paying anyone $x dollars a month for the privilege of playing their game. I have a feeling that a lot of companies see the cash cow of WoW (not to mention the fact that MMOs, being server-based games, are inherently difficult to pirate) and want to get a piece of that, but with pay-per-month MMOs, players are only going to be willing to play so many of these games at a time. Its a much more limited market, and I think a lot of companies are going to get bur
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shut up
Why do you say shut up?
will you please just shut your fucking star fags loving mouth?
I would appreciate it if you would watch your tongue!
star fags is shit
Perhaps you could avoid such unwholesome thoughts.
i shit it out everyday
Please, get your mind out of the gutter.
the only thing more disgusting than adults talking about star fags like it matters is adults reading comic books
What makes you believe that?
shout your star fags mo
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
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FYI they announce the Lucas Arts partnership with Bioware well before EA bought Bioware.
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Wow. That's some baseless grand-standing since, well, the MMO was announced well BEFORE [bioware.com] the EA merger [slashdot.org].
Also, I guess it's good for you that they're still making Dragon Age, huh?
I suppose Intel should ONLY make desktop processors? Or Coca-Cola should ONLY release Coca-Cola Classic? Hm?
Heaven forbid a games company should diversify the type of games they make.
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Amnesia (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but how are they going to explain a whole world full of amnesia patients with a dark mysterious past?
Star Wars MMO? (Score:2)
I've got a bad feeling about this.
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Ob Lewt Warz Reference (Score:2)
Episode IV [rpgplanet.com]: A New Dewd
Episode V [rpgplanet.com]: The Empire Nerfs Back
Episode VI [rpgplanet.com]: Return of the Carebears
Episode I [rpgplanet.com]: The Phantom Beta
And in 2010 (Score:2)
KOTOR:NGE to make it more Star Warsy and iconic.
Re:Difference? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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]
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There was a more recent one too where Tycho was fantasizing about rolling a protocol droid and saving the day with language.
Ah here it is.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/10/24/ [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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It doesn't matter to me. I sold my copy to EB and used the credits to buy Wii games.
I heard that the reason they cut so much out was that EA brass HAD TO HAVE THE GAME OUT NOW. It didn't matter how much got cut out, left out, or left in.
After all, it's just a game. Who cares if it's fucked up?
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
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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Fans should have their arses whipped for lionizing the franchise.
Read that again: franchise.
The first three movies were (relatively) great. Then a franchise was born. And some of the things in that franchise have been good. Much of it has been bad. That's a franchise.
There's one sure thing you can say about franchises - the more people buy into them, the less pressure there is to feel you need to make something of quality for it to sell. That's why franchises exist .. its a built-in consumer base.
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Yep. EA's track record speaks for itself, and very loudly. I was completely unsurprised to find out that the warhammer MMO would have massive amounts of content cut to launch at a specific date. In fact, it was a resounding I-told-you so dating back to the precise moment I found out Mythic was bought up by EA. EA does not need more new releases from old franchises to fuck up. They need to focus on fixing the ones they already have.
BioWare wrote stories (Score:2, Insightful)
It was the stories they told that made BioWare great. MMOs don't have stories, by definition. Sure, they have quests, but they don't have grand over-arching storylines. It's a limitation of the medium.
I fail to see how the fact that BioWare are writing an MMO is anything other than a cause for commiseration. Another great development studio has been subsumed and repurposed. Thanks EA.
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The thing that make KOTOR ok, was that eventually it was over.
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Hell, I'd kill for a new SINGLE PLAYER entry in the X-Wing series.
It would give me an excuse to buy that $250 flight yoke.
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