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.
Looks like a good game, but I wont be playin'. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Looks like a good game, but I wont be playin'. (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, the rare guy who wasn't completely pleased with his Star Wars Galaxies experience.
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Re:Looks like a good game, but I wont be playin'. (Score:4, Insightful)
Your analogy would work perfectly, if you include the necessary bit.
I won't eat at a restaurant because there are too many slobbering, loud, annoying food fanbois there.
If you can eat and enjoy yourself without ranting endlessly how the executive chef sold out years ago, complaining about how the lobster shot first, or otherwise being a overzealous and clueless food otaku... then you won't detract from my enjoyment of the restaurant. But if you are, I'll go someplace else. And it's just unfortunate that this particular restaurant franchise has some of the worst customers ever.
Re:Looks like a good game, but I wont be playin'. (Score:5, Insightful)
Believe me, it wasn't the fans that ruined Galaxies, it was Sony. They drove that property into the fucking ground. The "New Game Enhancements" killed it permanently back in '05, it just took them 6 years to put that final nail in the coffin.
Sony should never be allowed to touch a fucking MMO again.
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.
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WoW 2.0 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:WoW 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand who you're talking to. It's the best leveling experience I've ever experienced in an MMO. Sure, it's not a completely new genre. If you were looking for something that doesn't play like an MMO, then you were looking in the wrong place. You can downplay the effect that the conversations and story have all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that those elements make leveling feel extremely different from World of Warcraft (unless you spacebar every conversation, in which case you're missing the point of the game).
What you seem to be saying is that you don't enjoy MMOs. That's a valid opinion, but it's not a valid criticism for this game.
Re:WoW 2.0 (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the best leveling experience I've ever experienced in an MMO.
This. I dont even pay attention to my level so much, I just wanna get that sonofabitch who STOLE MY GODDAMNED SHIP.
Re:WoW 2.0 (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. I've leveled just about every character class in WoW. I can barely remember any of the quests. The only one that comes to mind is the Lolita-like quest between Duskwood and Westfall. Other than that, it was just a bunch of "Collect 6 Bear Pelts" quests with completely uninteresting text thrown in just to say they gave the story telling a try. Leveling was a chore that was to be endured so that you could get a class to end-game.
SW TOR is different. I literally have no desire at all to do anything at end-game. Raids and such are the last thing on my mind. I just want to quest. Any game that makes questing actually the thing I log in for rather than a penance I must pay to get to the "real" game deserves a nod.
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Wouldn't a KOTOR 3 have fulfilled your wishes just as well? And without the monthly sub, mind you.
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That's funny because I actually enjoyed the leveling experience in WoW. The top level raiding was also fun but because of it's nature it wasn't as entertaining over all. At any time I could pickup and play one of my alts and go do questing and progress the character. At max level, once you finished the quests all that was left was waiting for the weekly raids or grinding out rep with whatever faction. The leveling experience was by far more versatile and fun for me. I had five max level characters of differ
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Where did the GP ever say anything like that?
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"You can downplay the effect that the conversations and story have all you want, "
I listen to other sources of sound, I can't listen to their waffling on as well, so its skip skip skip - so they have no effect.
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Wow, you just missed the whole point of the game.
I'd have thought that it being produced by Bioware would have been a clue as to how it would play..
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Just for that, I'm going to need to to bring me 10 wampa pelts!
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Not WOW improved, IMNSHO. More like Vanilla WOW with lightsabers. No LFD. No dual-spec. These are two things that casual players like me enjoy. It's like they took a stock MMO, added voice acting, and a veneer of KOTOR.
Now, there are a few things other MMO's need to look at. The companion system, if stolen by another company, and perhaps matured, could really help blur the lines between single-player and co-op multi-player games in a beneficial way for us casual gamers.
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This is not how it plays out in the game at all.
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Yup, it's basically KOTOR 3 but with a monthly subscription.
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.
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You were doing well up to there, but how did you finish that sentence without your brain imploding?
WOW makes its money from the hopelessly addicted and the gold farmers who supply them. Given the mind boggling investment just in developing SWTOR it'll take years of locked in players to break even. Do you know many casual players who'll keep dropping $15 month after month to watch the same cutscenes o
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Re:WoW 2.0 (Score:4, Interesting)
So you're tired of the genre, it's like saying you're tired of running around with guns shooting people - well then all FPS games are going to suck for you. I loved Skyrim, but you could say it's exactly the same as almost every other RPG, you got your fighter, mage and rogue skills, same old go into dungeons and beat the crap out of the usual assortment of bad guys and monsters, level up, get better gear and so on. Yay another game with a fireball spell. There's just a limited way of doing things, a lot of things have changed between I played Civilization 1 and Civilization 5 but a lot more stayed the same. It's the same discover technology, found cities, build units and buildings, deal with other nations and all that stuff. Or all the "Tycoon" games, they all more or less work the same even if you're building a roller coaster or a hospital. If you've tired from that basic game play no game is going to satisfy you.
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 ...
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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.
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Thanks for the info, but 45 for a game that you then keep spending on monthly still just doesn't add up.
Why isn't the game free? Wouldn't they get more subscribers that way? After all, it is the monthly subscription that makes them the money.
They seem to be deliberatly hampering themselves by sticking to the WoW model much to closely.
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Re:Irking (Score:5, Insightful)
$60 for a game, then $15 per month vs paying $60 for a game you're done with in a month, so then you're bored and go buy another one at $60. Which is cheaper?
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Do you really have to play games as soon as they're out?
You could buy them a year (or 2 years) later, when they cost $15.
It's just a matter of preference. For the same amount of money, would you rather play 1 game all year long, or 10 different games?
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If you're done with a $60 game in a month, you got ripped off.
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Initial investment gets people hooked (sometimes). Once you spend the $60, the $15/month doesn't look bad compared to the idea that all that money was wasted. Or that is the idea, anyways. Creates a more loyal fanbase. If free, people have much less incentive to stay (but lower barrier for entry). It all depends on the type of player you want.
Don't want it too high though: a large part of the reason I never picked up WoW again was that I'd have to buy all the expansions... and not even get any game time in
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Why isn't it free? Because millions of people were willing to pay for it. It would have been retarded to do anything else. The There was around 1 million unit just in preorder, including selling out the collector edition at 150$ a piece.
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Please try writing a game where you capture that kind of mechanic, where character development comes from getting more skilled, not stealing better gear from dead orcs.
Hmm... I kind of agree with everything you said. But I have to point out that Glamdring (Gandalf's sword), Sting(Bilbo/Frodo's sword), and Orcrist (Thorin's sword) all came from the troll's cave in The Hobbit.
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It will come down if people refuses to pay the original 60. I think they should try for something like 19.99 and then the subscription. WoW prices have been slashed, so you can get the Battle Chest for $20, the two other expansions for $30, plus if you sign for the annual pass you pay like $13 per month plus get a free copy of Diablo 3. When you think that WoW is a pretty mature and stable game at this point, and all the content you are getting, who cares about a different game that is pretty much like WoW.
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Its an MMO which should last a long time.
You play for 2 years for example. You pay $60 + (23 * $15) = $405.
You think you should be paying 24 * $15 = $360.
Thats less than $2 per month over the life of the game, which could probably be made up with advance purchasing.
I don't see what you are complaining about.
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I fall into the camp of someone who will simply never pay a monthly fee for a game. I'm a casual gamer at best, and I've long since been outpaced by video games and can't work most of them.
By making it on-line only, and charging for that, they've pretty much assured that people like me will never even try it. Which, they're probably fine with.
The guys who made Portal, however, can likely count
Wrong title..... (Score:5, Funny)
The title doesn't really fit....
My suggestions:
- Return of the Grind
- A new quest
- The sleep deprivation strikes back
Yours, Martin
$100M really? (Score:2)
the game's budget is estimated to be as high as $100 million
What in the world could they have possibly spent that on? I'm struggling to figure it out. Even if 3/4 went to marketing and executive bonuses, that would still be a rather large sum of money.
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Well let's assume 9/10 went to marketing and executive bonuses and go from there :-P
Re:$100M really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Napkin math:
200 employees (random guess, but my gut says that's a low number)
x $75k per year (another random guess, but I don't think it's absurd)
x 5 years in development
= 75 million. Add in marketing, management, and server costs, and you might be there.
Oh, and don't forget license fees. I won't speculate on what Lucas is charging them, but I bet it's mindboggling.
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As another poster said - voice acting. LOTS of it. That and CGI - and writers, etc. It took a lot of people a lot of man hours to develop this. That said - $100 million doesn't seem all that bad. Last I heard their pre-orders alone were approaching 3 million. Some of those are collectors editions and digital deluxe, but even at $60 a pop for the regular edition x 3 million is $180 million. There's other material costs involved there, but I'd wager that the initial sales alone will makeup for the deve
Re:$100M really? (Score:4, Funny)
the game's budget is estimated to be as high as $100 million
What in the world could they have possibly spent that on?
My guess: 2 Death Stars and franchise rights from Lucas.
"Largely Unexplored"? (Score:2)
Seriously? It's "Largely unexplored"? I was in beta for half a year and that was short compared to some. I had about half a dozen max level characters during that time and I've done quests that don't even exist in the current build (because they were removed with often unfixable bugs effecting players). Plenty of people who were in beta longer then me even have certainly explored SW:ToR pretty darn thoroughly. I think 'game reviewers' are the only ones who haven't played more than a single beta weekend and
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"Seriously? It's "Largely unexplored"?"
Yes, because nobody has written about it, go do that if you care so much (remember to write how the interface is unreadable)
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.
I give it 12 months until it's free to play (Score:2)
Lots of other "big" titles that launched recently have since gone free-to-play. Star Wars Online and DC Universe Online are recent examples. I give SWTOR a year (more than the average due to the Star Wars name) before they start letting people in free. They might not call it "F2P" but at the very least they'll have playable trial accounts that expose 75% of the game.
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.
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.
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I would say that if you can complete half of the levels in a week, then it should not feel like a grind because it isnt. It also sounds like it isnt a challenge, and all of the content is high level. Why not just give a intro demo and turn everyone loose at level 50
"Story-Driven" (Score:2)
A story-driven MMO...this could be a "neverending story" that actually lives up to it's name!
.... 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.
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P.S.: SWTOR feels like a WoW with worse animations, worse interface and too much voice-acting. Nice for a few weeks, then boring.
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"Nobody goes there anymore - its too crowded.".
Queues are to be expected in a popular game on launch day. Every time you hit a queue that means that there are that many paying customers in there taking up that much room. You'll never see any business "killed" for having too many customers.
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Is it easy to move a character between servers on TOR? Last time I tried in WoW, it was a huge pain in the ass. A real let-down after having played Guild Wars (where you could move anywhere, anytime you wanted).
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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.
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Worst I had was peak time Friday night in PST (North American server), at about 35 minutes.
No wait times past 10m on the weekend, and nothing on Monday or Tuesday.
Might just be the European servers, or the particular one you're on. I'm on one of the most dense NA servers (wait times for mine are among the top when I check).
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.
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UI Scaling and Mods are something Bioware Stated would come after launch.
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Pretty much all of Bioware's games are like this. I couldn't play Mass Effect 2 on my PS3 with my standard definition TV because, despite it being a fairly sizable TV, the font was completely unreadable. I don't doubt that even on an HDTV I would still run into issues.
It's not just a programmer issue to add in font sizes, though. It's a QA issue. The stunning amount of text that needs to be checked once per font size is not a trivial expenditure of time.
Origin experience, horrible bugs (Score:3)
buy another EA game again. Horrible cheating, crashing, clunky origin interface.
Time to starve the beast. Don't buy the games and make ea vanish as it should have ages ago.
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Standard Digital Download Edition - SOLD OUT! (Score:3)
Deluxe version still available of course!
And to think my attitude to EA had mellowed in recent years...
Re:So, when did subscriptions become traditional? (Score:5, Informative)
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Which is why Guild Wars will never have a sequel.
Oh, wait...
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Guild Wars is probably the most underrated MMO in history. Way better story and graphics than WoW, it was free to play from the beginning, and moving a character between servers was as easy as a drop-down menu (allowing you to easily play with friends on different servers, something that should have been standard on all MMO's a long time ago). And yet it never got the attention it really deserved.
Re:So, when did subscriptions become traditional? (Score:5, Interesting)
SW:TOR bring the RPG back to MMORPG. But I think GW2 has the chance to be truly revolutionary -- it destroys the 'holy trinity' model, no monthly fee, and the graphics and gameplay look to be a substantial improvement over the current generation of 'hotkey' MMOs.
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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
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Which is why Guild Wars will never have a sequel. Oh, wait...
At the rate they're developing GW2, I tend to believe your first statement.
Re:So, when did subscriptions become traditional? (Score:5, Insightful)
MUDs preceded MMOs. They were also by and large F2P.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD [wikipedia.org]
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Err... early MUDs tended to cost a lot to set up, but were run as curiosity projects as universities. I also remember MUDs that did charge for access, such as Avalon (still in existence: http://www.avalon-rpg.com/ [avalon-rpg.com] ), although many came with other services, for example Terris ( http://www.legendsofterris.com/ [legendsofterris.com] ) came with OnLive in the UK, then went to AOL, before becoming independent.
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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...
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Things update and the game keeps progressing. In the past you would play the game and beat it and thats it. Wait for a sequel and buy that one. With so many millions paying monthly you have extended content that is not possible otherwise
Re:So, when did subscriptions become traditional? (Score:5, Interesting)
And fully voiced quest interactions with very good writing.
I personally burned out on WoW a good while back. Several months before Cataclysm came out I quit playing. When it came out I resubed and leveled one character from 80 to 85, but then quit again shortly thereafter. I've tried many of the free-to-play games, Rift, EVE Online, and many others in the meantime. Nothing grabbed my attention.
I got early access to SWTOR 5 days ago and have already played at least 15 hours and can't wait to knock off work so I can play again.
I can honestly say that I see myself leveling at least 1 character of every class to max just to see the quest chains. Its that good.
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
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"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.arstechn
Re:So, when did subscriptions become traditional? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So, when did subscriptions become traditional? (Score:5, Interesting)
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There is no free space flight. It's all scripted combat on rails. DUMB.
WHAT
That was the single best thing about SWG. How could they fuck THAT up?
Not really, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Also as someone who actually plays it, I think it's inexact. It's like calling Skyrim "Fallout 3 with swords."
The only similarity to WOW is that both are games in the same genre. So, yes, certain mechanics are going to be shared between the two, by necessity. Some because frankly, they're part of the whole MMO premise, and some because we have a decade and a half of figuring out what players like and what players don't like. In a new game you want more of the former and less of the latter.
And it's not even a bad thing. We had an attempt at ignoring everything that other MMOs showed that works or doesn't work. It was called Tabula Rasa. Yeah, Lord British thought he's so great that he can simply wipe the slate of everything that had been learned in a decade of MMOs and reinvent everything his way. It wasn't much fun to play for most people who've tried it and it bombed badly.
And really, most of that stuff isn't even particularly specific to WoW. As someone who's played half a dozen MMOs before, I don't see why I should reduce a whole genre to one game. It's called MMO, not "WoW clone". You could just as accurately say it's Everquest 2 with lightsabers, or City Of Heroes with lightsabers, or, really, whatever.
The classes for example are not really clones of WoW, suprisingly enough. The companions mechanic is also not very WoW. Actually branching available quests based on what you did before (e.g., alignment) is also not very closely mirroring any WoW mechanic I can think of. Having a choice of how you want to end a quest is also not very WoW-like. Etc. The point is that it's different enough to feel different and interesting, and in the end that's all that matters.
As for what happens in a few months, meh, nothing is for ever. I bought a game, not entered a marriage and made a kid, you know? If it stops being fun to play in a few months, for whatever reason, I'll move on then. And hey, at that point I will have got a couple of months of fun. Am I right?
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Point duly taken, but there was an "if" there. IF it stops being fun.
I'm sure Bioware and EA are also fully aware that they need to keep people entertained over more than a couple of months and are working on new quests, instances, expansion packs, etc. So this would be their motivation to, you know, negate that "if".
And at least Bioware has proven great skill so far. So I wouldn't worry all that much about them y
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So not only didn't you try swtor, you didn't try wow either, eh?
"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. "
So is Wow - yes, if you stay away for long enough (and we are talking real world years) yes there will be progression without but (and so presumably here will in swtor) but the whole point is that YOU the player get to meet all the leaders, all the leadersin the world get to know you and your name.
In swtor you are NOT
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"Disclaimer: I have not played the game yet, and my opinion is based on reviews and people who have played the beta."
You should have stopped commenting right there. I was in Beta as well as started my early access on the 13th. While the voice acting is amazing and top notch graphics it is exactly like every other MMO out right now. Except they didn't put in a real LFG tool yet, though they have a PVP queue, and they don't have phasing like in WoW.
Honestly if this game didn't have STAR WARS in the name no on
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I've been playing (or, rather waiting in fucking queues) since last thursday, and yes, it's quite a lot like WoW. The colors on items are the same, at least the first 10 levels of soloing are the same.
But.
The NPC interactions are a lot more fun, quite Mass Effect-like. I don't know if there's a rep system yet as you only get dark/light side interaction points, but this would play particularly nicely into a faction rep system as well. Plus, you could have light/dark faction issues, where if you're light-s
Re:So, when did subscriptions become traditional? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think one of the long term players from beta who is a friend of mine put it best.
"I played the entire early part with my friend. We share start point for our characters, so we can "watch" each other's plot lines. So I walk with the quest giver NPC, and he says "Now that we're finally alone..." and my friend's character is right next to me. Jarring".
The best question was "so if this truly is MY story, why are there twenty guys who look just like me talking to the same NPCs and doing the same quests?"
Fact is, you just can't make a good, immersive story about a "hero that stands above the crowd" in an MMO. You have to be one of the masses, and by extension, not really a hero that stands above others. When MMO's pretend it's not so, like TOR and some of the new/remade zones in WoW, it looks silly and breaks immersion in a very bad way.
Difference is, WoW doesn't hype it up as a major selling point. TOR does, and while it works for people who are experiences with MMOs and don't really expect anything truly new, just an improvement, those who actually do expect something new end up sorely disappointed. Which is what happens to people who believe that TOR is not WoW with lightsabers. Because in the end, under all the extra fluff, there's still going to be twenty guys who have a story largely identical to yours right next to you reminding you that you're not the "hero that stands above the crowd" that game tries to make you believe you are.
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Worth noting that WoW's world has been dynamic since 3.0. It helps the problem a bit by making it appear that your actions in fact influence the world. In WoW, you can for example do a few quests in a small allied base as a part of effort to build up, and after a while, base will enter a next phase and grow. Essentially it means that there are different versions of the base in the same place, and your questing progress determines which one you get to access.
It still doesn't remove the "there's ten other guy
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MMO on a console (Score:2)
It really just would not have worked out very well.
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That's what they used to say about FPS's and RTS's too.
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while most xbox fans seem to be "brown shooter of the week" "dudebro gamers", is there not already an MMO on the 360 with DCUO? The PS3 actually has 4, as long as you have a CECH(A/B/E) model. FFXI, EQOA, DCUO, FreeRealms.
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WoW and EVE are the ONLY two MMO's I know of that bothered to make a mac client of their game. I honestly can't think of a single other MMO that is dual platformed.
But who cares? Unless you have an old non-intel Apple system (in which case the system requirements wouldn't work for this game most likely) you just install Win 7 on a second partition or hard drive and play the game on your mac that way. Stop trying to complain about something that isn't an issue anymore.