By John Walker on July 25th, 2011 at 4:15 pm.
Every MMO developer likes to think that their game will last longer than the norm. That norm, for AAA Western MMOs, is growing increasingly brief. Which makes BioWare’s ambitions for Star Wars: The Old Republic, impressively bold. Discussing what their game will be doing in 2025 requires the sort of cajones that can only impress us into believing them. That’s what Eurogamer reported that Darth Hater reported.
The game plans to have 19 major worlds at launch, along with a bunch of minor worlds, and they plan to add to this as the game goes along. So claims senior creative director James Ohlen, who goes on to say,
“We want to add dozens of worlds. Hundreds of worlds eventually. In 2025, we’ll hopefully have 500 worlds.”
I’m just doing the maths here, hang on…
…carry the three…
…less the differential…
…adjusting for traffic…
Bollocks.
Brilliant as they may be, they’ve been making this game for at least five years and are 19 worlds in. If they maintain the dedication and narrative that defines the game, in another 14 years they’d have one hundred more at most. Unless he means the minor ones, in which case they could probably create 500 in a weekend.
Never mind that in 14 years I can’t imagine we’ll be playing games in any way that seems meaningful now. 14 years ago was 1997 – we barely had genuine 3D. On computers made of straw. By 2025 we’ll be playing games on the microprocessors in our brains, as we swoop home from spacework on our light-gliders. Should that include the same MMOs we’re playing now I’ll be extremely impressed.
So good luck to them, I say. I absolutely cannot wait to play SWTOR, craving a narrative-focused MMO as I am. I’m yet to be convinced I’ll still be playing it when I’m 47. But please get back to me then to call me an idiot.
25/07/2011 at 16:25 Alaric says:
We shall see.
25/07/2011 at 16:37 Erd says:
It’s survival is really more about them keeping the servers running. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are 2 further reiterations of star wars mmos by then though.
25/07/2011 at 17:07 Xercies says:
Or more you shall see, I have already seen
25/07/2011 at 19:08 Chesterton says:
The “year 2025/500 worlds” comment was a JOKE…Anyone at the panel (as I was) would have told you that.
I love you RPS, but this story isn’t telling the full context of what actually happened.
Chill out, internet. Don’t be trolled.
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25/07/2011 at 16:28 ResonanceCascade says:
If the game is still running in 2025, they’ll probably have more worlds than players.
25/07/2011 at 16:28 cheesetruncheon says:
yeah I’m sure the game will be a huge success priced at £45 + a Monthly fee.
25/07/2011 at 16:51 Teddy Leach says:
HERP DERP DERP.
Can they not SEE how this is going to end?
25/07/2011 at 17:27 Nalano says:
Don’t you see? 2025′s when they get their investment back!
25/07/2011 at 18:48 Axyl says:
No, 2025 will be when the next awful SW MMO will be ready, and then they’ll suddenly shut this one down to shunt players over to the new one…
After patching all the decent and worthwhile parts of it out a couple years earlier and sheding half the remaining playerbase, ofc.
25/07/2011 at 19:06 Wulf says:
I’ve said elsewhere that Bioware’s TOR press releases (including the EA stuff) is pure entertainment.
“WoW is the ultimatez, if you break the rulez of WoW you are failzorz, lolz. YOU MUST NOT BREAK ONE RULE OF WOW, EVAR, FOR ANY REASON! If you do… your game DIEZ.”
“Our game will be soooo innovative and not WoW at all!”
“Our game will has EIGHT CAMPAIGNZ!”
“Our game will charge you for preorders!”
“Our game will be running in 2025! Honest, dood!”
/popcorn
25/07/2011 at 19:14 Nalano says:
Design by committee.
25/07/2011 at 22:55 Tuan says:
Oh noes a monthly fee! How will I ever afford the measly $15 a month to play a game hours and hours on end! Skip one cheap meal out, you’ve broken even.
I played Everquest back in the day for $10/mo. Believe me, I got my money’s worth. Hourly rate approached $0.
If you don’t think it’s worth paying a monthly fee, then perhaps you shouldn’t be excited to play an MMO?
26/07/2011 at 01:33 jezcentral says:
Most places are selling it for less than £35 anyway.
26/07/2011 at 08:40 Red_Avatar says:
@Tuan I don’t consider $/€15 to be cheap and I rarely go eat out – although it would be half or even less than that anyway so it would be closer to two or three meals.
Regardless of that, this is a MONTHLY fee that you pay for access to the same material. A fee which SHOULD have been covered by the initial ridiculously-high purchase fee. In theory, the fee should be for server maintenance, adding new content, fixing problem, customer support. In reality, new content is kept for expansion packs except for tiny inconsequential stuff, customer support is poor at best and server maintenance … do you really think a single player creates $/€15 worth of server costs?
Heck, you have to pretty much play for at least 40 hours for it to be worth the €15 and most people wouldn’t really feel like playing at least an hour a day on the same game for longer than a few weeks.
In the end, I think that we need to move away from these ridiculous monthly fees. They’re outdated and are useless for people who actually have a LIFE and want to play when they feel like it instead of feeling that every day they don’t play is money down the drain.
26/07/2011 at 09:58 Kdansky says:
@Tuan: Yes, 15$ a month isn’t a huge sum. But on the other hand, you have to invest hundreds of hours of drudgery and boredom to have a few minutes of fun, because MMOs are designed to make you waste time. I’d rather buy something akin Dungeons of Dredmor and Jamestown each month.
I’ve got a (deactivated since 2009) WoW account with 150 days /played. I know what I speak off.
25/07/2011 at 16:29 MiniMatt says:
Hmm, in 2025 Star Wars will be a shade under 50 years old. Which begs the question, where’s my Laurence Of Arabia MMO?!?
25/07/2011 at 20:32 porschecm2 says:
Hm, now there’s a brilliant idea.
26/07/2011 at 08:23 Erd says:
On a similar note: I’m genuinely shocked no-one has made a WW2 MMO.
26/07/2011 at 10:43 mejoff says:
What? like http://www.battlegroundeurope.com/?
25/07/2011 at 16:29 Batolemaeus says:
That’s pretty…fearless…of them. What’s their motto? “Swtor Forever”?
25/07/2011 at 16:38 Lacero says:
“If it looks good, it is good” ?
:)
25/07/2011 at 16:45 Batolemaeus says:
Nobody would seriously choose that as their motto.
Seriousness aside, unless they become the new wow, which, as far as I can tell they’re trying very hard, I don’t see it happening in a narrative driven mmo where content expires and has to be replaced rapidly. Unless, of course, they’re planning to run one shard until the license expires, just out of spite.
25/07/2011 at 18:45 President Weasel says:
Even EVE is showing its age and struggling somewhat against the tide of angry bittervets and burnouts, although it’s still chugging along in it’s EVEy way. That’s far less narrative driven though, and I agree with Batolomeus that it would be harder with a narrative driven MMO – especially as SWTOR sounds rather like it’s going to be “single player online with maybe a couple of other players being vaguely involved occasionally” rather than a true MMO – I think I will need a better acronym than that though.
25/07/2011 at 16:32 Danorz says:
bless ‘em
25/07/2011 at 16:33 cyrenic says:
A more relevant prediction might be: Free to play within 2 years.
25/07/2011 at 16:39 Squirrelfanatic says:
No, within six months.
25/07/2011 at 16:41 ReV_VAdAUL says:
UNATCO?
25/07/2011 at 16:42 PickyBugger says:
I heard that it’s a WOW killer but shush don’t tell anyone…
25/07/2011 at 17:14 stahlwerk says:
U
Unatco?
25/07/2011 at 17:49 WPUN says:
Two years is a good number. Yes.
25/07/2011 at 18:45 Conor says:
stahlwerk: No. Savage.
25/07/2011 at 18:46 PleasingFungus says:
Old MMOs, ruling the world.
25/07/2011 at 19:13 Wulf says:
@PleasingFungus
I hope not! Let’s all hope they get toppled by certain rebellious upstarts that want to turn the world on its head by doing things differently, just like that other thing that we aren’t talking about involving the man in shades.
25/07/2011 at 19:15 coldvvvave says:
Thats terror.
25/07/2011 at 19:20 ChiefOfBeef says:
Desperate. Your turn.
25/07/2011 at 16:34 Dreamhacker says:
Unless they’ve found some magic way to create an infinitely varied and replayable gameplay OR the global gaming industry suddenly turns into a planned economy overnight, then that is a pretty naive statement.
Edit: Yet… I still play Master of Orion 2. All right, it’s a semi-naive statement.
26/07/2011 at 11:22 Stellar Duck says:
But MoO2 doesn’t cost us 15 € a month.
25/07/2011 at 16:35 Andy says:
When you put it in context like that, when folk like us will be well into our mid-40′s (good lord that’s a terrifying thought), it just sounds like such a ridiculous claim.
You’re right though John, it’s bordering on bravado to make such a claim but doesn’t change the fact that once you think about it for about 15 microseconds you realise that it’s complete and utter gibberish.
The rhetoric is all fine and dandy but this kind of thing makes me despair just a little for the sanity of the guys behind the development. I’d imagine even the PR staff face-palmed at this comment.
If I’m still playing this (or indeed any) game regularly in 14 years time, and I don’t mean for a little retro nostalgia, then it’ll only be because it was (will be?! all this tense changing is confusing!) the greatest game ever made and Bioware will be busy ruling the Universes…. Much as I’m looking forward to giving it a bash, I think not.
25/07/2011 at 19:14 Wulf says:
^^^
Have a look at what I said about their press releases.
It’s like it’s being handled by monkeys.
Lobotomised monkeys.
Monkey lobotomites, then.
25/07/2011 at 16:38 wccrawford says:
Some of that development time was for code and assets that will be the same between all the worlds. There’s no need to duplicate that effort.
Also, it’s possible to hire different sets of people to write different subplots and worlds, but doing the same with the codebase is a lot harder.
So it’s totally possible that they could have 500 worlds in 2025.
I just think it’s unlikely to happen.
25/07/2011 at 16:40 Jason Moyer says:
With the direction Bioware has been going in, a part of me wishes this would tank so bad it would take EA’s entire RPG division with them, leaving Mass Effect 3 as their final game.
25/07/2011 at 18:21 Dariune says:
Never gonna happen.
I agree with Jason Moyer
Bioware have gone down a path many gamers will not follow. Their quality have taken a heavy downwards spiral and their marketing department seems to get the most effort dedicated to it.
I kinda hope it flops too. Then other companies who make good games but with lesser marketing departments will have more of a chance.
25/07/2011 at 19:35 Wulf says:
It needs to tank and Guild Wars 2 needs to be an incredible success. The reason for this is that it needs to be proved that WoW-clones full of grind and people-hacking just won’t work any more, that we’re collectively too smart to fall for that now, and that proper games, filled with real content are the way forward.
If TOR flopped and GW2 thrived, it would prove that beyond the shadow of a doubt. I’m sorry Bioware. I liked Mass Effect 2 (aside from the shameless perving over the women in that game, that made me hate you again), but you’re doing everything I can to represent everything I hate. I hope you go down… hard. With no hope for survival. I want to see Bioware die, and be dissolved by EA as Origin was, so that their coders will be scattered to the winds to start their own independent studios.
THAT is when we’ll start seeing interesting things from the people of Bioware.
25/07/2011 at 21:44 Starky says:
Wulf, if you (or anyone) genuinely want the company to fail, hundreds of people to lose their jobs; of which only 10% might start their own studios and the rest will struggle to find jobs that pay close to their wage at bioware.
Then you Sir, are a cunt.
No other word for it, a massive cunt.
You’re free to dislike their games, their sales model, their art style, even the company goals, ethics or practices. But you go too far when you start wishing for the collapse of a massive studio that employs hundreds based on your own shitty personal bias and rampant guild wars fanboyism
25/07/2011 at 21:57 moondog548 says:
@wulf If SWTOR is just KOTOR online then it’ll be massively dissappointing but still worthy to exist, so don’t say it must fail (though GW2 must succeed indeed).
@starky Plx stop and think about how absurd your argument is. Wishing for unproductive things to not be done is not equivalent to wishing for people who currently do those things to outright perish. IT’s not as though people *deserve* jobs doing un- and counter-productive things. I very much hope that the people who’s fault it isn’t get jobs for a developer that produces something worthwhile. Hell, I’d rather they be paid to dig and then fill in ditches than to harm the marketplace of things I enjoy. EDIT ah, I took out a “STFU” here for the sake of civility but I forgot you backed up your moronity with vulgarity so indeed, it need be said:
STFU
26/07/2011 at 00:19 Starky says:
Man that is one stupid wall of text you’ve got going there. First of all, “un- and counter-productive” is your opinion – mine is that while DA2 was a bit average (6/10 average on a proper 1-10 scale), basically every other bioware game has been fantastic. you may not like the direction they went with ME1/2 and DA:O but many, many gamers did.
You’d rather dig and fill ditches than harm the marketplace? That is utter nonsense and idiocy and you know it.
First, they are not harming the marketplace – except in tunnel visioned fanboys like Wulf (and you, who smells like a meatpuppet to be honest), even if they produced 100% pure shite, Uwe Boll level of shite that sold millions of copies (but of course everyone who liked/bought those copies would be clueless idiots right?) it would in no way “harm” the industry. Any more than mainstream manufactured pop (which has existed for decades) harmed indie music, or alternative scenes.
Hell without a mainstream to measure themselves against there would be no alternative, counter-culture scenes at all.
Second, if you’d rather dig ditches than risk harming a multi-billion dollar world wide industry with your gnats slap against a mountain of effort – then you really should be digging ditches as that is clearly all your limited intellect can handle.
26/07/2011 at 01:17 moondog548 says:
@starky
Thank you very much, that was hysterical. :D
In gratitude for your comical frothing, I have patched my previous post with a carriage return where one ought to previously have been.
26/07/2011 at 08:09 Inarborat says:
Here here!
I’d do a happy dance if Bioware kicked the bucket after TOR going down in flames. It’s not like I’m wishing death on these people but insanely overhyped studios at least deserve to be knocked down a peg or hundred. The arrogance of nowadays Bioware is dreadful.
As you can see, Dragon Age 2 left a bad, vile taste in my mouth. Never again, Bioware, never again.
25/07/2011 at 16:45 Bluebreaker says:
They have some incredible sense for humor. xD
25/07/2011 at 16:47 GT3000 says:
Well, if you account for the two year shut down and ressurect in 2002, Meridian 59 has been running for..Almost 13 years. So year, it’s not impossible but unlikely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59
25/07/2011 at 18:22 runtheplacered says:
I created a character in that game (for nostalgia) a few months ago (played for about a week and a half) and I have to say… there are definitely people still playing that game and taking it quite seriously.
25/07/2011 at 18:24 iniudan says:
Everquest has been running since 1999 and have a exponantially increasing number of expension (stopped the count at 8 back in 2004) but think they are somewhere between 15 and 20 now. =p
25/07/2011 at 18:57 Gar says:
Only MMO I’ve played has been around since 1996!
Right now there are 2 players online :P
http://www.terraoutlands.com/
25/07/2011 at 21:46 kaelus says:
Holy crap, that’s still running? I can’t remember if that or Realm was the first graphical mmo or MUD as we used to call them. I remember playing those games till EQ turned them all on their head.
25/07/2011 at 16:47 CMaster says:
People are still playing Doom and Ultima Online, aren’t they?
Sure, not many, and the interesting this is that big projects like TOR get shut down with many times the player base that smaller MMOs (Neocron, Fallen Earth) carry on happily with.
25/07/2011 at 17:33 Tei says:
We are talking about EA here. EA has closed some servers of games released in 2010.
25/07/2011 at 17:40 IDtenT says:
Yet UO keeps on giving.
25/07/2011 at 18:11 sqparadox says:
@Tei That’s an odd link to post as the vast, vast majority of shutdowns are console game servers. The only PC game on that list before you hit the “Previously Shut Down Online Service” section (excluding demos) is Need For Speed Most Wanted which is almost 6 years old. And while the full list may contain games that were released in 2010, what I’m surprised by is what games they are apparently still running servers for.
There isn’t a single Command and Conquer game on that list (that I could find), Need for Speed apparently has servers up for several legacy titles (everything from Carbon forward save the less than successful Prostreet.). All the Battlefields from 1942 to Bad Company 2 apparently still have servers. I’m astounded by the proportion of PC game servers left on to console game servers turned off. I haven’t actually checked any of this in any of these games so this list may simply be incomplete, but I’m leaning more towards the side of ‘EA keeps PC game servers up way longer than I ever thought.’
25/07/2011 at 19:42 Wulf says:
The funny part will be how, in 2025, Guild Wars 1 and 2 will both be running and healthy, both healthier than TOR, and ArenaNet will get to be as smug as hell about this. Guild Wars 1 continues to have boatloads of players, it has every year I’ve gone back to play it, and I could honestly see it going to 2025 and beyond.
I mean, consider… the WoW-heads are just going to get sucked into Titan anyway. They have no choice in the matter. Where Blizzard goes, they go. So they’ll get pulled away from TOR at that time, TOR will lose most of its playerbase, and GW2 will keep going from strength to strength.
Why? Because GW2 (and GW!) already won this battle by doing the right thing: Not being WoW. You won’t ever pull the WoW-heads away from Blizzard, ever. Titan will literally own them mind and soul when it comes along, so creating a WoW clone is just begging for your own doom. But doing things as differently as GW2 is and catering to an older, more casual crowd? Well… I think that’s a massive recipe for success.
25/07/2011 at 20:09 Kaira- says:
Tell me Wulf, how is the future?
25/07/2011 at 22:15 mondomau says:
@ Wulf: I admire your conviction. I mean there’s always the chance you are going to end up looking like a massive prat if GW 1/2 disappear, but fair play to you anyway.
25/07/2011 at 22:58 JerreyRough says:
@Wulf If you’ve paid attention to various news articles that have come out in the last few years, Titan isn’t another WoW. Its aimed towards a more casual market. Instead, they’ll just keep updating WoW and giving it more and more features.
25/07/2011 at 16:48 The Sentinel says:
Unlikely.
25/07/2011 at 18:19 zeroskill says:
^ this very much. I mean, cmon, who has to promote their mmo going around telling people its build to last forever if it doesnt suck.
25/07/2011 at 16:48 Avish says:
I think Bioware already proved that it’s quite possible to create many environments with only a few maps.
Just think how many worlds they can create by reusing the 19 worlds they already have?
25/07/2011 at 17:04 Durkonkell says:
Oh gods, now that is an unpleasant thought.
Or perhaps procedurally generated ‘worlds’ because that always works so well in MMOs (see Star Trek Online’s shoddy exploration areas).
%playername! It is good to see you here at %starwarssoundingplanetnamethatnoonehasheardofbefore! We are under attack from %enemyfactionname! We need you to kill %randomnumber %enemyfactionname to take the pressure off of our %factionname units!
25/07/2011 at 17:30 Lacero says:
“…to distract you from the pointless yet familiar dead ends we have placed junk there for you to take and sell.”
Seconding that this is a very unpleasant thought.
25/07/2011 at 19:46 Wulf says:
Avish: +1
This comments thread just goes from strength to strength.
26/07/2011 at 05:29 Tetragrammaton says:
Yeah, that unpleasant wet-dog smell is getting rather powerful
25/07/2011 at 16:49 FakeAssName says:
given EA’s aversion to canceling UO, this game may well still be running in 2025.
so that side of it kinda believe, continued support for this game after about a year … my ass!
him talking about having 500 “worlds” (does he mean “cells”?) is just marketing drivel to convince people to be early adopters to this game. I’m sure this also has absolutely no relation to EA getting LA to pull the plug on SWG and lots of players getting pissed off at the franchise, no relation at all.
25/07/2011 at 16:49 Teddy Leach says:
OK, a tenner says it dies by Christmas next year. And 50 quid says it doesn’t even sell that well.*
*Imagination-money only. I can’t afford real money.
25/07/2011 at 17:11 IDtenT says:
Pre-orders are already selling out…
25/07/2011 at 17:30 Nalano says:
MMO pre-orders always sell out. It’s easy to convince people of the quality of your product if they don’t actually have access to it.
25/07/2011 at 18:09 Coins says:
How can digital pre-orders sell out?! Madness!
25/07/2011 at 18:19 Nalano says:
Collectors’ Editions. With the die-cast figurines, et al.
25/07/2011 at 19:50 Wulf says:
@Nalano
You don’t know… ? You honestly don’t know?!?!? Oh gods…
They’ve enforced scarcity on their digital preorders. I’m not kidding. Honestly, I swear I’m not. They say that they have a limited amount of digital preorders on offer, and even if you pay the preorder fee you MAY or MAY NOT get into the open beta period (which is what the preorder is about). If you don’t get in, your preorder is cancelled if I understand it.
So… yeah.
/popcorn
25/07/2011 at 19:54 Nalano says:
What’s the bonus of pre-ordering, other than access to the beta?
25/07/2011 at 20:08 Zarunil says:
They are running out of downloads!
26/07/2011 at 11:16 Teddy Leach says:
WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF INTERNET!!!!111111ONEONEONEELEVEN
26/07/2011 at 19:00 newprince says:
@Teddy Leach
“WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF INTERNET!!!” Made me laugh way too hard. Cheers.
25/07/2011 at 16:51 Tulse says:
Did they just hire Peter Molyneux as project lead?
25/07/2011 at 16:51 Monkey says:
The only thing i play with now that i know for sure i will still be playing with in 2025, is my balls
25/07/2011 at 17:02 Simon Hawthorne says:
Me too.
Wait, no…
25/07/2011 at 22:41 Gonefornow says:
Clever.
Wait, no…
25/07/2011 at 16:54 Vexing Vision says:
If EA manages to keep a game growing for more than three months, I’ll be impressed.
Oh, HELLO Warhammer! How are you doing nowadays?
25/07/2011 at 16:54 deadly.by.design says:
Everquest and Asheron’s Call are still going ten years later, but it doesn’t mean they’re great games.
25/07/2011 at 16:57 Tei says:
This is wen you write Optimism with uppercase O, as if where some ideology (or maybe a religion) based purelly on faith.
25/07/2011 at 16:59 Teddy Leach says:
You mean it isn’t?
25/07/2011 at 16:57 Alphabet says:
Maybe they’re basing this estimate on a release date of 2024?
25/07/2011 at 16:57 ran93r says:
That timespan is about twice the attention span that I had for World of Warcraft, I still pop on there from time to time and technically they are still getting my money. I suppose I “could” still be playing SW but I don’t know if I want to jump back into another moomoo for that amount of time.
25/07/2011 at 16:57 Durkonkell says:
I was actually rather interested in TOR. Yeah, it looks a little WoW-like and I don’t think that’s necessary, but then again KOTOR was never really about the combat for me. Alright, so I was grinding my teeth at the mobility-scooter ‘speeder’ we saw in the gameplay demo (why can’t we have fast moving mounts from the beginning in MMOs?) a little bit as well. But still, infinite KOTOR is appealing to me even if I have to put up with the type of imbeciles I already have in WoW pick-up-groups.
But the pricing has really, critically put me off. It’s not so much a thumb in the eye as a lightsabre buried up to the hilt in the eye. It’s EA shouting “You IDIOTS! You utter imbeciles! You will pay ANYTHING we tell you to pay and then pay us a monthly fee as well! Next time we won’t even make a game, we’ll just charge you £50 or so for a box, and you’ll still pay because you have sawdust instead of brains!”
With a loudhailer.
Physically connected to my ear.
They’re talking about 2025, I think they should be addressing how they’re going to sell enough copies despite the overinflated price and then retain sufficient players to survive 2012.
25/07/2011 at 18:27 runtheplacered says:
“why can’t we have fast moving mounts from the beginning in MMOs?”
They explain this at Comic-Con, actually.
“You will pay ANYTHING we tell you to pay and then pay us a monthly fee as well!”
You’re being way too hyperbolic to take for a sane rational person. It’s the same price as many other games on the market, $60. To only blame EA on this is absolutely ridiculous.
“They’re talking about 2025, I think they should be addressing how they’re going to sell enough copies despite the overinflated price and then retain sufficient players to survive 2012.”
Ok, so you’re just trolling? Because you do realize this 2025 statement was in jest, right? It wasn’t an actual serious comment.
25/07/2011 at 18:45 Durkonkell says:
£45 for the standard edition? I don’t believe I’ve ever paid that much for a non-ultra-collector’s-edition of a game. It is absolutely *not* the same price as every other game on the market. That is the point. Even call-of-modern-duty-war isn’t (quite) that expensive!
Furthermore: Comic-con wasn’t broadcast into everyone’s brain. Saying “they explain this at comic-con” as if I’m an idiot for not knowing why we have to trundle around on a vehicle so slow it’s comical is insulting. Perhaps you could enlighten me, oh knower of everything, rather than just telling me that there is Information That I Don’t Know That You Do? (nyah, nyah).
25/07/2011 at 19:56 Wulf says:
To put the nail in the coffin…
It’s not just a liittle WoW-like, it’s a direct damn WoW clone. Bioware told me this themselves when they said that designers break some sort of law if they defy even one design law of WoW, even one, no matter how small. If you defy one law, you’re a failure, you should try and ape WoW as closely as you can. I wondered if it was really as much of a WoW reskin as it looked to be…
Yes. Yes it is. I watched 90 minutes of it thanks to justin.tv and… it had talking. It was WoW with talking. That was it, really. There was speech. There was a lot of it. And it was hilariously bad. The acting quality of the speech was some of the worst I’ve heard in anything, ever. I’ve heard better in the original Silent Hill, it was stilted, many of the actors sounded like they lacked confidence, and it was painfully bad. It was low-budget-indie-film-staffed-by-amateurs bad. You have to hear it to believe it.
Oh, and you get choices! But all that does is decide whether you go to WoW grinding area A or WoW grinding area B. That’s pretty much it. There isn’t a single meaningful choice there. And I watched 90 minutes of the damn thing so I have a good idea of how it all works. It’s WoW… but WoW with really bad voice-acting. Some people won’t believe this until they try it… but frankly? More fool them.
25/07/2011 at 23:44 moondog548 says:
@Wulf
Now keep in mind I’m on your side, so that’s why I must take you to task on tossing out the “meaningful choice” cliche and thus soiling any actual arguments you bring often to the table….
I’d love it if anyone could cite an example, from *any context in the known universe or realm of possible thought including but not limited to videogames* of a choice which is “meaningful” where in /every/ case the outcome is continued entertainment and enjoyment.
26/07/2011 at 01:27 Vexing Vision says:
@moondog548:
1. Single-player: Witcher 2. The end of Act 1 sees you making a meaningful choice that defines Act 2 and is equally entertaining (though I actually liked the king’s warcamp better).
2. MMO: Dungeons & Dragons Online. Several quests progress differently according to your party composition, skillset and approach to the dungeon (anyone up for the icedragons?).
3. Upcoming MMO: Secret World. While I suspect that the quests are pretty linear once people figured out which button to press, the character customization appears to provide a lot of immensely meaningful choices.
4. Dwarf Fortress. It’s a game about making meaningful choices every bloody second.
25/07/2011 at 16:58 Simon Hawthorne says:
Eurogamer’s comments tell me that the 500 worlds comment was said in jest.
Read it again.
Are you so sure it wasn’t said in jest, John?
25/07/2011 at 18:05 Tamerlaput says:
Of course it was a joke.
“-In 2025, we’ll hopefully have 500 worlds.
-Guaranteed! In year 2025!”
I mean, how subtle is that? They should have added smiley faces in the transcript I guess.
Pretty entertaining to see some people discussing this seriously though.
25/07/2011 at 18:33 westyfield says:
Bollocks. And there I was, about to make a smug comment about this game.
Thanks, Simon Hawthorne.
Thimon Thawthorne.
25/07/2011 at 18:49 apollyonbob says:
I know, right? Everyone’s acting like this was said seriously. I thought maybe it was some weird British thing. “Oh hey, lets all respond to this very obvious joke as though it was said with complete sincerity!”
‘kaaaaay.
25/07/2011 at 19:44 Stochastic says:
To me, it wasn’t obvious that this comment was a joke. The fact that so many people were fooled, myself included, speaks volumes about the way EA has been hyping SW:TOR.
25/07/2011 at 20:01 Wulf says:
That it’s a joke is just BS and covering for them, really. I mean, they’re a business, they’re not in a position to joke. They should know that there’ll be expectations based upon the hype. They’ll know that their fans will be using what they say as fuel to talk about their game. If they are joking in such a way then it’s incredibly irresponsible of them and it shows that they don’t give a shit about their fans.
So! Either they were serious and this is the most ridiculous bout of Bioware PR ever, or they don’t give a shit about their fans. Which is the lesser evil? You decide!
25/07/2011 at 20:07 Koozer says:
So…how is it funny? What was the set up?
25/07/2011 at 20:40 Tamerlaput says:
The setup? That’s the whole “joke”. It’s from a comic-con panel not a Seinfeld show. Check the link from darth hater, there’s a youtube video, it’s at 32:25.
It’s basically:
bioware guy: 500 planets in 2025.
crowd: haha (because it’s impossible).
The end.
25/07/2011 at 16:59 Burchard says:
Life support in 21 months. I did the math.
25/07/2011 at 17:02 Drake Sigar says:
Bless em, they’re too young to know.
25/07/2011 at 17:09 Xercies says:
Since WoW is 10 years old now and its looking like it might soon die down with the popularity I can’t even see that lasting another 14 years let alone this game lasting that long.
25/07/2011 at 17:30 PickyBugger says:
In what universe are you living where WOW is ten years old?
25/07/2011 at 18:04 mod the world says:
In what universe might WoW die down soon?
25/07/2011 at 20:03 Wulf says:
Oh, WoW is definitely dying down. You can see it around the Internet. On many of the niche gaming boards I used to visit there were threads asking of like-minded people play WoW. There was a time when these boards would have hundreds of replies. These days they’re lucky if they get two. If that’s not popularity dying down then I don’t know what is.
25/07/2011 at 17:10 jti says:
I give it 6 months after which it slowly dies during the next six. A year.
25/07/2011 at 20:04 Wulf says:
I give it six months before they see their financial reports, freak out, and then reinvent it as a free-to-play game.
25/07/2011 at 17:13 Berzee says:
It would be awesome if it did last, though. There may be some good stories come out of it =)
25/07/2011 at 17:13 IDtenT says:
Question is, will the engine even be capable of holding up that long? I mean, this is a game modeled to run on DirectX 9 hardware – in 2025.
25/07/2011 at 18:34 iniudan says:
Everquest is still running with the graphic they updated to in 2001 if I am not mistaken (hard to say last time I logged was in 2006, but player character model seem to be the same in recent expansion picture)
25/07/2011 at 17:15 Kent says:
Perhaps they’re meaning that they’re going to get a Star Wars license that ends 2025 or something? Anyway, I think that it could be feasible that they make it appealing even in the year 2025 but it has to be something truly grand and the consoles would have to keep holding the PC market back with it’s horrendous technology during all those years, judging from just how half baked BioWares games are I’m pretty sure their MMO will be universally accepted as generic blandness at best.
25/07/2011 at 17:33 ScubaMonster says:
Problem is, I predict the mmo landscape will be vastly different in 2025 than it is now. That far in the future, WoW gameplay and WoW graphics will not last. Wow’s gameplay and graphics is already getting pretty stale and TOR hasn’t even launched yet. And that’s basically the game model TOR is using. Sure, toss in some Bioware elements but at the core they pretty much are the same.
25/07/2011 at 20:05 Wulf says:
Apparently the whole thing is a joke.
“Let’s give our fans talking points so that we can point at laugh at them like the idiots that they are! They’re going to pay monthly for a WoW clone after all, just to line our pockets! Let us gain as much entertainment and money at their expense as we can!”
Yay Bioware.
25/07/2011 at 17:18 Maxheadroom says:
Prize to the first person to link this story with a smiely face when it dies on it’s ass in the first year
25/07/2011 at 17:21 Jake says:
500 tiny worlds and like 10 guys with a vast collection of bought-in-game celestial Boba Fett helmets, pet Yodas and Sith monocles sustaining everything.
25/07/2011 at 20:44 Flame_US3r says:
I would pay over $70 US for a monocle for my pet yoda (non-unique “species unknown,” rather?).
25/07/2011 at 17:29 Cunzy1 1 says:
Fire planet
Ice planet
City planet
Warehouse planet
Water Planet
Another Warehouse planet
Planet where you fight a helicopter
Dessert Planet
Desert Planet
Industry Planet
Umm Snow Planet?
How have they got 19 already?
25/07/2011 at 17:32 Nalano says:
You forgot:
- Lovely upper-crust city-planet.
- Slumworld.
- Jungle Planet.
- Tatooine, because it’s so freakin’ original.
25/07/2011 at 17:33 Cunzy1 1 says:
Hutini.
25/07/2011 at 17:51 Maxheadroom says:
Quarry planet (If Blakes 7 taught me anything it’s that every planet looks like a quarry just outside Wales)
25/07/2011 at 17:56 stahlwerk says:
- Sewer Planet
- Death Star v0.1 (screw continuity!)
- Darth Wossname’s Home Panet (dark and sinister, violet highlights!)
- Sewer Planet
25/07/2011 at 18:21 Nalano says:
- Grasslands planet that looks suspiciously like English countryside except for the constant laser fire.
25/07/2011 at 18:21 Kaira- says:
Mmmmm… dessert planet. *drool*
25/07/2011 at 19:06 Tei says:
- “Space base with metallic corridors”-planet
25/07/2011 at 20:52 Flame_US3r says:
Underwater city
With infinite kill-able Gungans.
26/07/2011 at 10:04 aircool says:
You mean Shillingstone Quarry in Dorset, right?
25/07/2011 at 17:30 Dachannien says:
“Cojones” are balls. “Cajones” are box-shaped Peruvian drums.
25/07/2011 at 17:50 ResonanceCascade says:
He clearly meant they will charm us into believing them with their wonderful Peruvian drumming.
25/07/2011 at 20:08 Wulf says:
Haaa. Well done.
25/07/2011 at 17:31 ScubaMonster says:
I love how he thinks the game will still be going strong in 2025 when all the did is basically copy and paste WoW gameplay and tossed in voice acted storylines. Plus, there’s no telling how well it will do on launch. The game could turn out to be a disaster.
Of course, no game developer is going to get up there and say their game is going to flop or be short lived. Still though, it’s pretty presumptuous to be talking about plans in 2025 when your game hasn’t even launched and will be launching most likely late 2011.
I can actually see Blizzard’s Titan mmo changing up how MMO’s play, then everybody will scramble to copy that. Guess where that leaves TOR? Stuck in the past with WoW.
25/07/2011 at 20:13 Wulf says:
Guild Wars 2 is going to beat Titan to the punch. It’s already vastly changed up how MMORPGs play whilst keeping the bits that people do like. it’s a comfortable, well written steampunk environment but with very modern, very 2011 gameplay.
25/07/2011 at 17:34 Vinraith says:
I give it, perhaps, two years.
25/07/2011 at 18:06 mod the world says:
Like Star Trek Online?
25/07/2011 at 18:27 runtheplacered says:
STO just got a huge update. What do you mean?
25/07/2011 at 18:29 Vinraith says:
I was thinking Tabula Rasa plus a few months, actually, but that’s probably not a bad approximation for Star Trek Online either. Now there’s a game that had enormous potential and pissed it away.
Edit: In case it’s unclear, I’m saying STO wasted its potential. I’ve no opinion about Tabula Rasa one way or another, as I never played it.
25/07/2011 at 20:09 Koozer says:
I wish people would stop reminding me of Tabula Rasa. That game was great, if a little…rough.
26/07/2011 at 00:39 Alphabet says:
Tabula Rasa was awesome. with the best gameplay I’ve ever experienced in an MMO or an online shooter.
25/07/2011 at 17:37 B0GiE-uk- says:
BioWare: SW:TOR Will Still Be Going In 2025
“Not at those prices they won’t. I think this game is gonna flop because they are charging way too much.”
25/07/2011 at 17:49 Burning Man says:
Takeaway: John is 33. Good to know.
25/07/2011 at 20:15 Wulf says:
So I’m actually older than John? Hrmn.
25/07/2011 at 18:04 GoJays2025 says:
It will also be the year the Blue Jays will win the World Series!
26/07/2011 at 07:54 metalangel says:
For the third time!
25/07/2011 at 18:21 aircool says:
Still playing UFO: Enemy Unknown after 17 years. However, I doubt that SWTOR will be that good.
25/07/2011 at 18:26 Dariune says:
Nothing is THAT good :)
25/07/2011 at 18:26 Om says:
Based on the money spent developing this, they probably have to assume a 20+ year lifespan to break a profit
25/07/2011 at 20:16 Wulf says:
Considering that it’ll likely die when Titan takes the WoW-heads back under its wing… I don’t even give it that. Nowhere near.
Oh this’ll be fun to watch. Schadenfreude, I know, but Bioware deserves it. They had the chance to make something truly amazing of Star Wars, and they did not.
25/07/2011 at 18:40 aircool says:
Knowing EA, it probably takes until 2025 download the Day 1 patch and queue for a server…
25/07/2011 at 18:44 Shiner says:
Long time lurker but feel compelled to comment here. After reading the sabre-rattling comments on this thread and Eurogamer I decided to go to the link and actually listen to the statement in question.
I can only assume that neither John Walker nor Wesley Yin-Poole (author of the original Eurogamer article) have actually listened to the audio recording of the conference as it is unequivocally meant as a joke. Only the most literal-minded could interpret it in any other way.
I realise we all hate EA etc etc and the pre-order pricing is excessive but this article (and the source material on EG) is just tabloid-esque nonsense and smacks of poorly-researched and sensationalist journalism which sits uncomfortably alongside your other sterling work.
25/07/2011 at 19:10 0p8 says:
agreed.
(BTW I’m not defending EA)
The focus that you put on your little maths equation for how many worlds would be ready by 2025 was indeed very lazy and tabloid-ish.
John Walker,What makes you think they dont already have 100 worlds ready and waiting?
……anyway i actually think its all quite funny.
25/07/2011 at 20:19 Wulf says:
As I pointed out: It cannot really be a joke.
The thing is is that they’re a business and they’re not in a position to make jokes, because everything they say becomes talking points for fans, and part of the hype. This will have their fans believing that they’re dedicated to the game over the long term, and that they really want to put their all into it. Now, either that’s the truth and they’re a bit deluded, but it’s good for their fans, or… they’ve just pissed over their entire fan base.
So either it’s a joke and they don’t give a fuck about their fans, or they’re a bit deluded, either way it’s bad and once again a bout of terrible PR for Bioware (I’ll ad this to my internal ‘Entertaining Bioware PR’ list). Really, think about it, people will see this and start asking whether Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet is this dedicated to their game.
“Oh ho, it was just a joke!” – says Bioware.
Really now. Really?
Just a few moments thought reveals why it was an idiotic statement, joke or not.
25/07/2011 at 20:22 Wulf says:
I actually want to see smiley Colin Johansen do a bit about this and how certain MMORPG developers don’t give a fuck about their fans, and make jokes at their expense, unlike ArenaNet who’re never going to do that sort of thing.
“Yeah, there are some developers which will lie to you about keeping their game running for 20 or so years, smiling and claiming it to be a joke to some people, then nodding seriously at others. We’re not going to do that. We don’t know where we’re going to be in 20 years or what will happen. We’re not going to be dishonest or insult the intelligence of our fans.”
Please Colin? Please.
26/07/2011 at 05:29 Lemming says:
Wulf, i have to ask…are you for real? I mean really, really real? Because you sound like a cartoon: “They aren’t allowed to joke”.
It’s a Comic Con panel answering audience questions. Did you know that on the Game of Thrones Panel that Dinklage said he’d like to end the series with a dance number? Ofc, he must be deadly serious, because you know, GoT is some serious shit financed by some serious people.
Seriously, drop this argument you sound positively insane.
25/07/2011 at 18:47 Axyl says:
Pfft. Tell that to the players still mourning the loss of SW:G.
Pre or Post NGE, that game shouldn’t have been shut down so close to SW:TOR that people can’t help but think it’s to push players towards the newer and overpriced game.
Ideally, NGE would never have happened, and it would still be online and kicking years from now.
Then I wouldn’t feel forever gutted I missed it when it was great and feel stuck for a Sci Fi MMO other than a reskined WoW-a-Like to play until Dark Millenium Online.
Just bad move after bad move imo, and now a public statement that simply reeks of unfounded arrogance.
25/07/2011 at 18:47 Zogtee says:
First the greedy pricing and now this silly hype. I’m losing faith in TOR more rapidly than I thought was possible.
Oh, BioWare, how deep you have fallen.
25/07/2011 at 19:01 SagaciousFoo says:
Maybe Ultima Online, which is still online and has bunches of players, would’ve been better off if they had made a plan for 14 years in the future.
All MMOs that are moderately successfully never die. Everquest and Ultima Online will still be around in 2024. Why not plan for TOR to be around then?
Also, the 5 years = 19 worlds thing is a fallacy. How many of those 5 years were spent learning how to make an MMO? On figuring out what kind of game they wanted it to be? On what classes exist? On how to do combat and dialogue and quests?
25/07/2011 at 19:10 Nick says:
it doesn’t take 5 years to copy WoW.
¬_¬
25/07/2011 at 19:05 Chesterton says:
Oh good Lord people.
He said this during the Comic Con panel for the game, and was completely joking. It was so obvious to everyone in the room, the whole crowd laughed.
Lighten up!
I also played 20 minutes of the game and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ll be picking it up.
25/07/2011 at 20:27 Wulf says:
^^^
Read my comment up there about it, search ‘Colin Johansen’. :D
If you’re just going to sit there and say “Lulz, it was a joke. I R STILL A FAN.” then you have zero self-respect, since Bioware are having a good laugh at the expense of their fans.
25/07/2011 at 21:24 Kaira- says:
I have this creeping feeling that either Wulf is a madman/-woman/-thing, or he/she/it is actually a mole inside BioWare. I don’t know which one creeps me more.
26/07/2011 at 06:28 Pointless Puppies says:
I love how Wulf is trying incredibly hard to convince himself and others that THIS CAN’T POSSIBLY BE A JOKE. NOOO. I CAN’T BE. BIOWARE IS ASS FOR EVEN JOKING ABOUT THE SRS BSNS THAT IS VIDYA GAEMS.
Seriously, Wulf. You’re literally twisting things completely out of context and blowing things way out of proportion to fit your ludicrous rants. And yes, we get it. You want to have sexual intercourse with a box of Guild Wars 2 as soon as it is humanly possible. We got it after the first 1000 time you “casually” mentioned the game in this thread alone.
26/07/2011 at 07:34 Chesterton says:
Wulf, what the blazes are you rambling on about?
“Bioware are having a good laugh at the expense of their fans”? Any fan that was there (like yours truly) or who has watched the footage knows it was a self-deprecating joke on Bioware’s part. If you can’t see that, then I honestly don’t know what to say. Any reasonable person can see that.
For everyone else: I was at the panel as a casual observer. I haven’t been following SWTOR’s coverage or bits of info over the years, but I decided to wait for an hour to play 20 minutes of a level 1 character on the Comic Con show floor…and I really enjoyed it. So I went to the panel, and came away very impressed. I’ll be picking it up Day One, and will have fun with it.
I also watched a lot of people play Guild Wars 2 on the floor, but never got a chance to play it myself (35 minute demo timers! What the heck, NCSoft?)…And it looks beautiful and fun too. I’ll be picking that up Day One as well.
26/07/2011 at 07:37 Rii says:
“So I went to the panel, and came away very impressed.”
Clearly a BioWare sockpuppet.
25/07/2011 at 19:08 db1331 says:
14 years from now, in a galaxy
far, far away….
THE OLD REPUBLIC
Episode XII
A NEW EXPANSION
13 years after the great shift to the free to play model, the galaxy is in turmoil. Many players have already fled. The few stragglers who remain are bored. Most spend their days cybering in the Mos Eisley cantina.
In an effort to fortify what little interest remains, Bioware releases several new planets, each filled with fetch quests and aliens that are a palate swap of aliens found on existing planets. How long this new content can maintain player interest is uncertain.
Meanwhile, BioWare’s ToR eShop is barely turning a profit. Sales of lightsaber gems and Wookie hairstyles are down 800%. No one knows if sales will rise again-only that they must. And soon…
25/07/2011 at 19:36 Teddy Leach says:
I love you.
25/07/2011 at 19:56 Stochastic says:
Pursued by EA’s sinister stockholders, Bioware races to change their paymodel aboard the F2P train, custodian of the stolen WoW game design documents that can save their bottom line and restore price gouging to the industry…
25/07/2011 at 20:28 Wulf says:
\o
That’s all, really.
Well played.
25/07/2011 at 19:21 Dana says:
LoL, haven’t seen more pathetic marketing attempt in a while.
25/07/2011 at 19:23 Very Real Talker says:
this game looks like utter shit, why would they support it until 2025?
OH WOW, 500 SHITTY LOOKING PLANETS!
25/07/2011 at 19:42 Fox89 says:
This is blatantly a get-out-of-jail card so they don’t have to make KOTOR3!
“Hey, Bioware! Where’s KOTOR 3?”
“Oh that. Well, we did start it but figured ‘Hey, might as well just work it into the MMO!’. I mean, nobody wants to play a Star Wars game on their own anymore. No-one but nerds anyway. And do we look like the kind of people who make games for them?“
25/07/2011 at 19:52 TariqOne says:
And yet, this seems like it could possibly be everything I could have ever wanted from KotOR3: epic length and breadth, quality production, and COOP. Yow!
Consider the possibility that it just might be good. Wouldn’t that be neat? Why not just wait and see? Sure, it’s probably shit, but why not try not jerking our knees about prematurely for once?
25/07/2011 at 19:57 Fox89 says:
Oh it might be good. I’m not saying it wont. But there are certain things a single player RPG brings that you can’t get in an MMO, however much it tries. If The Old Republic is able to give the player any kind of feeling of importance or consequence in the story, I’ll eat humble pie. But seeing as it would take some kind of design wizard to pull that off in a massive multiplayer environment, I doubt we’ll see it.
I have nothing against TOR at all. Even though I’m not much of an MMO player I’m considering buying it. But there is a place for the single player game as well, and I want a new KOTOR :)
25/07/2011 at 20:04 TariqOne says:
Points all well taken. I’ve long ago stopped getting excited for MMOs.
25/07/2011 at 19:45 shoptroll says:
Worth noting that Ultima Online is still going strong. Or well… just going I guess.
The problem is that they’re tied to the Star Wars license. As soon as LucasArts wants something fresher or newer, the axe will fall on them just like they did with Galaxies.
25/07/2011 at 19:46 TariqOne says:
Quick! Call the BioWare Schadenfreude Patrol! Oh. They’re all here.
Not sure why everyone is cackling with glee and salivating in hopes that BioWare and/or TOR will fail. I’ve lost hundreds of wonderful hours in BioWare titles, Star Wars stuff, MMOs, etc. So I’m hoping TOR is good. I’m hoping BioWare has many more decades ahead of producing quality games for me to waste my time in.
You snoots need to get some perspective.
25/07/2011 at 19:53 TillEulenspiegel says:
Sick of lack of ambition and half-assery?
If they’d put out some great trailers showing amazing gameplay with cinematic story whatever, I think most everyone would be looking forward to it. But they haven’t done that. Everything they’ve shown looks terrible.
As it is, better to laugh than cry.
25/07/2011 at 20:21 jstar says:
Yeah but they stopped making good games a while ago. Now they make shoddy, poorly written games. To make matters worse they now have this monster turkey on their hands and are acting like Danny Bilson did before Homefront came out. I bet you two months after release EA’s share price will dive bomb.
25/07/2011 at 20:36 Wulf says:
@TillEulenspiegel
EXACTLY this. Exactly.
I mean, SWG was so much better than TOR could ever be. I watched 90 minutes of TOR just to see if it wasn’t WoW even after Bioware had unequivocally told me that it was a WoW reskin. And… they were telling the truth. It’s a WoW reskin. It’s nothing more than a WoW reskin.
They are just milking the license.
Please… read that sentence a few times… slowly.
Now, think about what ArenaNet are doing with Guild Wars 2, what with its dynamic events, no subscription, anti-grind ethos, an MMORPG with real choice with consequences that you actually see both in the game and in your own chunk of an entire damn city (as opposed to choice A sends you to grinding area A and choice B sends you to grinding area B), it’s truly well written instead of going for epic bullshit and has a genuinely intelligent feel to it (probably due to the people working on the lore), and… it’s just doing everything differently. It’s a massive risk.
Compare that with a WoW reskin.
TOR is a WoW reskin.
How can you expect people not to be annoyed? It’s Star Wars! It has such a rich history, so many books, so many tales, so many races, and settings, and so much depth. They could’ve picked a truly interesting setting, with compellingly strange race choices, and unusual gameplay, and it would have been this massive risk… but we’d all have been cheering them on.
Most of us like risks, I think. We’re tired of the same old shit. And TOR is just the same old shit. T has the right of this. Believe me right now when I say that if Bioware had chosen to be as risky as ArenaNet then I’d be shouting their praises from the rooftops.
But I have self-respect and I’m not going to just sell myself out for a WoW reskin. The games I get behind SHOULD be risky and amazing.
25/07/2011 at 21:43 TariqOne says:
This game I haven’t played is SO MUCH BETTER than that game I haven’t played.
Anyway pfff. Thank heaven for low standards and high income, I guess.
Games are fun. RPGs are fun. I’ve dumped hundreds and hundreds of hours into Warband. Hundreds into Bloodlines. Hundreds and hundreds into EVE. Thousands into WoW (sheepish grin). Hundreds each into Warhammer Online, Rift, Age of Conan, Guild Wars. Scores into the KotORs, both Mass Effects, both Dragon Ages. Scores into Eschalons. Scores into the STALKER series. Scores into DC Universe Online, ffs. Hundreds into Saints Row 2. Hundreds into the Neverwinter Nights titles. Same with the Baldur’s Gates. RPGs and RPG-alikes are fun.
TOR is a day one purchase for me. I’m going to play a jedi. My fiancee will play a jedi. Other friends of ours will be there, and some will be jedis. We will run around for at least scores of hours thwhacking each other with laser beams in what I guarantee you will be a pretty well crafted Old Republic world. We’ll craft, run instances, PvP, explore. Whether we ragequit or just get bored after 40 hours or 4000, who knows? But it’s hard to get mad about the notion. Games are fun. Games with friends are fun. Games with friends in Star Wars universes are fun.
I’ll also buy GW2 day one. I’ll also have a fucking blast in it. Did I mention games are fun?
TLDR: Games are fun.
25/07/2011 at 22:51 Maykael says:
TariqOne is absolutely right.
Had more, but it was rather aggressive. I decided not to publish it. Suffice it to say that I most strongly disapprove of Wulf’s behavior all throughout this comment thread. Yes people drink different brands of coffee than you. It is not a tragedy and it’s wrong to wish that a coffee-maker that you don’t like, but other enjoy should perish.
25/07/2011 at 23:48 neolith says:
@TariqOne:
It’s true, we’ve played neither GW2 nor SW:TOR.
However every time some infos about GW2 come up I think “Oh, nice, that could be a good feature. I want to try that.” and whenever I see something about TOR it’s more like “Ok, that looks really boring. Again.”. From where I stand one game looks promising and the other doesn’t. There seem to be worlds in between what both MMOs try to do.
The question is: Why the chickens does TOR look so damn uninteresting? Aren’t these teaser trailers supposed to wow me and make me want to play the game? TOR’s trailers have the exact opposite effect.
If there really is a good game beneath all that what we were shown about TOR, then the guy who is responsible for the videos needs to get his wiener punched. Hard. Repeatedly.
26/07/2011 at 06:06 TariqOne says:
@Neolith: I hear you.
But I’m 42. I long ago stopped fretting about why John Woo isn’t Akira Kurosawa, or why Michael Bay isn’t Werner Herzog. I just like movies. I also don’t sweat it when my corner pizza joint sells greasy slices of pizza instead of delicate, artisinal sushi.
I can totally see why TOR is playing it safe and shooting for the widest possible audience here. And honestly, as a gamer, I don’t see anything wrong with mainstream efforts, particularly with mainstream and, let’s admit, often execrable fare like Star Wars. I went to see the last three movies and really, we’re decrying TOR’s tarnishing the license? We’re complaining about milking the license? Really? That train has done left the station decades ago.
This is a mainstream, big-budget Star Wars game worked on by a professional studio that has turned out tons of very reliably good (if not envelope-pushing) product for many years. It is set in a compelling lore era. I can play it with my friends and it will have a wide range of features. It’s pizza. It isn’t sushi.
I don’t think buying it implicates my “self respect.” At all. And I don’t see how wishing it to fail and BioWare to go out of business and what-have-you serves any purpose at all, other than to fulfill our need to be histrionic and mad about stuff that is, at the end of the day, pretty fucking fun.
26/07/2011 at 07:37 Chesterton says:
Good thoughts, Tariq. You’re good people.
26/07/2011 at 09:41 Maykael says:
@TariqOne: I have exactly the same opinion. Why do we wish to see the creators of Baldur’s Gate II fail? Also what’s wrong with bringing a stronger narrative context to traditional MMO mechanics?
I hate hack’n'slash games, I find even Diablo boring as fuck. I am playing through Dungeon Siege II and the albeit weak story line and universe-building with the illusion of choice is working quite well for me. For some gamers (me and, I think, you included) giving a better reason even for grinding will make it enjoyable. An MMO like TOR that will allow me to devise a stronger personality to my character through some dialogue choices seems kinda nice.
Just to be clear to Wulf & co.: The fact that I hold this opinion does not mean that I think less of Guild Wars 2. It is a very ambitious project that is being developed by a strong team that will probably end up being the better game overall. But that does not mean that I want/think/hope that TOR fails. If it manages to make the traditional MMO better, then all the better for us all.
26/07/2011 at 09:48 neolith says:
Stupid reply form ate my reply. :( Let’s try again:
@TariqOne:
I like the food analogy. :)
Not every game has to be sushi. I wholeheartly agree. As much as I like sushi I only eat it occasionally. And pizza… oh man, I love pizza! But for the last years I tried quite a lot of different places that serve it. Sadly I had to find out that they all kinda make the same stale pizza with very few toppings and no side dishes. Some come on blue plates, some on yellow, but they all taste exactly the same.
Along comes Bioware, telling everyone they now serve pizza, too. They make quite a fuss about it – what they’re going to do and how their pizza will be awesome. And then they let us take a peek through their window before they open the place. Their waiters run around as Vader and Luke, the plates the pizza comes on all have the Deathstar on it and everyone can get a free lightsaber if they want to. Their prices seem quite high for their pizza but they continue to point out how great it is that all their waiters talk. All the time. Even the check won’t be written – no, they will tell you how much you have to pay.
Then I take a first glance at the pizza itself. And it looks exactly like all the pizzas I’ve ate before. It’s the same deforsted stale stuff every other place serves these days. Yes, it comes with all the StarWars stuff and yes, the waiters can’t seem to shut up, but let’s face it: I am here for the food. All the bells and whistles are nice, but why should I come here if the food is not good? Ok, it might be fun to bring your kids here once, because they don’t care for the quality of the pizza as long as they are distracted by other stuff. But I’m to old for that shit. And I’m still hungry.
All I want is someting proper to eat. Let it be pizza, it doesn’t have to be sushi. But dammit, make the pizza good. I don’t care if you serve it in a restaurant not as fancy as Bioware’s and I don’t care if it costs me a buck more. But make it tasty.
As far as I can see, Bioware doesn’t do that kind of pizza… :(
25/07/2011 at 19:54 Johnny Law says:
It was as clearly a joke as anything has ever been. Only the most affectless, stereotypical “WHAT IS THIS HU-MOR YOU SPEAK OF” robot-men could fail to figure this out, though I’ll cut you some slack if you’re reacting to second- or third-hand reports.
I know that has already been pointed out in earlier comments, but it bears repeating.
25/07/2011 at 20:07 Teronfel says:
2025? Sure why not
25/07/2011 at 20:10 Rhalle says:
It looks awful.
The undiscriminating 10-year-olds who think the second Star Wars trilogy is better than the first, and the retarded man-children who cosplay and love everything generally won’t keep this embarrassment alive with their subs for more than a year.
And oh how I will laugh when those incompetent shills at Bioware who sold out to make mass-market schlock get liquidated.
25/07/2011 at 20:13 jstar says:
Hear hear.
26/07/2011 at 13:24 nmute says:
back in my day they used scale models.
brrrr!
25/07/2011 at 20:14 Grayvern says:
If this actually happens I will eat a motherboard.
25/07/2011 at 20:25 endaround says:
Yes but what about the year 2525, if man is still alive, if woman can survive?
25/07/2011 at 20:34 Bilbo says:
“Barely had proper 3D in 1997″
…What?
25/07/2011 at 20:39 Text_Fish says:
The graphics already look dated. I realise graphics don’t make a game, but a lot of people don’t realise that and will be seduced away by better looking things. Graphical addons/updates can only go so far before you have to rebuild the engine from scratch and when that point comes it will make better business sense to release a fully fledged sequel to crank up the hype-o-meter.
25/07/2011 at 20:46 Bilbo says:
As long as you’re making that judgement based on the new shots, and not the old ones, I’m with you, although I’d politely point you to 2005 WoW and 2011 WoW and ask you to do the compare-and-contrast-shuffle thing. But no, seriously, a lot of people are tearing around the internet saying the game looks dated based on the alpha build, and that ticks me off. The newest pictures look at least passable.
25/07/2011 at 20:51 Spinks says:
They were joking about 2025 :)
25/07/2011 at 20:58 Hoaxfish says:
Nobody? nobody?
25/07/2011 at 22:37 Aska says:
As a non-sequitur, many MUDs that started in the early nineties still support a playing population dating back to the very beginning of the game. I myself regularly log in to the same MUD to check up on people still playing since 1992 – that’s almost 20 years already. Now, graphical MMO type games are probably not the same thing – as they are most often run for profit and once profit wanes, the game gets deleted regardless of if a small dedicated population still plays it.
25/07/2011 at 23:33 WPUN says:
I also hear there is a website devoted 2 the new worlds by some guy in Scottlande or someplace. They say he’s really crazy ‘cuz his wife went into labor an she wouldn’t let him go to the shoppe and place a pre-order so when they got home from th hospital he cut her up and buried her in th yard and then ate his own baby with some chips, oh delicious chips. So they caught him but he managed to get his copy of the SWKotOR soundtrack and smuggled it into prison with him and the other convicts tried to take it away from him in teh shower so he cut them up and ate them too, in fact he went on a rampage and ate all the prison guards with some chips, oh delicious chips. And then he sat down at the warden’s desk and posted about it on RPS only stopping when he had too pee in a potted plant in th corner of the room. After he finished posting he found the prison surrounded by th Army and there was a guy on a bullhorn named Dr. Quartermass who was telling him too put down the fork and come out with his hands up. But he managed to escape through teh sewers and they couldn’t catch him but they found his bag of chips, oh delicious chips. They say he’s still hiding too this day in teh mountains of Scotchland, teh Alpes, posting on RPS with a portable microwave dish and a laptop every day. They also say of your are backpacking in th Alpes that you’d better not carry any chips, oh delicious chips. They say they’ll never catch him too because there are laws that protect mountain people and the police are scared too go up there. But he has 2 come 2 a city once a month on th seventh day and he breaks into a house that has a computer and he posts on RPS and he eats anyone at home with chips, oh delicious chips. So the police are hoping to catch him when he goes to the city but so far he’s eaten over 819 people and 2,401 bags of chips, oh delicious chips so it seems like there is no stopping him. You may think I’m making all this up but it’s the truth and I know it cause I asked my friend who works at Bioware and he said it’s true so it is.
26/07/2011 at 06:23 TariqOne says:
My God. I can’t decide whether to call the police or offer to become your agent.
Brilliant. Or not?
26/07/2011 at 06:31 Gadriel says:
I have no idea what I just read and I like it.
26/07/2011 at 00:02 vash47 says:
The word is “cojones”, “cajones” means “drawers”.
26/07/2011 at 01:07 John Walker says:
And now that’s what I’ve decided I meant.
26/07/2011 at 00:44 Berious says:
They’ll need that long to make their money back.
26/07/2011 at 01:15 RenegadeRed says:
Wow, I’m surprised RPS has suddenly turned into Fox News overnight.
The comment in the headline is grossly taken out of context, it was clearly a joke poking fun at Bioware’s own delay in releasing this game in a timely fashion (the whole conference was full of jokes in fact). To see the context clearly go to Youtube or G4 and watch the panel.
For instance, in answer to a question from the audience, “Will I be able to see the consequences of choice A if my pick-up group chooses B instead?” the Bioware guy says: “You can watch Youtube a week after the game is released.”
Cue RPS headline: BIOWARE SAYS TO NOT PLAY SW:TOR, WATCH YOUTUBE FOOTAGE INSTEAD.
Seriously, this whole RPS article is sickening and needs to be retracted immediately with a clarification.
26/07/2011 at 02:33 Tamerlaput says:
Well, on one hand you can make some news based on an out-of-context quote and have 4 comments pages worth of people getting awesomely trolled.
On the other hand, you can take a minute (less than one minute actually) to verify your information. And if you did that, you’d have nothing, now, wouldn’t you?
What’s hilarious is in the meantime the same site posted a video of the panel (there was only a transcript+audio at first) and you can actually see what must be the bioware PR guy facepalm when he hears the 2025 joke, probably already picturing headlines like: BioWare: SW:TOR Will Still Be Going In 2025.
26/07/2011 at 08:25 Inarborat says:
Hahaha, your panties..they are in a bunch.
26/07/2011 at 08:34 Rii says:
SICKENING
26/07/2011 at 11:19 Wilson says:
Yeah, these comments have either been misreported, or the tone of the post isn’t clear enough. Maybe John was just going for a tongue-in-cheek over criticism of a fairly throw-away comment, but it doesn’t come across like that. If you are joking, it’d be nice if it was clearer. Otherwise, this post does have a hint of tabloid reporting to it.
Before the bit about 500 worlds in 2025, one of the guys does say that they hope the game will last for decades, but I really didn’t hear this part of the discussion as being them saying: ‘we are 100% certain our game will be here and popular in 2025 and will have 500 worlds.’
Regardless, because I have no personal stake in the game (I’m not planning on ever getting it, but I don’t think it was designed by Satan either), the arguments have been hilarious to follow.
26/07/2011 at 01:23 bonds0097 says:
I find you lack of faith disturbing.
*sigh* Yes, I created an account just so I could say that.
Still, I agree that it is unlikely any game made today will make it to 2025 given the pace of technology.
26/07/2011 at 02:36 Daiv says:
The day before release day there will be zero players. On release day there could be hundreds of thousands of players. It is INFINITY PERCENT GROWTH!
New players will be added at such a rate the Earth will be consumed and will be a seething, boiling mass of humanity exploding outwards at the speed of light.
26/07/2011 at 05:54 Rii says:
Wulf, you are not helping your cause. It’s great that you have your convictions and all, but at this point you’re alienating even folks who actually agree with you for the most part. Like me.
I’ve been in a similar place before, and – watch me step over the line here – I eventually came to realise that it was mentally unhealthy for me, that it was exacerbating certain issues I was and am still dealing with, and hindering my growth as a person. I think you need to step back from this and related matters and endeavour to find some peace for yourself, Wulf.
I hope you will receive the above in the spirit in which it was intended.
26/07/2011 at 06:47 Strutter says:
I doubt this game will even survive it’s first year, it’s just not anything we’ve not seen before.
26/07/2011 at 07:16 Eolirin says:
Ultima Online is still running. It’s been running for 14 years. The original Everquest is *still* getting expansions.
If SWTOR survives it’s first 5 years, it’s likely to survive until there is a conscious decision on the part of EA to shutter it for what will likely be licensing reasons. These things last forever, profitably, provided they cross a critical population threshold. They die early or never.
26/07/2011 at 09:16 BobsLawnService says:
Is that how long it needsto attract subscribers to break even?
/cynic
26/07/2011 at 11:04 Vile Vile Vilde says:
I thought they said that in jest..
26/07/2011 at 11:07 Heijoshin says:
If people actually watched the comic -con presentation it’s pretty evident that he was saying this in jest. The whole presentation was littered with comedic comments like this, which was great. Would help if the sites actually informed the world realistically and factually, instead of taking quotes without the relevant context. Journalism at it’s finest…. (aimed at those that actually thought it was a serious comment of course)
26/07/2011 at 11:56 ADVERSiTY says:
Who knew games were such serious business…