49 réponses à ce sujet

[malace_ixo]

I love their games; hands-down my favorite dev. I'm not exactly sure what kind of investment they've made individually on TOR but I've heard it said something like a $100 billion's been put into it. I'm sure LucasArts has probably put forth a big part of that but that's a massive undertaking.
 
WoW dominates the MMO market and everyone wants to nip at their heels and get a piece now that they've seen how many paying customers show up for the online community. star wars is a huge franchise so they must be banking on a big fanbase and Bioware's reputation for great stories to somehow pull out something phenomonal.

I wonder if they'll be able to make as big of a dent in that niche as they're hoping for. My guess is they won't make enough profit for TOR to be seen as a success. For my personal taste I might have liked them to wait for the industry to provide better technical resources to get a next-gen flavor out of their graphics before going MMO.

KoTOR 3 got dropped, probably around suggestions from LucasArts that they felt it was time to take a plunge. Who can fail to infer how carefully they must have eyed WoW? I think it's a mistake. I'm confident TOR will be an awesome game. Bioware never fails to deliver. But with how much they must have put into it I don't think they'll get enough of a return for this to be anything but red ink. I'm filled with the impression that KoTOR 3 would have been a more sound business decision. It would have gone far to advance the reputation of the franchise and continued to draw in fresh faces as we all become more acclimated to the MMO world.

Idk. We'll have to see. I've been poring over everything I could find since the game was announced. It may prove to surpass my expectations. But a $100 billion is no light investment. A next-gen KoTOR would have killed

[Pwnsaur]

They should have done KOTOR 3, regardless of how successful TOR turns out to be. The fact that KOTOR 3 would have absolutely annihilated is also something to be considered. It would have been released early in the life of the next-gen platforms and carried an immediately successful and respected series to promote BioWares' legitimacy as 'Top Dog' in cinematic RPG's.



It would have also given Mass Effect more initial success and hype as more 'next-gen' fans would be awaiting BWs' next project. If you consider the mediocre (and worse) releases available on next gen in the initial couple of years and their respective success attributed to lack of variety, KOTOR 3 looks even more appealing. All around it's an unfortunate turn, and may prove to be BioWares' biggest blunder since inception.



Time will tell, but with the economic climate, WoW's utter dominance in an over saturated MMO market, and a ludicrous amount of $ invested.... Not a recipe for success... I guess BioWare is banking on the old adage "With great risk comes great reward."

[mad825]

Pwnsaur wrote...
I guess BioWare is banking on the old adage "With great risk comes great reward."

To be fair, EA are playing it safe.

EA did say: "The Old Republic doesn't need WoW-level subscriptions in order to make money, it just needs to run for a decade"

Anyway, MMOs is where the money lies in todays zombified society.

[malace_ixo]

i meant $100 million. stupid oversight

[Deadmac]

malace_ixo wrote...
KoTOR 3 got dropped, probably around suggestions from LucasArts that they felt it was time to take a plunge. Who can fail to infer how carefully they must have eyed WoW? I think it's a mistake. I'm confident TOR will be an awesome game. Bioware never fails to deliver. But with how much they must have put into it I don't think they'll get enough of a return for this to be anything but red ink. I'm filled with the impression that KoTOR 3 would have been a more sound business decision. It would have gone far to advance the reputation of the franchise and continued to draw in fresh faces as we all become more acclimated to the MMO world.

According to a ranting laid off employee, the price tag thus far is around $300 million. Since this game is the size of nine games, I would not put it past BioWare and LucasArts to take such a risk. I agree with you regardless about the actual cost.

I will add... During the last eight to nine months, the franchise has started to show signs of fatigue. Science-fiction as a genera is starting to show some fatigue. After George Lucas announced the 3D versions of his movies, long-term fans started to have a change of heart. Instead of welcoming the news with an open wallet, they are now rethinking about their long term investments into this franchise. When the MMORPG was first announced, "Knights of the Old Republic" fans also started to react in a negative manner. Sure, the new MMORPG will be a success for both "StarWars" and BioWare; however, I think they are a little too-too over confident. 'If' they did spend $300 million on this project, I personally think it will take seven to ten years for them to obtain a return for their investment. I don't think 'the bulk' of their fans will stick around after year one.

Currently people are moving away from subscription MMORPGs and MMOs, and they are now embracing the free Facebook versions. It is as though we hit the end of a trend, and the next evolution of gaming is just right around the corner. Other words, BioWare and LucasArts may have arrived on the MMORPG scene a little too late. It would not suprise me if that is the case.

Even though I am a "Knights of the Old Republic" fan, I am not interested in the whole social gaming experience. I would rather invest my time into a single player game.

On another note, "Star Wars" is showing more signs of age than "Star Trek", and it has pushed me to the edge of saying - "I am no longer a Star Wars fan." Things change. People change. You can't stop personal growth. If I were to remain a "Star Wars" fan for any longer, I would be preventing myself from growing into a more mature science-fiction fan. I am willing to bet many-many fans are now seeing the franchise in the same manner. After the prequels rewrote the tone of "Star Wars", many people are now seeing it as a kiddies franchise. Darth Vader and Boba Fett are no longer being seen as adults with complex and dark issues. They are now preceived as anoying children kicking the sand.

How all this affects the franchise as a whole remains to be seen. "Knights of the Old Republic" should have stayed as a single player game, and I think some of BioWare's descision to change it will come back to haunt them.

Modifié par Deadmac, 15 janvier 2011 - 04:07 .

[Commander Shepard453]

Bioware should have just made a third Knights Of The Old Republic game with the success of that game more people would be eager enough to jump on to the Kotor MMO for the long run.

If Bioware were going to make a Old Republic MMO why isn't it for the Xbox 360/PC market cause most of the 360 fans isn't going to be able to play it because they don't have a good PC to run the game thats a reason why people play PC games on the consoles, Kotor fans just don't like playing MMO on the PC only what about us Bioware EA.

Modifié par Commander Shepard453, 15 janvier 2011 - 10:33 .

[nubbers666]

yes and no

due to the huge amount of fans knights of old repbulic has i know a lot of people will buy it

how ever i think that it may not be 1 that last for long

wow is a dying mmo so sooner or later something will have to take its place i just hope this 1 will

[Loerwyn]

katie916 wrote...
wow is a dying mmo

Yes, WoW breaking its previous expansion's sale records with Cataclysm combined with its ever increasing number of subscribers must clearly mean it's dying. 

No, BioWare haven't. Why? Because LucasArts (And now also EA) are paying for it. It is not a project BioWare have embarked on themselves, they would have been 'recruited' to do it (Looking at the timeframe of things, it would have been just before they were bought out by EA at the very latest) by LucasArts.

So no, BioWare haven't made a mistake.

[Shirosaki17]

I think they made some mistakes with this MMO, but it's hard to tell since we don't know what the game will exactly be like yet.



We know there is a storyline for each class and you can roleplay by making different dialogue choices and stuff, but I'm not sure how appealing it will be to the MMO crowd. I think for at least 90% of players of that genre, it's all about leveling to max level and either pvping or running instances or raids. Questing is only important if you make it give more exp than grinding.



I also don't think once people reach max level they are going to want to go back and do the easy quests to start the storyline for their characters. It's pretty complicated. I don't think they've specified how this role playing will work, whether it opens up new quests going one way or the other, or whether you can skip quests and be alright or whether there is an endgame progression of quests for your character to do once he's max level.



Even then I'm not sure how appealing it's going to be to roleplay your character for people. RP servers are the minority in MMOs right?



I think it's all going to come down to end game content. That's always the big thing. It has to work, servers have to handle the load, and it has to be fun.

[Revan1]

Made a mistake? No. I think many of initial Bioware and KotOR fans would rather have a single player experience than an MMO, but this has drawn in a large numer of Star Wars fans and KotOR fans alike.

I would rather have had a single player experience as well--as I've never played an MMO and don't relish paying for it over and over--however, Bioware has always given great thought into their gameplay and story and has listened to its consumers and changed things based on their input. I'm hoping for something great----I'm also hoping I feel good spending money on it each month.

For Bioware's sake, I wish them all succes in this and hope it infects the MMO world with ToR fever!

[Commander Shepard453]

Revan1 wrote...

Made a mistake? No. I think many of initial Bioware and KotOR fans would rather have a single player experience than an MMO, but this has drawn in a large numer of Star Wars fans and KotOR fans alike.

I would rather have had a single player experience as well--as I've never played an MMO and don't relish paying for it over and over--however, Bioware has always given great thought into their gameplay and story and has listened to its consumers and changed things based on their input. I'm hoping for something great----I'm also hoping I feel good spending money on it each month.

For Bioware's sake, I wish them all succes in this and hope it infects the MMO world with ToR fever!

God! I hope not cause I want to see another Kotor single player game because a lot of people don't like MMO on PC what about us we wanted a third Kotor game with better graphics, lightsaber duels, facial animation and a good 10 to 20hrs story.

[metatheurgist]

Someone else described the reality of a Star Wars MMO really well:

The first time a "Jedi" runs into a battle screaming "LULZ, noobs you all been PWNXORED!!!!!!", any pretense of atmosphere and story will evaporate. The only thing left after that will be the usual jack-offs spouting BS and playing PvP.

That's not Bioware's market, that's WoW's market, and I doubt they'll be able to pull that market away from WoW.

[Gecon]

malace_ixo wrote...

i meant $100 million. stupid oversight

Awww.

I like the idea of having a $100 billion MMO :innocent:... I only fear there arent yet enough artists around the world available to spend THAT much money on a MMO.

[Gecon]

metatheurgist wrote...

Someone else described the reality of a Star Wars MMO really well:

The first time a "Jedi" runs into a battle screaming "LULZ, noobs you all been PWNXORED!!!!!!", any pretense of atmosphere and story will evaporate. The only thing left after that will be the usual jack-offs spouting BS and playing PvP.

That's not Bioware's market, that's WoW's market, and I doubt they'll be able to pull that market away from WoW.

I heard their newest addon only sold about 4 million times, so apparently the number of people playing WoW is shrinking (or there are that many goldsellers who just keep farming the base game, who knows).

[-GIOS-]

I think that this could pay off huge for Bioware if they do
it right. I have played wow for 5 years now, I am getting pretty sick of
it now, not so much the game but like the person stated above all the lawl i
pwn u kiddies, they really ruin the fun of the game. I think Blizzard did
a ton of things right with wow hopefully Bioware can take the good things and
add there own great ideas to the mix. One thing I don’t like about wow is it
has become to easy, I like my game's to have some sort of challenge and feel like
a real world not just a few zones you hurry through to get to the end game. The
journey should be fun and involved not just a means to an end. The biggest
thing Bioware has going for them is the huge change from fantasy to sifi. The
fantasy mmo market is saturated with games and 90% of the new ones that are
coming out are fantasy to. A change in genre should pay off huge for them. So
in closing I hope they make the game interesting and challenging so that the
people that play it and end up sticking around are the people that we would
actually want to game with.

My 2 cents.

[Loerwyn]

Gecon wrote...
I heard their newest addon only sold about 4 million times, so apparently the number of people playing WoW is shrinking (or there are that many goldsellers who just keep farming the base game, who knows).

Uh... It's the fastest selling expansion to date. It's not shrinking. 4.7 million copies in the first month for a game is good, 4.7 million copies for a PC/Mac only MMO in the same time span is a mindblowingly huge number. Dragon Age, on three platforms, did less copies than that over a longer time span, I believe.

Cataclysm has been out about a month, and between release and now we've had Christmas and other religious festivals, so money isn't exactly flying around left, right and center for a lot of people.

How can WoW be shrinking if the sub numbers are continually going up and if the expansions, without fail, have broken the records of the previous release?

[-GIOS-]

WOW is definitely growing..........old! The new
expansion is just more of the same, its cool but did little to keep my interest
past the first month.

Modifié par -GIOS-, 20 janvier 2011 - 10:12 .

[Martin the Warrior]

My brother tells me that his WoW guild is eagerly anticipating ToR's release. And if ToR follows the new MMO trend of a little free stuff for everyone and a lot of extra goodies for paying subscribers, like LotRO or PotCO, that would convince a lot of people to play who would not otherwise have the money for a subscription. I think WoW might soon have some competition on their hands.

Then again, I could be wrong.

Modifié par Martin the Warrior, 23 janvier 2011 - 07:07 .

[Deadmac]

mad825 wrote...
To be fair, EA are playing it safe.

EA did say: "The Old Republic doesn't need WoW-level subscriptions in order to make money, it just needs to run for a decade" {smilie}

If people play the same game for ten years, I personally don't think they will grow as gamers or as human beings. I would rather spend the next ten years throwing my money into a bank account, so that I can buy a car, house, and anything else that is tangible.

Also, if you do an estimation on the cost to play this game ($15 x 12 months = $180 per year), you could roughly buy two to three pc games a year for the next ten years. Twenty to thirty diverse rpg games versus playing only one game.

MMORPGs and MMOs are just not worth the effort or expense.

Modifié par Deadmac, 08 février 2011 - 06:48 .

[Lord Kable]

I wish KOTOR 3 was made, no doubt.



I do however think they will profit from this! Never know, they might come back to more KOTOR games as a series - keeping the MMO running! We can only hope

[Deadmac]

malace_ixo wrote...

I wonder if they'll be able to make as big of a dent in that niche as they're hoping for. My guess is they won't make enough profit for TOR to be seen as a success. For my personal taste I might have liked them to wait for the industry to provide better technical resources to get a next-gen flavor out of their graphics before going MMO.

Agreed.

Four reasons why:
(1) "Guild Wars II" will be available upon "Star Wars: the Old Republic's" release, and its an MMORPG in which is a...drum-roll please... FREE SUBSCRIPTION BASED ONLINE GAME.

(2) Outside of the fully voiced characters in which "The Old Republic" has implemented, "Guild Wars" and many like it have already done what BioWare is doing to its game. Story driven quests, morality choices, etc...

(3) "Star Wars" as a franchise is already suffering from overexposure; thus, the franchise is under tremendous pressure from fatigue.

(4) Approximately six months after "Star Wars: the Old Republic's" release, White Wolf's MMORPG "The World of Darkness" will arrive. If "The World of Darkness" has cheaper subscriptions fees (or is free to play online), "Star Wars: the Old Republic" will be dead in the water. Why? At that point in time, THREE MMORPGs will have a FREE TO PLAY ONLINE subscription.

Other words, MMOs/MMORPGs are moving towards a free online subscription method, for they realize the majority of the people do not want to pay over $60 to play a game.  Sure, you have to pay for expansions, but the price is not going to crush the fun out of gaming.

Why pay more for the same stuff when you can buy everything for only the box price? While everyone is paying $100+ per year to play "The Old Republic", you can play many new MMOs for a lifetime for only $60.

Modifié par Deadmac, 16 mars 2011 - 05:21 .

[MrManzano]

malace_ixo wrote...

i meant $100 million. stupid oversight

I was gonna say...100 billion would be enough to explain the current economic climate

But tor IS a stupid mistake. Personally, I would rather see ME3, KOTOR3 and DA3 be released in that order, if only to allow DA3 to be super extra special awesome.
Bioware makes single-player story-driven RPGs, the rest of the industry is catching up, though, so it can't afford to lose its edge by investing in yet another WoWannabe.
But it has, and for that it is doomed. Bioware will close soon after tor flops, and story-driven gameplay will turn out a dead end. New caps on internet usage will kill mmos and multiplayer in general, development costs will put giants out of bussiness and the whole industry will be dead within the decade.
Wow, that's stark. Here's a puppy:

[addu2urmanapool]

I think the lack of console support really kills it. Isn't that entire point of Dragon Age 2 that consoles are the future?

[xCelesx]

Well I think it was probably a mistake, it probably would have been safer to go with kotor 3. I know I won't be buying it, why get that when I can have Guild Wars 2.

[NirvanaRain]

Yes I think it was a mistake, the first two KotORs were console and PC and RPG, to suddenly jump to MMO and leave half the games fanbase hanging is just bewildering, why they did that I don't know.