Star Wars: The Old Republic anticipation thread.

[Briquettes]

Jax wrote:

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I am surprised its going free to play so early the numbers may be down but still the profits are healthy for EA/Bioware.

I read statements like this a lot and I think there is a common misconception out there that gross revenue/profit is all that matters to a business. I had the misfortune of working for a large corporation after college, and my corporate masters were far more interested in quarterly trends. As strange as it may sound, management would be happier to lose money with positive growth than to make money with negative growth.

SWTOR has lost 50% of it's revenue over two quarters. Even if you're making a profit, that kind of trend is a disaster.

[Drago-Kazov]

Hedck yeah, i know i don't have to pay to play deep inside my heart. This is awesome.

[Drago-Kazov]

Briquettes wrote:

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I read statements like this a lot and I think there is a common misconception out there that gross revenue/profit is all that matters to a business. I had the misfortune of working for a large corporation after college, and my corporate masters were far more interested in quarterly trends. As strange as it may sound, management would be happier to lose money with positive growth than to make money with negative growth.

SWTOR has lost 50% of it's revenue over two quarters. Even if you're making a profit, that kind of trend is a disaster.

Bioware is different, they deeply care about their products and fanbase.

[Briquettes]

^Doesn't matter, unfortunately. Bioware is owned by EA now. The executives and shareholders are calling the shots, not the developers.

[Drago-Kazov]

Biware still has creative control, its in the contract. So as far as their products go nothing changed.

[O'Dib]

My subscription expires in about 2 weeks. I will have been playing for a total of 8 months by then. At the rate of one class story a month I could've finished all of them, but am up to 7 50s at the moment, and put rolling my smuggler on hold. I love the stories and the leveling, but I've seen all the planets and all the side quests way too many times in that little time. I normally take 2 years before wanting to replay an RPG. Anyway, I had to quit cause I'll be away from my beast desktop for 2 months, traveling Europe, and no way can my laptop handle the game, plus, I wouldn't have time for it anyway.

By the time I'm back mid-November I'm hoping the new playable race and level cap increase will have landed. Endgaming any one toon has held my interest for a week at most in the past (and really, there's only 3 of them I played past 50), but I've had good fun just exploring some of the content I've skipped over, Voss & Hoth bonus series, and a bunch of the higher level flashpoints. Hopefully I'll get to own an HK before I'm cut off and have to figure out what to do with my spare time in the 3 weeks of subscription-free time I have before my flight. I'm pretty close to legacy 42, might get another level in before I'm done.

[Briquettes]

O'Dib wrote:

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I love the stories and the leveling, but I've seen all the planets and all the side quests way too many times in that little time.

I think this is what killed my ability to enjoy the game. I started as a smuggler and found the story got progressively more boring with each planet. I finally gave up on Voss and tried to roll some alts, but doing all the quests over got extremely tedious. It might not have been so bad if warzones and flashpoints gave enough xp to realistically level a toon.

[O'Dib]

Briquettes wrote:

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I think this is what killed my ability to enjoy the game. I started as a smuggler and found the story got progressively more boring with each planet. I finally gave up on Voss and tried to roll some alts, but doing all the quests over got extremely tedious. It might not have been so bad if warzones and flashpoints gave enough xp to realistically level a toon.

Thankfully they've been rolling out things that make leveling alts less of a chore on a pretty consistent basis. First there was the sprint at lv. 1 and speeders allowed in spaceports that I thought was huge, then it was rocket boost (which works in stealth and in dungeons), which allowed me to speed past a shit-ton of tedious aggro on my operative, whom I mostly leveled through PVP anyway. Then there was speeder piloting at lv. 10, and so on. Not to mention the accrued benefit of an insane Presence score after having completed all companion conversations on previous toons, which always made even my very first undergeared companion just a beast at DPSing the shit out of everything. But before any of that, on my first 4 toons, it was mostly the rush of being a force-user that made the slog seem worth it. As far as your problem with XP gains through WZs goes, they made it so you can buy faster WZ leveling, as well as boosts to FP, class mission, space mission, and exploration gains.

[ThunderAeroI]

Drago-Kazov wrote:

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Biware still has creative control, its in the contract. So as far as their products go nothing changed.

That's funny. You believe that too I presume.

[Jeff O'Connor]

Drago-Kazov wrote:

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Biware still has creative control, its in the contract. So as far as their products go nothing changed.

Hey, ME3 is my favorite in the Mass Effect trilogy, but even I can see the writing on certain walls. It's simply a matter of logic -- business decisions are largely handled via EA these days, and in some ways it shows.

[Reverend]

^Only some? EA's fingerprints are all over that game (which I also really enjoyed) both directly and indirectly. DA2 was just as bad if not worse in this regard. I'm just amazed Bioware were able to talk EA into giving the EC away for free.

[Briquettes]

Well DA2 supposedly sold significantly less than DA:O, ME3 (which I liked) was a public relations disaster, and now TOR is a financial disaster. Maybe this will convince EA to sit back and let Bioware make games on their own again.

I almost got through typing that with a straight face. If things don't turn around for Bioware soon I fear EA will assimilate what's left of the company and its brand will go the way of Westwood.

[Skywalker]

Yeah, I think eventually BioWare will eventually disappear, and a few of its members will leave EA and start up a new company, similar to how Obsidian Entertainment was formed by former employees at Black Isle.

[Base_Delta_Zero]

Don't worry. They're including bowcasters in the next content update. That'll fix things.

[Jeyl]

Base_Delta_Zero wrote:

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Don't worry. They're including bowcasters in the next content update. That'll fix things.

Only same sex relationships will save TOR now.