So who else is looking forward to TOR?

[Arrqh]

A former EA/Bioware Mythic employee let out some steam:
http://ealouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/hello-world/

And Bioware? Don’t make me laugh. They’ve spent more money making the Old Republic than James Cameron spent on Avatar. Shit you not. More than $ 300 million! Can you believe that?
And you know what they’re most proud of? This is the kicker. They are most proud of the sound. No seriously. Something like a 20Gig installation, and most of it is voiceover work. That’s the best they have. The rest of the game is a joke. EA knows it and so does George Lucas,they’re panicking , and so most of Mythic has already been cannibalized to work in Austin on it because they can’t keep pushing back launch.

I dunno. I was mostly lukewarm about the game given my "they killed KoTOR3 for this?!" stance, but yick. I hope this thing isn't as dysfunctional as the guy makes it sound.

And in the comments, he said this:

OK. So some devs tried to blame Games Workshop for all their “restrictions” but that was just bs. Utter bs. Paul Barnett wanted this game to be DARK. The management demanded dark, chaotic settings and ugly ass character models.

Paul, fist in palm, told us how “WAR will never have dancing! There is no dancing, these people are in a WAR!” So brilliant. BRILLIANT. Copy WOW and abandon everything that made DAoC great, but leave out dancing the one place where artists really get to express ourselves.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure why I should put a lot of weight into what a disgruntled animator who's complaing that he didn't get to make Warhammer characters dance says about what George Lucas thinks about SWTOR. There's obviously a significant amount of hyperbole flying around and this guy isn't a reliable source of information.

As an aside, David Jaffe isn't all that impressed either.

 

[SPCTRE]

As an aside, David Jaffe isn't all that impressed either.

Thanks for sharing, another very entertaining read

 

[darthraidr]

ugh... jaffe...

What the fuck is it about making games where it brings out the worst, most immature, most obnoxious sides of certain types of people on a team? Everyone thinks they always know better than the people in charge.

in other words, don't question jaffe! what an ego.

i totally disagree. sometimes the people in charge don't know what they are talking about. where i work, we believe "Every Voice Matters." that great ideas can come from anywhere. And that we should be respectful of other opinions, and embrace criticism as just another avenue for great ideas.

would dancing have made warhammer a better game? probably not. but if you have animators that are passionate about it, why not throw them a bone and let them do it? not every player is going to stand around dancing, but those that want to can. and any chance you can empower the player in a way that has just about no negative impact on anyone else, you should do it. (it can also empower designers as they set up towns/taverns and need some flavor. not everyone can be attacking all the time).

 

[SPCTRE]

BTW, here's another blogpost concerning EA Louse by Jeff Preston.

http://ordohereticus.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/anonymous/

 

[Arrqh]

i totally disagree. sometimes the people in charge don't know what they are talking about. where i work, we believe "Every Voice Matters." that great ideas can come from anywhere. And that we should be respectful of other opinions, and embrace criticism as just another avenue for great ideas.

would dancing have made warhammer a better game? probably not. but if you have animators that are passionate about it, why not throw them a bone and let them do it? not every player is going to stand around dancing, but those that want to can. and any chance you can empower the player in a way that has just about no negative impact on anyone else, you should do it. (it can also empower designers as they set up towns/taverns and need some flavor. not everyone can be attacking all the time).

I certainly agree with you in terms of being respectful of others opinions, dealing with crticism, etc. But the whole dancing thing... no, I completely agree with Jaffe here especially given the context of Warhammer being a licensed property. It is an artist's job to work within the confines of the IP and to support the overall consistent art direction for a project. If an animator is passionate about something that is contradictory to either of those then they need to act in a professional way and work to support the project and not their personal preferences. And even then, there were plenty of other "fun" animations in the game and even an entire in-game event in WAR that was basically about drinking beer. Being angry that he couldn't make dance animations seems like an incredibly narrow focus.

If an artist can't deal with working under someone else's creative vision then that person isn't going to be happy working for anyone but themselves... and that goes even more so for an established and licensed IP.

 

[SPCTRE]

i totally disagree. sometimes the people in charge don't know what they are talking about. where i work, we believe "Every Voice Matters." that great ideas can come from anywhere. And that we should be respectful of other opinions, and embrace criticism as just another avenue for great ideas.

would dancing have made warhammer a better game? probably not. but if you have animators that are passionate about it, why not throw them a bone and let them do it? not every player is going to stand around dancing, but those that want to can. and any chance you can empower the player in a way that has just about no negative impact on anyone else, you should do it. (it can also empower designers as they set up towns/taverns and need some flavor. not everyone can be attacking all the time).

I certainly agree with you in terms of being respectful of others opinions, dealing with crticism, etc. But the whole dancing thing... no, I completely agree with Jaffe here especially given the context of Warhammer being a licensed property. It is an artist's job to work within the confines of the IP and to support the overall consistent art direction for a project. If an animator is passionate about something that is contradictory to either of those then they need to act in a professional way and work to support the project and not their personal preferences. And even then, there were plenty of other "fun" animations in the game and even an entire in-game event in WAR that was basically about drinking beer. Being angry that he couldn't make dance animations seems like an incredibly narrow focus.

If an artist can't deal with working under someone else's creative vision then that person isn't going to be happy working for anyone but themselves... and that goes even more so for an established and licensed IP.

QFT - I'm certainly not a fan of Jaffe, but I'm completely on board with his EA Louse rebuttal.

 

[Skywalker]

BTW, here's another blogpost concerning EA Louse by Jeff Preston.

http://ordohereticus.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/anonymous/

Damn, beat me to it.

 

[darthraidr]

what i'm saying is that if he's passionate about doing dance anims, then he should do it, provided he's completed all his other tasks. if he's doing it on his own and wants to get it in, and has made the assets, awesome. granted, that doesnt mean anyone will hook up his work. but nothing wrong with giving the other devs more options.

as for the "lore" reason... i am not familiar with Warhammer lore... is there somewhere where in lore they specifically say "there is no dancing in this universe"? if there isnt, then there is no lore reason. just having a "dark and gritty" world means dick in terms of dancing and certainly doesnt cancel it out. now if your bosses are constantly telling you "don't do this" then you should respect their wishes. but it's certainly well within your right to say they were wrong, or made a wrong choice.

and hoestly, who cares what jaffe says about this? has he worked on an mmo before? mmo development is a different beast than console development.

 

[SPCTRE]

as for the "lore" reason... i am not familiar with Warhammer lore... is there somewhere where in lore they specifically say "there is no dancing in this universe"? if there isnt, then there is no lore reason. just having a "dark and gritty" world means dick in terms of dancing and certainly doesnt cancel it out. now if your bosses are constantly telling you "don't do this" then you should respect their wishes. but it's certainly well within your right to say they were wrong, or made a wrong choice.

It's not so much about the Warhammer lore, it's about differentiating your product - like it or not, any MMO will be compared to WoW and even smaller details such as people dancing on mailboxes make a difference for the overall atmosphere of your game.

 

[darthraidr]

i think if you are going to try and top WoW, then you need to do everything it does, at least as well as it does it. most MMOs seem to do some of what WoW does decently, they then manage to botch some super obvious, super basic things (movement, inventory, combat), then they add whatever new twist they want... but because the basics, the foundation is weak, the whole game is on rough footing.

if WARs big concern was having people dance on mailboxes, the better solution would be to not let people stand on mailboxes. what looks more bizzare, a person dancing on the street, or a person standing on a mailbox.

back to TOR... hopefully it's not just a WoW clone with a SW skin and VO.

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

Honestly, in an MMO, your interactions with other players is part of what makes the experience unique. Generally, your interactions reflect you and your mood rather than the character's mood, unless you're a heavy story RPer. And most people aren't.

Eliminating "fun" and "funny" interactions between players in an MMO because of the tone of the world and story is actually a really short-sighted idea. these things help people relieve tension, blow off steam, laugh in between the heavy gameplay parts of MMOs.

 

[Skywalker]

Relieving tension doesn't really fit in well with the Warhammer universe. It's not supposed to be a fun setting where people will want to goof off. It's supposed to be dark and grim.

 

[SPCTRE]

^ Well, there is the excessive drinking of beer, especially amongst the Dwarfs

 

[Arrqh]

And the MMO reflected that. There was a lot of humor, but it was all consistent with the IP. Dancing is not consistent with the IP.

I actually really enjoyed WAR until I hit tier 4 and the design of the RvR system fell apart. It had a lot to offer that was very different from WoW by being so pvp focused and it's a shame that the polish and the endgame just wasn't there.

 

[Chaos Descending]

^^^ I don't know if you are still following the news regarding the ongoing development of WAR, but they are completely revamping the entire open RvR paradigm. I've played it in the PTS, and I think it's very fun. Lots more combat action than before. The changes should probably go live within the next month.

 

[Arrqh]

I haven't been following it closely enough to know the details, but I have heard about some of the big changes they're making. Actually talking about it here inspired me to go to their homepage, and I see that they were giving old subscribers 14 day free trials...

 

[Chaos Descending]

I've been playing WAR pretty consistently since about March of last year, so yeah, about a year and a half. I'd say they've done quite a good job of fixing a lot of what was wrong at launch since then. There are still some things that annoy me, but to me the game is FUN, and that's all that counts.

So yeah, free 14 day return gig. You got nothing to lose!

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The first two KOTOR games sold a bit over a million units apiece. For comparison, the two Half-Life games have sold close to 10 million units apiece. KOTOR sales are very good but not stellar. If SWTOR has really cost over $300 million, it's going to take quite a while to recoup that cost if they ever can.

Let's be generous and say it ends up with 500K subscribers. That's $25M at $50 a copy to buy the game (I assume they'll charge something just to get the game, of course.) That still leaves $275M+ to cover with monthly subscription fees, to say nothing of server operating costs, bandwidth, support, and continued content development. But let's be nice and only talk about the $275M. They'd need to get $550 more out of each of those 500K subscribers, meaning about 3 years' worth of subscriptions per member.

This really sounds like a tremendous gamble. There are no MMOs out there that seriously compete with WoW in terms of membership. They are all at least an order of magnitude smaller in terms of subscribers. Unless they can grab and hook about a million members from day one and keep them for a couple years, this thing is going to lose serious money.

There are also the unpredictable events like a game mechanics modification. Fucking up the game mechanics is what wrecked Star Wars Galaxies, which is on life support now. One bad patch can drive away the majority of your users.

Honestly, I'm not convinced BioWare can handle an MMO, but I guess we'll see.

 

[Chaos Descending]

I have a feeling that the $300 Million number is way off base.

 

[Arrqh]

All MMO's are big gambles whether they're directly competing with WoW or not... APB completely brought down Realtime Worlds, and they were going after the GTA market not the RPG'ers.

I also don't think it's necessarily correct to use KOTOR sales... a single player RPG... to extrapolate MMO sales (and it's also not that relevant to compare it to sales of an FPS). It really is two completely different markets. In the single RPG space, KOTOR was very successful relative to the market.