Sw:tor

[chipper]

This item will be released on March 25, 2011.


seen a few posts on forum too saying that its due out in march i hope so been waitin for this for years i really hope its as good as it looks

 

[rynnor]

It seems further away than that from release when you read the press releases tbh.

I think they have made a bit of a monster problem for themselves with so many advanced classes - its going to be an impossible beast to balance judging by every other previous mmo's experiences especially when you throw in pvp.

The lack of details on the crafting system is a bit worrying - saying its great and exciting is fine but theres still no details.

I think its impossible to call at this point but I shall keep an eye on it.

 

[inactionman]

Out in march and it isn't in beta yet? If that's true, it doesn't bode well!

 

[Ctuchik]

aye, its gonna be another DAoC in terms of balance.

but for their own sake i really hope they do a good job with the game seeing what an absolute insane budget they have for this game. last i heard it was around 300 million dollars and counting...

they are pretty much forced to bitchslap WoW in terms of subscribers if this game will stay online.

EA are not only shooting themselves in the foot here, they are blowing it up with a nuclear bomb....

 

[chipper]

one thing about mmo's, release dates always get pushed back, but at least there is finally A realease date. they must be getting confident in its completion.
i dont believe itll be ready by march but mebbe an autumn release is viable. either way im just really looking forward to this after the disaster that is Star trek online

 

[rynnor]

I hope it does well - though having tons of classes is a nightmare to balance if they manage to keep the sub-classes distinct it can add a lot of depth and strategy and some people truly enjoy the challenge/elan of a 'gimp' class.

I'd be slightly worried as a pvp'er on the emphasis they have put on gear and raiding but its a flaw that daoc shared so not neccesarily a showstopper.

 

[Ctuchik]

one thing about mmo's, release dates always get pushed back, but at least there is finally A realease date.

sure, release dates gets pushed back often. but there comes a time in every MMO's developing life where you just HAVE to release no matter what, or it won't make it at all. and looking again at the massive moneysink this game seems to be i'm pretty sure that it will release rather soon:ish.

even EA's moneypit isn't bottomless

/edit: imagine what Mythic could have done with WAR if they had 300 million dollars to play around with

 

[Lollie]

made an even bigger fuck up?

 

[Reno]

That $300 M price was only mentioned by EA-louse tbh. By his own admission he wasn't in SW's team and was only repeating a rumour, so I'd take it with a large pinch of salt.
Not that it couldn't be in the general ballpark, close or even true.

Danita

 

[Ctuchik]

interesting read about that supposed budget and why it isn't realistic, or a sure doom if it's actually true.

SWTOR Will Fail, With Numbers to Prove It | Ardwulf's Lair

 

[Reno]

He's juggling some unrealistic numbers there.
Hell even Daoc had more subscribers after 2 years than he's assuming will be left after 1 year for SW.
He's made a rough sketch for SW's business if it bombs hard ( think WAR but maybe even worse).
Now he has to do a few calculations if SW:tor does reasonably well, or even good.

 

[chipper]

well star wars online sold 500,000 units on pre orders alone and that was at a time when mmo's were still an emerging market, there is a much wider audience now and with a brand name like this and memorys of SWO buried it could do really well on initial sales.

as always with an mmo the first 6 months will show if the game is gonna boom or bust, till its released its hard to say what will happen. the game needs to be completed and not a half finished like war

 

[Raven]

Its EA, it won't be anywhere near to as good as the hype sadly.

 

[Ctuchik]

He's juggling some unrealistic numbers there.

yes he does, and he admits it to. so its not like he claims anything for facts

/edit: besides, all he's doing is tearing EAlouse's supposed budget to pieces.

he's not trying to prove a point other then that louse is probably wrong.

 

[Ctuchik]

as always with an mmo the first 6 months will show if the game is gonna boom or bust, till its released its hard to say what will happen. the game needs to be completed and not a half finished like war

that is starting in open beta nowadays.

many ppl get a feel for the game then and decide if they want to buy it or not.

sadly "open beta" for most ppl doesn't mean open beta, and i don't think most developer companies believe it either.

 

[Raven]

That's because most people who beta don't actually understand what a beta is for.

 

[Aph3x]

I have a horrible feeling this will sink quicker than WAR did. EA will push for it to be released early and not in a completed state which will mean bugs, holes in game play and un balanced classes. I really hope I'm wrong as I've been looking forward to this game since release but as they seem to be pushing the main selling point as "Voice acting" I feel its all going to end badly.

 

[Ctuchik]

That's because most people who beta don't actually understand what a beta is for.

No of course not. But knowing what a beta is or not doesn't matter any more. The devs either adapt to how it is or they will never release a really successful game again.

Personally i'm only vaguely treating an open beta as an actual beta, mostly i treat it as a hype demo.

And i'm pretty sure even the devs do as no MMO nowadays have any restrictions on who they invite to them other then releasing a "set number" of beta keys that never actually runs out. Or if they by chance actually do run out they will just release another batch of keys.

Even the closed betas aren't all that restrictive any more. Usually there's a load of sites that give away close beta keys, and all you have to do is klick on a link.

 

[ECA]

It really depends on the company as to what a beta is, most western MMOs treat closed and open beta has a hype/PR opportunity and don't really plan on doing anything with it other than finding weird random bugs ( ie so they have a downloadable patch as the disks are already done ).

Some companies still treat a beta as a beta, but most of us have realised that open beta/closed beta 2-3 months before release is basically a PR pre-launch hype event rather than a beta.

 

[chipper]

It really depends on the company as to what a beta is, most western MMOs treat closed and open beta has a hype/PR opportunity and don't really plan on doing anything with it other than finding weird random bugs ( ie so they have a downloadable patch as the disks are already done ).

Some companies still treat a beta as a beta, but most of us have realised that open beta/closed beta 2-3 months before release is basically a PR pre-launch hype event rather than a beta.

agree a last stage beta is primarly a pr stunt its mainly to hype it up. once the nda is dropped you know theyll let any and all in.

the game has been in development for a bloody long time i can remember the rumours about it years ago and then there was nothing for years about it so i have no doubt the game will be polished.

 

[Aada]

I really don't see the game being a success tbh Star Wars is far to big of a Universe to cram into a game.

Unless EA have learned that you can't release a game these days with hardly any content then i see a grim future for this.

It's not one of those games that will be an inbetween a success or failure it will either swim like a dolphin or sink like a lead fart.

 

[chipper]

yes but theyve done the right thing this time theyve set it in a timeline with very little lore.

SWG biggest failure point was the simple fact it was constricted to a timeline in which there was very little room to manouever. i said this from day one the game would fail because they were limited to what content they could add.


TOR is not set around any of the movies or game well 300 years is still alot of difference its set in quite an obscure piece of the timeline theres very little lore for fans to nit pick at.

star wars is about good and evil yet only a very select few got to be a jedi and lets be honest a good portion of ppl wanted to be jedi yet they couldnt because it didnt fit in with the timeline. now we have a massive sith/jedi battle where ppl can swing lightsabers and force lightning about at will. i think the game will be a much bigger success than alot of mmo's of late.

 

[Ctuchik]

Remember that STO didn't have a set timeline to work within either. they "invented" an alternate timeline so they could do something with the game, and that didn't turn out to work all that well either, but that's maybe more down to CBS giving Cryptic an unrealistic release window.

Still, i'm gonna reserve judgement on SW:TOR until the game is released and i've had a chance to play it a while.

Personally i don't mind lore as long as its consistent and doesn't get changed every half year like Blizzard have done with WoW recently.

I mean, Tauren paladins? >.<

 

[Ctuchik]

the game has been in development for a bloody long time i can remember the rumours about it years ago and then there was nothing for years about it so i have no doubt the game will be polished.

That's what i'm hoping for. That they have taken their time to actually polish the game before release, and not after it.

 

[chipper]

am sure the first rumour i heard was around 2005 involving bioware. so thats at least 5 years which is a good amount of time for a mmo in development lookin at around 6 years of creation for this id be surprised if it was shoddy.

 

[svartalf]

I think SWTOR will get pushed into late 2011. Do you remember when WoW said, "okay, we've tested it and now it's going to take another 2 years to buff the living shit out of it". Everybody said, "err... whatever". That time certainly paid for itself and more.

 

[Raven]

Yeah but that's Blizzard who only release stuff when it's ready, not EA who release stuff ASAP, ready or not.

 

[Ctuchik]

Yeah but that's Blizzard who only release stuff when it's ready,

That's debatable, usually after every major patch there's hotfixes going on several times a week or a bigger bugfix patch on the usual downtime