I honestly think that Bioware had no idea of how much they were chewing off.
I think they thought it would be relatively easy to copy WoW. I think they thought they could churn out the game in a few years tops.
The plan was, buy Hero Engine, copy wow set in SW universe, add story, roll in dough, add new content quickly via their "new type" easy to edit the game world Hero engine.
The game got pushed back to 2010, then 2012.
By then they had poured much more time and money into the project, and all the little technical design problems weren't just compounding, but causing chain reactions of develpment problems resulting in what SWTOR is today.
At first glance, WoW seems easy to replicate. After a cemetary filled with WoW-clones, perhaps it's not so easy after all.
Excellent post - and one that I think captures the grand plan. And when it comes to story of course - well we (Bioware) are masters.
At some point they also decided that using voice overs and cut-scenes would be great marketing ploy; they may have thought it was good for game play as well but if so that is simply an example, imo, of not understanding the difference between single player and multi-player.
And I fully agree about the WoW comment; so many games are called "WoW" clones when in reality they don't come close.
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Excellent post - and one that I think captures the grand plan. And when it comes to story of course - well we (Bioware) are masters.
At some point they also decided that using voice overs and cut-scenes would be great marketing ploy; they may have thought it was good for game play as well but if so that is simply an example, imo, of not understanding the difference between single player and multi-player.
And I fully agree about the WoW comment; so many games are called "WoW" clones when in reality they don't come close.