I agree that SWTOR will make or break the story drieven theme that the MMO genere is moving towards. Fine.
But I think this should be said about GW2 as well. GW2 is well on par with SWTOR on story aspect.
I think GW2 will have more impact than SWTOR.
GW2 isn't even remotely close to being on par with the Story aspect with BioWare. From what we've seen of GW2s story, you pick most of your choices up front, then you sit there and watch a predetermined cinematic where the characters talk back and forth, and as far as I've seen, no real choices or responses are even given during this time, you just watch the two banter back and forth.
BioWare allows for different responses at each questing interval, with companion dynamics, alignment changes, and that extends to multiplayer content as well. The choices you make as you go forward will change your experience and your character. Again, that extends throughout group play, end game, etc. GW2 isn't even remotely close in this aspect from what we've seen thus far.
gawd...I hate the SWTOR fanbois who are completely ignorant about other MMOs and do comparisons. A classical uninformed, ignornant, idiotic attempt to compare to GW2.
Lack of choices from what you seen? Hmmm...lets see....what has ANet released to the public...oh thats right the STARTER zone gameplay. There has been panels, articles, blogs, updates, you name it of how the will be distinctive decision making that will allow replay throughs to be completely different if different choices are made.
Ignorant comment part two, your judging a game where it's nowhere near the stage as the other. GW2 doesn't even have closed Beta testers which SWTOR does and has had them for a while...months in fact. There is a still a lot of developement left going on in ANet studio to the agony of it's fans/followers.
I'm sick of people like you on the SWTOR forums that clearly pulling the WoW fanboi effect on youtube for their game. And obviously a DA/Mass Effect fan who is blinded by BW's reputation and performance as an end all be all thing that is identical to the WoW fan attitude with their precious MMO. ANet will be highly on par with BW in story telling and will be rivals very much so.
It's stunning how many people can read the same article and completely miss the intent and misinterpret the premise in such fantastically different ways. I read all the posts and I think maybe, and I'm being liberal here, 10% got it. All of the flaming and trolling and yelling.. the browbeating and huffing. The beating of chests and flinging of poo. This is what is at the core of it. For all the crap that comes from fingertips, all the complaints and hostilities it all comes down to one thing. The bottom line. Companies will make what sells. If you want something put your money where your mouth is. BioWare is playing it smart, they know what sells and what has worked in the RPG gaming market and they're bringing it with the elemets of MMOs that people expect. In the end it's a package thats going to move and sell millions of boxes on hype alone. They have more than two million people who want to just test the thing. I think they will do fine.
.BioWare is playing it smart, they know what sells and what has worked in the RPG gaming market and they're bringing it with the elemets of MMOs that people expect. In the end it's a package thats going to move and sell millions of boxes on hype alone. They have more than two million people who want to just test the thing. I think they will do fine.
they will sell millions of boxes ,that is a sure thing,but its not the point in mmo market.
can they keep people paying monthly fees in single-player online game is the point.
in single-player adventures its normal that game has few different endings nowadays.
but in mmos its a bit different thing,atleast i demand unlimited amounts of stories if im going to buy that game every month.
and honestly there isnt many Longest Joyrneys,Larrys or Space Quests on the market and i doubt that this company can deliver such stories every month for years to come.
There is no place for 'cinematic gameplay' in mmos, mainly because they try to offer each player the illusion that they are the protagonist in an expanding world. This is impossible to achieve in a massive multiplayer driven game. 'Cinematic' is not the thing mmos should evolve into.
and that's just wrong, SWG worked just fine (till they screwed it).
star wars is star wars, and star wars works good for everything. plain and simple. :>
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
To be honest, the worst part about this game for me is that other people will be there to pull me out of it. I may actually try an RPPvP server just to escape all the MMO players who can't appreciate anything other than a race to the end. My brother being one of them. I know he is going to hate the game because he lacks the patience to experience cutscenes and what have you, but I can't dissuade him from purchasing either because he is too drawn to "the next big MMO" title TOR has generated for itself.
I can see the community being very strong on RP/RPPvP servers, because so many people want this to work out.
Take a look at an 'action game/shooter' like Jedi Knight- that game lasted forever because people didn't just join a server and start flailing lightsabers at one another. The community learned discipline and RP-ish servers almost became the standard.
Granted, awesome combat and community maps helped the situation, but nevertheless, I believe it is possible in TOR. I know I will be someone who strives to make this game last.
An endless KOTOR? I've literally been waiting for this since I was playing SWG and the original KOTOR simultaneously.
They'd just better let me bet on player driven swoop races and lose my credits at the pazaak table sooner or later.
I have to disagree with the premise that a large investment is needed to make a successful game in this genre. Large teams like they have at Bioware for this game, tend to step on each others toes a lot, duplicating effort in many areas. A smaller, well organized team, IMO would do a better job. Executives get in the wrong mind set that throwing more people at a project get it done faster, in many cases it extends the project because the organization gets too unweildy.
Not to say this won't be a great game, I just think the Bioware and EA have spent far more than they really needed to.
Too many of these studios think a great team consists of great programmers, storytellers and graphics designers, when in reality, the most important person is the one who keeps the staff organized and focused on the important things, one who understands MMO's and what satisfies people who play them.
I agree with your sentiment and the possibility of success without large investment, but not particularly every word.
In my experience, something substantial ALWAYS has to be invested to make something worthwhile and successful. Be it time or money.
As someone who has worked in the genre on a title that was unsuccessful, I feel I have a better understanding of where people can go wrong, and large investment is never on that list. :P
Look no further than the mobile application markets to prove your point though- little investment, huge success.
I agree that SWTOR will make or break the story drieven theme that the MMO genere is moving towards. Fine.
But I think this should be said about GW2 as well. GW2 is well on par with SWTOR on story aspect.
I think GW2 will have more impact than SWTOR.
GW2 isn't even remotely close to being on par with the Story aspect with BioWare. From what we've seen of GW2s story, you pick most of your choices up front, then you sit there and watch a predetermined cinematic where the characters talk back and forth, and as far as I've seen, no real choices or responses are even given during this time, you just watch the two banter back and forth.
BioWare allows for different responses at each questing interval, with companion dynamics, alignment changes, and that extends to multiplayer content as well. The choices you make as you go forward will change your experience and your character. Again, that extends throughout group play, end game, etc. GW2 isn't even remotely close in this aspect from what we've seen thus far.
gawd...I hate the SWTOR fanbois who are completely ignorant about other MMOs and do comparisons. A classical uninformed, ignornant, idiotic attempt to compare to GW2.
Lack of choices from what you seen? Hmmm...lets see....what has ANet released to the public...oh thats right the STARTER zone gameplay. There has been panels, articles, blogs, updates, you name it of how the will be distinctive decision making that will allow replay throughs to be completely different if different choices are made.
Ignorant comment part two, your judging a game where it's nowhere near the stage as the other. GW2 doesn't even have closed Beta testers which SWTOR does and has had them for a while...months in fact. There is a still a lot of developement left going on in ANet studio to the agony of it's fans/followers.
I'm sick of people like you on the SWTOR forums that clearly pulling the WoW fanboi effect on youtube for their game. And obviously a DA/Mass Effect fan who is blinded by BW's reputation and performance as an end all be all thing that is identical to the WoW fan attitude with their precious MMO. ANet will be highly on par with BW in story telling and will be rivals very much so.
Hah, the best part is, I'm not incorrect, it is EXACTLY how I've described it at this moment. The story you experience is all poised on your choices at character creation. Do you disagree? Maybe you should read more on what GW2 offers. Have you seen the personal story videos for GW2? They pull you out into a movie sequence, and you watch two characters talk back and forth in a very prescripted manner. Nothing we've seen so far says otherwise. In the off chance that you do make some choices throughout the personal story portion, it WILL NOT be remotely similar to SWTOR. NO other game developer apart from Bethesda has put in as much effort into story aspects as BioWare. You really think GW2 will have over 200 hours of diverse, dynamic class story per character? Keep dreaming son.
Might want to read up on what they have on stories so far. They have "thousands" of choices that could be tweaked before development, sure, but read about the mechanics of it, most of these choices they speak about happen at character creation, classes, races, the questions answered and .. "at least one major moment of choice which can alter the chain of events" ..... .... OH thats good, at least one? BioWare has one of those in just about every single piece of their storyline quest, and thats before you take into consideration alignment and faction standings, which GW2 doesn't have.
Honestly from what I've seen so far, GW2s personal story is a very minor portion of what the game offers, to try and cater to those that want more traditional questing. Oh, and how about "I'm sick of all these monkey-fighting GW2 fanboys on this monday to friday plane!"
Grow up, and either put some relevant information in your posts regarding whats really in each game or just take a deep breath and move on. The worst part is, I'm actually looking forward to GW2, I'm just able to.. y'know.. look at what each game has without throwing a tantrum.
I seem to remeber a Star Wars semi-sand box game that everyone loved. Until the beast that kills MMO's did what it does.
Bingo was thinking the same thing! If they didnt kill SWG it would still be a huge game today. This article seems to say its the consumer's fault not the product?? i'm sorry i still believe that if a good sandbox mmo product is produced then the consumers will buy and support it. I wish SWTOR all the success in the world. I think there is room for both styles of games.
I seem to remeber a Star Wars semi-sand box game that everyone loved. Until the beast that kills MMO's did what it does.
Bingo was thinking the same thing! If they didnt kill SWG it would still be a huge game today. This article seems to say its the consumer's fault not the product?? i'm sorry i still believe that if a good sandbox mmo product is produced then the consumers will buy and support it. I wish SWTOR all the success in the world. I think there is room for both styles of games.
SWG was never a "huge" game. Not by todays numbers and not for an IP as strong as SW. I was there and it was ok but lets take off the rose colored glasses when looking back at SWG. It was a buggy, unbalanced mess of a game that COULD have been huge. A very ambitous game with huge amounts of untapped potential. SOE lost focus on where that game was going 6 months in to it.
.BioWare is playing it smart, they know what sells and what has worked in the RPG gaming market and they're bringing it with the elemets of MMOs that people expect. In the end it's a package thats going to move and sell millions of boxes on hype alone. They have more than two million people who want to just test the thing. I think they will do fine.
they will sell millions of boxes ,that is a sure thing,but its not the point in mmo market.
can they keep people paying monthly fees in single-player online game is the point.
in single-player adventures its normal that game has few different endings nowadays.
but in mmos its a bit different thing,atleast i demand unlimited amounts of stories if im going to buy that game every month.
and honestly there isnt many Longest Joyrneys,Larrys or Space Quests on the market and i doubt that this company can deliver such stories every month for years to come.
I'm really starting to think they design these games to sell a huge amount then fail so they can move onto the next "Big Thing".
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
However-I refuse to believe that an MMO from a company that has never made one before is going to influence the future of the genre. If it came from an established company that knows what it is doing-Turbine,NC Soft,Funcom,etc-I'd at least accept such a notion. But from MMO newbes-no way.They don't have the experience to influence anything.
I think it should be obvious. Blizzard did it. Never made one before and influenced the Genre. Bioware and Blizzard have one thing in common. The make very good games. So I think there is a chance that a company which has proven to make good games can also succeed in other Genres.
After my disappointing experience with STO which was also made by an established mmo company I have more trust in a company which made a game like MassEffect 2. I mean I played ME2 and STO at the same time and I constantly thought that the companions and ships in STO should be much more like it is in ME.
It's a stalemate between developers and sandbox lovers:
Sandboxers are waiting for a AAA sandbox title from developers.
Developers are looking for a more viable market between sandbox and themepark players.
Unfortunately for sandboxers, themepark market wins by a mile. I myself will not waste millions of dollars on something that is not surely profitable. I'm running a company here, not a charity.
Right now EVE is the most successful sandbox game and, if you're a real supporter of the genre you should support these sandbox games and hope that in the forseeable future your market will grow to a less negligible size. Maybe then some AAA sandbox game will come, and more will follow depending on its success. Am I indirectly telling you to waste your time and money? Yes. You don't have much option, really. It's either you sit and wait until the sandbox becomes mainstream; you help spin the "gear" and waste tons of money just to show your support; or, just be happy with themepark.
What a complete bull. I dont support and torture myself through games I dont like because of some vain hope that other companies see the success of the genre, I play something that is GOOD. It is silly to expect anything less of a commercial product and customers.
Supporting something that is just plain bad (like MO, Xyson, Earthrise etc) would actually be bad for sandbox genre because it gives the signal to devs that they can release a crappy, bug ridden, incomplete, unstable, imbalanced mess just because it is a sandbox and I call complete bull on that as well.
This whole notion of us sandbox gains being to blame for not enough sandbox titles because we dont support crappy sandbox games is just plain ludicrous. Whatever genre your game fits in it must be GOOD to suceed, be it sandbox, themepark or whatever.
Finally there have been sandbox games in the past with moderate successes. UO and Asherons call were both excellent sandbox games which made quite alof of money for the devs. No the reason why sandbox games are dissapearing is because of the elephant in the living room that for some reason people are ignoring.
WoW
Once this game became a huge hit, investors are getting their mouths watered to try to imitate its success by a score of themepark games. Had it not been for WoW then the market for MMORPGs would have been very different.
For a while now, I've been watching the news about The Old Republic. I've seen the "OMG THIS IS GOING TO BE FAIL!" or "OMG THIS IS GOING TO KILL WOW!". That might be a bit eccentric and over the top as a summarization of the posts about the game. Not just on these forums, but the other forums in general.
In my very personal opinion and in my own point of view, this is how I see things. Bioware, for many years, has been a company with "quality over quantity". Following the mindset of "It won't be released until it's done." Sadly, I don't know too many companies that have done that in the MMO market. Trion seems to follow the mindset to a lesser extent. And they're doing well I suppose. Only one other company has truly taken that mindset to the max. Blizzard Entertainment. And we all see what happened with their triple A title. Like it or hate it, there it is.
The concern now comes into play because of Electronic Arts. I'm sure a good portion of us know what happens when EA gets their hands in something. -Points to Dragon Age 2-
In so long as EA has kept their hands out of the development of The Old Republic, I think, or at least I hope, that we will see a game, an MMORPG that will be Bioware's finest "peice de resistance".
Am I a Bioware fan? Of course. I won't deny that I am. I'm a fan of their old games. KOTOR 1 and 2, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights 2, Dragon Age and Mass Effect 1 and 2. I'm also a Blizzard fan. Starcraft, Brood War, Starcraft 2, Vanilla WoW, and Warcraft 2-3. Why am I a fan? Because these companies proved to me that they care about what their customers want. A well developed game that will entice and enthrall their audience. And they won't release it until it is done in the DEVELOPER'S eyes.
Personally, I wish Bioware had held off showing any kind of tidbits from the game. But that is merely my thought.
I woudl say that Blizzard used to care about their subscribers.....but, for a good deal of time now they have forgotten about us, and just look to the financial bottom line.
Your confusing Blizzard caring for their customers and Blizzard's duty to their shareholders.
Of course Blizzard cares about their customers....if they didn't, their customers would leave. I've heard of countless examples of Blizzard GMs giving people items back, restoring hacked accounts, and other services to their customers where other game developers would not touch with a 10 foot poll. NCSoft wouldn't lift a finger to help you in Lineage 2.
What Blizzard will not do is become a charity for game enthusiasts. Blizzard / Activision is a publicly held company with shareholders. As with any publicly traded company in any industry......your main objective is to earn your shareholders a profit. Blizzard is in business to make money, they make money by putting out a quality product.
What Yamota said. This article is just troll-bait.
It simply ignores highly successfull games with sandbox elements like Minecraft or Farmville. It also ignores that right next to SWTOR, there is GW2 mixing Themepark and Sandbox elements, getting both hardcore and casual gamers excited. Undead Lab's zombie mmo is even more sandboxy, and it's published by Microsoft.
So, why are these devs and publishers going that route, even though us evil, evil players don't support bad sandboxes enough? Well, maybe they know how to get it right, and actually have the guts to just do it.
I have to disagree with the premise that a large investment is needed to make a successful game in this genre. Large teams like they have at Bioware for this game, tend to step on each others toes a lot, duplicating effort in many areas. A smaller, well organized team, IMO would do a better job. Executives get in the wrong mind set that throwing more people at a project get it done faster, in many cases it extends the project because the organization gets too unweildy.
Not to say this won't be a great game, I just think the Bioware and EA have spent far more than they really needed to.
Too many of these studios think a great team consists of great programmers, storytellers and graphics designers, when in reality, the most important person is the one who keeps the staff organized and focused on the important things, one who understands MMO's and what satisfies people who play them.
I agree with your sentiment and the possibility of success without large investment, but not particularly every word.
In my experience, something substantial ALWAYS has to be invested to make something worthwhile and successful. Be it time or money.
As someone who has worked in the genre on a title that was unsuccessful, I feel I have a better understanding of where people can go wrong, and large investment is never on that list. :P
Look no further than the mobile application markets to prove your point though- little investment, huge success.
This was the point I was trying to make in one of my previous posts.
Understand your audience...
Casual MMORPG Gamers that tend to gravitate to games like WOW are less interested in virtual worlds and more interested in things like eye candy (State of the Art Graphics Engine, Big Elaborate Item Skins & Textures, etc.), story telling (phased content in WOW, cinimatic cut scenes in Aion, and cinimatics in TOR), and cool factor on player animations (big elaborate skill / spell animations). All this crap takes a ton of money and resources......money and resources that the indi-developer working on a sandbox doesn't have.
Traditional MMORPG Gamers are looking for a virtual world. For those folks, the game does not live and die by how awesome the graphics are, how elaborate the animations are, etc. Those things are nice, but a luxury. Hell, most of these old school sandbox fans put up with Ultima Online graphics during the age of playstations and 3D graphics cards.
Make something simple in the look and feel of a Diablo, Torchlight, or Battle of Immortals Graphic User Interface and models......take the best practices of what UO / DF / MO did and BAM....you got your sandbox. Guys like Adventurine and Star Valut got caught up with trying to put out a AAA title on a D grade budget.....and as a result they had a stupid long development cycle, terrible launch, and no hope for a community.
Arch Age is on the horizon in Korea.....its going to be one of the first polished sandbox MMOs to come out in a long time. If it does well enough, I think they will port to the Western Market.
"Over the past year we were approached by numerous publishers expressing an interest in partnering with Undead Labs [...] and while they were excited to work with our team, most of them wanted us to work on yet another World of Warcraft clone.
Screw that. We’re here to do cool new things; not rehash things that literally hundreds of other companies have been trying to do for half a decade. The team at Microsoft Game Studios immediately understood where we wanted to go with this, and they’ve been enthusiastic proponents for the vision of a zombie-survival online world game from the very beginning."
What Yamota said. This article is just troll-bait.
It simply ignores highly successfull games with sandbox elements like Minecraft or Farmville. It also ignores that right next to SWTOR, there is GW2 mixing Themepark and Sandbox elements, getting both hardcore and casual gamers excited. Undead Lab's zombie mmo is even more sandboxy, and it's published by Microsoft.
So, why are these devs and publishers going that route, even though us evil, evil players don't support bad sandboxes enough? Well, maybe they know how to get it right, and actually have the guts to just do it.
You can not put Minecraft and farmville in the same genre as these MMO's. Zynga is not successful based solely on Farmville, they have quite a few products out there, and found a niche in pay to play games on mobile devices and easy to use games on Facebook. Now think about all the people out there with both cell phones and internet connections. I think that far exceeds the people with gaming rigs, and then those interested in MMO's.
And as far as Minecraft, there will not be any other duplication of this any time soon. Minecraft benefited from being able to play it at work, on avg pc's, with no true rush on time to advance in game. You honestly think that a fantasy mmo would work if you only played it 20 minutes here and 20 minutes there? You wouldn't get very far into the game, but Minecraft had the luxury of not needing to go anywhere and still be everywhere.
The OP makes very great points, that I have even stressed in the past. People claim they want something different from the typical MMO's out there, that they want it sandbox, and harder, etc. But yet games like Earthrise, Fallen Earth, Mortal Online, Champions Online, Warhammer, who all try and improve on the genre, try to take the next step, always wind up falling backwards because the community has no patience.
Everyone seems to want the polish and smoothness of WoW in a brand new, never before seen game. Undead Lab's may very well be sticking to their guns, but if players leave due to bugs and lag and server stability, then it doesn't matter how good the game may be in 2 years, if no one is around to fund them until that point.
TOR has a huge budget, a solid IP, and very dedicated fans at this point. Let's see if the fans stick around long enough for the game to become what the devs want it to be, or lets see if they jump ship because of too many "similarities" to existing games.
You can not put Minecraft and farmville in the same genre as these MMO's. Zynga is not successful based solely on Farmville, they have quite a few products out there, and found a niche in pay to play games on mobile devices and easy to use games on Facebook. Now think about all the people out there with both cell phones and internet connections. I think that far exceeds the people with gaming rigs, and then those interested in MMO's.
Sure, but what I mean is that Farmville is played by very casual gamers - and these guys love building stuff, growing food, breeding animals and so on with their friends. Compare casual games like Farmville & Minecraft to hardcore "niche" sandboxes like Haven & Hearth or Xyson, and you'll see plenty of similarities. Seems like those features aren't that niche and hardcore after all. It just became that way because WoW doesn't have those features, and if WoW doesn't have it, it's suddenly regarded as "niche".
Jon's correct here. Regardless of the bickering in the replies here, it's true that we have built this monster. It's not a monster I wish to play, but it comes out of what the money trail provides.
I played Fallen Earth at launch and got to max level with seeing maybe 2 minor bugs. I think people with netbooks running wow on full settings came to forums and complained about the lag. BS, I didn't even have a great computer at the time and it ran smooth.
OP has many good points. I am actually beginning to think that the 'give-me-sandbox-nao!' crowd (of which I am admittedly a part) is simply a vocal minority. EVE is the proof that it is a sizable and significant minority, but still that is one game out of dozens of themeparks that combined dwarf its numbers.
Fallen Earth's downfall wasn't bugs. It was bad combat, terrible NPC AI, and poorly thought out game systems (ie economy, PvP, breakage, wheel-spinning, capstones, etc)
Having said all that. Fallen Earth is a themepark, so I don't even know why its in this discussion as a sandbox.
havent played any star wars game cept on console...but with anything that is publicly announced to have such a high budget...you better put in everything possible cause if not there will be people saying "they spent alll this money and yet they didnt add this?!" im tlaking about complete and total customization of every aspect of the game pretty much needs to be from the mind of the players...if they try to take a single risk...it will most likely be a huge fail
It's a stalemate between developers and sandbox lovers:
Sandboxers are waiting for a AAA sandbox title from developers.
Developers are looking for a more viable market between sandbox and themepark players.
Unfortunately for sandboxers, themepark market wins by a mile. I myself will not waste millions of dollars on something that is not surely profitable. I'm running a company here, not a charity.
Right now EVE is the most successful sandbox game and, if you're a real supporter of the genre you should support these sandbox games and hope that in the forseeable future your market will grow to a less negligible size. Maybe then some AAA sandbox game will come, and more will follow depending on its success. Am I indirectly telling you to waste your time and money? Yes. You don't have much option, really. It's either you sit and wait until the sandbox becomes mainstream; you help spin the "gear" and waste tons of money just to show your support; or, just be happy with themepark.
What a complete bull. I dont support and torture myself through games I dont like because of some vain hope that other companies see the success of the genre, I play something that is GOOD. It is silly to expect anything less of a commercial product and customers.
Supporting something that is just plain bad (like MO, Xyson, Earthrise etc) would actually be bad for sandbox genre because it gives the signal to devs that they can release a crappy, bug ridden, incomplete, unstable, imbalanced mess just because it is a sandbox and I call complete bull on that as well.
This whole notion of us sandbox gains being to blame for not enough sandbox titles because we dont support crappy sandbox games is just plain ludicrous. Whatever genre your game fits in it must be GOOD to suceed, be it sandbox, themepark or whatever.
Finally there have been sandbox games in the past with moderate successes. UO and Asherons call were both excellent sandbox games which made quite alof of money for the devs. No the reason why sandbox games are dissapearing is because of the elephant in the living room that for some reason people are ignoring.
WoW
Once this game became a huge hit, investors are getting their mouths watered to try to imitate its success by a score of themepark games. Had it not been for WoW then the market for MMORPGs would have been very different.
Then as I said, you have the other options. Since you don't want to help spin the gear by wasting your money, you can either sit and wait or just embrace themepark. I understand you though, I myself wouldn't pay for something not worth my money. Fortunately for me, I have no ill-feeling about the MMO industry for its lack of support for sandbox.
"IF" swtor is actually going head to head against WOW, spending all that money, and it isnt just a bunch of marketing, then however they want to do it is fine. Sandbox , virtual world or themespank.
This should have happened 5 years ago. AT LEAST. But instead something else happened.
But Ya, they spent so much time and money killing 3d sandbox virtual worlds that lived or were in dev because their market share was so tiny. Right. It was worth a shitload to kill em.
Whatever reason, for good or for ill, the first of the virtual worlds were killed, even though devs state that thats what they want the final evolution of their art to be in the future. Virtual Worlds. But they were killed none the less, thats why everyone is themespankin now. Not because when given 2 different games of equal value, people picked themepark. Do any focus group testing of people who have never played MMO's and know nothing of them and list the features of both, they all say virtual world. they all say themepark seems kinda retarded. Thats what my testing says:)
Farmville is just one feature of a virtual world.(no one wants to be a farmer) And look at it. Even though the humanitarians say it's a evil little slot machine exploiting the human mind. With all the Addicts, and people missing work, and getting fat, becoming social recluses, and dying from exhaustion hehe.
Truth be told, any good game will make money, if it's price is justified. Any good game burdened with agenda or gimmicks will fail. people flock to blizzard because they used to just make great games minus the gimmicks. They made people wait along time, but thats just good marketing, their games were the best. If they stop doing that , their name will diminish accordingly. If they want to hold hands with their competition, or just sit in their tower and nap, and dismiss customer demand then their name will diminish.
What gamers want and as customers they deserve is, for these companies to be good honest companies. With competition, innovation, and customer demand leading the way. And the media to make sure they follow the rules towards each other and their customers. so these kids that give up everything, their homes and friends, to work at their dream job,or to just get a foot in the door. actually get to do that. To live their dream. Or at least an Industry where thats still possible. Shame on everyone if it's not.
Anyway, original point is: If Bioware and EA are going to compete and spend all this money, and not just say thats what their doing, like Tabula Rasa, SWG, Vanguard, Warhammer, LOTRO, AOC,...ect
Then fucking awesome. I dont care what kind of game it is. I'll buy it and play it because they actually "tried" to do what they said they were doing. I'll say "fuck yeah" to that any time. If it doesnt work it doesnt work. If it does, then watch out!! We'll have an awesome game. Any type of game can be awesome and massively successful....but never a game that is created for the purpose of agenda or tricking your customers. You'll make money at the expense of your brand. We aint our parents, we are insanely loyal or hostile. And we won't forget no matter what you may call yourselves later.So Pick your side.
I know, i know, it's asking an awful lot of these guys to just be good honest companies and let the croniism die with the baby boomers.
IF swtor is for real...then GO GO Bioware!!! Themespank or not.
If its more bullshit...then we already know what happens.
See you in the dream.. The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
Look i get what the article was saying. That the risk bioware is taking doing a voiced quest thing and with the money they are putting into this. If it fails in the future devs may be less inclined to spend loads of money on a new themepark mmo.
I understand this. I also understand that if it succeeds u are gonna see alot of people using popular ips as themparks.
I find that most of the posts i make is defending tor . I know tor isnt gonna be star wars galaxies or tie fighter vs xwing space in it. I know this it doesnt bother me.
I know what tor is bringing to the table and cant wait to try it. Almsot everyone who has played this games hand s on has raved about it. I dont understand how getting to max level will kill this game.
They intend to have all the stuff every themepark mmo has for end game. Pvp raids, heroics, Which i do in wow not for gear but cause i love to see the content. And with multiplayer talk and bioware story added to those i cant wait to see hwo it all plays out.
Keep in mind your class story can change based on your choices. This to me seems so cool I know i am a fanboi but its cause the game just sounds like my cup of tea.
It may not be yours fine. Dont need to rip it for no reason using lies and innuendo and stuff thats been debunked for months now.
I fully expect this game to succeed. I think a story driven mmo with voice and stuff will be cool . Its not the most innovative but may be just the next step in evoloution of mmos.
I wish gw 2 all the luck in the world but i wish some of them woudl stop ripping tor and comparing it to gw 2 all the time. I just do. I dont knwo i guess the fact ive always wanted to play a jedi or sith just makes my day. Plus i love wow. so a wow clone doesnt make me flinch or run. Plus i wanna play all 8 classes.
Comments
gawd...I hate the SWTOR fanbois who are completely ignorant about other MMOs and do comparisons. A classical uninformed, ignornant, idiotic attempt to compare to GW2.
Lack of choices from what you seen? Hmmm...lets see....what has ANet released to the public...oh thats right the STARTER zone gameplay. There has been panels, articles, blogs, updates, you name it of how the will be distinctive decision making that will allow replay throughs to be completely different if different choices are made.
Ignorant comment part two, your judging a game where it's nowhere near the stage as the other. GW2 doesn't even have closed Beta testers which SWTOR does and has had them for a while...months in fact. There is a still a lot of developement left going on in ANet studio to the agony of it's fans/followers.
I'm sick of people like you on the SWTOR forums that clearly pulling the WoW fanboi effect on youtube for their game. And obviously a DA/Mass Effect fan who is blinded by BW's reputation and performance as an end all be all thing that is identical to the WoW fan attitude with their precious MMO. ANet will be highly on par with BW in story telling and will be rivals very much so.
It's stunning how many people can read the same article and completely miss the intent and misinterpret the premise in such fantastically different ways. I read all the posts and I think maybe, and I'm being liberal here, 10% got it. All of the flaming and trolling and yelling.. the browbeating and huffing. The beating of chests and flinging of poo. This is what is at the core of it. For all the crap that comes from fingertips, all the complaints and hostilities it all comes down to one thing. The bottom line. Companies will make what sells. If you want something put your money where your mouth is. BioWare is playing it smart, they know what sells and what has worked in the RPG gaming market and they're bringing it with the elemets of MMOs that people expect. In the end it's a package thats going to move and sell millions of boxes on hype alone. They have more than two million people who want to just test the thing. I think they will do fine.
they will sell millions of boxes ,that is a sure thing,but its not the point in mmo market.
can they keep people paying monthly fees in single-player online game is the point.
in single-player adventures its normal that game has few different endings nowadays.
but in mmos its a bit different thing,atleast i demand unlimited amounts of stories if im going to buy that game every month.
and honestly there isnt many Longest Joyrneys,Larrys or Space Quests on the market and i doubt that this company can deliver such stories every month for years to come.
Generation P
and that's just wrong, SWG worked just fine (till they screwed it).
star wars is star wars, and star wars works good for everything. plain and simple. :>
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
To be honest, the worst part about this game for me is that other people will be there to pull me out of it. I may actually try an RPPvP server just to escape all the MMO players who can't appreciate anything other than a race to the end. My brother being one of them. I know he is going to hate the game because he lacks the patience to experience cutscenes and what have you, but I can't dissuade him from purchasing either because he is too drawn to "the next big MMO" title TOR has generated for itself.
I can see the community being very strong on RP/RPPvP servers, because so many people want this to work out.
Take a look at an 'action game/shooter' like Jedi Knight- that game lasted forever because people didn't just join a server and start flailing lightsabers at one another. The community learned discipline and RP-ish servers almost became the standard.
Granted, awesome combat and community maps helped the situation, but nevertheless, I believe it is possible in TOR. I know I will be someone who strives to make this game last.
An endless KOTOR? I've literally been waiting for this since I was playing SWG and the original KOTOR simultaneously.
They'd just better let me bet on player driven swoop races and lose my credits at the pazaak table sooner or later.
I agree with your sentiment and the possibility of success without large investment, but not particularly every word.
In my experience, something substantial ALWAYS has to be invested to make something worthwhile and successful. Be it time or money.
As someone who has worked in the genre on a title that was unsuccessful, I feel I have a better understanding of where people can go wrong, and large investment is never on that list. :P
Look no further than the mobile application markets to prove your point though- little investment, huge success.
Hah, the best part is, I'm not incorrect, it is EXACTLY how I've described it at this moment. The story you experience is all poised on your choices at character creation. Do you disagree? Maybe you should read more on what GW2 offers. Have you seen the personal story videos for GW2? They pull you out into a movie sequence, and you watch two characters talk back and forth in a very prescripted manner. Nothing we've seen so far says otherwise. In the off chance that you do make some choices throughout the personal story portion, it WILL NOT be remotely similar to SWTOR. NO other game developer apart from Bethesda has put in as much effort into story aspects as BioWare. You really think GW2 will have over 200 hours of diverse, dynamic class story per character? Keep dreaming son.
http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/personal-stories/personal-story-overview/
Might want to read up on what they have on stories so far. They have "thousands" of choices that could be tweaked before development, sure, but read about the mechanics of it, most of these choices they speak about happen at character creation, classes, races, the questions answered and .. "at least one major moment of choice which can alter the chain of events" ..... .... OH thats good, at least one? BioWare has one of those in just about every single piece of their storyline quest, and thats before you take into consideration alignment and faction standings, which GW2 doesn't have.
Honestly from what I've seen so far, GW2s personal story is a very minor portion of what the game offers, to try and cater to those that want more traditional questing. Oh, and how about "I'm sick of all these monkey-fighting GW2 fanboys on this monday to friday plane!"
Grow up, and either put some relevant information in your posts regarding whats really in each game or just take a deep breath and move on. The worst part is, I'm actually looking forward to GW2, I'm just able to.. y'know.. look at what each game has without throwing a tantrum.
Bingo was thinking the same thing! If they didnt kill SWG it would still be a huge game today. This article seems to say its the consumer's fault not the product?? i'm sorry i still believe that if a good sandbox mmo product is produced then the consumers will buy and support it. I wish SWTOR all the success in the world. I think there is room for both styles of games.
SWG was never a "huge" game. Not by todays numbers and not for an IP as strong as SW. I was there and it was ok but lets take off the rose colored glasses when looking back at SWG. It was a buggy, unbalanced mess of a game that COULD have been huge. A very ambitous game with huge amounts of untapped potential. SOE lost focus on where that game was going 6 months in to it.
I'm really starting to think they design these games to sell a huge amount then fail so they can move onto the next "Big Thing".
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
I think it should be obvious. Blizzard did it. Never made one before and influenced the Genre. Bioware and Blizzard have one thing in common. The make very good games. So I think there is a chance that a company which has proven to make good games can also succeed in other Genres.
After my disappointing experience with STO which was also made by an established mmo company I have more trust in a company which made a game like MassEffect 2. I mean I played ME2 and STO at the same time and I constantly thought that the companions and ships in STO should be much more like it is in ME.
What a complete bull. I dont support and torture myself through games I dont like because of some vain hope that other companies see the success of the genre, I play something that is GOOD. It is silly to expect anything less of a commercial product and customers.
Supporting something that is just plain bad (like MO, Xyson, Earthrise etc) would actually be bad for sandbox genre because it gives the signal to devs that they can release a crappy, bug ridden, incomplete, unstable, imbalanced mess just because it is a sandbox and I call complete bull on that as well.
This whole notion of us sandbox gains being to blame for not enough sandbox titles because we dont support crappy sandbox games is just plain ludicrous. Whatever genre your game fits in it must be GOOD to suceed, be it sandbox, themepark or whatever.
Finally there have been sandbox games in the past with moderate successes. UO and Asherons call were both excellent sandbox games which made quite alof of money for the devs. No the reason why sandbox games are dissapearing is because of the elephant in the living room that for some reason people are ignoring.
WoW
Once this game became a huge hit, investors are getting their mouths watered to try to imitate its success by a score of themepark games. Had it not been for WoW then the market for MMORPGs would have been very different.
My gaming blog
Your confusing Blizzard caring for their customers and Blizzard's duty to their shareholders.
Of course Blizzard cares about their customers....if they didn't, their customers would leave. I've heard of countless examples of Blizzard GMs giving people items back, restoring hacked accounts, and other services to their customers where other game developers would not touch with a 10 foot poll. NCSoft wouldn't lift a finger to help you in Lineage 2.
What Blizzard will not do is become a charity for game enthusiasts. Blizzard / Activision is a publicly held company with shareholders. As with any publicly traded company in any industry......your main objective is to earn your shareholders a profit. Blizzard is in business to make money, they make money by putting out a quality product.
What Yamota said. This article is just troll-bait.
It simply ignores highly successfull games with sandbox elements like Minecraft or Farmville. It also ignores that right next to SWTOR, there is GW2 mixing Themepark and Sandbox elements, getting both hardcore and casual gamers excited. Undead Lab's zombie mmo is even more sandboxy, and it's published by Microsoft.
So, why are these devs and publishers going that route, even though us evil, evil players don't support bad sandboxes enough? Well, maybe they know how to get it right, and actually have the guts to just do it.
Hype train -> Reality
This was the point I was trying to make in one of my previous posts.
Understand your audience...
Casual MMORPG Gamers that tend to gravitate to games like WOW are less interested in virtual worlds and more interested in things like eye candy (State of the Art Graphics Engine, Big Elaborate Item Skins & Textures, etc.), story telling (phased content in WOW, cinimatic cut scenes in Aion, and cinimatics in TOR), and cool factor on player animations (big elaborate skill / spell animations). All this crap takes a ton of money and resources......money and resources that the indi-developer working on a sandbox doesn't have.
Traditional MMORPG Gamers are looking for a virtual world. For those folks, the game does not live and die by how awesome the graphics are, how elaborate the animations are, etc. Those things are nice, but a luxury. Hell, most of these old school sandbox fans put up with Ultima Online graphics during the age of playstations and 3D graphics cards.
Make something simple in the look and feel of a Diablo, Torchlight, or Battle of Immortals Graphic User Interface and models......take the best practices of what UO / DF / MO did and BAM....you got your sandbox. Guys like Adventurine and Star Valut got caught up with trying to put out a AAA title on a D grade budget.....and as a result they had a stupid long development cycle, terrible launch, and no hope for a community.
Arch Age is on the horizon in Korea.....its going to be one of the first polished sandbox MMOs to come out in a long time. If it does well enough, I think they will port to the Western Market.
I'll add a quote from Undead Labs:
"Over the past year we were approached by numerous publishers expressing an interest in partnering with Undead Labs [...] and while they were excited to work with our team, most of them wanted us to work on yet another World of Warcraft clone.
Screw that. We’re here to do cool new things; not rehash things that literally hundreds of other companies have been trying to do for half a decade. The team at Microsoft Game Studios immediately understood where we wanted to go with this, and they’ve been enthusiastic proponents for the vision of a zombie-survival online world game from the very beginning."
http://undeadlabs.com/2011/02/news/rude-qa-2/
The industry/publishers needs to stop blaming players for their own fear of taking any risks.
Hype train -> Reality
You can not put Minecraft and farmville in the same genre as these MMO's. Zynga is not successful based solely on Farmville, they have quite a few products out there, and found a niche in pay to play games on mobile devices and easy to use games on Facebook. Now think about all the people out there with both cell phones and internet connections. I think that far exceeds the people with gaming rigs, and then those interested in MMO's.
And as far as Minecraft, there will not be any other duplication of this any time soon. Minecraft benefited from being able to play it at work, on avg pc's, with no true rush on time to advance in game. You honestly think that a fantasy mmo would work if you only played it 20 minutes here and 20 minutes there? You wouldn't get very far into the game, but Minecraft had the luxury of not needing to go anywhere and still be everywhere.
The OP makes very great points, that I have even stressed in the past. People claim they want something different from the typical MMO's out there, that they want it sandbox, and harder, etc. But yet games like Earthrise, Fallen Earth, Mortal Online, Champions Online, Warhammer, who all try and improve on the genre, try to take the next step, always wind up falling backwards because the community has no patience.
Everyone seems to want the polish and smoothness of WoW in a brand new, never before seen game. Undead Lab's may very well be sticking to their guns, but if players leave due to bugs and lag and server stability, then it doesn't matter how good the game may be in 2 years, if no one is around to fund them until that point.
TOR has a huge budget, a solid IP, and very dedicated fans at this point. Let's see if the fans stick around long enough for the game to become what the devs want it to be, or lets see if they jump ship because of too many "similarities" to existing games.
Sure, but what I mean is that Farmville is played by very casual gamers - and these guys love building stuff, growing food, breeding animals and so on with their friends. Compare casual games like Farmville & Minecraft to hardcore "niche" sandboxes like Haven & Hearth or Xyson, and you'll see plenty of similarities. Seems like those features aren't that niche and hardcore after all. It just became that way because WoW doesn't have those features, and if WoW doesn't have it, it's suddenly regarded as "niche".
Hype train -> Reality
Jon's correct here. Regardless of the bickering in the replies here, it's true that we have built this monster. It's not a monster I wish to play, but it comes out of what the money trail provides.
Fallen Earth's downfall wasn't bugs. It was bad combat, terrible NPC AI, and poorly thought out game systems (ie economy, PvP, breakage, wheel-spinning, capstones, etc)
Having said all that. Fallen Earth is a themepark, so I don't even know why its in this discussion as a sandbox.
havent played any star wars game cept on console...but with anything that is publicly announced to have such a high budget...you better put in everything possible cause if not there will be people saying "they spent alll this money and yet they didnt add this?!" im tlaking about complete and total customization of every aspect of the game pretty much needs to be from the mind of the players...if they try to take a single risk...it will most likely be a huge fail
( Comming Soon )
Then as I said, you have the other options. Since you don't want to help spin the gear by wasting your money, you can either sit and wait or just embrace themepark. I understand you though, I myself wouldn't pay for something not worth my money. Fortunately for me, I have no ill-feeling about the MMO industry for its lack of support for sandbox.
"IF" swtor is actually going head to head against WOW, spending all that money, and it isnt just a bunch of marketing, then however they want to do it is fine. Sandbox , virtual world or themespank.
This should have happened 5 years ago. AT LEAST. But instead something else happened.
But Ya, they spent so much time and money killing 3d sandbox virtual worlds that lived or were in dev because their market share was so tiny. Right. It was worth a shitload to kill em.
Whatever reason, for good or for ill, the first of the virtual worlds were killed, even though devs state that thats what they want the final evolution of their art to be in the future. Virtual Worlds. But they were killed none the less, thats why everyone is themespankin now. Not because when given 2 different games of equal value, people picked themepark. Do any focus group testing of people who have never played MMO's and know nothing of them and list the features of both, they all say virtual world. they all say themepark seems kinda retarded. Thats what my testing says:)
Farmville is just one feature of a virtual world.(no one wants to be a farmer) And look at it. Even though the humanitarians say it's a evil little slot machine exploiting the human mind. With all the Addicts, and people missing work, and getting fat, becoming social recluses, and dying from exhaustion hehe.
Truth be told, any good game will make money, if it's price is justified. Any good game burdened with agenda or gimmicks will fail. people flock to blizzard because they used to just make great games minus the gimmicks. They made people wait along time, but thats just good marketing, their games were the best. If they stop doing that , their name will diminish accordingly. If they want to hold hands with their competition, or just sit in their tower and nap, and dismiss customer demand then their name will diminish.
What gamers want and as customers they deserve is, for these companies to be good honest companies. With competition, innovation, and customer demand leading the way. And the media to make sure they follow the rules towards each other and their customers. so these kids that give up everything, their homes and friends, to work at their dream job,or to just get a foot in the door. actually get to do that. To live their dream. Or at least an Industry where thats still possible. Shame on everyone if it's not.
Anyway, original point is: If Bioware and EA are going to compete and spend all this money, and not just say thats what their doing, like Tabula Rasa, SWG, Vanguard, Warhammer, LOTRO, AOC,...ect
Then fucking awesome. I dont care what kind of game it is. I'll buy it and play it because they actually "tried" to do what they said they were doing. I'll say "fuck yeah" to that any time. If it doesnt work it doesnt work. If it does, then watch out!! We'll have an awesome game. Any type of game can be awesome and massively successful....but never a game that is created for the purpose of agenda or tricking your customers. You'll make money at the expense of your brand. We aint our parents, we are insanely loyal or hostile. And we won't forget no matter what you may call yourselves later.So Pick your side.
I know, i know, it's asking an awful lot of these guys to just be good honest companies and let the croniism die with the baby boomers.
IF swtor is for real...then GO GO Bioware!!! Themespank or not.
If its more bullshit...then we already know what happens.
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
Look i get what the article was saying. That the risk bioware is taking doing a voiced quest thing and with the money they are putting into this. If it fails in the future devs may be less inclined to spend loads of money on a new themepark mmo.
I understand this. I also understand that if it succeeds u are gonna see alot of people using popular ips as themparks.
I find that most of the posts i make is defending tor . I know tor isnt gonna be star wars galaxies or tie fighter vs xwing space in it. I know this it doesnt bother me.
I know what tor is bringing to the table and cant wait to try it. Almsot everyone who has played this games hand s on has raved about it. I dont understand how getting to max level will kill this game.
They intend to have all the stuff every themepark mmo has for end game. Pvp raids, heroics, Which i do in wow not for gear but cause i love to see the content. And with multiplayer talk and bioware story added to those i cant wait to see hwo it all plays out.
Keep in mind your class story can change based on your choices. This to me seems so cool I know i am a fanboi but its cause the game just sounds like my cup of tea.
It may not be yours fine. Dont need to rip it for no reason using lies and innuendo and stuff thats been debunked for months now.
I fully expect this game to succeed. I think a story driven mmo with voice and stuff will be cool . Its not the most innovative but may be just the next step in evoloution of mmos.
I wish gw 2 all the luck in the world but i wish some of them woudl stop ripping tor and comparing it to gw 2 all the time. I just do. I dont knwo i guess the fact ive always wanted to play a jedi or sith just makes my day. Plus i love wow. so a wow clone doesnt make me flinch or run. Plus i wanna play all 8 classes.
Can people stop saying sandbox