Roaming mobs and criiters seems like something thats hasn't been added to the game properly.
I saw plenty of neutral beasts and mobs outside of the starter planets. Not sure why anyone would consider them missing, though perhaps lacking in comparison to other select MMOs; however, I don't think they add much significant.
As I've already said, I'm almost certain BW is more concerned about their servers and game stability with launch so close. This much-desired "Life and Soul" can ride the back-burner for a patch or two so long as I can play SWTOR without any meaningful, game-breaking bugs / glitches. It's a really picky subject, imo.
Plenty of neutral beasts doing what? Standing in place right?
That's the thing, the cities and social hubs have npc's, but most of them just sit there and you can't even interact with them, nor do they talk to each other. In 2 weekends I heard 1 ambient npc conversation. ONE. In the regular world most mobs just sit in place, and the VERY FEW critters / beasts just do the same thing also.
The game may be the most immersion lacking mmo I've ever played, and I'm not exaggerating.
QFT!
Just dumping some mobs and NPC's in a zone is not of this time and age anymore. You could do that 12 years ago maybe, because AI pathing/scripting wasn't that far yet.
But that this day and age, after games like LOTRO, EQ2, AoC, etc, etc (/sigh yeah even WoW) we come to expect better than that!
U know what no one is gonna make u play this game u dont like it fine. What i dont understand id why everyone i mean everyone who starts a negative thread doesnt just start 1 they start like 10 of them.
What 1 rant wasnt enough.
I for have had a blast in tor but i dont nitpick every little thing. If u dont think people wouldnt cry about nite day cycles and the moons and stuf u havent been paying attention to what htey whine about already.
If they had a day nite cycle which u knew wasnt gonna be in what 9 months ago , people would find something to cry about. they have to whine about something cause its not gw 2
Maybe the devs should have looked at Ashenvale. Got to admit still gives me fond memories running through that fantastic zone in wow. Full of life. Plus the musical score was simply stunning. Does SWTOR actually have any atmosphere????
Yeah Ashenvale beta was nothing like Ashenvale release.
You guys really believe you are stress testing on the final build? There are night and day cycles and rain/weather. None are implimented on this build.
I can't tell you how much I love Beta to release comparisons.
U know what no one is gonna make u play this game u dont like it fine. What i dont understand id why everyone i mean everyone who starts a negative thread doesnt just start 1 they start like 10 of them.
What 1 rant wasnt enough.
I for have had a blast in tor but i dont nitpick every little thing. If u dont think people wouldnt cry about nite day cycles and the moons and stuf u havent been paying attention to what htey whine about already.
If they had a day nite cycle which u knew wasnt gonna be in what 9 months ago , people would find something to cry about. they have to whine about something cause its not gw 2
Originally posted by DexterMMO I you feel this way about this game... I fear what you feel about the other 400 mmo's. If being part of a movie doesn't immerse you... just play IRL.
It's entirely possible the OP's opinion is valid concerning any content that doesn't relate to your character. The NPC development as it relates to your character is awesome. Even the little blurbs of voice they spout when you click on them after you're done with all the questing relates to you in a meaningful way.
I'm not sure about stuff that doesn't relate to you though...I don't pay much attention to the 'people in the background'. Generally, unless you're going out of your way to look at them they don't really matter. Why would you sit there and stare at a gardener or some guy at the bar?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Originally posted by lizardbones Originally posted by DexterMMO I you feel this way about this game... I fear what you feel about the other 400 mmo's. If being part of a movie doesn't immerse you... just play IRL.
It's entirely possible the OP's opinion is valid concerning any content that doesn't relate to your character. The NPC development as it relates to your character is awesome. Even the little blurbs of voice they spout when you click on them after you're done with all the questing relates to you in a meaningful way.
I'm not sure about stuff that doesn't relate to you though...I don't pay much attention to the 'people in the background'. Generally, unless you're going out of your way to look at them they don't really matter. Why would you sit there and stare at a gardener or some guy at the bar?
I take that back. There's even stuff going on around you that has nothing to do with you. There's no good reason for it to be there other than environmental 'flavor'.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I you feel this way about this game... I fear what you feel about the other 400 mmo's. If being part of a movie doesn't immerse you... just play IRL.
It's entirely possible the OP's opinion is valid concerning any content that doesn't relate to your character. The NPC development as it relates to your character is awesome. Even the little blurbs of voice they spout when you click on them after you're done with all the questing relates to you in a meaningful way.
I'm not sure about stuff that doesn't relate to you though...I don't pay much attention to the 'people in the background'. Generally, unless you're going out of your way to look at them they don't really matter. Why would you sit there and stare at a gardener or some guy at the bar?
When I run through the Jedi Temple with probably 50-60 npc's sitting around and it feels like I'm running through a library or graveyard - that's the problem.
You mention little things npc's say to you - that's ONLY the quest giving npc's, you cannot click on any of the random npc's walking around (or should I say usually just stuck in place) unless they are a quest giver.
and man-hour costs? lol! This is the largest budget MMO in history! You would expect they could find some tiny bit of money here in that insane budget of theirs to add some soul and life to this game! /Facepalm
Yeah I've ponder about this since I tried the game, where did they spent it all?
Felt like when you made your own modules to NWN you put a mob here and there or in groups took like 1min to do and they stood there waitied to be killed when you started the module.
Same in TOR the mobs the npcs the so called "wildlife" they are all static hardly move and if they move they move in one direction and stop and go back the same way they came from.
*crickets* anyone?, that was the feeling of the enviroment i got when i played TOR.
I made a post about this in both the SWTOR general forums and suggestion box forums. Seems most players are on the same page about this. Can see the general chat post here:
Funny, last time I checked mobs in WoW just stand there or path a set pattern over and over again. They won't even attack you unless you attack them 98% of the time. And even if they did, your toon is so OP compared to them that they didn't have a chance to begin with.
I also seem to recall everyone complaining about the mobs in Rift dismounting players all the time (low level mobs attacking high level characters). It was such an inconvenience that they made the mobs ignore high level characters. Where's the realism in that? Yeah I hate your guts, but only if you are at my level or lower.
You say you want life, but only if it doesn't interfere with your game. They can fill the world with thousands of mobs that auto aggro onto everything in sight... you'd spend more time killing them then doing the quests and possibly never get very far in an hours time. Then you'd complain that it's too real and that you want the world to be more static so that you can avoid the mobs and do whatever.
Games are like this because the player base asked for it to be that way... just as they asked for Pandas.
I have to agree with this unfortunately. Also the fact that enemy mobs don't move at all doesn't help either. Even minimal movement like most other similar MMOs would go a long way.
MOBs don't move around, because there is no ROOM for them to move around. All the places that I have been in the game had creatures crammed into the environment in such a way that they literally were on top of each other. I understand there are more open spaces later in the game, but from what I have seen in videos, this doesn't change. The people who build SWTOR's world have a thing or two to learn about making it feel alive.
One "want" per person, apparently all different. And ire at the devs if their "want" isn't the top of the priority list.
That's pretty much the nutshell history of MMO message boards there. ^
Completely wrong. While what people want is subjective as far as details go, you still have basically two camps of people on this site. One camp loves the direction current themepark MMOs are going, which tends to lean on the side of solo-friendly, linear, simplified casual gameplay, and the others want something much more deep such as a virtual world, non-linear. You can categorize these as themepark and sandbox if you want, but I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, The Secret World is shaping up to be a nice hybrid of the two.
I have said for a while now that it would help a lot if these two types of games were not lumped into the MMORPG genre, because they are completely different gaming experiences and the two groups of people involved don't really understand each other. That is the main source of arguments here.
For example, your virtual world (sandbox, whatever) type player will probably love a player-driven economy with in-game housing, deep resource and crafting systems, skill-based and open ended gaming (no end game), community, non-combat classes with full gameplay paths, interdependent classes where no player is an island unto themselves, community and RP features, etc.
A themepark player tends to be combat-focused and to not care about crafting much at all, and if they do, they want it fairly simple so it doesn't take much time away from leveling. They don't want to be "forced" to group or work with other players to progress in the world. They prefer a fairly linear leveling progression toward end-game or rerolling another class. Social features don't really interest them. Non-combat classes are considered useless, etc.
Of course I am generalizing here and some of you will be in both, or neither camps, but those are really your main camps here. We can argue details all day long, but the fact is that these two mmo philosophies are as different as night and day. It's a lot like watching a Democrat trying to understand the mindset of a Republican, and vice versa. Two different universes.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
The "life and soul" of mmos for me is the community. With that being the case, it is no great surprise most are shockingly poor in that department these days.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
LOL at thread. When a game is amazing as ToR is, people start saying things like "Wheres the spirit, and soul"
"Wheres the dynamic weather system?"
"OMG Npcs dont run around town, and have there own lifes and goals like some sort of SIMS game"
"Omg there is no day/night cycle, game killer"
"OMG Cool downs and toolbars hotkeys weapons levels and experience, ROFL THIS GAME IS A CLONE OF WOW"
STFU this game is the best thing released in YEARS AND YEARS..
Thats where the life and soul is, inside the fact the game is epic win
You know what? This post is fantastic: it lacks common sense, it lacks lack of "leet speak" and it completely avoids the topic of the thread. Ah well, in the end this post may not be so wonderful, but at least you increased your post count, and that's all that matters isn't it? : )
On-topic: I agree with the OP, although I have seen (and heard) a few conversations between NPCs. But unfortunately, these conversations are COMPLETELY disconnected from the characters involved: the animations made by the characters are out of sync with the dialogue, and the dialogue doesn't fade into the background as you move further away from the NPCs.
See, exactly what I was talking about Officer. People complain about the most minute random, obscure meaningless features of a game trying to say it lacks quality.
{mod edit} You are on a forum where a game is being discussed, and one of the many discussions that are currently going on involves a complaint about the (lack of) life and soul in this game, anything that is relevant to the topic should be posted. {mod edit}
one of the many discussions that are currently going on involves a complaint about the (lack of) life and soul in this game, anything that is relevant to the topic should be posted
Well, treating abstract concepts as concrete usually does lead to trouble.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Originally posted by ironhelix Originally posted by paterah I have to agree with this unfortunately. Also the fact that enemy mobs don't move at all doesn't help either. Even minimal movement like most other similar MMOs would go a long way.
MOBs don't move around, because there is no ROOM for them to move around. All the places that I have been in the game had creatures crammed into the environment in such a way that they literally were on top of each other. I understand there are more open spaces later in the game, but from what I have seen in videos, this doesn't change. The people who build SWTOR's world have a thing or two to learn about making it feel alive.
Mobs exist so you can kill them. Why does it matter what they're doing when you're not killing them? If you're not doing something that's part of your story line or a mission, you won't even see them.
In the process of killing them (the actual important part of the interaction), I've watched them duck behind cover, jump out from behind objects and heal each other (until I kill the healer). I've been crowd controlled too. This is a LOT more than most mmorpg where the mobs just stand there and mindlessly plug away at you until they die. I could really give a cr@p if they don't patrol around.
The NPCs on the other hand are something else entirely. The talk and have little conversations. NPCs that I've dealt with in the past with missions have something to say to me that relates both to themselves and to my missions. I've gotten a couple letters from NPCs I've dealt with in the past, giving me an update on how things are turning out (mostly good, thanks to me). At once point I walked into a bar past the security, and when I walked out the bouncers were dead and the crowd in front of the bar had scatter off someplace. I have no idea what happened there because I wasn't involved in whatever it was. It looked interesting whatever it was. In another area where security forces are fighting insurgents, you can kill the insurgents and instead of just spawning more insurgents, more come running from someplace to take up positions against the security forces.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but it really does seem that people are trying to find anything they can to nitpick about.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Mobs exist so you can kill them. Why does it matter what they're doing when you're not killing them? If you're not doing something that's part of your story line or a mission, you won't even see them.
SWTOR: Immersion unleashed.....
Honestly, I've been trying not to get involved regarding the little back and forths going on about how brilliant/disappointing this game is, but if what you said is how people actually feel, they kind of deserve a flat experience. That whole sentence reaks of MMO fail. Themeparks away!
Mobs exist so you can kill them. Why does it matter what they're doing when you're not killing them? If you're not doing something that's part of your story line or a mission, you won't even see them.
SWTOR: Immersion unleashed.....
Honestly, I've been trying not to get involved regarding the little back and forths going on about how brilliant/disappointing this game is, but if what you said is how people actually feel, they kind of deserve a flat experience. That whole sentence reaks of MMO fail. Themeparks away!
That is the case for every MMO outside of Ryzom, get some perspective...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Mobs exist so you can kill them. Why does it matter what they're doing when you're not killing them? If you're not doing something that's part of your story line or a mission, you won't even see them.
SWTOR: Immersion unleashed.....
Honestly, I've been trying not to get involved regarding the little back and forths going on about how brilliant/disappointing this game is, but if what you said is how people actually feel, they kind of deserve a flat experience. That whole sentence reaks of MMO fail. Themeparks away!
agree and the more we pay for it the more they will push it.
Mobs exist so you can kill them. Why does it matter what they're doing when you're not killing them? If you're not doing something that's part of your story line or a mission, you won't even see them.
SWTOR: Immersion unleashed.....
Honestly, I've been trying not to get involved regarding the little back and forths going on about how brilliant/disappointing this game is, but if what you said is how people actually feel, they kind of deserve a flat experience. That whole sentence reaks of MMO fail. Themeparks away!
That's the deal with this game right now. You're hearing the lovers of it say "we didn't need that feature anyway, and 99% of gamers don't care about it". So basically what they are saying is exactly what I said in the OP. The game is a sterile mmo experience where VO quests were used to spice up otherwise boring (in my opinion) gameplay and world. The world, the atmosphere, the details that immerse you deeply into the story, is non-existant. Now I know some people will argue that last sentence, and all I can say to that is good on you, if you are cool with the way this game looks and feels. For me, compared to much, much older games, it is dead and lifeless. Hell, even Rift feels more alive than this one to me and I find Rift to be general boring as well.
What can one expect when the Bioware devs basically came out a few months back and started using language like "WoW is a touchstone" to describe their $120m brand new Star Wars game.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjOSLCR2hE no further coment
QFT!
Just dumping some mobs and NPC's in a zone is not of this time and age anymore. You could do that 12 years ago maybe, because AI pathing/scripting wasn't that far yet.
But that this day and age, after games like LOTRO, EQ2, AoC, etc, etc (/sigh yeah even WoW) we come to expect better than that!
U know what no one is gonna make u play this game u dont like it fine. What i dont understand id why everyone i mean everyone who starts a negative thread doesnt just start 1 they start like 10 of them.
What 1 rant wasnt enough.
I for have had a blast in tor but i dont nitpick every little thing. If u dont think people wouldnt cry about nite day cycles and the moons and stuf u havent been paying attention to what htey whine about already.
If they had a day nite cycle which u knew wasnt gonna be in what 9 months ago , people would find something to cry about. they have to whine about something cause its not gw 2
Yeah Ashenvale beta was nothing like Ashenvale release.
You guys really believe you are stress testing on the final build? There are night and day cycles and rain/weather. None are implimented on this build.
I can't tell you how much I love Beta to release comparisons.
There arent gonna be day/ nite cycles. No offense thats been announced for months.
Painfulllllllll.....
It's entirely possible the OP's opinion is valid concerning any content that doesn't relate to your character. The NPC development as it relates to your character is awesome. Even the little blurbs of voice they spout when you click on them after you're done with all the questing relates to you in a meaningful way.
I'm not sure about stuff that doesn't relate to you though...I don't pay much attention to the 'people in the background'. Generally, unless you're going out of your way to look at them they don't really matter. Why would you sit there and stare at a gardener or some guy at the bar?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
It's entirely possible the OP's opinion is valid concerning any content that doesn't relate to your character. The NPC development as it relates to your character is awesome. Even the little blurbs of voice they spout when you click on them after you're done with all the questing relates to you in a meaningful way.
I'm not sure about stuff that doesn't relate to you though...I don't pay much attention to the 'people in the background'. Generally, unless you're going out of your way to look at them they don't really matter. Why would you sit there and stare at a gardener or some guy at the bar?
I take that back. There's even stuff going on around you that has nothing to do with you. There's no good reason for it to be there other than environmental 'flavor'.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
When I run through the Jedi Temple with probably 50-60 npc's sitting around and it feels like I'm running through a library or graveyard - that's the problem.
You mention little things npc's say to you - that's ONLY the quest giving npc's, you cannot click on any of the random npc's walking around (or should I say usually just stuck in place) unless they are a quest giver.
Yeah I've ponder about this since I tried the game, where did they spent it all?
Felt like when you made your own modules to NWN you put a mob here and there or in groups took like 1min to do and they stood there waitied to be killed when you started the module.
Same in TOR the mobs the npcs the so called "wildlife" they are all static hardly move and if they move they move in one direction and stop and go back the same way they came from.
*crickets* anyone?, that was the feeling of the enviroment i got when i played TOR.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
I made a post about this in both the SWTOR general forums and suggestion box forums. Seems most players are on the same page about this. Can see the general chat post here:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=678077
and the suggestion box post here (perhaps replying in the suggestion thread will help get Bioware's attention?) We'll see
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=678344
Funny, last time I checked mobs in WoW just stand there or path a set pattern over and over again. They won't even attack you unless you attack them 98% of the time. And even if they did, your toon is so OP compared to them that they didn't have a chance to begin with.
I also seem to recall everyone complaining about the mobs in Rift dismounting players all the time (low level mobs attacking high level characters). It was such an inconvenience that they made the mobs ignore high level characters. Where's the realism in that? Yeah I hate your guts, but only if you are at my level or lower.
You say you want life, but only if it doesn't interfere with your game. They can fill the world with thousands of mobs that auto aggro onto everything in sight... you'd spend more time killing them then doing the quests and possibly never get very far in an hours time. Then you'd complain that it's too real and that you want the world to be more static so that you can avoid the mobs and do whatever.
Games are like this because the player base asked for it to be that way... just as they asked for Pandas.
MOBs don't move around, because there is no ROOM for them to move around. All the places that I have been in the game had creatures crammed into the environment in such a way that they literally were on top of each other. I understand there are more open spaces later in the game, but from what I have seen in videos, this doesn't change. The people who build SWTOR's world have a thing or two to learn about making it feel alive.
Completely wrong. While what people want is subjective as far as details go, you still have basically two camps of people on this site. One camp loves the direction current themepark MMOs are going, which tends to lean on the side of solo-friendly, linear, simplified casual gameplay, and the others want something much more deep such as a virtual world, non-linear. You can categorize these as themepark and sandbox if you want, but I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, The Secret World is shaping up to be a nice hybrid of the two.
I have said for a while now that it would help a lot if these two types of games were not lumped into the MMORPG genre, because they are completely different gaming experiences and the two groups of people involved don't really understand each other. That is the main source of arguments here.
For example, your virtual world (sandbox, whatever) type player will probably love a player-driven economy with in-game housing, deep resource and crafting systems, skill-based and open ended gaming (no end game), community, non-combat classes with full gameplay paths, interdependent classes where no player is an island unto themselves, community and RP features, etc.
A themepark player tends to be combat-focused and to not care about crafting much at all, and if they do, they want it fairly simple so it doesn't take much time away from leveling. They don't want to be "forced" to group or work with other players to progress in the world. They prefer a fairly linear leveling progression toward end-game or rerolling another class. Social features don't really interest them. Non-combat classes are considered useless, etc.
Of course I am generalizing here and some of you will be in both, or neither camps, but those are really your main camps here. We can argue details all day long, but the fact is that these two mmo philosophies are as different as night and day. It's a lot like watching a Democrat trying to understand the mindset of a Republican, and vice versa. Two different universes.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Life? Soul? Realism? You just counterdefined Video Game right there.
For most people, character development and personal story ends upon clicking "Log in" if not "Start Game"
The "life and soul" of mmos for me is the community. With that being the case, it is no great surprise most are shockingly poor in that department these days.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
I have seen rain, lightning, sandstorms and snowstorms.
There is weather in the game, so I guess that's one that can be knocked off the list.
Personally I didn't mind the lack of day/night cycles, but YMMV.
{mod edit} You are on a forum where a game is being discussed, and one of the many discussions that are currently going on involves a complaint about the (lack of) life and soul in this game, anything that is relevant to the topic should be posted. {mod edit}
Well, treating abstract concepts as concrete usually does lead to trouble.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Where's the life and soul of this game?
Thats what you as a player need to put inthere....
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
MOBs don't move around, because there is no ROOM for them to move around. All the places that I have been in the game had creatures crammed into the environment in such a way that they literally were on top of each other. I understand there are more open spaces later in the game, but from what I have seen in videos, this doesn't change. The people who build SWTOR's world have a thing or two to learn about making it feel alive.
Mobs exist so you can kill them. Why does it matter what they're doing when you're not killing them? If you're not doing something that's part of your story line or a mission, you won't even see them.
In the process of killing them (the actual important part of the interaction), I've watched them duck behind cover, jump out from behind objects and heal each other (until I kill the healer). I've been crowd controlled too. This is a LOT more than most mmorpg where the mobs just stand there and mindlessly plug away at you until they die. I could really give a cr@p if they don't patrol around.
The NPCs on the other hand are something else entirely. The talk and have little conversations. NPCs that I've dealt with in the past with missions have something to say to me that relates both to themselves and to my missions. I've gotten a couple letters from NPCs I've dealt with in the past, giving me an update on how things are turning out (mostly good, thanks to me). At once point I walked into a bar past the security, and when I walked out the bouncers were dead and the crowd in front of the bar had scatter off someplace. I have no idea what happened there because I wasn't involved in whatever it was. It looked interesting whatever it was. In another area where security forces are fighting insurgents, you can kill the insurgents and instead of just spawning more insurgents, more come running from someplace to take up positions against the security forces.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but it really does seem that people are trying to find anything they can to nitpick about.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
SWTOR: Immersion unleashed.....
Honestly, I've been trying not to get involved regarding the little back and forths going on about how brilliant/disappointing this game is, but if what you said is how people actually feel, they kind of deserve a flat experience. That whole sentence reaks of MMO fail. Themeparks away!
That is the case for every MMO outside of Ryzom, get some perspective...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
agree and the more we pay for it the more they will push it.
That's the deal with this game right now. You're hearing the lovers of it say "we didn't need that feature anyway, and 99% of gamers don't care about it". So basically what they are saying is exactly what I said in the OP. The game is a sterile mmo experience where VO quests were used to spice up otherwise boring (in my opinion) gameplay and world. The world, the atmosphere, the details that immerse you deeply into the story, is non-existant. Now I know some people will argue that last sentence, and all I can say to that is good on you, if you are cool with the way this game looks and feels. For me, compared to much, much older games, it is dead and lifeless. Hell, even Rift feels more alive than this one to me and I find Rift to be general boring as well.
What can one expect when the Bioware devs basically came out a few months back and started using language like "WoW is a touchstone" to describe their $120m brand new Star Wars game.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.