This isn't going to turn out like some think. Not everyone wants to fling a glowstick.
Not everyone of the hardcore audience on this site perhaps, but the vast majority of SW fans world wide care only for Jedi. It was that way in SWG, its that way in all the single-player games (with the exception of maybe the Xwing series), and its that way in nearly all of the EU fiction.
SW = Jedi to most people, which is unfortunate because it could be much more than that, but never will be due to sales numbers.
Regardless, looking forward to the game.
I think the early days of SWG disprove what you are saying to some degree, even the later days too. What made Jedi in SWG the end all be all was that they where an alpha class, so easily superior to any other class. That, and other things, is what killed the game. I don't see BioWare being so stupid as SOE was, or whoring out and alpha class to avoid cancels in lieu of fixing issues. I think there will be a myriad of viable classes and dare I say, balance.
Exactly. I don't see Bioware creating broken professions that can't stand a chance in PVP while all their attention is focused on Jedi. People went jedi in SWG because professions like Smuggler and Commando (which they REALLY wanted to play)were almost useless and never fixed. If PVP was your thing then you went jedi because it was way overpowered.
I like to PVP and if I expect every profession to play some role in it. From what I saw of the trailer, Bioware is on the right track.
This isn't going to turn out like some think. Not everyone wants to fling a glowstick.
Not everyone of the hardcore audience on this site perhaps, but the vast majority of SW fans world wide care only for Jedi. It was that way in SWG, its that way in all the single-player games (with the exception of maybe the Xwing series), and its that way in nearly all of the EU fiction.
SW = Jedi to most people, which is unfortunate because it could be much more than that, but never will be due to sales numbers.
Regardless, looking forward to the game.
I think the early days of SWG disprove what you are saying to some degree, even the later days too. What made Jedi in SWG the end all be all was that they where an alpha class, so easily superior to any other class. That, and other things, is what killed the game. I don't see BioWare being so stupid as SOE was, or whoring out and alpha class to avoid cancels in lieu of fixing issues. I think there will be a myriad of viable classes and dare I say, balance.
SWG was never popular with the casual crowd, pre and post NGE. After all, that is why they implemented the NGE in the first place, the original game was failing big time.
All of you "rose tinted glass" people keep forgetting or ignoring the fact that SWG was bleeding subs and they were falling below 200k and that scared them into the CU and NGE. Sadly, the updates were just as bad as the original game, so they got flack from both sides of the fence.
I believe the only thing that helped them recover some of the losses was the readily available Jedi class and the space expansion.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
I wish they kinda used the original system that swg used where people had to accomplish a lot of ingame activities before unlocking the jedi class. Oh well. And yea, im going to be a jedi or sith :O Sorry cant help it. Im just starting to read the star wars novels and anything regarding luke or mara jade is the most exciting.
That was epic failure because they told everyone how to unlock jedi with the stupid holocron's and then removed perma death to appease all the cry babies, which eventualy led to the NGE where everyone could be a Jedi.
Alpha classes never work in a MMO because if your put restrictions on them people will cry to have the restrictons removed. The more restrictions they remove the less powerful the alpha class has to be as more people keep getting them.
Well said, SWG also had the problem of using Jedi to stave off cancellations when the problems from those first few months started coming to a head. Alpha class is very bad, alpha class restrictions being removed making it easy for anyone to get is worse, using said unrestricted alpha class to keep people frustrated with bugs and broken class and bad mechanics is game breaking.
The main reasons most MMO's fail at obtaining high subscription numbers is because they release it way to early. Now im not talking about bugs or class adjustments, I'm talking about huge portions of missing content. SWG wsa suppose to have Battle Grounds that people could join in and fight each other along with npc's, they were suppose to have a continuing story arc every month, they were suppose to have player cities, mounts, space ships, etc.. etc.. And all this stuff was missing when SWG went live. Some of it was put in later by a patch or exapnsion, but by then people were already leaving the game because we had a huge sandbox with no toys in it to play with.
Once most of that stuff got put in it was a pretty fun game but the damage had already been done.
Age of Conan had a lot of missing and unfinished content when the game released, even a year later they are still missing content promoised before the game launch, such as drunken brawling and mounted combat. The other problem they had was it was extramly easy to level so people were hitting the level cap only to find the end game content was badly broken, sieges didnt work and raid dungeons were bugged to hell.
WOW for the most part got it right, they had enough content to keep people busy when the game launched. Sure they had bugs and classes had to be tweaked, but overall it was a fairly smooth first month.
The things The Old Republic has going for thim is this.
1) EA and LucasArts have very deep pockets
2) LucasArts knows they need to redeem themselves after the SWG mess
3) Bioware has a proven track record for making high quality games
4) Unlike most MMO's were the game is center around kil gank kill with very little story at all, TOR will be heavily story driven.
5) As long as George Lucas butts out and lets Bioware write the story, it should be pretty good
SWG was never popular with the casual crowd, pre and post NGE. After all, that is why they implemented the NGE in the first place, the original game was failing big time. All of you "rose tinted glass" people keep forgetting or ignoring the fact that SWG was bleeding subs and they were falling below 200k and that scared them into the CU and NGE. Sadly, the updates were just as bad as the original game, so they got flack from both sides of the fence. I believe the only thing that helped them recover some of the losses was the readily available Jedi class and the space expansion.
You are very much confusing the timings. After launching too early (recall the push to get it out in the summer for the kid's out of school crowd) had the game launching well before it was ready. The first 3 to 4 months saw tons of balance issues and major bugs that started to take its toll and then, magically, the holo grind was introduced despite the claims to the contrary up until then that there would be no published path and perma death and other such limits in place. They used the holo grind to buy time because of the very serious early problems they were not keeping up with. But the Jedi alpha class created far more serious problems that, ultimately, led to the CU and NGE and the death of the game. You don't have to be Richard Garriet to know that an MMO cannot work if there is one or two classes that seriously trump all other classes.
It isn't that SWG was growing and popular pre-Jedi, it certainly had issues but they where fixable if you were not SoE looking to market your way out of the mess instead of coding your way out. Early on they developed by nerf bat with such monumental flavor of the month swings in balance that it was hard to believe. Then some genius at SoE figured they just had to dangle Jedi out there to buy time, and it worked in a way, but ultimately by introducing an alpha class to a game with major issues of balance already they went from the frying pan to the fire and instead of having a game that was fixable they had a game that was doomed thus the CU and NGE.
Early bugs and balance issues cost the game subs but the alpha class Jedi, ultimately, killed the game.
I don't think the assumption that the vast majority of players will be Jedi is true. If you ask a random group of people who their favorite Star Wars character is, I expect more people would say Boba Fett, Han Solo, or Chewie than Luke Skywalker. If it's the force/melee gameplay that is so appealing about Jedi, then why aren't there such huge player imbalances in other MMOs that have a class with similar combat gameplay, like a magic/melee class? A lot of people prefer ranged combat or playing a support class like a healer. And they have said that the Jedi/Sith classes will be balanced with other classes, not overpowering, so a desire to play the most powerful class should not be a factor either.
I don't see what is so great about playing a Jedi. With each new class they reveal, I get closer to thinking that there will actually be relatively few people playing Jedi as their main when the game is released.
I don't think the assumption that the vast majority of players will be Jedi is true. If you ask a random group of people who their favorite Star Wars character is, I expect more people would say Boba Fett, Han Solo, or Chewie than Luke Skywalker. If it's the force/melee gameplay that is so appealing about Jedi, then why aren't there such huge player imbalances in other MMOs that have a class with similar combat gameplay, like a magic/melee class? A lot of people prefer ranged combat or playing a support class like a healer. And they have said that the Jedi/Sith classes will be balanced with other classes, not overpowering, so a desire to play the most powerful class should not be a factor either. I don't see what is so great about playing a Jedi. With each new class they reveal, I get closer to thinking that there will actually be relatively few people playing Jedi as their main when the game is released.
I think you are right, unless Jedi is as it was in SWG (an alpha class). If the classes are balanced then you will see diversity of who plays what and the game will have a chance to succeed if other elements are good, if jedi is an alpha class and the other classes are not balanced against them then no matter how good the rest of the game it it will likely stumble.
Comments
If I had to choose today, knowing what I know. I would choose a Trooper. Seems like it will be the least played class to this point.
Not everyone of the hardcore audience on this site perhaps, but the vast majority of SW fans world wide care only for Jedi. It was that way in SWG, its that way in all the single-player games (with the exception of maybe the Xwing series), and its that way in nearly all of the EU fiction.
SW = Jedi to most people, which is unfortunate because it could be much more than that, but never will be due to sales numbers.
Regardless, looking forward to the game.
I think the early days of SWG disprove what you are saying to some degree, even the later days too. What made Jedi in SWG the end all be all was that they where an alpha class, so easily superior to any other class. That, and other things, is what killed the game. I don't see BioWare being so stupid as SOE was, or whoring out and alpha class to avoid cancels in lieu of fixing issues. I think there will be a myriad of viable classes and dare I say, balance.
Exactly. I don't see Bioware creating broken professions that can't stand a chance in PVP while all their attention is focused on Jedi. People went jedi in SWG because professions like Smuggler and Commando (which they REALLY wanted to play)were almost useless and never fixed. If PVP was your thing then you went jedi because it was way overpowered.
I like to PVP and if I expect every profession to play some role in it. From what I saw of the trailer, Bioware is on the right track.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
This poll makes no sense. Not all the classes are revealed and the poll shows factions.
Fail.
Not everyone of the hardcore audience on this site perhaps, but the vast majority of SW fans world wide care only for Jedi. It was that way in SWG, its that way in all the single-player games (with the exception of maybe the Xwing series), and its that way in nearly all of the EU fiction.
SW = Jedi to most people, which is unfortunate because it could be much more than that, but never will be due to sales numbers.
Regardless, looking forward to the game.
I think the early days of SWG disprove what you are saying to some degree, even the later days too. What made Jedi in SWG the end all be all was that they where an alpha class, so easily superior to any other class. That, and other things, is what killed the game. I don't see BioWare being so stupid as SOE was, or whoring out and alpha class to avoid cancels in lieu of fixing issues. I think there will be a myriad of viable classes and dare I say, balance.
SWG was never popular with the casual crowd, pre and post NGE. After all, that is why they implemented the NGE in the first place, the original game was failing big time.
All of you "rose tinted glass" people keep forgetting or ignoring the fact that SWG was bleeding subs and they were falling below 200k and that scared them into the CU and NGE. Sadly, the updates were just as bad as the original game, so they got flack from both sides of the fence.
I believe the only thing that helped them recover some of the losses was the readily available Jedi class and the space expansion.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
That was epic failure because they told everyone how to unlock jedi with the stupid holocron's and then removed perma death to appease all the cry babies, which eventualy led to the NGE where everyone could be a Jedi.
Alpha classes never work in a MMO because if your put restrictions on them people will cry to have the restrictons removed. The more restrictions they remove the less powerful the alpha class has to be as more people keep getting them.
Well said, SWG also had the problem of using Jedi to stave off cancellations when the problems from those first few months started coming to a head. Alpha class is very bad, alpha class restrictions being removed making it easy for anyone to get is worse, using said unrestricted alpha class to keep people frustrated with bugs and broken class and bad mechanics is game breaking.
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The main reasons most MMO's fail at obtaining high subscription numbers is because they release it way to early. Now im not talking about bugs or class adjustments, I'm talking about huge portions of missing content. SWG wsa suppose to have Battle Grounds that people could join in and fight each other along with npc's, they were suppose to have a continuing story arc every month, they were suppose to have player cities, mounts, space ships, etc.. etc.. And all this stuff was missing when SWG went live. Some of it was put in later by a patch or exapnsion, but by then people were already leaving the game because we had a huge sandbox with no toys in it to play with.
Once most of that stuff got put in it was a pretty fun game but the damage had already been done.
Age of Conan had a lot of missing and unfinished content when the game released, even a year later they are still missing content promoised before the game launch, such as drunken brawling and mounted combat. The other problem they had was it was extramly easy to level so people were hitting the level cap only to find the end game content was badly broken, sieges didnt work and raid dungeons were bugged to hell.
WOW for the most part got it right, they had enough content to keep people busy when the game launched. Sure they had bugs and classes had to be tweaked, but overall it was a fairly smooth first month.
The things The Old Republic has going for thim is this.
1) EA and LucasArts have very deep pockets
2) LucasArts knows they need to redeem themselves after the SWG mess
3) Bioware has a proven track record for making high quality games
4) Unlike most MMO's were the game is center around kil gank kill with very little story at all, TOR will be heavily story driven.
5) As long as George Lucas butts out and lets Bioware write the story, it should be pretty good
Same here. Though I have priorities. Jedi and Smuggler are on top of my list atm.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Going to play them all but the first 2 will be Bounty Hunter and Sith.
Some kind of healer class if they have them. A healer in another game if not.
You are very much confusing the timings. After launching too early (recall the push to get it out in the summer for the kid's out of school crowd) had the game launching well before it was ready. The first 3 to 4 months saw tons of balance issues and major bugs that started to take its toll and then, magically, the holo grind was introduced despite the claims to the contrary up until then that there would be no published path and perma death and other such limits in place. They used the holo grind to buy time because of the very serious early problems they were not keeping up with. But the Jedi alpha class created far more serious problems that, ultimately, led to the CU and NGE and the death of the game. You don't have to be Richard Garriet to know that an MMO cannot work if there is one or two classes that seriously trump all other classes.
It isn't that SWG was growing and popular pre-Jedi, it certainly had issues but they where fixable if you were not SoE looking to market your way out of the mess instead of coding your way out. Early on they developed by nerf bat with such monumental flavor of the month swings in balance that it was hard to believe. Then some genius at SoE figured they just had to dangle Jedi out there to buy time, and it worked in a way, but ultimately by introducing an alpha class to a game with major issues of balance already they went from the frying pan to the fire and instead of having a game that was fixable they had a game that was doomed thus the CU and NGE.
Early bugs and balance issues cost the game subs but the alpha class Jedi, ultimately, killed the game.
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Achiever 60.00%, Socializer 53.00%, Killer 47.00%, Explorer 40.00%
Intel Core i7 Quad, Intel X58 SLi, 6G Corsair XMS DDR3, Intel X-25 SSD, 3 WD Velociraptor SATA SuperTrak SAS EX8650 Array, OCZ 1250W PS, GTX 295, xFi, 32" 1080p LCD
I don't think the assumption that the vast majority of players will be Jedi is true. If you ask a random group of people who their favorite Star Wars character is, I expect more people would say Boba Fett, Han Solo, or Chewie than Luke Skywalker. If it's the force/melee gameplay that is so appealing about Jedi, then why aren't there such huge player imbalances in other MMOs that have a class with similar combat gameplay, like a magic/melee class? A lot of people prefer ranged combat or playing a support class like a healer. And they have said that the Jedi/Sith classes will be balanced with other classes, not overpowering, so a desire to play the most powerful class should not be a factor either.
I don't see what is so great about playing a Jedi. With each new class they reveal, I get closer to thinking that there will actually be relatively few people playing Jedi as their main when the game is released.
The "Uncle Owen" class for me!
I think you are right, unless Jedi is as it was in SWG (an alpha class). If the classes are balanced then you will see diversity of who plays what and the game will have a chance to succeed if other elements are good, if jedi is an alpha class and the other classes are not balanced against them then no matter how good the rest of the game it it will likely stumble.
--------------------------------
Achiever 60.00%, Socializer 53.00%, Killer 47.00%, Explorer 40.00%
Intel Core i7 Quad, Intel X58 SLi, 6G Corsair XMS DDR3, Intel X-25 SSD, 3 WD Velociraptor SATA SuperTrak SAS EX8650 Array, OCZ 1250W PS, GTX 295, xFi, 32" 1080p LCD
Most likely Trooper.
I always play the ground-pounder classes. The ones that do all the heavy lifting. I leave the prima dona classes to the kiddies.