This has been both a funny and informitive thread.
Many here have echoed what I have speculated while others put blinders on to the parties involved on thier favorite (unreleased) game.
Let me add this. Search for Jim Ward of Lucas Arts (1997-2008) and read his interviews.
Think about the companies involved with the making of both SWG & TOR. SOE, Lucas Arts, EA and BioWare
Now think about the past business actions of these companies and what they can bring good or bad to the market.
SOE has done its best when it did not have a second party involved. No splitting of interest. Generally, LA has done better dealing with smaller studios that fell under thier control... a long time ago. EA has a rep for killing compition on thier EA Sports devision and pulled games that didn't meet thier expectation even if there was a solid following. BioWare is not the same company that developed KOTOR or Baldur's Gate since EA purchased them. Further, is it a positive situation to have three companies communicating for consistancy on one game? If SOE and LA couldn't agree on SWG and its direction how does that compare to TOR?
You all know that many developers of SWG from Lucas Arts jumped over to work on TOR, right?
I am a Star Wars fanboi ... since 1977. But even my eyes have opened to slack quality in favor of the easier buck. I salute LA for commiting to making better games in the future... but the future is unwritten and by who's standards of "better"?
I like many of you want TOR to be great and change the market. I haven't seen reported anything that assures that. My wish is for a new Original Saga Star Wars MMO to be developed... yes a SWG2. But I won't hold my breath.
Do what??? Who moved from swg to SWTOR they are two different companies.
Several former SWG developers (Dallas Dickinson, for one) are currently working for Bioware on SWTOR.
So I started to walk into the water. I won't lie to you boys...I was terrified. But I pressed on, and as I made my way past the breakers, a strange calm came over me. I don't know if it was divine intervention or the kinship of all living things, but I tell you, Jerry, at that moment ... I was a marine biologist.
A lot of good thoughts, good writing, in this thread.
SWG had a number of problems. The principle one was that the outlier bomb that is WoW dropped right after SWG launched, under the old theory of MMO design and launch...send it out half baked and the crowd would still go for it. WoW smashed that particular way of publishing an MMO, and SOE was very slow to catch on to that aspect of it. In fact, I don't think they have yet.
So LA sees WoW taking off and asks "how come this totally non galaxy dominating IP is kicking our ass?" Make the game more fast and exciting...they didn't like Koster's design that much in the first place, I don' t think. Koster was going for this huge RP sandbox thing, and LA was thinking FPS with glowsticks. The entire Jedi thing was all about how successful the various Dark Forces sequels, which featured flashlights and glowsticks left and right, and LA was thinking that what the game needed was more Kyle Katarn and less Uncle Owen. The success of KOTOR around the same time, compared with SWG, pretty much sealed the deal. The market wants lightsabers.
The fact that JK III and IV, and KOTOR were fully developed games, not half baked alphas, was lost on both LA and SOE as one of the principle reasons SWG was struggling. Flashlights do not a game make. If SWG had a lot fewer bugs and a lot more content, and was better tested before going live for play balance issues, might have been the WoW. But SOE doesn't do polish. They just don't. They shove stuff out the door and let the base MMORPG audience lap it up. Which they did at first. Despite all the problems, SWG was the fastest growing game in MMO history...untill the 800 pound gorilla showed up a year later.
WoW was something totally different...a game that hugely expanded the MMO market, because it WORKED. It was accessible from the getgo, and while had its own set of problems at launch, it was pretty obvious that more work had gone into it before it was launched. The combat system worked, specials fired, there were things for the players to do in the form of highly directed content. People who would give up on an MMO heard about this (positive word of mouth), found it was easy to get into and play, and of course like any game like this, was highly addicting. SWG was (at least for me) highly addticting, but many people just don't have my patience because they see the potential...they want instant gratification, and WoW delivered that.
So WoW went and broke the million mark first, and LA is fuming, demands SOE make SWG more like an FPS, and so SOE comes up with the NGE as the solution.
And sends it out in half-alpha state, wipes out SWGs playerbase, and sends a lot of them packing off to WoW.
What is kinda annoying about all this is not that the game had to close, sure i can understand people loved the game. I don't even find the saying LA had something to do with it closing. I don't pretend to know what goes on behind closed doors.
What does annoy me about this whole thing is this constant trying to put a blade into SW;TOR with various underhand tatics like saying it needs X amount of subs. There is no need for this, Smed worked on a game i really enjoyed in EQ so he gets respect there, but everytime he doesn't just man up and say, we screwed up or the game just didn't do so hot, and instead chooses to either shift the blame or take low blow attacks at another game from a different company, he just comes off as whiny and childish which makes me lose respect for him.
He was okay in my book with stating SW:TOR was one of the reasons, because frankly i think it is. a portion of the people playing SWG are probably only playing it so they can be in the star wars world in an MMO setting. THeres a good chance when TOR does come out that they will flock to it.
I feel pretty safe in saying that SWG isn't really pulling the sandbox fans in, and those that liked the questing will almost sure (well they will now) switch to TOR which emphasis on the questing mechanics.
So if SWG isn't pulling in the sandbox crowd, it would lose the questing crowd, and most likely unless theres a feature in the game that TOR doesn't have that SWG does it would have lost the Star wars crowd. That would have left the crafting crowd and i don't think they were enough to keep the game going.
So i will agree TOR had an impact on the decision but to go even further and start with the well you think you'll do well there huh? betray me will you, well mark my words you'll regret it cause I know how much it costs and they will sink faster then SWG did, but don't come crying to me when it does because you didn't listen to me and played my game, no you went wondering off to that other game.
Sounds like a rejected lover rather then a shrewd business man. I have to ask what happened when he was running EQ? It seems like at that time period they had love for games now it just seems like hes after money and is pissed that he can't have the star wars game anymore. Kinda like a child losing a toy. That isn't how a respectable business person reacts, They console their fans, let them know the reasons it didn't work out and then let them know what they go next. They don't start attacking others games and making outlandish conjectures on other games in an attempt (vain or otherwise) to bring down a up coming game that people may enjoy. We are all suppose to be gamers and the only way gamers win is if we are having fun. Wish doom and gloom and downfall of games is kinda being an anti-gamer.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Whatever people think about SWG and SOE, I got one thing out of playing that game that I have yet to find in any other game I have played:
A true community.
Me and my new-found friends spent 4 years building a community in that buggy sandbox. 4 Years making stories, friends, and enemies, sharing adventures, and living a Star Wars life together.
SWG, or rather SOE, was responsible for a lot of excellent new systems. Just look at multi-person starships and housing. What game has let you turn your house into a mini theatre, where you could make 50 of the same skirt and then move them around until they look like a theatre curtain? Or fiddle around a bunch of blaster barrels and electronic components so that it looks like your house has security cameras? And then you get to do the whole thing all over again in your private collection of starships.
As much as I am totally looking forward to TOR, will it let me move cargo boxes around in my freighter? Hell no.
My only real problem with SOE is that they seem to suffer from 'half-assed syndrome'. They never fully manage to tap the potential of what the are designing. They bring out an awesome new feature, but there's always something wrong with it. So then they spend months of patches trying to get it right, and by the time it's done, nobody cares anymore.
Like the Storytelling system. Fabulous idea, I loved it as a roleplayer. But it was all waaaay too late.
So yeah, anyhoo, point is, I've played around 25 different MMOs since SWG, and none of them have ever held my interest as long as that piece of junk did. Strange really.
I agree the community in games like EQ and SWG were incrediable for me. One of the few times i actually got into the game for the community. I haven't put my finger on why it was.
I remember being apart of a guild that went through the effort to train me in the ways of the jedi for my ithorian just for the role playing sense. They had chambers where you had to meet the main master and go through a small test, then do mock duels for training and certain lightsabers you were not allow to equip until you reached a certain point in your training. It was awesome. Still trying to figure out what cuased this sort of community to form. It's not sandbox i know because the same thing happened in EQ and that was themepark.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I agree the community in games like EQ and SWG were incrediable for me. One of the few times i actually got into the game for the community. I haven't put my finger on why it was.
I remember being apart of a guild that went through the effort to train me in the ways of the jedi for my ithorian just for the role playing sense. They had chambers where you had to meet the main master and go through a small test, then do mock duels for training and certain lightsabers you were not allow to equip until you reached a certain point in your training. It was awesome. Still trying to figure out what cuased this sort of community to form. It's not sandbox i know because the same thing happened in EQ and that was themepark.
As my PA's most successful smuggler I remember having to track down our Jedi in the depths of Endor's woods, just to deliver secret stashes of food and supplies, whilst avoiding enemy PVPers looking to kill him. This was back when the Jedi perma-death was live for a while. Good times.
Comments
Several former SWG developers (Dallas Dickinson, for one) are currently working for Bioware on SWTOR.
So I started to walk into the water. I won't lie to you boys...I was terrified. But I pressed on, and as I made my way past the breakers, a strange calm came over me. I don't know if it was divine intervention or the kinship of all living things, but I tell you, Jerry, at that moment ... I was a marine biologist.
Have to say I totally agree with this belief.
RIP Old man. I feel bad for the way this game died.
What is kinda annoying about all this is not that the game had to close, sure i can understand people loved the game. I don't even find the saying LA had something to do with it closing. I don't pretend to know what goes on behind closed doors.
What does annoy me about this whole thing is this constant trying to put a blade into SW;TOR with various underhand tatics like saying it needs X amount of subs. There is no need for this, Smed worked on a game i really enjoyed in EQ so he gets respect there, but everytime he doesn't just man up and say, we screwed up or the game just didn't do so hot, and instead chooses to either shift the blame or take low blow attacks at another game from a different company, he just comes off as whiny and childish which makes me lose respect for him.
He was okay in my book with stating SW:TOR was one of the reasons, because frankly i think it is. a portion of the people playing SWG are probably only playing it so they can be in the star wars world in an MMO setting. THeres a good chance when TOR does come out that they will flock to it.
I feel pretty safe in saying that SWG isn't really pulling the sandbox fans in, and those that liked the questing will almost sure (well they will now) switch to TOR which emphasis on the questing mechanics.
So if SWG isn't pulling in the sandbox crowd, it would lose the questing crowd, and most likely unless theres a feature in the game that TOR doesn't have that SWG does it would have lost the Star wars crowd. That would have left the crafting crowd and i don't think they were enough to keep the game going.
So i will agree TOR had an impact on the decision but to go even further and start with the well you think you'll do well there huh? betray me will you, well mark my words you'll regret it cause I know how much it costs and they will sink faster then SWG did, but don't come crying to me when it does because you didn't listen to me and played my game, no you went wondering off to that other game.
Sounds like a rejected lover rather then a shrewd business man. I have to ask what happened when he was running EQ? It seems like at that time period they had love for games now it just seems like hes after money and is pissed that he can't have the star wars game anymore. Kinda like a child losing a toy. That isn't how a respectable business person reacts, They console their fans, let them know the reasons it didn't work out and then let them know what they go next. They don't start attacking others games and making outlandish conjectures on other games in an attempt (vain or otherwise) to bring down a up coming game that people may enjoy. We are all suppose to be gamers and the only way gamers win is if we are having fun. Wish doom and gloom and downfall of games is kinda being an anti-gamer.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Whatever people think about SWG and SOE, I got one thing out of playing that game that I have yet to find in any other game I have played:
A true community.
Me and my new-found friends spent 4 years building a community in that buggy sandbox. 4 Years making stories, friends, and enemies, sharing adventures, and living a Star Wars life together.
SWG, or rather SOE, was responsible for a lot of excellent new systems. Just look at multi-person starships and housing. What game has let you turn your house into a mini theatre, where you could make 50 of the same skirt and then move them around until they look like a theatre curtain? Or fiddle around a bunch of blaster barrels and electronic components so that it looks like your house has security cameras? And then you get to do the whole thing all over again in your private collection of starships.
As much as I am totally looking forward to TOR, will it let me move cargo boxes around in my freighter? Hell no.
My only real problem with SOE is that they seem to suffer from 'half-assed syndrome'. They never fully manage to tap the potential of what the are designing. They bring out an awesome new feature, but there's always something wrong with it. So then they spend months of patches trying to get it right, and by the time it's done, nobody cares anymore.
Like the Storytelling system. Fabulous idea, I loved it as a roleplayer. But it was all waaaay too late.
So yeah, anyhoo, point is, I've played around 25 different MMOs since SWG, and none of them have ever held my interest as long as that piece of junk did. Strange really.
I agree the community in games like EQ and SWG were incrediable for me. One of the few times i actually got into the game for the community. I haven't put my finger on why it was.
I remember being apart of a guild that went through the effort to train me in the ways of the jedi for my ithorian just for the role playing sense. They had chambers where you had to meet the main master and go through a small test, then do mock duels for training and certain lightsabers you were not allow to equip until you reached a certain point in your training. It was awesome. Still trying to figure out what cuased this sort of community to form. It's not sandbox i know because the same thing happened in EQ and that was themepark.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
As my PA's most successful smuggler I remember having to track down our Jedi in the depths of Endor's woods, just to deliver secret stashes of food and supplies, whilst avoiding enemy PVPers looking to kill him. This was back when the Jedi perma-death was live for a while. Good times.