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On the brief history of LucasArts / BioWare
Naucano
Member UncommonPosts: 80
Historians say we should learn from history. Well this is the history of MMO and other Star Wars games and some things which matter.
LucasArts games are going way back to 1992-1993 as pure merchandise. But let us start at:
June 2003 Star Wars Galaxies launches. Three years after LucasArts had made a site for it. In 2000 the game, what became later known as the SWG, was started being build by the same team that had made the Everquest Multiplayer.
July 2003 BioWare publishes “Knights Of The Old Republic” a RPG game based on the WotC d20 D&D rules ( 3e edtion ). With an elaborated voice-cast and a story set 4 thousand years before the movies.
2003 is also the year in which Raven software uses a Quake III engine to make the “Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy”. Here we get the introduction of the different “combat-styles” of the jedi. The story is set after the last movie-story and Luke Skywalker is being depicted as a jedi master.
23 november 2004 - Blizzard, 3 years after it’s announcement, releases World of Warcraft. Love it or hate it but MMO-business never will be the same after this.
2004-2005 ( USA/EU ) Obsidian took over from Bioware and publishes KOTOR II the Sith Lords. Biggest change, besides changes such as combat animation and interface, Obsidian makes, is the influences the players alignment can have on his “teammates”.
Already in 2003 It seems there was third one planed, and later on some material have been made. Some ideas were going in the MMO-direction. Which at that time could mean some adaptation and or add-on for SWG. In 2004 this idea was abandoned or canceled.
Pandemic Studios meanwhile had made the first of the “The Battlefront”-games with an online multiplayer feature.
27 April 2005 SOE launches its bad received “Combat Update”. Players are cancelling their subs after a while afther this. In the couple of months, years to come SWG/Sony is struggling(?) more and more to keep up, trying to get the game going. WoW at the same times grows out to be a monument.
April 2005 LEGO makes its first adorable game based on the famous plastic building bricks. Every two year, upon till now they will be making a game, which is set in that big Universum of StarWars. They enhance the cuddly factor but nothing else.
In may 23 2005(!) Gordon Walton ( Maxis, Sony Online ( yes SWG or didn’t you know ? ) and just started working now for BioWare ) bumps onto the guys of Simutronics at the E3 show, who where trying to make a name for the Hero Engine. They made an impression, indeed, they even got an award from mmorpg.com.
Neil Harris, President and COO of HeroEngine:
”Gordon is not an excitable guy by nature but this had his adrenaline flowing. “This is just what I need! I want to license your engine.”
We had thought about offering our engine and tools to developers but we had expected that we would have to actually ship a game first, like Epic did with Unreal Tournament before they licensed the original Unreal Engine.
“It’s not productized yet,” we told Gordon. “There are whole sections of code that is only roughed in and not optimized for performance or security. And there are very few comments and very little documentation.”
He didn’t care. “We are going to have tons of engineers. We can finish it ourselves. We’re going to want to modify your source code for our special project anyway.”
( fulltext )
2005 Activision uses the Unreal Engine to make an FPS about an elite stormtrooper squad during the clone wars: “Star Wars: Republic Commando”. It is one of the few games without the player being able to be a jedi, but it was well received as an enjoyable game. The main “complaints” were, that the campaign was too short and the multiplayer not elaborated enough.
13 October 2005 Lucasarts/Pandemic sequelled the Battlefront serie ( why change a winning horse ? ), and comes up with more of the same.
15 November 2005 SWG launches the now called “New Game Enhancements” update. Which made the remaining players even more frustrated then with the first.
August 2005 Sony told the world that 1 million boxes of the game were sold, but they forget to mention “something boiled” in that player community.
Early 2006 unconfirmed rumor stated that 10 thousand players were playing SWG at one particular friday. True or not, it is obvious by now that Star Wars has some “issues”.
January 2007 Microsoft has its new OS ready: Vista. Which became a disaster, but we did not knew that at the time. This was also the start of the os which should have supported the DirectX 11 and enhanced physics capabilities. Followed by Nvidia and ATI to announce new videocards supporting it … and promptly receiving messages about driver problems, because, as we know now, that is one of the things where Vista has screwed up big time.
2007-2008 Bioware starts a website/forum and starts building up a hype around a “new Star Wars” MMO. They make a Trailer, with a capital “T”, with a graphical style which is infamous different ( better ) then the ingame graphical style. It sets the tone of the storytelling philosophy. They make this movie perfect, so that afterwards, if somebody comes complaining about the actual ingame quality of graphics one could tell “Yes, but everybody knows, trailers are always eyecatchers, not the real thing”.
2008 The first “The Force Unleashed” was released. This game was the first in which compelling story and physics where more emphasized then gameplay. So on the downside many players complained about getting “frustration” from the game. The game had been build in 4 years and used the concept of combos. The lightsaber was thought of as “another” force power.
2009 Simutronics Hero's Journey, an unreleased graphical MMORPG which they were building, is being cancelled without much ado. The reason is unclear.
Oktober 2009 Microsoft try to make amends with Windows 7 and goes into therapy after Vista.
2010 Idea Fabrik buys the HeroEngine and staff.
2010 The Second “The Force Unleashed” gets the same criticism as its predecessor: praised for its graphic and sound but elements of the gameplay are getting much frustrated feedback.
15 December 2011 SWG ends, all servers are going down for ever. Coincidence or not , TOR is going officially into pre-release.
20 December 2011 BioWares big hyped new MMO “Star Wars The Old Republic” is launched.
Rated M for Mature - May contain content inappropriate for children
Comments
Ummm, I guess that is a nice timeline. Not staying to the LucasArts/Bioware title, but oh well.
This; however, got my attention: "They
make a Trailer, with a capital “T”, with a graphical style which is
infamous different ( better ) then the ingame graphical style. It sets
the tone of the storytelling philosophy. They make this movie perfect,
so that afterwards, if somebody comes complaining about the actual
ingame quality of graphics one could tell “Yes, but everybody knows,
trailers are always eyecatchers, not the real thing”."
The rest of the post is nicely done with tidbits about what was going on, then you go all tirade on the graphics of TOR. Puts the whole article in a different light.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Thats a rather nice biased historical acount you have there. Dates look right, comments are questionable, definately skewed though. Would have been better had you just decided to tell the facts and not embelish them with your own personal attitude.
Most definately has more than it's fair share of baiting comments in there, thats for sure. I'd anticipate you get your fair share of flames on that the way you wrote it, well deserved too I would say.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
Thanks,
Great write up
It will be exciting to see how this develops further.
I thought it was pretty interesting, and I don't mind your take. Makes it even more interesting that a list of bland facts.
I self identify as a monkey.
Well at least I got your attention
in my defence I would only say this:
You are reading something, you want to read, not what I have written.
I only said the trailers are of an other quality level then the ingame graphics. This is not apreciation, this also fact. Bioware made the choice of going for a cartoonesque ingame graphic. Their choice. The movies on the other hand have a much more realistic look with remniscence to the ingame characters.
Put the Satele ingame next to one in the trailer, don't you see a difference ? Can't you see how they move, how they behave ? Detail ? I thought the difference would be obvious ?
The ingame can't be as good as the trailers, both because of technicalities and because of choices made by Bioware. I wanted to stress the fact that BW started its own hype, with this sort of very good movies. Which only would feed a possiblity that the average viewer would get the wrong impression this would be the quality ingame.
Rated M for Mature - May contain content inappropriate for children
You will see that every history always has a personal attitude. And I rather admit it is personal, then trying to lie about its objectivity. So you flatter me with the word "biased". Thank you.
As longs as I get a reply with arguments or ideas, ... reasons: I am happy to oblige. Flaming is just flaming stupid
. But thankx for the warning anyway 
My comments are indeed "skewed". The reason is simple: the more companies, persons are making big noises, alot of fuz, big hype, I start looking for the things behind the scene. The more they shout, the more I think something is weird. A good product just need a decent, but correct praise, anything above that is vanity. This said, I do know marketing does not like modesty. And game business is not a straight business, good products have been failure nonetheless.
I think BW, all in all, made a good game ( again ). But any exaggerations, for or against, are premature.
The trailers of this game though I find very good. In fact they could easily rival with the Pixar and Dreamworks films. So if BW would be going into animation and or film business, I would think they some good ideas. But I hope they stay making games. In fact now that SWTOR is launched, I am curious what they still have in their sleeves.
Rated M for Mature - May contain content inappropriate for children
Oh I'm sorry, I honestly thought this was another attempt at pushing your views on everyone else because you had such a horrible customer service experience with SW:TOR so far. I didnt know you were actually trying to be a journalist and tell the history of BW/EA and the SW gaming franchise to date.
Oh and telling a history is not always done with bias, and it should never be told in a skewed manner. It should tell the facts of what happened and when, not to be bent into delivering the intended message of the person telling it. I am not responding here for or against the game itself, BW or EA, I am responding because of your irrisponsible use of the historical facts in an attempt to alter the perception of the readers to fit your beliefs. Tell the history fine, give the facts fine, bait others with misleading and biased opinion on an internet forum....just bad form and not needed.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
For those wondering, I got most of the stuff by reading wikipedia, mmorpg and other sources. And some of the "biased" stuff is right in there.
Offcourse any history, great or small, in this world has its own purpose. It always start, be it the big RL worldhistory or the small daily life, with facts, but it goes beyond. Though, some things we will never know. Why was the HeroEngine chosen ? And was this only an one man's decision ? You'll have to ask the person in question.
I am sure anybody can see I made my own selection. Some of the comments are my own, it would be unwise to think otherwise. I put in the remark of the graphics to show that some remarks on forums, such as but not only, here in mmorpg are a result of the display of BioWare itself. A hype always create expectations. Whether those expectations are justified or not is now a matter of every individual. I am such an individual, and as such I comment. Is this worth anything ? I only fancy myself there are worse thing written already about the subject.
I am sure most of readers will only see it, for what it is, as a litle doodah between vast uncountable threads about something vital as a online multiplayer game.
And never forget, these forums, and the ones of BW, and all other "collections" of text, about this infinit small element of our daily life are but an island in the vast silence of an universe of other players happily ignorant of what we have written here.
I hope some of us get some more things in perspective if you display a list like this. Maybe somebody will start asking questions ? Now that would be presumptuous of me. I'll just quote "The Flemeth" here, "Witch of the wild" in Dragon Age I:
"I don't expect you to do anything, least of all think"
Rated M for Mature - May contain content inappropriate for children