After giving SWTOR it's fair shot I'm left wondering, what in gods great gullet did they spend all of their money on? They had, what, a 200 million dollar budget?
I'm not a GW2 fanboy, but after comparing the two videos I'm beginning to wonder how much money BioWare spent on Crack Cocaine and Heroin for their employees.
Dont think SWTOR cost nearly as much as they claim. Im guessing they just use that as another way to HYPE the game. They bought their engine, They made it easy on themselfs. And they total missread what the MMO market wanted. If they had spent anny time doing some basic market reserch (like Blizzard did back in the day). Asked Fans of the genre about what they wanted and how. If they had payed anny attention to the people they were actually going to sell their game 2. They would have understood that NOBODY exept, maybe Star Wars fanboys wanted to play the game they were making. But they focues all their time copying stuff from other titles and doing voice overs. Proclaiming that voice overs were the second comming....
My prediction is that SWTOR will slowly decline over the next year. It will not shut down but it will never become a smash hit. In 4 years time I see it going the same way as Warhammer online.. 2-4 servers world wide...
After giving SWTOR it's fair shot I'm left wondering, what in gods great gullet did they spend all of their money on? They had, what, a 200 million dollar budget?
I'm not a GW2 fanboy, but after comparing the two videos I'm beginning to wonder how much money BioWare spent on Crack Cocaine and Heroin for their employees.
Dont think SWTOR cost nearly as much as they claim. Im guessing they just use that as another way to HYPE the game. They bought their engine, They made it easy on themselfs. And they total missread what the MMO market wanted. If they had spent anny time doing some basic market reserch (like Blizzard did back in the day). Asked Fans of the genre about what they wanted and how. If they had payed anny attention to the people they were actually going to sell their game 2. They would have understood that NOBODY exept, maybe Star Wars fanboys wanted to play the game they were making. But they focues all their time copying stuff from other titles and doing voice overs. Proclaiming that voice overs were the second comming....
My prediction is that SWTOR will slowly decline over the next year. It will not shut down but it will never become a smash hit. In 4 years time I see it going the same way as Warhammer online.. 2-4 servers world wide...
I think SWTOR will do just fine and i don't even play this game. The only game which is in danger of going F2P and downsize pretty fast on servers is TERA. Except for combat everything else is generic and been there done that in that game. But then again good combat didn't save AOC or DCUO.
After playing SWTOR for a solid 1.5 months and still have 1.5 monhts of sub left i just uninstalled the peice of shit.
The single player is nice with story telling.
But the PvP and the ability lag should have been fixed before release.
Where did BW spend their money on is a big riddle....iam curious what budget Bioware and Arenanet got to make their mmo.
As when you look at GW2 it destroys SWTOR in each department.
From character creation to story telling to Dynamic Events or even PvP...
I feel cheated once again..
I have too lifted the veil that is known as The Old Republic and can now see, just like you, that what you say is the truth. Take away the personal content and storytelling and you end up with little else. Bioware has proven, up to this day that they can make great single player games, but have failed or don't have the ability yet to make a mmorpg. I know there are a lot of us that are huge SW fans and Bioware fans, but what these guys released should have never been packaged as a mmorpg. Leveling from 1 to 50 was a blast, but once you're there, you can truly see how lacking TOR really is. I can also tell you it really hurts to even be posting this, but sometimes the truth hurts. I went into the game knowing exactly waht TOR was, but i didn't expect it to have such a dramatic dropoff once you reached the so called end game.
I bet they neglected antarctica too. How short sighted, imo.
I believe thats some misconceptions here.
We players from asia, which usually being custer as oceanic zone ( apart from Tera ), have the same beta, head-start and launch day, albeit a few hours later, as players from N.A, ever since EQ.
So we have already played this game, and those who want to leave have already left.
Tor releasing the game here in asia is just having a physical server here, like war, thats all.
currently playing SWTOR and enjoying it very much. But I have to agree, the voice chat and character cut scenes are amazing but, wtf dId they spend their money on?
After playing SWTOR for a solid 1.5 months and still have 1.5 monhts of sub left i just uninstalled the peice of shit.
The single player is nice with story telling.
But the PvP and the ability lag should have been fixed before release.
Where did BW spend their money on is a big riddle....iam curious what budget Bioware and Arenanet got to make their mmo.
As when you look at GW2 it destroys SWTOR in each department.
From character creation to story telling to Dynamic Events or even PvP...
I feel cheated once again..
I would say Arenanet reinvested the money they made on GW1. And put all their efforst into making a good GW2. ArenaNet loves their game. They are proud of it, they want to make a game for Gamers. Their not Hired by suits who know nothing about the gaming industry. I would say that anny Creative Ideas that Bioware had, probably got crushed by the MAN. That is what happens when you "SELL OUT". The leadership at Bioware made a shitload of money when they sold out to EA. Most of BIOWARE being older dudes they have long since stoped caring about gaming. Kepping their kidds in private schools and their Wifes/GFs happy is what drives their motivation for making games. Back in 1999 they had the spirit of ARENA net. But the years changes people.. 13 years later they are in a diffrent place, the visions of their youths are gone, replaced by Dollar Signs in their Eyes...
Bioware had no Interest in making a good game, there only reason was MONEY.. And that dosent mix well. Unless you were like Steve Jobs. And your focus in life was to Push the industry forward. But not all humans are made that way. All in all a sad day and we should maybe make a Memorial, sign on tombstone.
Rest in peace BIOWARE 1995-2007
Only the good die Young
If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane,
I'd walk right up to heaven and bring you home again.
Well i can tell you what they didnt spend thier money on.... Support, they must have the worst customer support of any game ive ever played so anyone who want to play this game i sure hope you dont in trouble with your payments or logins.... expect atleat a week before someone with a pulls actually looks into it and he will proberly not do anything until the next weeks maintance to check if its a problem... then he will escalate it and rinse repeat.........
After giving SWTOR it's fair shot I'm left wondering, what in gods great gullet did they spend all of their money on? They had, what, a 200 million dollar budget?
I'm not a GW2 fanboy, but after comparing the two videos I'm beginning to wonder how much money BioWare spent on Crack Cocaine and Heroin for their employees.
to be completely frank they both look like saturday morning cartoons to me and the graphics as well as 3rd person view is the deal breaker for me.
That said, they also both look like the quality of EQ2 which cost 20 million to make not 200 million.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I believe they spend most of their money on v.o, and not only paying the people doing the voice, but also the animations needed to do that, the time to put all those in, all these need money.
Cant imagine how long they need to release the next x-pac...
After playing SWTOR for a solid 1.5 months and still have 1.5 monhts of sub left i just uninstalled the peice of shit.
The single player is nice with story telling.
But the PvP and the ability lag should have been fixed before release.
Where did BW spend their money on is a big riddle....iam curious what budget Bioware and Arenanet got to make their mmo.
As when you look at GW2 it destroys SWTOR in each department.
From character creation to story telling to Dynamic Events or even PvP...
I feel cheated once again..
Uhm one and a half months of solid play ; Well I am not sure i'd feel cheated if I went out for food and beers , I would sure be a couple of thousand dollars up just playing the MMO.....
But when you say you feel cheated I am not sure if you mean from a monetary perspective or a waste of life time !!!! If it is the latter then why do you bother to play with pixels reasl people are more fun.
________________________________________________________ Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
Seriously though, thansk for reminding me to unsubscribe. They already stole one month from me because I went out of town the weekend my free period expired. Ug!
Trammies need to stop polluting the MMORPG landscape. They already have enough games in which to emote hugs and sell garbage by the banks.
Well i can tell you what they didnt spend thier money on.... Support, they must have the worst customer support of any game ive ever played so anyone who want to play this game i sure hope you dont in trouble with your payments or logins.... expect atleat a week before someone with a pulls actually looks into it and he will proberly not do anything until the next weeks maintance to check if its a problem... then he will escalate it and rinse repeat.........
Anything EA and support.......you should have known better, well unless this is your first EA game then I am sorry.
Seriously though, thansk for reminding me to unsubscribe. They already stole one month from me because I went out of town the weekend my free period expired. Ug!
After playing SWTOR for a solid 1.5 months and still have 1.5 monhts of sub left i just uninstalled the peice of shit.
The single player is nice with story telling.
But the PvP and the ability lag should have been fixed before release.
Where did BW spend their money on is a big riddle....iam curious what budget Bioware and Arenanet got to make their mmo.
As when you look at GW2 it destroys SWTOR in each department.
From character creation to story telling to Dynamic Events or even PvP...
I feel cheated once again..
Uhm one and a half months of solid play ; Well I am not sure i'd feel cheated if I went out for food and beers , I would sure be a couple of thousand dollars up just playing the MMO.....
But when you say you feel cheated I am not sure if you mean from a monetary perspective or a waste of life time !!!! If it is the latter then why do you bother to play with pixels reasl people are more fun.
I think you missed the point? the cheated part wasent the time spent. It was when he understood the game was not for him. He wanted to play it and suport Bioware. But he came to understand that the game had no comunity suport and no MMO feeling. I think you fanboys always missunderstand the people who dont agree with you. We all wanted to play Star Wars, we were all hoping for a great experince. With other players, but what we got wasent the game they could have made. I undestood this by just reading and watching videos before the game was released. I never bought SWTOR and I never will. But that dosent mean I dont want to play a good Star Wars.. space Game. I just dont want to play WoW in space....
The IP had so much potential and they droped the ball.. or "SOLD OUT" for big money... and if I played an MMO for 1,5 months and then felt like quiting I also would feel cheated. I felt cheated when I dident last through the first month of Warhamemer online. I grew up with the IP, played the table top game and the RPG game. Mythic made a Boring, BG instanced.. tunnel game, I was truly disappointed when I uninstalled it after 1 month. This dude feels the same way about SWTOR and I can relate to him..
Character discussion is a lost of time and money,players want contents KingdomVSKingdom,housing,mini games,large scale and open maps,more random things.
Character discussion finish in spacebar,spacebar,spacebar,spacebar........
Players are Bored of WoW-like genre (farm BG-farm dungeon-1 clic content) Players want a return to the origin of the MMO genre.
I've seen huge software projects fail before. The book The Mythical Man Month is one that describes what can happen. One programmer gets one programmer's work done. Two programmers are 1.5, since they have to talk to each other. Three programmers is equal to 2 workers, since they all have to talk to each other. Add 1,000 more, and it gets tough.
The other thing is an old software adage: your third attempt is the success. On the first one, you don't know what you are doing, and fail. The second one, you THINK you know what you are doing, and try to do too much, and fail. This is SWTOR I think. The third time, you know what you are doing, and know to do only the bare necessities, and then you succeed.
Dont think SWTOR cost nearly as much as they claim. Im guessing they just use that as another way to HYPE the game.
You know that all of the mega budget speculation came from analysts' guessing and anti BW/EA people, right? No other game had so much bullshit speculated about the budget as TOR had, with people stating with dry eyes figures of 7-10 times the budget of other AAA MMORPG's >.<
None of those claims were official, they only stated that the budget was a lot lower than the hyped exaggerations some were making.
A couple of years ago there was this rant from a disgruntled ex-EA (Mythic I think) employee - it was a classic rant, and it talked specifically about SWTOR (keep in mind, this was a couple of years ago).
I wish I could find a copy, as the original Wordpress blog has long since been taken down.
It wasn't entirely accurate (the guy was pissed), but it did come ~fairly~ close to stating the actual budget of SWTOR, and claimed that voice acting was the one single facet of the game all the execs were pinning their hopes on.
Hooray for Google and their privacy-sniffing search engine, I found a link:
There was another post, along a similar vein when the actual budget number was released, that detailed just exactly how much voice acting went into the game, and it's a staggering amount: 1,600 story hours, 1,000 Actors, 4,000 NPC's, 3 languages
So we can assume that swtor ones not being perfect from the start, each one had between 1 and 2 monthes of work, and a lot of them being reknown (at least according to imdb). This pushes a gross estimate at 10k to 30k $ per actor (which is the usual 30% error margin, considering the dialog last minute changes, the actor changes over 5 years, etc).
10k x1000 = 10 to 30 millions. So I was wrong with the "half the budget" it seems ;-)
edit : oh and I forgot to multiply this estimate by 1.5-2, thanks to the social charges.
edit 2 : holy cow, I was wrong, you might want to double the estimated annual income above, as I did not see the article addendum :
Update: 2.10.2010 — Excerpts from a Feb. 2008 article onVoiceOverTimes.com — “Actors Score $500K for Video Game Voice Overs”:
According to Screen Actors Guild rules, union voice actors can expect to be paid $760 for one four-hour recording session.
That’s just the fee for a professional voice actor with union status.
Now, if you were to talk celebrity voice talent, that figure increases exponentially. Speaking to Reuters, Blindlight production company general manager Lev Chapelsky said that some stars have demanded $750,000 for an hour’s worth of work, and one voice actor actually received $500,000 for a single session. Chapelsky told Reuters that top talent commonly receives “in the high five figures for a single session.”
So in the end we might no be very far from that 50% budget ...
And this is JUST voice acting. You have to have the use of facility, sound editors, sound directors, and a host of other professions to "produce" the VOs.
It is easily going to be half of the budget. Don't forget there is also a 40-50M MMO beneath all the VO.
After giving SWTOR it's fair shot I'm left wondering, what in gods great gullet did they spend all of their money on? They had, what, a 200 million dollar budget?
I'm not a GW2 fanboy, but after comparing the two videos I'm beginning to wonder how much money BioWare spent on Crack Cocaine and Heroin for their employees.
Dont think SWTOR cost nearly as much as they claim. Im guessing they just use that as another way to HYPE the game.
You know that all of the mega budget speculation came from analysts' guessing and anti BW/EA people, right? No other game had so much bullshit speculated about the budget as TOR had, with people stating with dry eyes figures of 7-10 times the budget of other AAA MMORPG's >.<
None of those claims were official, they only stated that the budget was a lot lower than the hyped exaggerations some were making.
This.
If Louse hadn't come out spouting the 300mil$ claim, no one would even care what TOR cost to make.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Comments
Dont think SWTOR cost nearly as much as they claim. Im guessing they just use that as another way to HYPE the game. They bought their engine, They made it easy on themselfs. And they total missread what the MMO market wanted. If they had spent anny time doing some basic market reserch (like Blizzard did back in the day). Asked Fans of the genre about what they wanted and how. If they had payed anny attention to the people they were actually going to sell their game 2. They would have understood that NOBODY exept, maybe Star Wars fanboys wanted to play the game they were making. But they focues all their time copying stuff from other titles and doing voice overs. Proclaiming that voice overs were the second comming....
My prediction is that SWTOR will slowly decline over the next year. It will not shut down but it will never become a smash hit. In 4 years time I see it going the same way as Warhammer online.. 2-4 servers world wide...
I bet they neglected antarctica too. How short sighted, imo.
Lol!
And its already release in asia , same day launch as N.A
RIP Orc Choppa
I think SWTOR will do just fine and i don't even play this game. The only game which is in danger of going F2P and downsize pretty fast on servers is TERA. Except for combat everything else is generic and been there done that in that game. But then again good combat didn't save AOC or DCUO.
Penguins are an oft-overlooked demographic.
Won't someone please think of the penguins?
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
I have too lifted the veil that is known as The Old Republic and can now see, just like you, that what you say is the truth. Take away the personal content and storytelling and you end up with little else. Bioware has proven, up to this day that they can make great single player games, but have failed or don't have the ability yet to make a mmorpg. I know there are a lot of us that are huge SW fans and Bioware fans, but what these guys released should have never been packaged as a mmorpg. Leveling from 1 to 50 was a blast, but once you're there, you can truly see how lacking TOR really is. I can also tell you it really hurts to even be posting this, but sometimes the truth hurts. I went into the game knowing exactly waht TOR was, but i didn't expect it to have such a dramatic dropoff once you reached the so called end game.
I believe thats some misconceptions here.
We players from asia, which usually being custer as oceanic zone ( apart from Tera ), have the same beta, head-start and launch day, albeit a few hours later, as players from N.A, ever since EQ.
So we have already played this game, and those who want to leave have already left.
Tor releasing the game here in asia is just having a physical server here, like war, thats all.
RIP Orc Choppa
currently playing SWTOR and enjoying it very much. But I have to agree, the voice chat and character cut scenes are amazing but, wtf dId they spend their money on?
I would say Arenanet reinvested the money they made on GW1. And put all their efforst into making a good GW2. ArenaNet loves their game. They are proud of it, they want to make a game for Gamers. Their not Hired by suits who know nothing about the gaming industry. I would say that anny Creative Ideas that Bioware had, probably got crushed by the MAN. That is what happens when you "SELL OUT". The leadership at Bioware made a shitload of money when they sold out to EA. Most of BIOWARE being older dudes they have long since stoped caring about gaming. Kepping their kidds in private schools and their Wifes/GFs happy is what drives their motivation for making games. Back in 1999 they had the spirit of ARENA net. But the years changes people.. 13 years later they are in a diffrent place, the visions of their youths are gone, replaced by Dollar Signs in their Eyes...
Bioware had no Interest in making a good game, there only reason was MONEY.. And that dosent mix well. Unless you were like Steve Jobs. And your focus in life was to Push the industry forward. But not all humans are made that way. All in all a sad day and we should maybe make a Memorial, sign on tombstone.
Rest in peace BIOWARE 1995-2007
Only the good die Young
If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane,
I'd walk right up to heaven and bring you home again.
Well i can tell you what they didnt spend thier money on.... Support, they must have the worst customer support of any game ive ever played so anyone who want to play this game i sure hope you dont in trouble with your payments or logins.... expect atleat a week before someone with a pulls actually looks into it and he will proberly not do anything until the next weeks maintance to check if its a problem... then he will escalate it and rinse repeat.........
DAoC/GW/Lotro/WoW/WAR/Rift/SWTor
to be completely frank they both look like saturday morning cartoons to me and the graphics as well as 3rd person view is the deal breaker for me.
That said, they also both look like the quality of EQ2 which cost 20 million to make not 200 million.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I believe they spend most of their money on v.o, and not only paying the people doing the voice, but also the animations needed to do that, the time to put all those in, all these need money.
Cant imagine how long they need to release the next x-pac...
RIP Orc Choppa
People dont realize just how expensive voiceovers are to add to a video game.
Hiring actors is only the half of it. It's sound studio and equipment fees that cost them out the nose.
Uhm one and a half months of solid play ; Well I am not sure i'd feel cheated if I went out for food and beers , I would sure be a couple of thousand dollars up just playing the MMO.....
But when you say you feel cheated I am not sure if you mean from a monetary perspective or a waste of life time !!!! If it is the latter then why do you bother to play with pixels reasl people are more fun.
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
I just hit escape.
Seriously though, thansk for reminding me to unsubscribe. They already stole one month from me because I went out of town the weekend my free period expired. Ug!
Trammies need to stop polluting the MMORPG landscape. They already have enough games in which to emote hugs and sell garbage by the banks.
Anything EA and support.......you should have known better, well unless this is your first EA game then I am sorry.
How is this stealing????
I think you missed the point? the cheated part wasent the time spent. It was when he understood the game was not for him. He wanted to play it and suport Bioware. But he came to understand that the game had no comunity suport and no MMO feeling. I think you fanboys always missunderstand the people who dont agree with you. We all wanted to play Star Wars, we were all hoping for a great experince. With other players, but what we got wasent the game they could have made. I undestood this by just reading and watching videos before the game was released. I never bought SWTOR and I never will. But that dosent mean I dont want to play a good Star Wars.. space Game. I just dont want to play WoW in space....
The IP had so much potential and they droped the ball.. or "SOLD OUT" for big money... and if I played an MMO for 1,5 months and then felt like quiting I also would feel cheated. I felt cheated when I dident last through the first month of Warhamemer online. I grew up with the IP, played the table top game and the RPG game. Mythic made a Boring, BG instanced.. tunnel game, I was truly disappointed when I uninstalled it after 1 month. This dude feels the same way about SWTOR and I can relate to him..
Character discussion is a lost of time and money,players want contents KingdomVSKingdom,housing,mini games,large scale and open maps,more random things.
Character discussion finish in spacebar,spacebar,spacebar,spacebar........
Players are Bored of WoW-like genre (farm BG-farm dungeon-1 clic content) Players want a return to the origin of the MMO genre.
I've seen huge software projects fail before. The book The Mythical Man Month is one that describes what can happen. One programmer gets one programmer's work done. Two programmers are 1.5, since they have to talk to each other. Three programmers is equal to 2 workers, since they all have to talk to each other. Add 1,000 more, and it gets tough.
The other thing is an old software adage: your third attempt is the success. On the first one, you don't know what you are doing, and fail. The second one, you THINK you know what you are doing, and try to do too much, and fail. This is SWTOR I think. The third time, you know what you are doing, and know to do only the bare necessities, and then you succeed.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
Dont think SWTOR cost nearly as much as they claim. Im guessing they just use that as another way to HYPE the game.
You know that all of the mega budget speculation came from analysts' guessing and anti BW/EA people, right? No other game had so much bullshit speculated about the budget as TOR had, with people stating with dry eyes figures of 7-10 times the budget of other AAA MMORPG's >.<
None of those claims were official, they only stated that the budget was a lot lower than the hyped exaggerations some were making.And this is JUST voice acting. You have to have the use of facility, sound editors, sound directors, and a host of other professions to "produce" the VOs.
It is easily going to be half of the budget. Don't forget there is also a 40-50M MMO beneath all the VO.
Marketing, Star Wars IP, voiceovers and overpaid execs making lousy decisions, and oh yeah, they actually spent money on creating the game too.
It was obvious I mean
It is something all human beings have (well, some do not have but still)
"It has potential"
-Second most used phrase on existence
"It sucks"
-Most used phrase on existence
This.
If Louse hadn't come out spouting the 300mil$ claim, no one would even care what TOR cost to make.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil