Many years ago, I could provide you with hard subscriber facts because companies were actually able to reveal them. Today, thanks to investors and “trade secrets,” we generally have to settle for vague statements of growth, decline, or breaking even. Actually, these days World of Warcraft is one of the few developers left that come straight out and give base number of subscribers, while NCSoft goes into a detailed breakdown on sales figures per title rather than subscriber numbers.
Since plenty of people have called for the imminent death of The Old Republic, Electronic Arts has eased our pain and suffering of needing to know everything by revealing that The Old Republic has sold over two million copies with 1.7 million subscribers (1 million concurrent), or a retention rate of between 80 and 85 percent. Despite the level of vitriol on certain websites, Origin accounted for 40% of those sales.
Memes somehow end up being far funnier when the people who perpetuate them end up in trouble by people who don’t “get it.” Take, for instance, the user who was banned from The Old Republic (including the game) for using the meme on the forums “I’m 12 and what is this.” Like any other company operating under the Child Online Privacy Protection Act, Bioware is required to actively monitor their player base and weed out any players who may be under 13.
Still, the humor in Bioware mistaking a meme for an actual confession of age has not eluded internet users. Infuriating, this is not. At least not as frustrating as the users who were warned for posting links to how to cancel your subscription when the option went missing for a good number of users.
I’m confused about The Old Republic. On one hand, I’ve seen players complaining of over instancing on Ilum, but if Bioware was truly instance-heavy, the least they could do is balance out the population on the open world PvP planets. Granted, if Bioware had introduced the third Vulcan faction as I had suggested back in 2011, we wouldn’t be having this problem right now.
Sorry, I wanted to preempt any Dark Age of Camelot people who were ready to talk about the 3-faction master race.
I’ve often said that when Black Mage becomes the voice of reason, the rest of us are doomed. Every day it seems another financial institution is predicting how much The Old Republic cost to develop, has sold, and expects to retain in subscribers, which Bioware has not officially released, and the numbers are getting more ridiculous with each passing story. I’m still securing Fighter as a write-in analyst for a few of our website brethren.
Bioware early adopters, have you made your plans for the upcoming 20th of January? Odds are you are in the process of deciding whether or not you want to continue that Old Republic subscription past the first month. Was it as good for you as it was for them? Do you see yourself playing a few weeks down the line? There aren’t really any MMOs releasing in February, but is there a title you gave up calling your name? Perhaps you want to give the game a break, or maybe you’re enjoying it and haven’t even thought about quitting.
Either way, December 20th is when the PR boat hits the water (or the dock) and the legacy that will be Star Wars: The Old Republic reveals itself. Remember the prime directive of MMO launches: Longevity is not made in preorders, but rather in the first six months and beyond. Granted, we know enough to say with confidence that Bioware isn’t going to go bankrupt, and there likely won’t be an apocalypse next month so there is another scenario to cross off the list.
Barring some massive exodus, there is still some time left before The Old Republic’s viability can be confirmed. Electronic Arts has invested too much into this title to just let it die off.
Leave it up to the internet to find even more humor in an already humorous bug. In The Old Republic, players discovered that using the emote /getdown causes your enemies to be unable to target you properly. Bioware has stated that no one has been banned or warned for this, so dance to your heart’s content!
If you can’t read the signature, this was made by Nikolai Trashev, who you can find here and see his other work at Minicrit.com. Check it out, his art is well drawn and hilarious to boot.
Color me intrigued. There’s a bit of a hubbub going on around The Old Republic over an issue I can’t quite wrap my head around. If you haven’t been following the blogosphere, a few players pointed out to the press that they were temporarily banned from The Old Republic for looting chests on high level planets with a low level character. Patiently, I opted to wait for more information to come out before writing a story. For starters, the emails were shady looking, there was no true confirmation to their authenticity, and even then there was likely more to the story than we had been told.
There is, but not in the manner you would have assumed (glitches). Stephen Reid (of the Bioware Reids) went on the forums to discuss the bans:
To be completely clear, while players may choose to travel to Ilum earlier than the recommended level (40+) and may loot containers if they can get to them, in the cases of those customers that were warned or temporarily suspended, they were systematically and repeatedly looting containers in very high numbers resulting in the game economy becoming unbalanced.
From extensively reading Reddit and the thread linked above, I’ve sussed out that two categories of accounts were targeted: Gold farmers and exploiters. The former, permanently banned, were using throwaway characters to exploit the somewhat sparse grounds of Ilum and gather vast quantities of credits (and crafting materials?) to sell. The latter, who had received temporary bans, were “systematically and repeatedly” looting containers.
The issue here is that there is no mention by Stephen Reid of an existing bug, but the offenders are described as exploiting the system, and this is what is confusing people because it paints the picture as Bioware banning players for spending too much time camping, and in Reid’s case, being rude by taking all the loot for themselves. The discussion by Reid goes on to reference this as outside what Bioware considers “normal gameplay,” and is thus punishable.
The actions taken by these accounts – and again, this is a relatively low number – were not ‘normal gameplay’. Everything you have listed above is what we’d consider ‘normal gameplay’.
After twenty four odd pages on the linked thread above, someone finally pointed out the exact nature of the exploit: In Ilum, when control moves from Republic to Empire and vice versa, the loot boxes respawn immediately. Seeing the potential for profit, players have set up a system on servers where they simply trade control back and forth with guild members out on the field to collect the boxes. This is what Bioware is referring to by banning players for exploiting the treasure chests, and in that case I would support the temporary suspensions as long as Bioware is warning the players beforehand, which they appear to be doing, or if the activity is truly as impossible for a legitimate player to stumble upon as is being claimed.
The issue here isn’t that Bioware is slapping offenders on the wrist, but that their explanation for the offense itself is painting an inaccurate picture in player’s minds, one that is not endearing to Bioware’s case. In any case, this exploit needs to be patched out.
Too many colons in the title! During the time Bioware wasn’t busy absorbing every sub-developer of Electronic Arts, the company was busy working away at their first and arguably one of the most risky entrances into the MMO genre. The Old Republic is the labor of love of a company that has never put out an MMO, let alone having not developed a multi-player game since 2002. But with the announcement of The Old Republic, at least we knew that Bioware would be consistent, and that we could expect heavy voice acting, a whole load of plot and subplots, and an incredible soundtrack.
I’ve found that The Old Republic is best played as Bioware once referred to it: Knights of the Old Republic 3, but online in a persistent world. The Old Republic is heavily instanced, and while that is for good reasoning, it’s a bit obnoxious when you walk into each city and see a number of buildings that cannot be entered because they are locked by class or by level. However, as it stands, all personal story-related buildings are instanced to ensure that the player is able to immerse themselves, and that means no entry if you have no business there. Still, the game does its best to present a compelling and immersive world, with your companion making comments in various areas of the map.
The first thing you’ll notice is the game’s voice acting, more so its very impressive quantity. Everyone has voice acting, and every quest you take, big or small, has a full dialog tree to accompany it. As with the KOTOR series, you are given the choice from time to time to go down the light or darkside path, which can mean continuing diplomacy or simply halting the conversation and murdering some NPCs. Where Bioware continues their trend of deep plot twists is in the sense that while your choices are split between dark and light side, your goals often are not. For example, the light side path may tell you to report your quest giver to the Republic for smuggling goods, but that means having a good friend arrested. On the Imperial side, while your Sith Trooper may want to just kill everyone in his path, often times the Empire would rather you left a few alive to bring back for interrogation. The points go into your light side/dark side pool, and unlock equipment as you gain ranks.
As far as game play goes, expect nothing particularly groundbreaking. Your story carries you through clearly defined hubs, from planet to planet as you level up. If you’ve played an MMO before, you know the procedure of entering a new hub, gathering all of the quests that send you conveniently in the same general areas, and turn them in until there are no more quests and your main story arc leads you somewhere else. The pain of this grind is lessened a lot by the inclusion of a story that will actually interest you. No more reading a long piece of text (and by that I of course mean slamming the “accept” button), and if you really don’t care about the story, the cutscenes can be sped through by holding down the spacebar.
In combat, The Old Republic follows the prime directive of hotkeys, with the notable exception of no auto-attack function, and this is where The Old Republic is falling short. While combat is functional and hardly a deal breaker, it is sluggish and slow to react. Again, not to a game breaking extent and one that Bioware should be able to patch, but enough that it is easily noticed and in high-intensity situations where you are attacking groups of five, six, or seven mobs, can be quite aggravating. Couple the inherent system and throw in if you are experiencing latency problems, and you have a recipe for button mashing. The fact that you always have a companion available allows for every class to be competent without issue. For instance, my smuggler is a damage dealer and healer while my companion is a tank. While he takes the punishment, I deal out damage and occasionally heal him.
Crafting is a hands-off component of the game, which some will enjoy and others will not. Players will wind up with three skills from an enormous list from three categories: Crafting, Mission, and Gathering. Gathering skills are what you find in other MMOs, nodes in the world that offer raw materials. Crafting is self-explanatory. Mission skills are where you send your companions on mini-quests to find resources. Each skill has respective suggested skills in other categories, so it’s best to choose three skills that fit together. All of the skills however, are leveled on a set it and forget it system, where you set up your crafting queue and then go about your business as your companion on board does his work. You can issue commands from anywhere, and the items are delivered directly into your inventory. Talk about convenient! In my case, the crafting is so hands off that I often find myself forgetting that it exists until the area I’ve entered has resource nodes that have outleveled my skill.
Why You Aren’t Playing Star Wars: The Old Republic
1.) Origin: You don’t need it, even if you order through Origin.com. As some of you know from my head start experiment, I ordered off of Origin.com, even with my intense loathing of EA’s Origin service. I never had to touch Origin once, as when I purchased the digital edition it sent me a link to download the client. Not once during the beta, head start, or live game did I ever have to touch Origin, and I placed this first on the list because I know how people feel about that platform.
2.) Space, where no one can hear you complain about how boring space is. I didn’t expect much out of The Old Republic’s starfighting for the same reason I never expected much out of Bioware’s previous game’s starfighting. Fighting in space is on rails, and was special for me for the first or second time I played through a mission. Sure, it looks pretty, but at the end of the day it’s just a mini-game. A fun mini-game for some, and even if you have absolutely no interest in space combat, you can easily pass these missions up.
3.) Again, Star Wars: The Old Republic breaks ground in storytelling, not combat. For players seeking a sandbox title, this is not the game you are looking for. If you don’t mind the traditional MMO approach of quest hubs, social areas, occasionally grouping up for heroic missions, flashpoints, and an endgame that revolves around player vs player combat and grinding for gear, you will find a lot to enjoy in The Old Republic. Even if you don’t enjoy the endgame grind, you can always start a new character and go through their individual story, skipping the repeated side-missions.
Bioware handled the launch of The Old Republic stunningly, between the staggered head start invitations and the servers specifically capped to even out the populations. There are some crippling bugs still in the game, including a few planets having problems with memory leaks. I can say for what it is worth that Bioware has been taking a very aggressive stance with releasing patches, at a rate of once every other day or so with varying degrees of extensive work, and regular maintenance on the servers themselves. There have been instances of one or two servers coming down for unscheduled maintenance, but these are usually fixed within an hour or two.
I know I say in every Why Aren’t You Playing that the title is worth looking into, but this is one of the few times I will extend that to paying the full $60 box price and a subscription. Take it from someone as cheap as I am, this is worth the cost. If you don’t like MMOs, do as I said earlier: Play it as if it is Knights of the Old Republic 3, ignore the social functions and heroic/flashpoint quests, and play for the story arcs. If Bioware plays their cards right, future expansions of The Old Republic could fulfill their desire of TOR being KOTOR 3,4,5,6,7, and beyond.
At the time of this writing, it is 4:00pm on Sunday, January 1st 2011. Of the servers online, there are 37 North American and 27 European servers listed as full, 31 NA and 23 EU servers listed as very heavy, 13 NA and 15 EU servers listed as heavy, 30 NA and 26 EU servers listed as Standard, and 13 NA servers listed as light.
It’s been a while since anything was said about The Old Republic’s launch in Australia and New Zealand, or for that matter the lack of a launch in either territory. Luckily, Senior Lead Community Manager Stephen Reid announced on the official forums today that Bioware is aiming for a Spring 2012 launch, around March 1st. Granted, a great deal of players have likely already purchased the game and are currently playing on North American servers, but no doubt this announcement will please those who would rather wait.
We can confirm that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be launching in Australia and New Zealand in the spring of 2012.
Right now we are targeting March 1st, but that could change as our number one priority is making sure that customers have a great service to play on.
For those of you who may have already imported the game, we will be investigating solutions to allow you to continue to play on a local server once they come online in March.
A journalist in gaming will express a distrust in mainstream media. After all, whenever someone in Korea dies from dehydration after a week long Starcraft binge, or a sadist in Vermont murders his child because her crying interrupted his Call of Duty kill streak, the rest of us are painted equally as unsociable psychopaths just waiting for someone to press the right button to send us on a killing spree. Heading further into the niche, I as a writer for MMOs have a similar distaste for mainstream gaming media for similar reasons. The mainstream gaming media loves to paint us as strangers with too much time, too much expendable money, and not enough sunlight or social interaction.
So it stands that whenever a grandiose MMO releases, the same stories from past will be recycled. Yes, any MMO with an economy of any kind will bring in gold farmers. Yes, the most preordered MMO in recent history is having issues with server capacity and getting people a spot in line. And they are behind in the times, too. Apparently no one told the gaming press that making your game free to play has not been a death sentence since 2009, and that the transition isn’t a switch that developers hit in a last ditch hope to make money, but rather a lengthy process that costs a lot of time and money.
For the next few months, expect to hear everything you already knew. Bear with them, they get paid moderately well to run the same stories every now and then.
