Tag: Star Wars

Bioware: No, TOR Is Not A Sandbox


Star Wars: The Old Republic is not a sandbox title. Let me say that again for emphasis: The Old Republic, developed by EA/Mythic/Bioware, is not. a. sandbox title. That is a very simple recipe of “this is not Star Wars Galaxies 2.” I don’t know why Bioware needs to reiterate this on a constant basis, but once again the usual troop of Galaxies vets have come in to make demands that the developers never promised and only they were expecting to begin with.

Although granted, we had this same conversation with Clone Wars Adventures, where I had to point out that the game is for children. Over on the Old Republic forums, Georg Zoeller posted in a thread asking for sandbox elements, to clarify once again that TOR is not a sandbox game.

There will certainly be out-of-combat player activities and activities that promote social interaction in the game, but you will not be able to take a job as a moisture farmer on Tatooine and simulate the life of such an individual in our game.

Zoeller states that concepts like player built housing are not completely off the table, just low priority. As far as MMO terms go, you can pick up your tickets at the booth, because TOR is about as theme-park as it gets.

In short: Uncle Owen and his life is not the kind of heroic journey we’re going for with this game. (The jawa’s with their rocket launchers wouldn’t make that a very fun activity anyway).

The amount of misinformation around The Old Republic is less surprising when you recognize that it’s looking to be one of 2011’s big players.

Suit Up: More Star Wars Galaxies Server Mergers Coming…


Star Wars Galaxies is always an interesting topic here on MMO Fallout. On one hand, you have Sony Online Entertainment, who referred to Galaxies as having one of the most active communities in SOE’s portfolio of games. On the other hand, you have those who remain in Star Wars Galaxies who, apart from complaints of only a small number of the remaining servers being active, are more likely to agree that the game has improved in leaps and bounds since the NGE and CU updates. On the third, mostly useless vestigial T-Rex arm sprouting from your chest, you have the Star Wars Galaxies Pre-Update players, a group of disenfranchised “veterans” (I hate that term) that devotes itself to trolling any MMO discussion, even if it has nothing to do with Galaxies, or Sony for that matter.

Sony is opening up free server transfers on Star Wars Galaxies, and historically that has lead to just one outcome: server mergers. The announcement mentions no end date, but does mention that while players will be able to transfer off of Starsider, they will not be able to transfer back. In addition, a Sony staffer mentioned that paid transfers will no longer be possible. Players will be restricted to one transfer, per character, per 90 days.

You can read the details here, but the link has been dead (along with the entirety of Star Wars Galaxies’ website) for quite a while. I will follow up with more details when I can get them. Obviously a server merger has not been announced, but given the status of many of the remaining servers (according to players), a merger is likely on the books.

There is a forum thread to discuss the server transfers here.

The Old Republic: Did We Say 1 Million? Sorry…


Kapow!

Back in March 2010, I wrote about my concerns with Star Wars: The Old Republic, primarily built around the expectation by EA Games that the game would require one million subscribers in order to “break even.” In fact, in the very-pre-release hype, EA went as far as saying that they could not only see one million subscribers, but that the number could go as high as two million. Naturally, I expressed my concern that The Old Republic could wind up like Tabula Rasa (I would have made a comparison to All Points Bulletin, but the game had neither launched or crashed at that point), shutting down after about a year.

Perhaps in response to the news that investors are lacking faith in EA Games’ ability to maintain its MMOs (Warhammer and All Points Bulletin being two examples), EA responded this week by reeling back on their one million subscriber comment. In fact, they went as far as rolling down numbers to claim that The Old Republic could be profitable off of only five hundred thousand subscribers, although EA would prefer to see the insanely profitable number of one million and beyond.

So is EA CFO Scott Brown doing damage control? Very likely, as both comments came up during conference calls attended by Gamasutra. Claiming one million to “break even” is a recipe for disaster, and in a world where EA can’t risk losing any more investors to their MMOs, the fate of The Old Republic may sit on Scott Brown not exaggerating in conference calls from now on.

Clone Wars Adventures Confirmation Confirmed


So much for this being photoshopped...

It felt like years ago that I originally wrote about an upcoming Star Wars: Clone Wars MMO, namely because it was way back in September 2009. Earlier this year in Feburary, I posted the above image that quite a number of people received on their Station Pass adverts, and was blasted on a few forums linking to the article that I was forwarding rumors, falsifying photos, etc.

Well, today Sony officially confirmed Clone Wars Adventures for this fall, a casual (yep) Clone Wars (yep) MMO similar in style to Free Realms (of course), chock full of mini-games (mmhmm), pets (yes), and more. The trailer is below:

This of course brings me back to questions I asked last September. By the end of next year, barring an unpleasant event occurring in the next twelve months, there be three Star Wars MMOs on the market. Can each coexist? Does Sony really need two Star Wars MMOs? I don’t know, but I do know that you’ll be able to catch me in my house on Tatooine this fall. Oh and make sure you take your shoes off when you come in, this is supposed to be a kid-friendly MMO.

Dangerous Expectations: One Million For The Old Republic


When Electronic Arts announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic is their largest development project ever, I immediately became worried for the title. In all likelihood, The Old Republic has an enormous budget, more than most other MMOs can shake a stick at, and as a result will have the eyes of EA glaring down on it when it does officially launch, and the resulting post-month 1 subscriber numbers are presented to the bigwigs. As I’ve mentioned before on several postmortem “What happened” episodes,  the number one cause of MMO death is not unsubstantial subscriber numbers, but lower than what the developer/publisher wanted.

So a game like The Old Republic will likely require a lot of subscribers to meet that budget they hooked into the title, and EA was kind enough to tell us exactly what that number is to break even: One million. Now, there are only a handful of titles that have over a million paying subscribers. A small handful, a very small handful. For some reason, one million has become the benchmark for success, even though several of the top 10 mainstream MMOs do not have one million subscribers. Not only does EA believe they will hit the one million mark, but they can see the game going up to two million and over.

Unfortunately EA may be setting themselves up not for failure, but for disappointment. Disappointment we can only hope doesn’t translate into EA pulling a Tabula Rasa and shutting the title down a year later. So far the experience from press testers has been positive, so who knows? Titles like Eve Online, Runescape, World of Warcraft, and Fallen Earth are not exclusive to breaking the rule of MMO releases: That the population peaks at launch and, following a sharp decrease after the free month, a gradual decline.

I think that, when The Old Republic does go into preorder, it will be right up there with Age of Conan and Warhammer Online for the most orders of the year. If Bioware can pull a higher than normal retention rate following launch, it will be good tidings for the foreseeable future. High expectations are dangerous, but not guaranteed to end in disappointment. Remember that.

More on The Old Republic as it appears.

2010: The Blue Moon Year


We enter January as 2009 comes to a close, we look at the year before us, and the year ahead, and remember that life goes on, no matter what happens in the present. I’ve dubbed 2010 the blue moon year because it has the pleasure of beginning with a blue moon, an event that won’t be occurring on New Year’s Eve for a long time to come.

I’m going slightly out of character with this article, if anything just to be the one time a year I get to be a jerk and pick on the same companies I spend the other 364 days vying for the attention of (Thank you Tork, Hasbro, Aventurine, Cryptic). This is a comprehensive list of some questions I have going into the new year, that I hope to get answered by this time next year.

Continue reading “2010: The Blue Moon Year”

Very Much Good Stuff Cheap: Steam

[Update] The Steam Sale is over as of January 3rd. Better luck next time!


If Funcom's money was gold-backed...

It’s time again for the Steam Holiday sale, and that can only mean one thing: MMO Sales to be found all around! Here is a list of the games you can find on sale at Steam this week, all of which should be on sale until January 3rd. You have a week and a half, so don’t put it off too long!

Please remember that all of these price are in USD.

[Update] The Steam Sale is over as of January 3rd. Better luck next time!

Mega Packs:

More sales after the break!

Continue reading “Very Much Good Stuff Cheap: Steam”

Really? ANOTHER Star Wars MMO?


star_wars_cgi_animation_to_hit_big_small_screens_400x300

TenTonHammer is reporting on a rumor that Sony Online Entertainment may be working on a more casual Star Wars MMO, that might be based on the Star Wars: Clone Wars CGI film. Not much is known on the title, but it is very likely that Sony will build the game off of the Free Realms engine, delivering the MMO as a freemium, browser based game, not necessarily aimed towards children, but instead a wide variety of players.

With Star Wars: The Old Republic being released next year, will this title be launched close-by as a free alternative? Does Sony really need two running Star Wars MMOs at one time? Will players be willing to take Sony up on a new Star Wars MMO on the idea that they learned from their mistakes with Star Wars Galaxies?

More on the rumored Star Wars MMO as it develops.

High Stakes For an Old Republic


Star Wars: The Old Republic, is by no means a small feat. Bioware promises to blend the storytelling of the previous Knights of the Old Republic games in with the gameplay and persistence of an MMORPG, and wants to immerse the character into the world of the Jedi, the Sith, smugglers, bounty hunters, troopers, and yet to be unveiled classes. Players have the ability to permanently affect the world around them through the choices they make in-game, 300 years after the events of the Knights of the Old Republic games.

One of The Old Republic’s features is 100% full voice acting of players and non player characters. In order to increase the player-base, Bioware announced today that the 40 novels worth of in-game dialogue will be acted out in English, and now French and German. Now that is a lot of voice acting.

Bioware is going all out with The Old Republic, and the game is getting a lot of hype because of it, even though I don’t approve of the “wow killer” title people are attaching. More on TOR as it appears.