Archibald said:
I ought to record the ending of Dragon Age with my guy landing the 'killing blow' f'ing naked and post it. I think I will.
Brutal argument. I think that Drakron`s logic will surely fail against this.
Doing that on a MMORPG will be hilarious as they need a core playerbase that is more interested in playing the system instead of playing the game, going simplistic means you are going to piss off the hardcore PvP that do make up the core, if they do it in their Star Wars game I give it about a year before they start rolling "incentives" for the old players to come back.
None of those are going to give a shit if the quest NPCs are voiced or not, heck back in WoW I pretty much just closed the dialog box and THEM checked what the quest objectives were.
In theory it is possible that they`ll bring faggotry into MMO genre too. Hardly, but i`d say possible.
Hate to say it, but that's EXACTLY what I'd tell them to do, if the aim was to make money. Now I fucking hate Bioware's story-telling. But I have to recognise that many many folks don't. That's because there's a huge audience out there for pulp trash fantasy, especially when the player gets to choose which gender/species his so-amazingly-attractive-that-everything-in-the-world-wants-to-shag-them character is interested in. So, their competitive advantage is in the story-driven market. That means NOT shutting folks out from participating in major story events because they can't/don't raid or are plain awful. Incidentally, I think the can't/don't raid thing is a valid excuse - raiding is just one style of gameplay, and it is a fucking travesty that it has somehow become lorded as the 'elite' endgame way of mmorpging, that you must do to play through the major plot points. But regardless, they shouldn't be doing anything that shuts players out from story progression.
That doesn't have to be retarded in and of itself. From what I gather, LotRO did a good job of carving out a niche as the 'story' mmorpg, where players from either the mega-hardcore mmorpgs (Eve, anything from Korea), or the themeparks ones (WoW) would write it off for having inadequate content, but it still built a profitable base of ultra-loyal fans by a policy of (a) story-focus and (b) not locking players out of the story simply because they don't want to raid. LotRO should be KoTOR3's main competitor, if they're smart. I.e. don't go against WoW - take on the Tolkein folk, it's a style of mmorpg that is less time-consuming and so many of them might actually play both games, and it plays to Bioware's reputation.
But secondly, why would you create another raiding mmorpg at all? Of any style? There are fucktons of raiding mmorpgs out there, from WoW-themeparks to Korean 'I-get-to-role-play-having-another-job-as-a-meaningless-pawn-in-a-major-corporation-because-I-get-bored-of-my-real-job-as-a-international-superspy' grindfests. That game has been done and if you want to be a major player, you need to avoid that market like the plague.
Retardation is the only way I can see Bioware making money on this one. And even then it's a long shot. Few people are going to see this as a genuine 'sequel' - if they're interested it's just because it's a Bioware Star Wars mmorpg - not because they're following the story of Revan and the Exile. And story-driven gamers aren't going to want to pay a subscription when the game's biggest selling point is that it's almost like a single player game.
