Editorial Rebuilding The Future: How BioWare Can Bounce Back

[Volourn]

" As far as the industry is concerned, Bioware is/was a similar tier developer. "

Such bullshit. BIO has NEVER been on Blizzard's llevel in terms of appealiing or selling to a mass market ala Blizzard. Stop fukkin' lying. BIO games are LUCKY tto reach 3mil. FFS


Your entire post is stupid.


P.S. Plenty of MMOs are successful without WOW type numbers. You don't need WOW type numbers to be successful. FFS

 

[evdk]

P.S. Plenty of MMOs are successful without WOW type numbers. You don't need WOW type numbers to be successful. FFS

You need WOW type numbers when you sink AAA+ Hollywood blockbuster amounts of money into the project.

 

[Infinitron]

" As far as the industry is concerned, Bioware is/was a similar tier developer. "

Such bullshit. BIO has NEVER been on Blizzard's llevel in terms of appealiing or selling to a mass market ala Blizzard. Stop fukkin' lying. BIO games are LUCKY tto reach 3mil. FFS

This guy disagrees: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-06-07-bioware-we-havent-had-a-breakthrough-success

Valve, Blizzard and Bioware all had a very similar profile over a decade ago: they were all doing very high quality games that people appreciated a lot

Btw, check out the comment by Cleve's buddy Michael Shamgar!

 

[Average Manatee]

Bioware is at the level of sales and acclaim that Blizzard was pre-WoW. Well, at least this was the case before DA2.

Another thing to add to my list of reasons why TOR failed:

Blizzard's fanbase was all-PC, and WoW had low system requirements to present a low barrier of entry. Bioware's fanbase was spread out across consoles and PC, while TOR was only for PC and had such high system requirements to make it run smoothly that upgrading to play TOR was a considerable investment.

 

[Infinitron]

Blizzard's fanbase was all-PC, and WoW had low system requirements to present a low barrier of entry. Bioware's fanbase was spread out across consoles and PC, while TOR was only for PC and had such high system requirements to make it run smoothly that upgrading to play TOR was a considerable investment.

Excellent point. I've said before that Bioware made a huge strategic error by giving up on the "PC-centric" wing of their development. What's interesting is that it took them a very long time to completely phase out the PC - their last patch for NWN1 was in 2008(!)

 

[Volourn]

"This guy disagrees:"

The article states that BIO has never had a 'mega hit'. ie A game that sells 10milish copies. That is right in line with what I posted - BIO games are lucky to reach 3mil let alone anything higher.


"alve, Blizzard and Bioware all had a very similar profile over a decade ago: they were all doing very high quality games that people appreciated a lot"

He's an idiot. BIO was never at Blizzard's level popularity wise. FFS

 

[Rahdulan]

Bioware is at the level of sales and acclaim that Blizzard was pre-WoW. Well, at least this was the case before DA2.

Another thing to add to my list of reasons why TOR failed:

Blizzard's fanbase was all-PC, and WoW had low system requirements to present a low barrier of entry. Bioware's fanbase was spread out across consoles and PC, while TOR was only for PC and had such high system requirements to make it run smoothly that upgrading to play TOR was a considerable investment.

Reason why TOR failed, aside from Bioware's inability to make a good game these days, was because in a moment of colossal idiocy they tried to merge two opposing things: their classic singleplayer storytelling and MMORPGs; but then they also tried to make singleplayer segment the main focus of the game. Game that was an MMORPG meant to be played with other people and where you have no other way to feasibly progress without going through your class story, unlike in, for example, Guild Wars 2 where personal story can be entirely ignored after the introduction.

It was just a badly put together game that A) was designed by people who knew nothing about MMORPGs, which prompted EA to send some Mythic people over for even more laughs, and B) they banked heavily on non-MMORPG players playing the game which indicates focusing on the wrong things if you wanted a successful MMORPG in this day and age.

 

[Volourn]

BIO didn't make KOTOR OL. THE FAKE TEXAS ONE DID.

 

[Average Manatee]

"This guy disagrees:"

The article states that BIO has never had a 'mega hit'. ie A game that sells 10milish copies. That is right in line with what I posted - BIO games are lucky to reach 3mil let alone anything higher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_games

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos 3 million

Apparently 3 million is enough of a mega hit to launch an MMO off.

 

[Volourn]

wiki lool wiki

p.s. Diablo 2 = 4mil in fukkin' 2000

BG2 = 2mil in... fukkin' 2000

But, fuck yeah, they wer ein the same league. STFU

Not that wiki is trustworthy cause those numbers are all bullshitz anyways,

Notice how DA1 isn't even on the fukkin' list even though it's supposed to be BIO's highest selling game LMFAO

 

[Average Manatee]

Diablo 2? You mean the game that had 2 bots for every player? Yeah, it had 4 million people playing it

Feel free to provide your own source to find sales data. I'm pretty sure ME2 was their highest selling game at 3 million, though most of them are around the 2.5 million range.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Feel free to provide your own source to find sales data. I'm pretty sure ME2 was their highest selling game at 3 million, though most of them are around the 2.5 million range.

I think I read that ME3 hit 3.5.

It's a real shame that the 2-3 million copies sold isn't considered a success.

Publishers being obsessed with smash hits is in my opinion bad for both gamers and the industry at large.

 

[Average Manatee]

3.5 million for ME3 was the number shipped, not sold. Pretty sure ME2 is their highest selling game.

It's worth noting that all of the numbers are for retail though, so it's entirely possible Bioware has significant digital sales contributions.

 

[waywardOne]

Has any Bioware game had good gameplay? BG2 is kind of close, but that was a long time ago.

Even if the BG series had good gameplay, it's certainly nothing to do with Bioware. They were implementing a rule set that had 15+ years of playtesting. The instances where the engine couldn't replicate an effect, they did a terrible job of working around it.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

To be fair to BioWare, has there been a single subscription based game designed to compete with WoW that hasn't failed at least somewhat spectacularly? Age of Conan and Warhammer are the most recent failures, but IIRC there was a rash of also-rans in 2006 or so. WoW is the only game to have unseated a dominant MMO, and it had the benefit of Blizzard already having a ton of experience with wildly-successful multiplayer games (including the ur-skinner box of Diablo 2). As Average Manatee pointed out, Blizzard gets mechanics in a way Bioware doesn't. But I don't think any company has as much experience dealing with multiplayer mechanics and balance as Blizzard (Starcraft and Diablo 2 were getting patched 10 years after release!).

 

[Curious_Tongue]

3.5 million for ME3 was the number shipped, not sold. Pretty sure ME2 is their highest selling game.

It's worth noting that all of the numbers are for retail though, so it's entirely possible Bioware has significant digital sales contributions.

It'd also be interesting to see used game sales figures. It could reveal how many people want to play their games, just not for full price.

 

[Serious_Business]

honourblade

 

[Average Manatee]

To be fair to BioWare, has there been a single subscription based game designed to compete with WoW that hasn't failed at least somewhat spectacularly? Age of Conan and Warhammer are the most recent failures, but IIRC there was a rash of also-rans in 2006 or so. WoW is the only game to have unseated a dominant MMO, and it had the benefit of Blizzard already having a ton of experience with wildly-successful multiplayer games (including the ur-skinner box of Diablo 2). As Average Manatee pointed out, Blizzard gets mechanics in a way Bioware doesn't. But I don't think any company has as much experience dealing with multiplayer mechanics and balance as Blizzard (Starcraft and Diablo 2 were getting patched 10 years after release!).

Had Bioware not dropped NWN and/or made NWN2 themselves instead of farming it out to Obsidian they would be in a similar position. Hell, NWN is practically an MMO already (see persistant worlds).

3.5 million for ME3 was the number shipped, not sold. Pretty sure ME2 is their highest selling game.

It's worth noting that all of the numbers are for retail though, so it's entirely possible Bioware has significant digital sales contributions.

It'd also be interesting to see used game sales figures. It could reveal how many people want to play their games, just not for full price.

And it's worth noting that Blizzard games have more longevity because they have more multiplayer and therefore less people selling them after the first week. This is probably why multiplayer was added for ME3, but it hardly did much to stem the trainwreck that the created in the first place there.

 

[Darkforge]

Look at that! Darkdork the Dunce is cryinga agin as he pretends his opinion on what makes a game good or bad is actually relevant! NEWSLFASH: IT ISN'T!

Yet in my 25 years+ as a gamer likely far more relevant than your's considering the utter nonsense and support you post about biotard.

 

[Volourn]

"Yet in my 25 years+ as a gamer"

This doesn't make you special. FFS It doesn't even make you any different than me, you dumb shit.

Having 25 years experience playing Super Mario Bros liek you have surely doesn't make you worthy of talking about RPGs. FFS


"Even if the BG series had good gameplay, it's certainly nothing to do with Bioware. They were implementing a rule set that had 15+ years of playtesting. The instances where the engine couldn't replicate an effect, they did a terrible job of working around it."

Idiocy = you. Considering all the shitty and failed DnD games that exist, I'd say a good DnD game is good INSPITE of DnD not ebcause of it you dumb shit. Just ask the makers of shitty SOZ, shitty DTU, shitty EOTB, and the king of all shit shitty POR2. Good gameplay doesn't come from silly ruleset, you dumb fuck. Only an ignoramous who knows squat about stuff like this aka you would think so.


"I'm pretty sure ME2 was their highest selling game at 3 million, though most of them are around the 2.5 million range."

Spamming arandom shit mother just shows you have no idea what you write about. I'll leave it at that.