Star Wars: The Old Republic will kill WoW - outsourced to Broadsword

[Regdar]

Combine a setting in which no one has never cared about consistency with a developer that has never cared about consistency and you get a game that doesn't care about consistency.

Lucas never cared about consistency because for Lucas, Star Wars has always been about the tragedy of Vader. From reading a number of articles on wookiepedia I gathered that the "expanded universe" is just a giant fanfic repository.

 

[circ]

jesus christ those Oblivion faces. I had almost forgot.

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

So, is WoW dead yet?

 

[Jarpie]

So, is WoW dead yet?

No but my soul is!

 

[deuxhero]

Combine a setting in which no one has never cared about consistency with a developer that has never cared about consistency and you get a game that doesn't care about consistency.

Only the REALLY bad EU authors (i.e., Mrs. Tallifan) and ToRtanic are inconsistent for the most part (there are exceptions, like Keyan Farlander being a Jedi, but one book has him not knowing basic aspects of the force). The really early EU stuff was all over the place, and most of it is in "it happened, but it will never be mentioned again or effect anything ever" with only a handful of non-movie characters progressing.

 

[Exar Kun]

http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/7/4309866/star-wars-the-old-republic-revenue-doubled-free-to-play

Subs at 500k.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Big question: Is it enough to keep the game afloat and make a profit?

 

[~RAGING BONER~]

it should have been micro-tranny from the start...would have been an actual success instead of a vague failure.

unique lightsaber crystals, robes, guns, slaves/romanceable "persons" etc for 1-5$ a pop would have netted them trillions of republic credits.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

God, can you imagine what that would have done to the industry? To EA? They still might have Riccotiello.
And the Bio Docs.
FUCK THAT SHIT.

 

[Mother Russia]

I don't understand this shit though. Slavery is apparently ok, but hetrosexuality isn't?? Fuk bioware

 

[Wilian]

Big question: Is it enough to keep the game afloat and make a profit?

Unless Bioware was lying when they said that one year of 500k subs will get them even, it should be quite so as long as stupid morons keep spending cash.

 

[Exar Kun]

Big question: Is it enough to keep the game afloat and make a profit?

Considering its making tons of money since free to play, the EA lead guy says he will continually provide money for 8 week content updates, and is still the 2nd most successful western MMO, then I would say yes.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Edit: Incidentally, loving the new level-tiered PVP. No longer do I have to play with people who have competed since day 1. Unless it's their alts.

Wait - the attempted WoW-killer didn't have level-tiered PvP? Even when WoW first introduced battlegrounds there was level-tiering. A lot of players would keep alts of differing levels specifically because they found one of the lower-level tiers more fun (whether because they found the abilities/tactics more enjoyable, or because they didn't have to put up with loot imbalance at pre-raid level tiers). Okay, they didn't have that at launch, but why would any developer implement battlegrounds and NOT implement level-tiered options?

 

[Azrael the cat]

Combine a setting in which no one has never cared about consistency with a developer that has never cared about consistency and you get a game that doesn't care about consistency.

Lucas never cared about consistency because for Lucas, Star Wars has always been about the tragedy of Vader. From reading a number of articles on wookiepedia I gathered that the "expanded universe" is just a giant fanfic repository.

Of course it is. It always is with mass-licenced 'franchise' books. If the writers from a film/tv series aren't involved, and the showrunner/producer isn't involved, how can you have any vision for a thematically and dramatically cohesive whole? It's one thing handing a franchise over to a particular writer or a particular director, but when you're licensing it en masse, what exactly IS the difference between an EU and fanfiction? I haven't bothered with that stuff since I was a kid, but from my recollection the EU genre even repeatedly falls into the same story traps as fan-fiction - in particular, so much of the EU genre (like the fanfiction genre) is centered around filling in details in the lore that really should have remained unexplained. For Star Wars that was a particular problem, as setting rules and explanations sucked everything interesting out of the Force.

Even as a Doctor Who fan as a kid, I had to admit that the EU novels were basically fanfiction. And there's a good argument for holding them as the best of the EU genre - many were written by the primary writers from the relevant doctor's tv run (e.g. most of the 3rd doctor books would be written by Terry Nation, who was also the most commonly used writer for the 3rd doctor's tv run) - there were far fewer of them, they would usually have one author at a time per doctor (making it easier to maintain consistency), and major extensions to the lore (i.e. the 7th doctor EU set after the show's cancellation) was taken from the plans the show had made for the 7th doctor's arc before cancellation. But it's still fanfiction - granting a commercial license over a series of works doesn't transform them into a dramatic whole.

Arguably you could say the same thing applies even in 'official film series' - Aliens might have been a good sequel to Alien, but there's no reason to consider it a continuation of the original team's vision. That doesn't mean that it's a lesser film - taken in its own right, it's an excellent film, but taken as a continuation of the original film, why pretend that possession of the commercial rights somehow makes it anything more than speculative?

 

[DragoFireheart]

My thoughts about this game's current state:

 

[Zewp]

Has this game killed WoW yet?

 

[DragoFireheart]

Has this game killed WoW yet?

No. WoW will just die off.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Big question: Is it enough to keep the game afloat and make a profit?

Considering its making tons of money since free to play, the EA lead guy says he will continually provide money for 8 week content updates, and is still the 2nd most successful western MMO, then I would say yes.

Does this mode of thought however include the initial investment, including advertising costs?

 

[Exar Kun]

Big question: Is it enough to keep the game afloat and make a profit?

Considering its making tons of money since free to play, the EA lead guy says he will continually provide money for 8 week content updates, and is still the 2nd most successful western MMO, then I would say yes.

Does this mode of thought however include the initial investment, including advertising costs?

That only helps since the initial investment was so high they aren't going to randomly shut the game down after they start milking it with micro transactions and stabilized subs at a reasonable amount.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Has this game killed WoW yet?

No. WoW will just die off.

It'll probably just go and organize a big last stand where it takes on every MMO ever at once so it can die like an old warrior.

 

[Zewp]

The funny thing is, if Blizzard were to reduce the sub to something like $10, a lot more people would likely subscribe again.

 

[ohWOW]

I don't think that I would go back to this game even for 1$ for a month. Not with pandas and furry wolves and over all idiot-friendly attitude. This game is barely a shadow of itself from 2004-2007.

 

[Syl]

Today news: World of Warcraft subscribers are leaving, Activision warns

The company said 14% of users left the game between January and March - a fall of 1.3 million.

 

[Jaesun]

Are they all rushing off to play TOR? WAS CRISPY POSSIBLY RIGHT?

 

[Zewp]

Yeah, I read about that this morning. To be honest, I'm more surprised it didn't start falling like that years ago already. It's bad enough that WoW subscribers are left to play through the same content endlessly, but Blizzard is charging them $15 a month for it. WoW is essentially still using a business model that is very quickly disappearing in the MMO market.