Star Wars: The Old Republic

instant0 · 2011-09-17T17:42:43.000Z

KevinC:

Of course! But I don’t rage and storm their forums if my particular book/TV show/movie includes or excludes gays, straights, furries, mormons, etc.

I got it…

Star Wars, The Old Republich; Torchwood!
That should have most things covered.
Should make the H/TG/L/G people happy. As well as Yaoi fans.

Edit: Republich? What the hell…

ckessel · 2011-09-17T19:37:59.000Z

instant0:

Edit: Republich? What the hell…

A republican that’s a lich (see Dick Cheney)

Brad_Grenz · 2011-09-17T22:32:11.000Z

I have no idea how that ended up in here.

Arson · 2011-09-18T00:56:15.000Z

World of Starwars: Wrath of the Sith King. I don’t know why this game is so hyped. I watch it. I read about it, and I don’t care about it.

Razgon · 2011-09-18T02:21:26.000Z

Arson:

World of Starwars: Wrath of the Sith King. I don’t know why this game is so hyped. I watch it. I read about it, and I don’t care about it.

Thanks for letting us know this important piece of information!

Quitch · 2011-09-18T06:52:42.000Z

KevinC:

Of course! But I don’t rage and storm their forums if my particular book/TV show/movie includes or excludes gays, straights, furries, mormons, etc.

And you represent the majority of course, so if you wouldn’t do it then it’s weird.

Frankly, I’m a little lost as to your point here.

Charlatan · 2011-09-18T14:37:22.000Z

I was thinking of SWTOR this morning as I was playing LOTRO. And I’m wondering - if you look at SWTOR through your crystal ball, do you see a future similar to LOTRO’s? There are some parallels: LOTRO had a big, well-known license, it had lots of money behind it, had a pretty good launch, and generally got positive reviews. I predict you’ll be able to put SWTOR in that sentence in a few months. LOTRO got a lot of roleplayers and plenty of people who wanted something shiny and new. I predict SWTOR will do likewise. LOTRO had some distinguishing aspects to it, but overall wasn’t terribly different from WOW. Again, I think you could say the same for SWTOR (from what we’ve seen). So from the 5000 foot view, LOTRO and SWTOR appear to be pretty similar games.

So what happened to LOTRO? Being pretty good wasn’t good enough. They went F2P because (I assume) the traditional $15/month model wasn’t working. And once they did that, they began to thrive. Today there seems to be a lot of servers, and Turbine (at least publicly) appears happy with how LOTRO is doing commercially.

So yeah, it’s early, given that SWTOR hasn’t even launched, but I was wondering if the best endgame Bioware can hope for is a similar fate? I don’t know how much Bioware spent on development vis-a-vis how much Turbine spent on LOTRO, but I wonder if they could consider a F2P fate a “success” given that they’re under the aegis of EA. I guess it all boils down to whether the market will support two games where you pay $15/month. There’s enough people to support that, sure, but whether enough people will think it’s worth it, that’s the question. I’m not sure that in today’s climate, and with the alternatives people have today, that the $15 bucks a month model is going to work any more.

P.S., I’ll be horribly disappointed if I can’t get a Wookkiee companion who I can romance

P.P.S., not really

Athryn · 2011-09-18T14:49:57.000Z

I think the one thing SWTOR has going for it that LOTRO didn’t is coming out at the right time. People werennt bored with WOW yet when LOTRO came out, and that boredom is really the biggest thing SWTOR has.

TheWombat · 2011-09-18T15:17:47.000Z

Athryn:

I think the one thing SWTOR has going for it that LOTRO didn’t is coming out at the right time. People werennt bored with WOW yet when LOTRO came out, and that boredom is really the biggest thing SWTOR has.

Anecdotally, I’ve heard from several friends who are either burned out on WoW or never really got into it that SWTOR is one they definitely plan to check out. So there’s probably some truth in this.

Dejin · 2011-09-18T17:32:33.000Z

Charlatan:

So what happened to LOTRO? Being pretty good wasn’t good enough. They went F2P because (I assume) the traditional $15/month model wasn’t working. And once they did that, they began to thrive. Today there seems to be a lot of servers, and Turbine (at least publicly) appears happy with how LOTRO is doing commercially.

AIUI this is not an accurate statement. They were doing okay with the traditional model, maybe not printing buckets of money, but doing well enough to continue operating and not in a “barely hanging on manner” either.

They switched to F2P because DDO, also owned by Turbine, was in big trouble and so DDO switched to F2P. When that happened Turbine discovered that DDO as F2P was in fact printing buckets of money, so they switched LOTRO over as well in the hopes of printing even more money buckets.

I don’t think it’s accurate saying that the $15/month was not working for LOTRO. LOTRO was successful enough to have several expansions before switching to F2P and would probably still be doing fine at $15/month if it hadn’t been for Turbine’s DDO experiment.

Rasputin · 2011-09-21T08:23:09.000Z

Guild phase 2 has begun, where guilds can set other guilds as allies and adversaries to try to get on the same server.

McMaster, when you can pry yourself away from your beefy man-love, let’s do this!

http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20110921

Mouzone · 2011-09-21T09:02:47.000Z

I don’t think sweator can be consider successful as f2p. If the rumors of it’s $100+ million development costs are true.
I haven’t been paying much attention to it but I can’t get a sense of how multiplayer fits in with the game. They seem to add alot to make single player immersive but those same changes will make playing in groups more annoying

Charlatan · 2011-09-21T16:28:59.000Z

Mouzone:

I don’t think sweator can be consider successful as f2p. If the rumors of it’s $100+ million development costs are true.
I haven’t been paying much attention to it but I can’t get a sense of how multiplayer fits in with the game. They seem to add alot to make single player immersive but those same changes will make playing in groups more annoying

I guess that’s the 100 million dollar question - can you make a game that has the feel of a single-player Bioware story-driven game and make it an engaging MMO at the same time? We shall know soon enough.

Charlatan · 2011-09-24T05:14:43.000Z

BioWare has announced the release date for Star Wars: The Old Republic as December 20 and 22, 2011 (see here). So since Star Wars Galaxies shuts down on December 15, that means you SW junkies will have a week of withdrawal before you can get your fix.

Edit because I acually had the date wrong. But I posted first so a winnar is me.

Razgon · 2011-09-24T05:15:06.000Z

Release date is 20th of december, 22nd of december in EU!

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=502598

edit: ha! Beaten by seconds!

hong · 2011-09-24T05:17:40.000Z

Any word on the release date for Austria, the land down under?

Teiman · 2011-09-24T05:25:14.000Z

yay1234

MSUSteve · 2011-09-24T05:38:53.000Z

MSUSteve:

The dev post quoted above makes it sound like they’re farther off from release than I’d been hoping. I was thinking they might get out in December, but if they’re still hemming and hawing about beta weekends and talking about data crunching and decisions to be made, it seems like release is fairly far off.

I’m very happy to have been proven wrong here. Definitely looking forward to December 20th!

instant0 · 2011-09-24T07:41:25.000Z

MSUSteve:

I’m very happy to have been proven wrong here. Definitely looking forward to December 20th!

Does not mean you’re wrong. Could just mean that they are releasing the game in an unfinished state in an attempt to get a lot of cash, not thinking about the backlash that will occur a few months later when 75% of the players jump ship cause the game lacked x,y,z,v,w features “all” the other MMOs have or are about to introduce.

MattKeil · 2011-09-24T08:05:33.000Z

Just in time for me to have no time to play it for two weeks due to Christmas and New Year’s plans. Good job.