Originally posted by Denambren

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Question:

How many unpolished and half finished , theme park MMOs made it big ?

Answer:

None

Same as sandbox , theme park , or whatever else.

Game needs to be polished and finished to suceed.

 

Your theory fails

 

Pretty much exactly this.

You can't say that games like Earthrise (!?!!?) and Fallen Earth are games that sandbox fans should have supported. These games were an embarassment to gamers because of the state they were released in.  Just because someone calls their unfinished pile of manure a sandbox game doesn't mean you should subscribe to that game for a year to help the industry.  Doing that promotes the idea that an unfinished, unpolished product with barely any content is what we're looking for as players. If we were to promote this idea, then the article is right about that: you would not see any multi-million dollar budget MMOs, theme park or not, since we would have clearly sent the message that we don't need content or polish to keep paying monthly for an MMO. 

 

I think the Articles point was that because theme park mmo's have been the most successful lately that if a big company is going to feel cofident enough to have a large enough budget to take their time and put out a more polished, they will choose the safer theme park style, while the smaller companies with low budgets and less time to develop their mmo's are making the sandbox games to fill that niche. So if you want a sandbox game, you and others need to give it the support to give them time and revenue to fix problems and make game better. I agree with you though that I don't want to spend my time or money to be an "invester" or "guine pig" while these companies take a year to finish their games.

Originally posted by Arentas

The only problem with sandbox games is that they aren't developed with AAA budgets.  If anything, sandbox games are far more fun to just start out in because they are ripe with untapped opportunity.  

If, for instance, Blizzard developed a sandbox game and dumped hundred million into it, then that game would be extremely successful regardless of the fact that its a sandbox.  It's all about the money Lebowski.

The only reason themepark titles are prevalent is because Blizzard created a highly polished, quality, theme-park MMO... and because everyone is trying to copy it.

It's all about the quality of the product, not whether its a themepark or a sandbox.  And quality usually requires a lot of money.   

Eve is successful... not because its some sort of crazy anomaly amongst sandbox MMOs, but because its a polished, deep, well thought out, well designed game.

 

Games like Darkfall,  Mortal Online, etc are not doing exceptionally well because they are low budget products with lots of design flaws.  That's all there is to it.

Read this, and read it again Jon Wood. Read it it so much that it shows up in your dreams at night. This is the reason why there aren't any QUALITY sandbox games about or in production these days. If a company sank $100 million into a sandbox effort and polished it to the "d" as Trion did with Rift, you'd have a game that would do just as well or better than 95% of the "efforts" being made today.

But, neither you nor anyone on this site can name a sandbox MMO that has seen HALF of that investment amount put into it and worked on by a veteran team after 2004. Sure, we've seen half-baked attempts by a few companies whose only reason for making a sanbox attempt was that none of the big, budget capable AAA companies is doing it.

Well the article is all well and good, but why even talk about a sandbox game when it's being developed by Bioware is odd.  Bioware isn't known for sandbox games, that isn't their style to begin with even in the remote sense of the word.  So the point overall is mute to me, to say the market and such has caused this to be a them park game... that makes no sense.

Bioware makes very story driven RPGs and I wouldn't expect their MMO to be any different, and the millions of fans that play Bioware games wouldn't want it to be any less different.  Thus you could say the huge majority of people who play RPGs like story driven content.  Call it whatever you want, but it is meaningful and is what makes a Roleplaying Game a Roleplaying game. 

There are just a minority of people who really like sandbox games, which i'm one of those that like both.  I would have to say that it would seem that those of us that like RPGs especially those table top games where we created our own story prefer the Sandbox style because of that fact.  We can sort of create our own content. and live out whatever fantasy at our own whim.

Considering that Bioware did create neverwinter nights i wouldn't put it past them to eventually have a sandbox title... not neccessarly based on Starwars. 

But considering this is their first MMO there are very high expectations and they really have to hit a homerun so to speak in order to gain a foothold on the market as a whole which will lead to them eventually developing other titles for other niche groups of people i'm sure.

Originally posted by Axton

I seem to remeber a Star Wars semi-sand box game that everyone loved. Until the beast that kills MMO's did what it does.

 

Do you mean sony or wow? Because both seem to be the folly of many an mmo and both probably (and by sony i mean definitly was) the cause of SWG's demise. You just dont fix whats working.

Originally posted by Adamai

Originally posted by Adamai

 

no no no not trash it. amd no not  bnetter features, more depth and more player control over the game universe and mechanics like swg and eve offer you..

Those are sandbox games, this is mostly a themepark with some sandbox elements.  Might as well get mad at an apple because its not an orange.

for example take a look at swtors answer to space flight.. i dont think they could have made it any worse, you literally have no control over your ship. you dont fly it you cant mod it and well its pretty much useless.  that shouldnt be how it is in an starwars game, your ship should eb your primary tool its what enables you to travel around the galaxy.

You can move your ship, you just can't turn around,  in fact you have to move your ship to dodge blaster fire and asteroids.  You can get mods and upgrade both the exterior and interior of your ship.  It is also your housing.

then you have companions which completely remove the very fabric of an mmo!!! thats the playing with other people aspect. if you have npc charecters you can take with you like kotor then the game isnt an mmo.. mmo stands for masive multiplayer online   it may be massive but im struggling to see where they fit the multi play into the game.. it may have some multi play but its certainly not going to be massive multiplay, atleast not like the likes of eve and swg.. do you see my point!!....

This doesn't remove the need to group, it removes the need for particular classes.  One companion won't get you through a world quest.  In fact, 3 players with 3 companions may not pull you through either (depending on the skill of the team).  Not to mention, its only ONE companion, which isn't even remotely as strong as a player.  GW1 gave you a team of companions, it didn't stop people from playing together with their own team.  This is a pretty weak argument to say the least.  Plus, companions aren't allowed in Warzones, Flashpoints, and most likely they'll be kept out of World Arcs too.

the game is lacking in depth of mechanics and player interaction.. and one more thing  take a brief look into the charecter customisation and clothing options and you will see yet more restrictive content.. from what i saw with the jedi how you look is based of your level and progression in the game, this basically means every jedi will look very much the same at max level... thats something else i dont like about todays new mmo's

No, its not lacking in either of those things,  it hasn't released yet.  Secondly, you can wear a ton of different armors, you can even wear armor that isn't ideal for your class at all,  and it will show you as much in your stats.  Thats just a minor tidbit,  what you don't realize is that there is more diverse sets of armor per class than most games have loot total.  Thats a dev comment paraphrased for you there.

 

its almost as if they lack the imagination required to develop a fantasy world with unpresidented freedom of play.. i dont want to be guided from one area to the next by a tring of quests thaty will eventually lead me to the grand finale and end game battle with some uber boss.. i dont want this because i know that once ive  reached this pivital point in the game their will be nothing else for me to do with this charecter other than pvp!!! pvp  as you and i both know is only fun for a while before it becomes boreing and tedious and samey..

Luckily you won't have to be guided by quests,  you can do world arcs,  grind, or level completely from PvP. Not to mention you have flashpoints, world arcs, world bosses... Have you even looked up information on this game at all?  

mmos need what i call the hook factor, something to keep players hooked once they ahve maxed out a char and reach max level.. in swg they do this with a deep complex economy and crafting system.. swg has kept me busy and playing for the best part of 6 years now and im still not bored with it..

They have that,  its called progression,  its called story,  its called content, and TOR has more of it than any game currently on the market and thats before we get into what information hasn't been released on it yet.  The game is absolutely massive.

but when i talk about games like wow and sto.. and lotro all i can think about is how their is nothing to do once i reach max level and  finish all the qeusts and aquire all the best items for my class...

Thats up to you if you want to feel that way, but that doesn't mean it is that way.  I played SWG for over a year myself, it was fun, but the NGE is absolutely terrible.  They had a game that was just fun enough to keep me interested and turned it into a game I'm too ashamed of to point and laugh at it.

there is no way on this earth im going to run through all the same story and quests again for another charecter, thats just boreing to me.  and while im doing that i already know whats at the end because ive already done it once.

You wouldn't be running through the same quests with another character, each class has its OWN unique story, 200+ hours of content PER class without counting that your choices change the outcome for each quesst.  All those hours of content PER CLASS isn't even a quarter of the content available.  Thats will all personal story content combined, and that alone would take an average player a year to complete.

im trying to explain myself as best as possible without sounding like im trolling and flameing the new swtor game.  there is no room for story in an mmo people simply dont          spend their time following stories in an mmo. some will but the majority just steam through it to the end   game stuff which is whaty matter most as the games today revolve around one thing and one thing only ... and thats pvp. and if i may!! pvp is only entertaining for a few months before it becomes boreing as hell..

How could they? There are no MMOs with a good story in place, and it isn't told in this manner either.  Nor do they allow for groups to become part of that story.  You are confusing every other game on the market with SWTOR, and thats your first mistake.  People try and put TOR in a class with everyone else,  and by doing so, its easy to see how you WON'T be able to understand what this game actually offers and what these mechanics actually are.  You missed out on the most important piece of character progression and then only try to understand part of it... the part where they say "story".  You miss out on everything else.

 i dont have these problems with swg or eve, i find that these games are so diverse and content rich that their is always something to do thats worthwhile and well fun and enjoyable.

Thats great, because they'll still be around when SWTOR launches, and many people will find the same thing in SWTOR that you find in those games... that TOR has things to do that are fun, enjoyable, and worthwhile.

i dont get that with wow or lotro or sto or other games of their genre.

Thats obvious.

ive played many many mmo's mmorts mmorpg mmofps mmog's mmosim you name it ive played them.  and only a few stand out, the rest seem to be the same thing just repeating over and over again.. 

i guess im asking for something diffrent to come out of the wood work not just another wow clone.. themeparks are just boreing. you already know how its all going to work and how its alll going to end before you even start playing them.

Luckily SWTOR isn't a WoW clone,  but like all those who call it such, you'd have to know something about what the game offers before you find out what the game truly is.

 

i love playing bioware games, but bioware games are all solo games, single player titles and thats why they are so great, bioware is fantastic at story and giving the player that hero feeling.. but this only works in a game of this type.. not every one can be a hero in a mmo. if every one is a hero then there really isnt any hero's   at all just lots of redefined player titles.. instewad of being called a server full of players its a server full of heroes.. there is no diffinitive diffrence. every one is the same every one is identicle the hero feeling and system only works in  single player titles.  mmo's are for scores of people who want to play cooperative in teams together to overcome puzzles and challanges. swtor wont really have much of this at all, so far all it has that works this way is several flashpoints, and lets not forget what a flashpoiint really is, its just a dungeon like any other. its not new not even close. and it seems to be the only apparent aspect of the game that requires other players..

 

Actually SWTOR will have more group content then most MMOs currently on the market, all of the content aside from personal story requires grouping,  thats over 75% of the game.  If you just want to do the personal stories and nothing else,  thats fine, but you miss out on most of the content. Flashpoints are just one possible event,  you have world arcs and group quests, heroics, flashpoints, warzones, open world PvP, and when you get into crafting, the best items require collaboration -- meaning you need other players to create them.

 

but im guessing you can take companions in too.  and might i add that its companions that took the fun out of guild wars too. all of a sudden players could solo every aspect of guild wars. it no longer required you to team with other players. your companions filled that gape rendering guild wars a single player experience.. but with an mmo label..

No you can't take companions in there.  If you choose to solo then thats your problem, I never had a problem finding a group in GWs nor will I in SWTOR.  You really think 1 companion is going to fill an entire team?  Really?

its hard to explain without makeing it looking like im belittleing people or accuseing them of having no experience with mmo's. so i wish to oppologise if i have come across this way to any one.  it was not my intention :)  i have been playing video games since the day i could talk and hold  a controller or press keys..  i started off gameing with the old atari not the 2700 the really old one  with the round nobs on the controller and the slider which was used to select the games.. like ping pong   and  misile command. im talking the very first kind of games.. like scrolling text adventures. my first real computer was the zx spectrum which was one of the most powerful home computers in its day.. it had games like manic miner and frogger and r-type and such...  ok they have nothing on todays games. but im just trying to give some insight into how long ive been playing video games.  im 32 now and ive always played video games, ive played online games ever since the internet was a public thing..  dont ask me the date as i cant remember all i can remember is the crappy opperating systems lol.

All those years of gaming and you still can't understand the ideas behind a themepark game?  I've been playing games longer than I can remember, but I learned early on the differences between the genres and subgenres, and found merit in every single one of them.  Thats the kind of player I am.  I'd rather look at a game like SWTOR, GW2, TERA, Archeage, DCUO, or any number of games and be excited about playing them rather than pretend I know everything they offer and decide to pass.  Sure there are games I'm not jazzed about,  but I won't knock them because they are exactly what they say they are.  

but yea as ive watched games come out ive seen then become sophisticated and then ive watched them go back in time get worse so to speak.  i dont know!! maybe im too old for these kind of things now. maybe ive passed my enjoyment thresh hold. maybe im no longer capable of being entertained by simple things.

but eve - online still stimulates my mind. the game is just well.... its enveloping and addictive.  and makes you want to keep going back for more to see whats around the next corner. no other games  do that for me :)

hope this gives you some insight into how i think and see things, i dont want people to think im a party pooper cause im not, i just want better games for us all and the recent stuff is as far as im concerned lacking in all areas,, startrek online was just heart breakingly poor qaulity when it was released and its not much better now, just more of the same   rubbish.

And I found eve boring.  Space only just isn't my thing, especially when you pretty much need a spreadsheet just to keep track of everything.  I like sandbox games myself,  currently playing Xsyon, and I was a long term subscriber of games like SWG, FE, and plenty of other hybridized sandboxes.  I have the ability to like everything, if only just enough to look at it with an open mind.   I was lucky to grow up with gamers like myself, and we literally played everything.  

If I were you, I'd start with learning more about SWTOR. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=188836

Once you've gone through the majority of that, it might answer a lot of those questions you have on whats possible in the game... whether this is a WoW clone,  and correct much more than I've corrected for you here.  It may seem like I'm being an asshole,  and perhaps I am in a sense.. but when people have false perceptions and spread them, I'd rather them dislike games for their true features instead of ones they created in their head.

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Originally posted by Arentas

The only problem with sandbox games is that they aren't developed with AAA budgets.  If anything, sandbox games are far more fun to just start out in because they are ripe with untapped opportunity.  

If, for instance, Blizzard developed a sandbox game and dumped hundred million into it, then that game would be extremely successful regardless of the fact that its a sandbox.  It's all about the money Lebowski.

The only reason themepark titles are prevalent is because Blizzard created a highly polished, quality, theme-park MMO... and because everyone is trying to copy it.

It's all about the quality of the product, not whether its a themepark or a sandbox.  And quality usually requires a lot of money.   

Eve is successful... not because its some sort of crazy anomaly amongst sandbox MMOs, but because its a polished, deep, well thought out, well designed game.

 

Games like Darkfall,  Mortal Online, etc are not doing exceptionally well because they are low budget products with lots of design flaws.  That's all there is to it.

Read this, and read it again Jon Wood. Read it it so much that it shows up in your dreams at night. This is the reason why there aren't any QUALITY sandbox games about or in production these days. If a company sank $100 million into a sandbox effort and polished it to the "d" as Trion did with Rift, you'd have a game that would do just as well or better than 95% of the "efforts" being made today.

But, neither you nor anyone on this site can name a sandbox MMO that has seen HALF of that investment amount put into it and worked on by a veteran team after 2004. Sure, we've seen half-baked attempts by a few companies whose only reason for making a sanbox attempt was that none of the big, budget capable AAA companies is doing it.

Which in my opinoin is the problem.  To get a polished and on the level sandbox game you need investors.

To get investors you need to show them they will get their money back 10 fold.

You can't get that unless a sandbox games does really well (north of a million users and hold now)

They won't see that until there is a sandbox game that is done enough to attract that many people.

and you won't get a game like that unless it has the money to do that..and we go around and around like a merry go round (yes that ryhms, yes i'm bad at it)

What needs to happen i think and for sandbox games i really hope it goes this way, is for this to happen

ToR is successful.  (yes for this plan to work this needs to happen) 

Investors see High polished expensive MMOs are the way to go ($$ cha-ching)  Then other AAA developers jump in and try their hand, theme park at first.  Then a little known developers (not really) decides "Hey we'd like to get in on this gravy train lets get our type of game out there"

They tell the investors, see how all those other Big companies are doing so well.  Well we are a big company and we have an idea and we can back it up. Let us bring out Oblivion online or something of that nature.

Then Once it's successful. They will try and bring out fallout online (once they can wrestle it from the ones who hold it now) and there is your entrance to sandbox games. Once they see people like these wander anywhere do quests in any other you want type games working, they will be more trusting of these types of games.

But again they need to be successful.  IF tor fails, it's more likely to shoot the genre in the foot then to create an opening for sandbox games.  Investors right now need to see success in anything...anything other then WoW, if they see that only one game can be succesful the chance of them investing in anything MMO is likely to dwindle fast. But whats success to them? Most likely something north of 1M customers, but the closer to WoW's numbers the better the success.

My opinoin/view of course.

Originally posted by Midnitte

Originally posted by Axton

I seem to remeber a Star Wars semi-sand box game that everyone loved. Until the beast that kills MMO's did what it does.

 

Do you mean sony or wow? Because both seem to be the folly of many an mmo and both probably (and by sony i mean definitly was) the cause of SWG's demise. You just dont fix whats working.

 I still can't beleive people don't thnk Lucas Arts had no hand in killing SWG? I remember fairly well lucas got nervous and was calling meetings ordering sony to gather some console players to test if SWG was fun or iconic like the movies. It baffles me how they could have not given the order to NGE the hell out of it. They sent julio torres in for god sakes! lol he was instant death for SWG. I mean TOR is what LA always wanted SWG to be!. Yes at the time Wow was out and that made sony think maybe LA is right we should dumb this puppy down. But it was LA that gave the ok you can bet. Darth Lucas is the master of his IP and rules it with a robotic iron fist. 

I agree with the OP 100%. We as a community have not supported the sandbox developers in the past. I think the bottom line is what people want is a hybrid. No one wants a pure sandbox and no one wants a pure theam park. We all want to feel like we can control the world but we also want to be guided by that world (similar to how politics and votes work). The one sandbox game that I can think of that is doing well so far is UO (Ultima Online). Players can build their own houses run around doing whatever they want but in the end they can go back to player hubs and gather missions and such. The same thing goes for EVE, if you want you can stay in 0.5+ space and just run missions for the rest of eternity. Sandbox is an option in those games not the entire game.

So with that said I think the hybrid is the future of both games (and perhaps cars). Players seem to want structure and content to play with but then a "base" to run back to that they created, a corner of the world to call their own. Afterall thats what I think of when I want to play a sandbox game... owning a base with my guildmates and friends.

Originally posted by jeremyjodes

Originally posted by Midnitte

Originally posted by Axton

I seem to remeber a Star Wars semi-sand box game that everyone loved. Until the beast that kills MMO's did what it does.

 

Do you mean sony or wow? Because both seem to be the folly of many an mmo and both probably (and by sony i mean definitly was) the cause of SWG's demise. You just dont fix whats working.

 I still can't beleive people don't thnk Lucas Arts had no hand in killing SWG? I remember fairly well lucas got nervous and was calling meetings ordering sony to gather some console players to test if SWG was fun or iconic like the movies. It baffles me how they could have not given the order to NGE the hell out of it. They sent julio torres in for god sakes! lol he was instant death for SWG. I mean TOR is what LA always wanted SWG to be!. Yes at the time Wow was out and that made sony think maybe LA is right we should dumb this puppy down. But it was LA that gave the ok you can bet. Darth Lucas is the master of his IP and rules it with a robotic iron fist. 

 

Exactly.  The community collectively hates the NGE... But SWTOR _IS THE NGE_ ... from the ground up.

The NGE failed because it took an existing game and tried to morph it, that'll never work. So they abandoned SWG and begain planning phases for SWTOR.

And now here we are, on the brink of its launch and so many people who claim to have hated the NGE's impact on SWG are salavating and chomping at the bit just to play the NGE 2.0.

Its pretty crazy.

I just want a game like SWG again. Its really that simple.

Originally posted by CujoSWAoA

Originally posted by jeremyjodes

Originally posted by Midnitte

Originally posted by Axton

I seem to remeber a Star Wars semi-sand box game that everyone loved. Until the beast that kills MMO's did what it does.

 

Do you mean sony or wow? Because both seem to be the folly of many an mmo and both probably (and by sony i mean definitly was) the cause of SWG's demise. You just dont fix whats working.

 I still can't beleive people don't thnk Lucas Arts had no hand in killing SWG? I remember fairly well lucas got nervous and was calling meetings ordering sony to gather some console players to test if SWG was fun or iconic like the movies. It baffles me how they could have not given the order to NGE the hell out of it. They sent julio torres in for god sakes! lol he was instant death for SWG. I mean TOR is what LA always wanted SWG to be!. Yes at the time Wow was out and that made sony think maybe LA is right we should dumb this puppy down. But it was LA that gave the ok you can bet. Darth Lucas is the master of his IP and rules it with a robotic iron fist. 

 

Exactly.  The community collectively hates the NGE... But SWTOR _IS THE NGE_ ... from the ground up.

The NGE failed because it took an existing game and tried to morph it, that'll never work. So they abandoned SWG and begain planning phases for SWTOR.

And now here we are, on the brink of its launch and so many people who claim to have hated the NGE's impact on SWG are salavating and chomping at the bit just to play the NGE 2.0.

Its pretty crazy.

 

SWTOR is not the NGE. Those of us who were there for the implementation of the NGE can tell you that. The NGE lifted its quest plots straight from WoW with no story at all behind them. Go there, kill <fill in the blank> X number of times, wash, rinse, repeat. And when the classes were first introduced you could not vary the spec at all. The skill trees were grafted on later in an attempt to get some of their old player base back. The NGE was the utter dumbing down of a game to the point that even WoW players thought it sucked.

As for wanting the "good old days" of sandbox SWG, I played those too. And they sucked. I was bored 95% of the time and found paying a doctor 20k and a dancer 5k so I could go hunt dinosaurs on dantooine one of the more pathetic game content ideas I have ever encountered. Even the PvP was lack-luster, and I love PvP. Everyone ran around with hammers in a supposedly blaster driven universe where only jedi were known to be primarily melee combatants.

The CU, which is much maligned and hated by the sandbox fans, was when they got it right. They kept class complexity and introduced quests with actual stories behind them and real content. And they fixed combat so hammers and gaffit sticks were not the weapons of the elite. If anything, SWTOR will be closest to the CU, which is when I, and most of us who want story in our games, enjoyed SWG.

Keep your sandbox. It's dull, unfinished, unpolished, boring, and lacking in absolutely everything. And don't even attempt to sell me on the "we make our own content" crap. I play RPGs IRL and they're about telling stories, which MMOs do not allow players the flexibility to do, because real consequences for player actions can't be introduced into MMOs.

And now that I'm done with my rant above, a question about the article lol. I thought I read somewhere that most of the $300 million that EA gave to Bioware went into the new Mass Effect and Dragon Age games? If so, couldn't the final cost on this game be a lot lower than people are thinking it is?

Originally posted by nightfallrob

And now that I'm done with my rant above, a question about the article lol. I thought I read somewhere that most of the $300 million that EA gave to Bioware went into the new Mass Effect and Dragon Age games? If so, couldn't the final cost on this game be a lot lower than people are thinking it is?

 

I was there for the implementation of the NGE.

Obviously its not an exact rip-off... Hell, anyone can see that....  Plus the NGE 1.0 was a complete failure. It had to be tweaked.  So, one of the tweaks was bring in a Bioware story.

All the fans of KOTOR were still barking for more KOTOR, so the NGE 2.0 took on a KOTOR skin.

"ICONIC PROFESSIONS. Be Han Solo or Boba Fett!"

Its the same concept.

Originally posted by nightfallrob

And now that I'm done with my rant above, a question about the article lol. I thought I read somewhere that most of the $300 million that EA gave to Bioware went into the new Mass Effect and Dragon Age games? If so, couldn't the final cost on this game be a lot lower than people are thinking it is?

While i don't recall an exact figure,  they stated the 300 M was an exaggeration (yeah like i didn't already know that from the start :P) and it seems that people think it's closer to 100-150M, (with the actual cost cloesr to 100M and the final cost being closer to 150M after commericals and all the stuff that goes with getting it out)

Originally posted by CujoSWAoA

Originally posted by nightfallrob

And now that I'm done with my rant above, a question about the article lol. I thought I read somewhere that most of the $300 million that EA gave to Bioware went into the new Mass Effect and Dragon Age games? If so, couldn't the final cost on this game be a lot lower than people are thinking it is?

 

I was there for the implementation of the NGE.

Obviously its not an exact rip-off... Hell, anyone can see that....  Plus the NGE 1.0 was a complete failure. It had to be tweaked.  So, one of the tweaks was bring in a Bioware story.

All the fans of KOTOR were still barking for more KOTOR, so the NGE 2.0 took on a KOTOR skin.

"ICONIC PROFESSIONS. Be Han Solo or Boba Fett!"

Its the same concept.

This is my very own opinoin and view on this.

The problem with the NGE and such was that they were trying to stuff a themepark game into a already established sandbox game.

This messed with the peopole who liked the sandbox part (driving most of them away) and what was put in wasn't enough to satisfy the new crowd it was trying to please and ended up a hybrid that didn't come off well.

Whereas SWTOR from the very beginning is what SWG was trying to do with the NGE/CU.  Whether that works better this way or not we are about to find out in the next year time (time for it to come out and have some kind of impact)

For the supporting question of Sandboxes i played SWG around 2 or 2,5 years (its long time ago) though already after 3 months of SWG life the signs were already burning on the wall that SOE had no clue and lost the course.

Ryzom is a game that has been closed service frequently and at the date it was released first our guild already was playing a mmo and had no ambition to move.
Any of this sort of FFA-PvP, FPS control sheme immature sandbox approaches i dislike very much and so do my mmo friends.
Also Sandbox means not the absolute absence of RPG/Story.

A mmo is a game that needs dedication, investment of time, is a social experience where your friends be a big hooking factor and after starting my mmo career with Daoc (we got internet that days) at that time i (we) already had a circle of friends i (we) do not want to miss for a piece of software.
So sometimes there is simply no window of oportunity for a mmo to gather old mmo folks and it gets only the gamehoppers and the freshmeat.

Today there opens up a new window of oportunity with many old time gamers get bored of the same old sausages in new casings and want a new sausage that looks like a sausage but is fresh meat with different spice (Rift is not its freaking rotten meat).

SWTOR will not only offer Star Wars Fans and Bioware Fans an oportunity to start a mmo but also any mmo gamer that is bored to death from one more fantasy game of killing ten rats/bats/goats with walls of text even the story addicted does not read bcs it has become so mundane.
SWTOR strives to offer a whole new level of storytelling while keeping any working gamemechanic of any known succesfull mmo combining it with fun/interesting parts of their own bioware toolbox offering a extremly polished experience and a long term playability no other mmo has offered ever at start and IF they get managed the technical obstacles right this game WILL be the next big p2p thing!

The loud minority may curse and moan as much they can but it will not help to hinder the SWTOR success - only Bioware and EA or Fate can make them fail bcs the market IS there.

Originally posted by CujoSWAoA

Originally posted by nightfallrob

And now that I'm done with my rant above, a question about the article lol. I thought I read somewhere that most of the $300 million that EA gave to Bioware went into the new Mass Effect and Dragon Age games? If so, couldn't the final cost on this game be a lot lower than people are thinking it is?

 

I was there for the implementation of the NGE.

Obviously its not an exact rip-off... Hell, anyone can see that....  Plus the NGE 1.0 was a complete failure. It had to be tweaked.  So, one of the tweaks was bring in a Bioware story.

All the fans of KOTOR were still barking for more KOTOR, so the NGE 2.0 took on a KOTOR skin.

"ICONIC PROFESSIONS. Be Han Solo or Boba Fett!"

Its the same concept.

Wow,  SWTOR is nothing like the NGE.  You have tons of hybridization and class combos which were taken out completely, you have combat that actually takes skill and builds that don't follow a set path. You have alignment that changes faction standings and your skills.  You have iconic star wars classes without BEING the iconic star wars characters, which was the NGE to a T.   Haven't even played the game since the NGE.. when you create a class, do they still have those iconic pictures of star wars characters when you select your class?

Thats before you get into all the changes starting with story,  real content -- not half ass questing like SWG did -- real group content, PvP objectives and end game.   This is above anything SWG was and could have ever been.  One things for sure, BioWare won't put out a game and have to drastically change it 3 times before giving up on it altogether because they don't have a strong enough design team and know how to fix it.

Nice article and I wish them luck and I really hope that they succeed, otherwise it will cripple the mmo market as a whole, making other companies less willing to try out new things. And Im really tired of the same old concept with just the visual style changed, I want to see really new games, not just clones.

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Question:

How many unpolished and half finished , theme park MMOs made it big ?

Answer:

None

Same as sandbox , theme park , or whatever else.

Game needs to be polished and finished to suceed.

 

Your theory fails

 

L O L...all I have to say.

You think WoW was polished and finished when it launched?  Day 1 you couldnt play due to the horrible rubberbanding..  And end game wasnt even in the game untill a few months down the line...it took 6 years for that game to get where it is today....no one can farely expect ANY new mmo to have the sort of polish that comes 6 years after launch.'

THAT...is why the MMO market is failing.. Consumers are stupid and their launch expectations are too high.  I'm not saying the game should be beta quality, but it shouldnt be years of development quality either.