Originally posted by Puremallace

The doubt about whether updates will take forever comes from this here

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c47lVQD5Zyo&feature=related

 

^ For those of you not to keen on clicking links that is a interview with the Blizzard CEO stating why having voice overs is a very bad idea in mmorpg model

 

Gee, the CEO of a rival company doesn't think that what Bioware is doing is going to be successful. Color me shocked /rolleyes.

Originally posted by Puremallace

The doubt about whether updates will take forever comes from this here

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c47lVQD5Zyo&feature=related

 

^ For those of you not to keen on clicking links that is a interview with the Blizzard CEO stating why having voice overs is a very bad idea in mmorpg model

One of the big differences between Bioware and Blizzard is that Bioware has a well established voice acting stream in their development cycles. Blizzard's development scheduling clearly isn't planned according to the requirements of getting voice acting in in the same way that Bioware's is.

I would say that in a game that sells itself on personal story that continuing to provide that on a regular and even basis is a scary issue for any dev.

I think fully VO and individual story driven content (which must be provided for each class across the board pretty evenly to stop rage) is EXTREMELY expensive, both in times of money and time, as proven by the game's already massive budget for what is basically a vey traditional theme park model.

Whether they are willing to invest the resource into pushing new content out at a reasonable pace is more upto EA then Bioware, and my opinion on EA is extremely low so I will leave that to others to decide/ rationalise.

Originally posted by GMan3

    It was around six or seven months ago that they talked about an unused library of VO that has already been done in one of the interviews and if my memory serves me correctly they said it was several hundred hours worth.  Now I am no expert, but this tells me they have plans for for all of that VO . . . expansions.

Just to point something out here, "several hundred hours" of voice overs isnt really that much. Mass Effect 2 had something like 250 hours of voice overs, and thats a game with an avarage play time of 16 hours or so.

And not that I think this will be a problem really, not with subscription revenue, but voice overs is one of the most expensive things in games today. The only thing more expensive per hour is motion capture.

Originally posted by BigAndShiny

The issue with TOR is that right around the time you've hit max level 3 months in and are dabbling in raiding, along come GW2, TSW and Tera, and you'll probably at least give them a go.

 

 

1)  People find it hard to leave WoW where their characters they have worked years on are.

2) If SWTOR is so great a few million will migrate.

3) They won't become so attached to their TOR chars in 3 months.  (I don't mean story wise, i mean in terms of time)

4) Thus they will be more willing to migrate and try new games.

5) What if those games are better.

 

TOR could be in fact helping bring a new generation of players to MMOs that then move on quickly, backfiring on EA's massive marketing campaign.

While it is true, many gamers like the new and shiny and will try out new games as they come out. Many, like myself, will have a hard time with other games after experiencing the new upgraded RPG questing feature in TOR.

So some will leave and try out other things or go back to WoW as you say. But many will stay or come back because other games won't do the questing any where near as well as TOR.

Have you seen some of the video of TERA? It was the click the quest giver, click to continue and click to accept. All without reading anything at all. Just kill x to complete the objective. And the combat is goofy with the 500 foot long weapons. Not for me, so I wouldn't try it in the first place.

GW2 looked to be something I would want to buy because it is a B2P. But some of the latest game play videos has made me not that interested anymore. The 2D VO reading of the text is just so wrong when compared to TOR. It just looks to be lazy programing. The fact that you will be porting everywhere and going in and out of two or three (if you count PvP) different instances (not in the same game world) to quest and level. It just didn't seem like it worked as it should. It should all be part of the same open world. And the dynamic events are just run in and kill, then leave. So I will now be passing on GW2

I haven't really been following TSW. Some of what I saw looked interesting. The VO cutscenes are actually nice and the game seems to have a very interesting setting. But let's face it, it is Funcom. They can not have a good launch. The game will probably be so unstable and bug filled that you won't be able to play for 3 to 6 months post launch.

I will stick with TOR for a long time regardless of other MMOs or SPGs. Based on the BW style of questing. And they are highering more writters and have been for a while now. They are working on post launch features and story as we post. The devs have said this during interviews and on the dev tracker. So I have no worries about post launch. And for me, I will be there for a long time. Can't say anything about others, so I won't even try. But you could be wrong with your above  post obviously.

Originally posted by Fratman

Originally posted by maskedweasel

 

One thing I've been hearing alot....

 

"SO you'll finish the story an mess around for 3 months, then everyone will leave until they come up with new story content, which won't happen anytime soon because story content takes SO long to make."    

  

Nah, it's more like people will finish the story, mess around for a couple of months, then leave and never come back because the story wasn't all that compelling to begin with.

 

I agree and disagree. I think the story will be good because I think Bioware does that well based on the KOTORs and others.

But I think if they focus too much on the story, people will play thru it and not come back. Good stories can get someone hooked into an MMO at first, but they do not keep people subbed.

Guild Wars had excellent writing and many voice overs, but if you were in a group, and didn't skip the cutscenes, you got harassed or booted.

How many times have you repeated a raid and reread the quest text?

or been entering a battleground, or getting a mission that gives you a bonus for capturing a flag, keep, etc and reread the text or relistened to voice overs?

What is really funny is the lack of understanding here.

Yes, VO expansion will cost more to produce generally, but they take no longer to produce or slightly more.

Once storyboarding is done for a new expansion, the VO work starts. At the same time the developers (like me) start to code the new zones, class, or what ever.  The VO is then added when the code is finished.

The thought that the VO is done in a contiguous line after or before coding is not the case.  The Code work for expansions will take much longer that recording voice overs will.  The VO recordings will be sitting there when the Devs are ready for them.

So if you are agruing that it will cost Bioware more to do an expansion then your point IMHO would be valid. But the time agrument really doesn't float.  There would only be a minimal time difference, it is like appling any other sound effects.

Originally posted by MMO.Maverick

Originally posted by Ceridith

People have stuck around with 'the same old' gameplay without much content in MMOs, yes.

What makes you think they'll continue to do that in SWTOR though, because they did it before?

What makes you think they have become sick or nauseous regarding that 'same old' gameplay, merely because they did it before? You might be sick to death regarding themepark MMO's, but that does not mean that everybody gets sick like that as you might, different tastes and mileage and all that.

If many players moving to SWTOR are the ones who have been sticking around WoW bored and disallusioned with a lack of content, why would they want to stick around in a game where they end up in the same dead end position as their last game?

Your statement starts with 'if' and then narrows down 1 possible conclusion and scenario of many possible scenarios. To elaborate: not all MMO gamers moving from WoW to SWTOR will be bored and disillusioned with themepark content in general, nor will it only be WoW gamers that move to SWTOR, so their background and motivation for MMO gaming are different as well.

See, I think that's part of why so many WoW clones fail. WoW was the first MMO for most MMO gamers these days, so many gamers go to these new 'clone' games thinking it will be different. Once they find out it's nothing really different, they get bored and move on.

Again, this ignores other factors that play a role as well in the motivations of players, like broken, unpolished MMO's that have been released prematurely or too little to do after the first few weeks bc of lack of features, or not the quality level of WoW, just to name a few.

Could I be wrong? Maybe, but history has a habit of repeating itself in the MMO industry. I'm sure not everyone will grow tired and leave, hell there's a lot of Star Wars fans that will put up with anything. But I know that there will be several people who will reach level cap, run out of content on their main, and then realize they're in the same position they were in with their last MMO. Just how many people it will happen with remains to be seen, but it will on some level be a problem.

Sure there will be people that leave after reaching level cap, or who decide after the free month of playing that SWTOR isn't for them.

What people should ask themselves though is, why did players keep playing themepark MMO's like WoW and others even after the first few months in which they went through the questing/leveling content, and still enjoying it enough to stay after those first months?

Those are far more realistic and important reasons and motivations than just concluding that 'because a game is a themepark MMO and players go through the quest leveling content up to level cap within 2-3 months, they'll be bored and leave afterwards'.

I agree with your assement.  In fact, I think people just want new and fresh.

Originally posted by Elikal

Phew, hard to say. I am much on the fence with this. When they keep momentum... who can say. But making story content IS expensive and takes time, or man-power. And players tend to be able to level faster than devs think. Maybe because running alts will offer new stories they have a bit more time.

In some ways, back in eq2 it was easier on the devs as it took so long to hit cap compared to today.  It seems like some forum members think the devs are just "being lazy" about creating new content but man-hours is critical. 

I wonder if someone thinks that two hour movie they watched only took two hours to make?  That's a joke but it sometimes feels that's how content criers sound about it.