15 years is realistic and a smart approach. They will plan out at least 5 year blocks and likely will end each block with a major story arch ending and a tech upgrade.

Pumping out expansions that have no connection to the last one is easy. The only way to plan out a story that make sense is to plan far in the future. Lotro is doing this because they already have the story laid out for them. Wow obviously pulls their story out of their ass because each expansion is damn near a remake of the game and separate from the last.

As for tech, their existing engine is likely scalable to a degree as it is. Each 5 year marker can have something as simple as texture upgrades or could go so far as increase poly counts. Even games who's engines didn't support this managed to do it in the past.

There is always the chance the game won't effective last 15 years but it is very smart and proactive to plan for it. Sticking to a long reaching plan is always more cost effective as well as you lay the foundations for it in the years leading up to it.

I would only take it as jest. 15 years is really rather ambitious, considering the rate at which technology is changing. Think about how dated it would be. Who is to say we won't be plugging something directly into our heads in 15 years? LOL

That was just humor words he didnt mean it for real.

Besides after 15 years we will be playing virtual reality lol

Originally posted by Nhoj1983

Respectfully,  4 years for an MMO is a catastrophic failure.  I'm going to just ignore your most dire prediction.  I really doubt that even STO will not pass that mark.  I'll allow for the possibility of 7 years being that we don't know the quality of the game but the reality is no matter how many people on this site beg for "different" the reality is "different" is dangerous and not always good.

 

The bad criticism your talking about for is more or less people who havn't played the game for a long period at all or just have made up their own preconceptions based on what they wanted the game to be.  Most hands on articles are good so I don't really get where your coming from here.  Even the ones that I saw that were less enthused had more to do with that person's expressed disinterest in general with the Star Wars franchise period(which really does matter if you don't like the subject material no mattter how good the game is your going to yawn and go to a game that interests you).  Now it's far from tested long term so I'll give you that but your statement of 3-5 years being good for an MMO is totally off.  Maybe for FTP but not AAA titles.  Just think of all the so called failures that are going strong and aren't likely to disapear any time soon. (WAR, AoC, STO, Aion<technically a huge sucess.. even if it wasn't here>,LOTRO, DDO,CO,COH,VG,EQ2)

 

As far as the other games you've mentioned that are "moving the genre forward".  I'll start with TERA.  Newish combat ideas but the rest of the game is more or less a by the book MMO.  It's already under fire in Korea for it's lack of content.  A game I look forward to but I'll bet SWTOR is a better package.  B & S Another game I'm looking forward to... but there's very little info about a serious revamp could be good but it doesn't(as of yet) belong on the list. 

GW2 is the best of the list but even so there's no reason to beleave that all elements of the game will so leave SWTOR in the dust that there's no reason to play the game.  The thing that comes to mind here is story.  Sure it's there but BW is the master in the field not arenanet or any other company in the business(perhaps rivaled by the Witcher dev).  Which is my last point SWTOR story is it's inovation.   I doubt any other MMO will be able to touch it in that catagory for years to come and you can bet it will be one of the major new tennants for mmos in the coming years.  It can be argued it was there before but let's be honest it was passable at best. 

 

I'd think this game will be around at least 7 years if it's a disapointment much longer if it's not.  I would have laughed at myself ten years ago but sheesh look at all the even moderately sucessful games still about.  MMOs don't disapear very quickly if they ever gain traction and it's got all the makings of a healthy community size.(100k+)  One thing to remember is there new MMO players every day we aren't a static group.  What is old and tired to some is new and fresh to others.  Link in this is SW and you have a rather large mass apeal drawing in many who'd ignore a traditional fantasy mmorpg.. just think about it.  It may not be as big as wow but die as soon at that?  Naw.

 

You're right, most AAA games live much longer. But they lived only that longer because very few changes were done in this genre for the last 10 years, from which only rare ones could be considered "revolutionary". There were a lot of features developped, that's true, but most of them would only make the MMORPG have the old flaws even more harder to fix.

Tera is moving forward because of the combat. Blade & Soul has a lot of changes too, one of them is simillar to SWTOR - story-driven progession. So, all of these are good because each of them are bringing something really different from the last 10 years of MMORPGs. If each of these has month subscriptions, it makes it hard to have the interest of the players to play more than 1 or 2 of them. PLUS, GW2 is B2P and a lot of companies are starting to see the potential of non-subscription payment models, which will make even more difficult to play those games.

Then, even though you don't believe in some things about GW2, it has been showed repeatedly in gaming conventions that GW2 not only brings a lot of new things to the table (like SWTOR, TERA, B&S and some others) but it really is focusing and succeding in kicking most of the flaws out of the MMORPG genre.

With all these changes, and with the actual evolution of technology, do you really think that planning to be "alive" in 2025 it's a realistic statement?

When I talked about 3-4 years "alive", I was talking about a game having a big player-base, have regular updates, with still new players trying it and there's profits from having it run properly. Most MMORPGs you see right now, a lot of them F2P, start getting really hit in all those things when they reach 3-4 y.o. Of course, I don't mean AAA, and you're right by saying they're "alive" for much longer, but there are some AAA games latelly that are failling to achieve even that too. And we have to consider the change the genre will have in the next 2-3 years will be crucial to wether or not a lot of games stay even online, some AAA included. 

About SWTOR having negative criticism from players that weren't very fond of Star Wars and only played a few hours. If playing that few hours is already something that makes them say "Yap, I was right, this isn't worth it" is good for the you and the devs, than I really won't believe it will live for 15 years. You see, for a game to live that long, it has to satisfy all kinds of players and their tastes, in order to make them say instead "Cool, I wasn't expecting this to be this good". Besides, it's not a good idea giving bad impressions in the first time the players try the game, it should be the opposite - make the player want to play more and more.

Now, I ask again: With all these considerations about the genre and the game, do you think it's a realistic statement? Don't you think it's too much?

For me, is like saying: I will be alive in 15 years (I'm just ignoring the fact that I might get Alzheimer)!

Positive projections.  Its something successful people do.  If you can't see yourself being successful 15 years from now, you probably won't be.

Its nice to actually hear a dev say in more or less words, "I can see my game still being alive 15 years from now.". 

Originally posted by Revivial

Positive projections.  Its something successful people do.  If you can't see yourself being successful 15 years from now, you probably won't be.

Its nice to actually hear a dev say in more or less words, "I can see my game still being alive 15 years from now.". 

Fair enough, and I totally agree with that. I still think 15 is too much, though.

I wouldn't be surprised if 75% of the servers are closed within 2 years.  This story-driven MMO will lack replayability except for hard-core star wars fans.

Originally posted by SBE1

I wouldn't be surprised if 75% of the servers are closed within 2 years.  This story-driven MMO will lack replayability except for hard-core star wars fans.

75% is a bit high. I would more say that a good chunk of the servers will be merged, but I doubt that most will be closed within 2 years. The game has a story, but it's a got a little something extra on the side too.

Wow. Lost a lot of respect for MMORPG.com staff. Not only did they post this exact statement once, but twice claiming it to be fact.

29:30 on the conference video. Clearly seen joking about a made up on the spot / arbitrary number.

Obvious ruse to mislead / rile up people up it seems.

Originally posted by AzurePrower

Wow. Lost a lot of respect for MMORPG.com staff. Not only did they post this exact statement once, but twice claiming it to be fact.

29:30 on the conference video. Clearly seen joking about a made up on the spot / arbitrary number.

Obvious ruse to mislead / rile up people up it seems.

 

Oh c'mon. At least read the article before you jump on the soap box:

"Now in all fairness, the quoted sentences were said partially in jest. However, and as your sainted mothers have doubtless told you, every blithely uttered remark tends to contain a nugget of truth."

I think everyone realizes the remark wasn't a hard-lined development strategy, but more of a showing of commitment to keep expanding on the game. It's a good entry for a discussion on in what way they should expand the game though.

I believe BioWare can pull if off. No 500 planets by 2025 for sure but a 15 year plan? Hell yeah lets do it.

Originally posted by Artymus77

hell if Everquest 1 can do it why cant SWTOR?

 

Because Everquest 1 didn't need to complete with a massive market of compeditors on release.  Everquest 1 also looks like crap and lets be honest, has some seriously archaic gameplay elements (but what do you expect from such an old game).

One thing I think people are really missing out on is how detailed said plan could be.  On the one hand they could have designed some crazy expanded universe full of features...on the other that 15 years could literally be a few dot points and years for when they expect expansions to take place.

 Why is the statment wrong?

 The template is too old to last 10 years let alone 5 or even a full year before going down in smoke to rest at the bottom.

The very second it stops makign EA cash they will pull dev teams to work on other things; if they don't do so immidietly. Because we need to shoe horn in more BS into ME3.

 Seriously they are putting the cart before the horse here. They don't even know if people will stick around(people pre ordered WAR in droves but look at it 2 months after launch) and lying to themselvesl ike this is bad. Bad for them good for us.

Originally posted by Eladi

Sir you are jesting us, You hype the game jest and its already done discussion on your own forums to hype your site whit jesty articles that do not even are current anymore or have a trendy announcement of announcements.

Bad bad reporter. *points to corner and silly hat* shoo.

 

My brain hurts

getting excited about some pixels? pathetic........

We will not know how good the game is until it launches and we get some play time.  They should probably focus on the launch and see how things go.  Hype means diddly.  Remember Warhammer? 

Even if it was a great game, there will be other games released in that time frame that TOR will be competing with.  However, I think the graphics are good enough that it could last quite a while.  As some have said, the technological improvements by then will make this game very old and tired.  There could be advances we don't even have an inkling of yet too.  Gamers can be very fickle also.

Anti-fans? So, because we don't like the direction the game has taken we are anti-fans?

I expect mindless drivel from the forumites that have trouble even passing a public high school class, but I do expect more from the professional writers.

Oh, so it's 500 different planets, not 500 different shards.

Originally posted by Latronus

Originally posted by vesavius

lol the game's models look crude and dated now, can you ima:gine how they would appear in 15 years :P

 This same ignorant arguement again?  Really?  WoW's models were outdated at launch, how's that pre-teen mindless POS game doing these days?  If graphics were that important, then it wouldn't have over 11 million subs now would it?  The reason for the simplified graphics is simple and I'll attempt to explain, no that would take too long, let me sum it up for you:

The low end graphics mean MORE COMPUTERS CAN RUN THE GAME, THEREFORE MORE PEOPLE CAN PLAY IT WITHOUT BUYING NEW COMPUTERS, WHICH HOPEFULLY LEADS TO MORE SUBSCRIPTIONS AND MORE MONEY FOR EA/BW!

Now was that so hard to figure out?  The model worked for Blizzard now BW hopes it will work for them too, and in this slumping economy where many can't afford to buy new computers, it may just work again... Time will tell.

 

 So as the op stated, that if the graphics are expeted to last for 15 years they will be garbage. they are already bad. Could you tell us again with larger caps how they think it will work for them?