Now that Mass Effect is coming out/out.....

[Darth_Pete]

I would like MMO better than sprpg, why? Because like KotOR1 you get about 35h of entertainment(?) Good story and game but after you have played it through thats it.

 

My MMORPG experience is SWG and WoW so far but those offer entertainment for 6 months - 1 year. Alot more than sprpg

[Taos]

I still have a hard time believing that Lucasarts would essentially kill Galaxies by putting another MMO up against it.

 

I don't find it that hard to believe. They basically killed SWG in November '05 when they dumped the "New Game Enhancements" [NGE] on the players. With that surprise move coming some six months after the "combat upgrade rebalance" they lost some 200k+ subscribers. The game has been slowly pluggin along ever since. Last numbers I saw were under 50k subs....some have reported under 20k subs, but not sure I buy that as many people that still play the game have more then one account. Also I believe station pass holders are included in that number of active subs...but not positive.

 

I also have a hard time believing that Bioware would develop (and support) two MMOs...

 

Yeah me too, especially since Bioware has never done one before, I seriously doubt they will enter the MMO market by doing two at one time.

 

 

Because the LA-BioWare project is listed seperately from the BioWare MMO, I think it's safe to say the LA-BioWare project is not an MMO

 

That's not necessarily true. Word is, if Bioware is developing a SW mmo, they can't announcet it yet as SoE still has exclusive rights. I mean, if it is a single player kotor 3, why not just announce it is in development already? That's not going to take anything away from ME.....

[Devilsfanatic]

I would like MMO better than sprpg, why? Because like KotOR1 you get about 35h of entertainment(?) Good story and game but after you have played it through thats it.

WTF? There's a few ways to play that game trough, 4 of them.....4 times 40 hours is 160 hours of gameplay......are you kidding, how is that not enough of a game?? Especially if they make it like Mass Effect where each different class has a different ability and actually would be useful, where the game is different each class you play. There's 3 classes, so that's another 3 ways to play the game, and that's 7 times, 40 hours, that's 280 hours of game play.....seriously, how can you get bored of a SPRPG I'll never know. Get another game after 280 hours.

[Son of Skywalker15]

Yeah me too, especially since Bioware has never done one before, I seriously doubt they will enter the MMO market by doing two at one time.

 

Totally agree with that. I'm hoping that Bioware has rethought its position on Kotor 3, if it ever truly ever held it, and is going to make it. Aside from Obsidian, it would be the best to do it, and it would be the best time. However, we don't know that they are doing two different MMOs; they could have left it separate on purpose...

 

I'm actually going to be talking to Drew Karpysyn (again) in December hopefully. When I do I plan on asking him some questions about this new site and partnership.

[Danny_boy]

I would like MMO better than sprpg, why? Because like KotOR1 you get about 35h of entertainment(?) Good story and game but after you have played it through thats it.

 

My MMORPG experience is SWG and WoW so far but those offer entertainment for 6 months - 1 year. Alot more than sprpg

 

Oh really?

 

From my days on SWG and my free trial of WoW, I've had, oh maybe 3 hours of entertainment, becuase most of my other hours were spent either being annoyed by 10 year olds who didn't understand Roleplaying so they spam me, lagging, taking boring quests with a horribly cliche and pointless story...

 

now in both NWN1-2 and kotor1-2 I currently have 8 months of fun and still going,plus I'm going to get MotB so that adds at least another 4 months of play.

[Tommycat]

First off, I can see Lucasarts killing SWG, because it has never even reached their expected numbers. Even at its height the numbers never reached 400k. There were many reasons for this.

 

1) initially no space. It was later added as an expansion, then rolled in with the "starter kit"

2) Initially no jedi. At first it was not possible, then extremely difficult, then relatively easy, then click JEDI!!!!!111

3) MASSIVE bugs. There were huge bugs. They added more bugs with each publish, then they revamped, added more glaring bugs, then the NGE occured. In my opinion the biggest bug they introduced into the game.

[Prime]

I don't find it that hard to believe. They basically killed SWG in November '05 when they dumped the "New Game Enhancements" [NGE] on the players. With that surprise move coming some six months after the "combat upgrade rebalance" they lost some 200k+ subscribers. The game has been slowly pluggin along ever since. Last numbers I saw were under 50k subs....some have reported under 20k subs, but not sure I buy that as many people that still play the game have more then one account. Also I believe station pass holders are included in that number of active subs...but not positive.

I understand the problems that Galaxies has had, but that doesn't change the fact that LA has a MMO in place. Plus, they are not the only controlling stakeholders. I believe that Sony is also involved and is making money from it. I would guess that they would not be keen on LA pulling out and going with another developer and leaving them out in the cold.

 

That's not necessarily true. Word is, if Bioware is developing a SW mmo, they can't announcet it yet as SoE still has exclusive rights. I mean, if it is a single player kotor 3, why not just announce it is in development already? That's not going to take anything away from ME.....

But since in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter when they might announce K3 (and if the Bioware/LA agreement is truly as recent as the announcement idicates, it is very early in development), why would they take any attention away from ME?

 

First off, I can see Lucasarts killing SWG, because it has never even reached their expected numbers. Even at its height the numbers never reached 400k. There were many reasons for this.

But LA isn't the only decision maker here, so they can't just pull the plug on their own accord as far as I can tell. SOE would be up in arms, I would imagine.

[Taos]

I understand the problems that Galaxies has had, but that doesn't change the fact that LA has a MMO in place. Plus, they are not the only controlling stakeholders. I believe that Sony is also involved and is making money from it. I would guess that they would not be keen on LA pulling out and going with another developer and leaving them out in the cold.

 

Oh I agree, I imagine they will continue the game on "life support" for the forseable future. I'm not saying they should simply shut it down now, just that I could see it happening. After all, other SoE titlse Planetside and Matrix online [MxO] are still going along with very few subscribers. Who knows, maybe even GL himself will get tired of seeing SWG in its current state and decide to pull the plug lol. The station pass is what keeps all of these games going IMO.

 

But since in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter when they might announce K3 (and if the Bioware/LA agreement is truly as recent as the announcement idicates, it is very early in development), why would they take any attention away from ME?

 

Well that is my point really, if it was Knights 3, why not announce it now? It wouldn't take anything away from ME. If it's a sw mmo, I imagine they have to wait for the soe exclusive license to expire before announcing it. There are a lot of people on the edge of their seat waiting to hear what will come of this partnership.

 

But LA isn't the only decision maker here, so they can't just pull the plug on their own accord as far as I can tell. SOE would be up in arms, I would imagine.

 

Oh yeah, they are still making money on it, so they wouldn't be too happy.

[RobQel-Droma]

Well that is my point really, if it was Knights 3, why not announce it now? It wouldn't take anything away from ME. If it's a sw mmo, I imagine they have to wait for the soe exclusive license to expire before announcing it. There are a lot of people on the edge of their seat waiting to hear what will come of this partnership.

 

Well, considering all the people waiting for Kotor III, I imagine there would be some attention taken away from ME if they announced it now. They might announce it a little later, but I doubt it. I'm really unsure that they're really seriously thinking about KIII right now (or any time soon)... because of the absolute lack of any kind of rumors - much less news - surrounding the Kotor series.

 

What I'm thinking is that, since they are hinting about some kind of MMO project, it is either World of Kotor or something totally un-Star Wars related. If its the latter, well, K3 is pretty much hosed right now. If its the former, well, K3 is still pretty much hosed right now. But then, I dunno; maybe they are planning to make the Kotor MMO, and then go ahead and finish the series, so the MMO is set some time between TSL and K3, and then gamers can go get K3 to end the series or something.

 

Just speculation. I really don't know if the info I'm going on is even valid. With the very few Kotor rumors going around, its hard to tell. (sidenote: has anybody else read the thing about Pandera and LA somehow teaming up to do something KotOR related? I can't remember where I saw that... probably a baseless rumor, though)

 

Oh, and, in closing: while I would love K3 to look somewhat like ME, don't change the combat system in any way, unless in just minor tweaks. Not that I don't like ME's combat system, but Kotor should stay the way it is. Certainly I don't want all the bugs ME has in there.

[Tommycat]

I understand the problems that Galaxies has had, but that doesn't change the fact that LA has a MMO in place. Plus, they are not the only controlling stakeholders. I believe that Sony is also involved and is making money from it. I would guess that they would not be keen on LA pulling out and going with another developer and leaving them out in the cold.

 

But since in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter when they might announce K3 (and if the Bioware/LA agreement is truly as recent as the announcement idicates, it is very early in development), why would they take any attention away from ME?

 

But LA isn't the only decision maker here, so they can't just pull the plug on their own accord as far as I can tell. SOE would be up in arms, I would imagine.

 

The way I see it, giving the players another choice in the MMO market for a Star Wars game would effectively kill SWG. That's what I mean by that. At any rate, LucasArts has the control of the IP. IF they refuse to allow SOE to continue using it, then they are stuck with merely bug fixes and adjustments to the game as it exists. No new expansions, no new content, just a basic bland game with no creative content added... wait... Nevermind....

 

Just because LA wouldn't continue its IP agreement with SOE does not mean that SOE loses Galaxies. It just means that SOE won't have exclusive rights to a SW MMO. Of course as the owner of the IP LA could hit SOE with a C&D order and force them to shut down SWG(Acronyms FTW). I doubt they would go that far, unless Bioware had redeveloped SWG and LA was happy about the new development stragegy.

 

It is entirely possible that the reason Bioware is being quiet about their MMO is that they cannot release that info until SOE's lease on the SW IP is up. Once SOE's lease on the SW IP is up then Bioware can announce the MMO. That is of course assuming the MMO's non-bioware IP is SW:KotOR-online... (more acronyms.... Whew!). For all we know the MMO might be an EA owned IP<shudders> which would make sense as to why EA is so excited about it.

[Prime]

Who knows, maybe even GL himself will get tired of seeing SWG in its current state and decide to pull the plug lol.

I wonder if GL even knows about Galaxies.

 

Well that is my point really, if it was Knights 3, why not announce it now? It wouldn't take anything away from ME.

I think it would. Right now the focus on Bioware has pretty much everything to do with ME. The vast majority of the activity on their boards relates to ME right now. That is what Bioware wants because the focus means hype. I don't think they want to dig into that by shifting focus away from ME.

 

At any rate, LucasArts has the control of the IP. IF they refuse to allow SOE to continue using it, then they are stuck with merely bug fixes and adjustments to the game as it exists.

They would never be able to do that because of all the contractual agreements in place.

[Char Ell]

Is there some compelling reason to think that the contractual relationship that exists between LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment is exclusive for more than 3-5 years? Given the performance of SWG SOE certainly doesn't appear to have earned the right to retain exclusivity for a SW MMOG. If I were in LucasArts shoes I would let SOE continue with SWG but once the exclusive period had been fulfilled I would look at developing a new SW MMORPG with another company because at this point I think SWG has so much negative baggage that it will never recover, no matter how much SWG is improved.

 

I guess I just don't get why there are so many who think that there couldn't be more than one Star Wars MMOG. I still believe we'll get a SW MMORPG out of the LucasArts/BioWare project and if it's based in the KotOR time period or any other time period before or after the movies then I see no reason why it couldn't co-exist with SWG. And if SWG ends up dropping to an unsustainable number of subscriptions with another SW MMORPG in play then LA and SOE can decide it's time to pull the plug on SWG. But if not then SWG can keep on rolling.

[Tommycat]

I wonder if GL even knows about Galaxies.

If he did, he would have shut it down already haha

 

They would never be able to do that because of all the contractual agreements in place.

Really depends on how the contract is worded. Not to mention I have never seen a contract that would be so ironclad as to be inescapable. Lets face it, IF Lucasarts wanted out, they could demand a full disclosure of peak usage, and if the numbers don't add up I'm sure there's an escape clause. I highly doubt LA would allow it to go on forever and damage the SW brand. Sadly Galaxies has already done quite a bit of damage to the idea of a SW MMO.*

 

 

*That is not to say that Galaxies isn't a fun game, or that the game itself is worthless, merely the level of trust involved with the SW game.

[Devilsfanatic]

Mass Effect is seriously awesome, so I'm pumped for a potential KOTOR III!!!

[King_Zazu]

i dont know about a KOTOR mmo. personally i hate mmo's with a burning passion, but perhaps they could make like diablo 2. with both a sp mode and a multiplayer mode

[Uilleand]

Mass Effect is seriously awesome, so I'm pumped for a potential KOTOR III!!!

 

Yes...yes it is...

 

...seriously...

 

If...if...(sends out prayers to the heavens and all who might be watching...) KotOR III is on the way....the potential is staggering...

 

And, while I really, REALLY don't believe that ME is some kind of 'test run' for a KotOR...I *do* see little bits of Jade Empire in ME...certain movements, even certain sound files. (Spooky music in some places is similar to the music in JE's graveyards)...

 

Oh...and I certainly won't be playing any MMOs...unless they're run on a sort of NWN kind of scale...I love my games and my stories, and I adore most of the people I yak with on boards like this...but nothing, *nothing* could compel me to interact with most of the brain-dead yokels that I've encountered in MMOs...*shudder*

[JoeDoe 2.0]

After Mass Effect, LucasArts should now see the potential of Bioware and make a deal for them to produce the KOTOR 3 game, using Mass Effect's game engine and graphics = Total Kick @$$

[Darca Lar]

It would be one B.A.M.F. for sure!

[Devilsfanatic]

Yes...yes it is...

 

...seriously...

 

If...if...(sends out prayers to the heavens and all who might be watching...) KotOR III is on the way....the potential is staggering...

 

And, while I really, REALLY don't believe that ME is some kind of 'test run' for a KotOR...I *do* see little bits of Jade Empire in ME...certain movements, even certain sound files. (Spooky music in some places is similar to the music in JE's graveyards)...

 

Oh...and I certainly won't be playing any MMOs...unless they're run on a sort of NWN kind of scale...I love my games and my stories, and I adore most of the people I yak with on boards like this...but nothing, *nothing* could compel me to interact with most of the brain-dead yokels that I've encountered in MMOs...*shudder*

 

I almost died laughing in ME when we're on Noveria and you have to intiate a neutron purge and the computer asks you for a code to initiate it and you can choose mumble something and your PC goes "7 9er semper *cough*

[Hoad]

After Mass Effect, LucasArts should now see the potential of Bioware and make a deal for them to produce the KOTOR 3 game, using Mass Effect's game engine and graphics = Total Kick @$$

My thoughts exactly.

[adamqd]

I was disappointed with mass effect, and although the graphics and engine Rule, I tend to agree with a certain Game Site...

 

Despite its many strengths, BioWare's sci-fi epic was the game that most disappointed us this year. After releasing an amazing game like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic to virtually unanimous praise, you'd think the development team would have used a nearly identical formula while constructing Mass Effect. Instead, they took Mass Effect in the same direction that Bethesda took Oblivion after Morrowind's success - they developed it for the masses. The game's character development options have been drastically reduced from dozens of unique attributes, feats, skills, and force powers to a handful of talents and unoriginal biotic abilities. KotOR's hundreds of hand-crafted items with long, witty descriptions and various statistics and effects have been cast aside in favor of an uninspired equipment system with three numeric scores and a Roman numeral to define each item's power. On top of that, enemy strength and loot are scaled to the player's level Oblivion-style, the number of companions compared to all other BioWare RPGs has been reduced, inter-party dialogue is strictly limited to the ship, combat is real-time and only allows for limited strategic maneuvering while paused, and landing on uncharted planets is, well, not what it was cracked up to be.

 

As a result, Mass Effect is essentially an action title with subpar RPG elements, and for that it receives our "Disappointment of the Year" award. While the game is still certainly worth playing for its excellent audio, cinematic dialogue, and storyline, Mass Effect is arguably BioWare's most lackluster role-playing game to date.