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[Kilroy the Grand]

December 20, 2011 - April 15, 2012

An ambitious game, A game that tried to laugh in the face of god himself. The gamewrights were overstretched and overworked in their abilities to fashion a decent game, in their haste they cribbed design notes from other, more established franchises... yet they failed to learn the hard learned lessons that the others had discovered. This disaster could have been prevented if only that had looked to the past, to the venerable SS Galaxy. But no, the taskmasters said! To many expenses not enough profits! They wanted to craft an MMO that would dwarf even the mighty HMS Warhld'o'worcrapht.

Built on a faulty engine, built on an exuberant fanbase, and built on a decades long franchise, several million people boarded that MMO thinking a tropical ocean of merriment lay ahead. The fans took great joy with the seemingly fantastic voyage, fans who had such admiration for those gamewrights that they could do no wrong... and for awhile... for awhile everyone was content. None of the subscribers knew what they had gotten into, no one did.

Slowly a few of the subscribers noticed a few troubling things, having a faction being able to kill the other in it's spawn points, being a blatant WOW rip off, being threatened with bans for "Farming", having nothing to do after reaching level 50. When they tried to point out these flaws to the other subscribers they were quickly decried as troublemakers and told "U don't haf to play" or "Go back to wow"

But soon after, with Bioware's other flagships burning into the sea, and further promises broken they realized how damned they were, with 600,000 subscribers left and dwindling, with many servers have only a hundred on so people active at anyone time... The good ship SWTOR is past the point of no return.

This goes not just mark the death of an MMO, but the first death knell of Bioware. The discontent is growing against this once fine company, now just a husk of it's former self, a spineless puppet of EA.

Kyrie, eleison

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For those to bored or too disinterested to read through all that bullshit, SWTOR was an MMO build on the HeroEngine, which they paid shittons for. Turns out it was a steaming pile of shit they built their 200million dollar game on. A game so faulty, so broken that even the die hard fans on their forums are turning against them. I give bioware about a year probably less before EA guts the entire company, lays everyone off, and sells everything off to make a profit. Why I wrote this? I read some shit on /v/ and I got really disgusted. Lying about Important features of a patch, mere HOURS before it's release so people would resubcribe is a shitty thing to do. or hiding the "cancel" button so people couldn't end their subscription, and trying to censor those that offered a work around. Bioware used to be a good company, not it's too busy shitting on the good will of it's customers. It's systemic, nothing you can do besides let the cancer eat it away until it's dead.

[Ultimuh]

Well I still like this game.

By the way.. any Bay12 guilds or are there too few people from this place who play it?

[miauw62]

Sigh...
Thats the problem with games these days, its all about making profit and milking games until they are empty, soulless husks.
Luckily, we still have the indie game devs.

EDIT:

I'm not saying this because i played the game, im saying this because of the button they removed. THAT makes me say this.

[Korva]

Meh, too much hyperbole I think. WoW's been declared dead or dying many times too and people still play it (I don't). Many people on many sides appear to go over the top a lot about how "perfect" or "utterly bad" games are. It's part of why I can't be arsed to read gaming sites, mags or most forums anymore.

Regarding TOR, I was disappointed by many things, mainly from a roleplaying perspective but also in terms of game mechanics -- but then, I guess I'm sick of MMOs anyway after years of WoW. The stereotypical MMO is way too grindy and myopically focused on "endgame", PvP and ph4t l3wt instead of providing an engaging world to experience.

[Jelle]

All went downhill from DAII, after that fiasco I've frankly not looked back to much on bioware's latest games.

What happened to the mmo doesn't surprise me at all. Shame though as I really freaking liked the old SWTOR games.

[Kilroy the Grand]

WoW's been declared dead or dying many times too and people still play it (I don't).

But Wow was never made to compete with a 7year old game, SWTOR can't even live up to it. I heard that a sizable population abandoned ship, I don't have the hard numbers so I can't tell you.

[Ultimuh]

There will always be quitters, some may or may not eventually return.
Also, I am sure they will eventually gain now players as well.

So for all I know, it's not dead if it's still moving.

[Kilroy the Grand]

There will always be quitters, some may or may not eventually return.
Also, I am sure they will eventually gain now players as well.

So for all I know, it's not dead if it's still moving.

You're faith is admirable. But I'm afraid bioware has become a punchline, their credibility is shot. I don't think this game be recover.

[Ultimuh]

There will always be quitters, some may or may not eventually return.
Also, I am sure they will eventually gain now players as well.

So for all I know, it's not dead if it's still moving.

You're faith is admirable. But I'm afraid bioware has become a punchline, their credibility is shot. I don't think this game be recover.

Well I better be optimistic since I bought that collector's edition with that statuette of Darth Malgus.

[Kilroy the Grand]

There will always be quitters, some may or may not eventually return.
Also, I am sure they will eventually gain now players as well.

So for all I know, it's not dead if it's still moving.

You're faith is admirable. But I'm afraid bioware has become a punchline, their credibility is shot. I don't think this game be recover.

Well I better be optimistic since I bought that collector's edition with that statuette of Darth Malgus.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I didn't mean this in mean way, honesty

[fenrif]

TOR is basically screwed soley because they spent so much money on developing it that to break even they'd need ridiculous subs right out the gate. I'm fairly certain that they didn't get that...

I bought it, played for a bit and then uninstalled before the free month was even up. They really made some bizzaro design decisions with that game. It's like it was a game designed 10 years ago, because they sure haven't paid attention to the little progress the genre has made in that time. I was kinda worried going into it because if you look at all the pre-release advertisement they constantly talk up "FULLY VOICED DIALOGUE." Which is missing the point of an MMO by a wide margin I think.

I dunno what's going to happen to Bioware though. EA just got done propping itself up on their brand name, and renaming a few studios to "Bioware (location)" to capitalise on it, then pretty much as soon as that was done the huge wave of backlash that had been building started hitting. It doesn't help that Bioware's PR is laughably bad I guess. So it'll be interesting to see what happens.


-edit-

Also: to anyone who still plays TOR, did they end up adding in the homosexual romance options like they said they would? I ask because EA seems to be grasping at this "Bioware: defenders of homosexuality!" angle in a big way, probobly because it's the only shred of positive PR they've had in a while. If they haven't added it in yet that's kind of hillarious.

[Ultimuh]

Also: to anyone who still plays TOR, did they end up adding in the homosexual romance options like they said they would? I ask because EA seems to be grasping at this "Bioware: defenders of homosexuality!" angle in a big way, probobly because it's the only shred of positive PR they've had in a while. If they haven't added it in yet that's kind of hillarious.

Not sure, since I myself don't swing that way. (Or.. however you say it..)
Altough I could try with a female character who romances a female companion?
Might take a while to get that far tough.

[Sonlirain]

And in all of this murky sea the Ultima Online ship (more like a boat by now but still) continues to sail on.

IMHO WoW raped the MMO genre by introducing "on rails" progression instead of offering any freedom.
In fact after you get to the max level currently in the game you are pretty much forced to do certain things like:
Craft/buy yourself some items.
Grinding reputation (and some items) in 5 player dungeons.
Go to lowest tier raid (to aquire low tier epic items)
Go to mid tier raid (to aq... you know the drill)

New xpac - All your items are now obsolete but you can start again.

Or you can just PvP... just replace low tier raids with BGs and High Tier raids with Arenas and it's basically the same thing (just with even less creativity involved on the designers side because they don't have to create new bosses for you).

And now EVERYONE making a MMO tries to rip off WoWs crappy game design to this very day.
TOR became another brick in the wall i guess but hopefully WoW eventually falls apart and/or the MMO market opens up again (hopefully not for another WoW clone).

[Ultimuh]

And now EVERYONE making a MMO tries to rip off WoWs crappy game design to this very day.
TOR became brick in the wall i guess but hopefully WoW eventually falls apart and/or the MMO market opens up again (hopefully not for another WoW clone).

When a door closes, another one opens.
Or how ever that saying goes..

[Korva]

It isn't in yet, no.