Star Wars: The Old Republic Will Actually Ship This Year

Jeff: "We'll have to see how that goes, because a December 20 release date puts it pretty close to our crazy Game of the Year process as well as, you know, Christmas and stuff."

I'm offended that you would ever mention Christmas. Oh wait I celebrate it. Okay, I'm offended you would ever bring it up around people that may or may not celebrate it and may or may not be offended by its existence. There we go.

@blueduck said:

@Meowshi said:

@Benny said:

Too bad for them that they started making this when WOW was at its peak, only to have interest in WOW begin to wane since cataclysm was released.

Quality aside, when guild wars is released; the subscription based model will be completely irrelevant to new games post-WOW, if it isn't already.

With a monthly fee, a developer can churn out patch content at any rate they like and still get money regardless, whereas with guild wars, the onus is on arenanet to get high-quality content out as fast as possible so people can pay them for it. In my opinion, a much better model.

Interest in WoW is dying because the game has been out for years, not because people are tired of the style of gameplay. They just want that style in a shiny new wrapper. What the mass market wants is basically WoW in a brand new setting. That's essentially what this game is offering.

You're insane if you don't think it will be successful.

GW2 is innovative and will most likely be a more engaging game, but it won't sell anywhere near as much as The Old Republic. Quality does not equal sales.

Is that why Rift did so well? It was Wow in a shiny new rapper.

There was nothing "shiny" about Rift. It was just another fantasy MMO. People want another WoW. Something with a franchise that they recognize (Warcraft, Star Wars, etc.) with the cartoony, easily-accessible graphic style. Rift could boast none of those things. It wanted to meld science fiction and fantasy, create its own races, and essentially make something that what never going to have mass market appeal.

Despite the "Azeroth is dead" trailers, Rift was never competition for WoW. In fact, the game is doing fine with its current subscribers. It didn't have the budget of WoW or ToR.

@wompa421 said:

I still don't know about this game if it wasn't an MMO I would definitely buy it but since it is one I'm going to wait till giant bomb does some coverage and a review on it to see if its worth me sinking a lot of time into it. The only MMO I've played was City of Villains and I played the shit out of it I did play WOW for a week and got bored hopefully this game is worth it because there are a lot of games coming out late in the year that I'm interested in.

That is an incredibly silly decision. Giant Bomb is not the place you go for MMO coverage or reviews. None of the main four even like MMOs, and they've already stated they have no interest in the game several times. If you're relying on this site to determine whether or not to buy an MMO, you might as well use it to determine which JRPGs and EA sports titles you want as well.

I was at the bioware session at eurogamer, they gave out beta access to everyone in attendance!

@Buckfitches said:

@Meowshisaid:

What the mass market wants is basically WoW in a brand new setting.

I don't think that's what the market wants, at all. Why do you think this, if I may ask?

WoW is basically delivering exactly that in every expansion. I don't think that dipping WoW in a space theme will do much in terms of gathering interest from people who are already invested in a game like that.

I'm sure it'll be very successful on day one, but I can already hear the servers merging in the distance.

Expansions are not a brand new setting in the same sense of an entirely new game. People eventually get bored of playing the same game year after year, even if they are addicted to the particular play-style and aesthetics. So far there hasn't been a fully-fledged MMO to offer a competently similar experience. The Old Republic is that game.

The fact that it is science fiction, instead of fantasy is just a bonus.

The fact that it is Star Wars, is just a bonus.

The fact that it is Bioware, is just a bonus!

People want to pretend like their preferences determine what will and won't sell, but that's nonsense. If it was up to hardcore MMO fans on these forums, WoW would have never sold 2 copies.

@Xeirus said:

@CL60 said:

@blueduck said:

@CL60 said:

@blueduck said:

@Meowshi said:

@Benny said:

Too bad for them that they started making this when WOW was at its peak, only to have interest in WOW begin to wane since cataclysm was released.

Quality aside, when guild wars is released; the subscription based model will be completely irrelevant to new games post-WOW, if it isn't already.

With a monthly fee, a developer can churn out patch content at any rate they like and still get money regardless, whereas with guild wars, the onus is on arenanet to get high-quality content out as fast as possible so people can pay them for it. In my opinion, a much better model.

Interest in WoW is dying because the game has been out for years, not because people are tired of the style of gameplay. They just want that style in a shiny new wrapper. What the mass market wants is basically WoW in a brand new setting. That's essentially what this game is offering.

You're insane if you don't think it will be successful.

GW2 is innovative and will most likely be a more engaging game, but it won't sell anywhere near as much as The Old Republic. Quality does not equal sales.

Is that why Rift did so well? It was Wow in a shiny new rapper.

Uhh, Rift is doing well.

Yeah for its budget its doing well but if you took the amount they spent to make TOR it wouldn't be looking so hot right now.

EA has stated they need 500k subs to do good enough, Rift was Trions first game, and it sold around 1.2 million and has a very solid playerbase and is growing. A bioware starwars game with the knights of the old republic name will do just fine..most of the MMO playerbase wants MMOs that play similarly to WoW.

"good enough" won't be enough, I hope the game is great I really do because I want to play it and enjoy it. But from the video they showed (I know, I know, it's not much) this game looks awful. It'll do very well at launch but I promise it will drop off or go f2p after a year. But who knows, to each hsi own.

The game looks like an MMO. People who are disappointed in it are either people who aren't fans of MMOs in general or people who expected something that differed from your standard MMO. Either way, your problem is with the genre, not the game, and it's you're own fault for building up expectations based on nothing. From day one the developers of this game have been honest about what it is.

"We are not re-innovating combat."

"Our game is all about gear."

"We respect the trinity system."

Only way you could have been confused is if you weren't listening.

People still think that a game needs to do WoW numbers to be successful? EA has already said they only need a million subscribers to break even. Even SWG managed to sell a million copies, and it was a steaming pile of shit. If you people want to ignore Bioware's name recognition, Star War's franchise appeal, and the massive amount of hype these games have; then be my guest. Just don't pretend like your predictions of dumb are based on any sort of logic.

In a TotalBiscuit interview on YouTube, Daniel Erickson was asked about the length of the storylines per class and stated that chapter 1 is longer then the original KOTOR (which if memory servers me well, was around the 50+ hour mark) and that there are 8 chapters per class... so yeah, that's a lot of freaking content if it turns out to be true.

A mate of mine as been part of the beta for a while now, hasn't said much due to the NDA though so don't know how well it's been going. Would love Giantbomb to do something similar for SWTOR like they did for STO, though I recommend they do it in January 2012.

People sure like to complain a lot.

Well I preordered about a week ago, and I'm excited. I'm not expecting the second coming of MMOs, I'm expecting a story driven MMO with companions in space, so I doubt I will be disappointed.

I played WoW for quite a while and enjoyed it so if the combat is similar, I'm cool with that. Plus I don't have time for WoW endgame anymore so the idea of just rerolling and having a whole new story is pretty exciting for me.

All in all I'm just excited to make a smuggler and shoot first, with a wookie by my side.

That's no MMOon!

@Meowshi: You are assuming a lot of things. People want the exact same, but not, but they do, or don't, maybe.

I'm not trying to insult you, but you are spouting just as much wishful thinking nonsense as all the "TOR haterzz" on this site.

That's cool, I guess.

Lots of us hoping to play it with the rest of us a bit annoyed by know pacific server information. It still amazes me that they will as everyone else does get a lot of complaints to have them, eventually get around to it and have to offer things as as sorry for waiting. See it all the time with these sorts of games. I would have thought companies would learn that there are people living this side of the world too.

@Buckfitches said:

@Meowshi: You are assuming a lot of things. People want the exact same, but not, but they do, or don't, maybe.

I'm not trying to insult you, but you are spouting just as much wishful thinking nonsense as all the "TOR haterzz" on this site.

It's not really "wishful thinking". I don't actually wish for the game to be successful or unsuccessful. I don't really care one way or the other.

I just don't know why everyone is acting so nonsensical.

Awesome! :D

@smikey said:

Actually why don't you just put up videos of you playing STO? Let people see what the recent changes in the game are actually like.

Definitely. Seems like this has been a rough summer for STO because of corporate shenanigans which their pr hasn't kept up with, but at the same time they've added a lot of features and it seems like there's a lot more on the way, some of it soon. The duty officer system should add a lot more non-combat gameplay. They should maybe have Brad go back when that launches. Their criticisms were valid at the time, but it's changed so much that continuing to treat it like a running joke isn't really fair.

From the picture we can infer Jeff both hates and loves the doctors, loves from Samuel L Jackson, hates from the inclusion of Haden Christiansen, and a prequel trilogy press photo.

@Guyzea said:

Kotor 3

I agree

@Guyzea: Man, I wish.

Looking forward to this. Be a nice Christmas treat.

@smikey said:

Actually why don't you just put up videos of you playing STO? Let people see what the recent changes in the game are actually like.

This.

@BeepBeepBoop said:

People sure like to complain a lot.

Well I preordered about a week ago, and I'm excited. I'm not expecting the second coming of MMOs, I'm expecting a story driven MMO with companions in space, so I doubt I will be disappointed.

I played WoW for quite a while and enjoyed it so if the combat is similar, I'm cool with that. Plus I don't have time for WoW endgame anymore so the idea of just rerolling and having a whole new story is pretty exciting for me.

All in all I'm just excited to make a smuggler and shoot first, with a wookie by my side.

Pretty much my thoughts too. Not looking for anything revolutionary here. Just want a decent story and a lot of single player/small group action.

My life is over lol. I want to cry with joy.

@zymbo said:

@BeepBeepBoop said:

People sure like to complain a lot.

Well I preordered about a week ago, and I'm excited. I'm not expecting the second coming of MMOs, I'm expecting a story driven MMO with companions in space, so I doubt I will be disappointed.

I played WoW for quite a while and enjoyed it so if the combat is similar, I'm cool with that. Plus I don't have time for WoW endgame anymore so the idea of just rerolling and having a whole new story is pretty exciting for me.

All in all I'm just excited to make a smuggler and shoot first, with a wookie by my side.

Pretty much my thoughts too. Not looking for anything revolutionary here. Just want a decent story and a lot of single player/small group action.

Exactly. 8 different BioWare stories set in the Star Wars universe, each with their own group of companions. Of course I'll buy that!

It seems like a lot of people are planning to play this as a single player type experience and it has me wondering how Bioware plans to keep people playing after they have completed all the stories.

Not even Star Wars can make me endure the repetition of MMORPG gameplay.

@Redbullet685 said:

Meh. I don't like MMO's.

thanks for the info.

@Edwardryu said:

actually, I don't understand MMO why I have to pay even more after buying. subscription? my ass. once you paid for it, you don't need to pay more if it is not DLC. that's why I never play this kind of bullshit including WOW, possibly Diablo 3 or whatever. what a stupid people are! they don't even realize that they pay even more and more. one time you buy. that's all. don't want to waste my damn money for nothing.

It is because it costs a lot of money to run the servers. Running the persistent world and supporting that many player iterations over such a long period of time costs a lot of money. Plus you need 24/7 staff on hand to take care of customer service because people have in game problems at all hours. On top of that they push out constant updates. With WoW for an example, you spend the $50 to get the original content. Then each month they patch in more quests, items, raids..etc. Purely from the amount of time you can spend in the game, it is cheaper to play a game like WoW then to purchase new titles. I played WoW for 6 years with over 275 days of /played across 3 characters. Throughout that time I didn't purchase 360/PS3 games, just played WoW. The game essentially never ends, where as many $60 games end within 7 or 8 hours and are done for good.

@CitizenJP said:

My life is over lol. I want to cry with joy.

Your new life begins in a galaxy far, far away...

Kinda makes up for the delay to Diablo III (as i was hoping late 2011) so I'm now looking forward to Jeff and Co playing this for a QL as well (hoping its not sub only!).

@Meowshi said:

@wompa421 said:

I still don't know about this game if it wasn't an MMO I would definitely buy it but since it is one I'm going to wait till giant bomb does some coverage and a review on it to see if its worth me sinking a lot of time into it. The only MMO I've played was City of Villains and I played the shit out of it I did play WOW for a week and got bored hopefully this game is worth it because there are a lot of games coming out late in the year that I'm interested in.

That is an incredibly silly decision. Giant Bomb is not the place you go for MMO coverage or reviews. None of the main four even like MMOs, and they've already stated they have no interest in the game several times. If you're relying on this site to determine whether or not to buy an MMO, you might as well use it to determine which JRPGs and EA sports titles you want as well.

oh i didn't know everyone there said they had no interest in it i guess i'll have to go with gamerevolution.com and game informer and other places for the review.

seems like they where pressured by investors to announce a permanent release date cant wait for the finished product though

Can't say that im too interested, but can't wait for the video.

I think the game will do fine in terms of sales and player base. I'll be interested in trying it out once they start a free trial sometime down the line.

I'll believe it when I see it.

@Funkydupe said:

@CitizenJP said:

My life is over lol. I want to cry with joy.

Your new life begins in a galaxy far, far away...

LOL YES! ( 7 ^_^)7

I really like the dialog in the game,is a shame...because from what I've seen,that's pretty much it.

which is not enough.

Meh. I decided to wait for Guild Wars 2. That's got me excited. Plus, I have a friend who was in the SWTOR beta, and he came away unimpressed. I may do a trial to see if its worth my time and money. That, and my preorder money was switched to a PS Vita once I heard about what the game's like.

After reading that EA Louse blog earlier this year I'm wondering if this game is even worth bothering with.

@Meowshi said:

@Xeirus said:

@CL60 said:

@blueduck said:

@CL60 said:

@blueduck said:

@Meowshi said:

@Benny said:

Too bad for them that they started making this when WOW was at its peak, only to have interest in WOW begin to wane since cataclysm was released.

Quality aside, when guild wars is released; the subscription based model will be completely irrelevant to new games post-WOW, if it isn't already.

With a monthly fee, a developer can churn out patch content at any rate they like and still get money regardless, whereas with guild wars, the onus is on arenanet to get high-quality content out as fast as possible so people can pay them for it. In my opinion, a much better model.

Interest in WoW is dying because the game has been out for years, not because people are tired of the style of gameplay. They just want that style in a shiny new wrapper. What the mass market wants is basically WoW in a brand new setting. That's essentially what this game is offering.

You're insane if you don't think it will be successful.

GW2 is innovative and will most likely be a more engaging game, but it won't sell anywhere near as much as The Old Republic. Quality does not equal sales.

Is that why Rift did so well? It was Wow in a shiny new rapper.

Uhh, Rift is doing well.

Yeah for its budget its doing well but if you took the amount they spent to make TOR it wouldn't be looking so hot right now.

EA has stated they need 500k subs to do good enough, Rift was Trions first game, and it sold around 1.2 million and has a very solid playerbase and is growing. A bioware starwars game with the knights of the old republic name will do just fine..most of the MMO playerbase wants MMOs that play similarly to WoW.

"good enough" won't be enough, I hope the game is great I really do because I want to play it and enjoy it. But from the video they showed (I know, I know, it's not much) this game looks awful. It'll do very well at launch but I promise it will drop off or go f2p after a year. But who knows, to each hsi own.

The game looks like an MMO. People who are disappointed in it are either people who aren't fans of MMOs in general or people who expected something that differed from your standard MMO. Either way, your problem is with the genre, not the game, and it's you're own fault for building up expectations based on nothing. From day one the developers of this game have been honest about what it is.

"We are not re-innovating combat."

"Our game is all about gear."

"We respect the trinity system."

Only way you could have been confused is if you weren't listening.

People still think that a game needs to do WoW numbers to be successful? EA has already said they only need a million subscribers to break even. Even SWG managed to sell a million copies, and it was a steaming pile of shit. If you people want to ignore Bioware's name recognition, Star War's franchise appeal, and the massive amount of hype these games have; then be my guest. Just don't pretend like your predictions of dumb are based on any sort of logic.

I"m basing my opinion on the trailers they have shown, literally everything from this game that's been posted is pure recycled copy/paste battles from every MMO out there.

I think you need to calm down, you act as is you work for the damn company. It's an opinion, I have mine, you have... whatever yours is, I can't tell, just seems like you're trolling.

If you have to wait for January to do a series on the game, I'd be glad to wait. Having a slightly more mature community and a few server stability patches might even help.

@lockload: that was pretty cool of them, but man. I have done EVERYTHING they've asked of me with no beta invite. I pre-ordered the collector's edition, I've attended every PAX presentation they've made, I even read an issue of the comic book! What do I get? A testing weekend that was short on both sides because of technical issues! JUST LET ME IN ALREADY BIOWARE.

I'm surprised this is coming out before next year, but aside from being Star Wars, this game just isn't getting me excited for it. It seems like WoWm but I wish it the best.

@IndieFinch: That's a overblown myth. Server costs are no-where near that expensive, and they are making millions in profit from retail sales alone, not to mention the sales of the expansions every odd year. The profit margins of WoW are astronomical.

No Christmas vaycay for any Bioware employees then!

Does anyone else think that it will start the day of or after Galaxies shuts down?

@Robosaur said:

Does anyone else think that it will start the day of or after Galaxies shuts down?

The first paragraph of the article says the launch of SW:TOR is five days after Galaxies shuts down...

This needs to be F2P

Looking forward to this title but trying as hard as i can to not get too excited as a lot of the testers are saying that this is basically WOW with lazer swords and WOW isn't a game i really enjoyed. I enjoyed Galaxies for the first few years of it coming out so trying as much as possible to remain positive, Bioware do tell some great stories so i hope this is the case here too.

tons of people waiting in the queue for TRO at Eurogamer this weekend