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BioWare Mythic is now just Mythic
Has the BioWare name lost its luster? That depends on whom you ask, of course, and we can't help but wonder at the mixed message behind Mythic's recent decision to dissociate itself from the famed RPG behemoth. In a blurb on the official Warhammer Online website, community manager Kai Schober writes that BioWare Mythic will henceforth be known as Mythic, which is a return to the studio's pre-2010 days before it merged with BioWare and adopted the parent company's name as its prefix. "In the wake of a new focus our studio has recently changed its name from BioWare Mythic to Mythic. Everything else stays the same -- our passionate teams will continue to support and develop our existing titles as well as working on some new and exciting projects," Schober writes.
Industry execs conclude that gamers like free games
The latest declaration regarding the validity of the freemium business model comes to us from MCV. "It turns out free is the price point people want to pay for games," BBC Worldwide executive Robert Nashak told the website. Nashak goes on to say that freemium raises the quality bar by virtue of putting the power in the hands of the consumer. "If you're not hooking people in you can't monetize," he says. BioWare-Mythic's Eugene Evans agrees, and he says that the model has its roots in the games rental business. "For me that really did start when I saw the retailer Blockbuster started renting out games. I'm convinced that probably put some studios out of business," Evans explains. "There [were] a lot of people [who] complained about game rentals at the time, but they were often the people whose product was just bad."
Can Ultima Forever be a worthy entry in the legendary series?
This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity. If there's any video game on the planet that demands a remake, it's Ultima IV: Quest Of The Avatar. As arguably the most important title in what I still believe is certainly the most historically important series in video game history, it's something that deserves to be played by as many people as possible. Yet the years have not been kind to Ultima IV. Unlike certain other games commonly cited as "needing" remakes, Ultima IV comes from an era before in-game tutorials and before the mouse had achieved market saturation. It is, unfortunately, just out of the range of accessible for many, regardless of its reputation. So when I first heard about Ultima Forever, I was cautiously optimistic. Perhaps a respectful remake could maintain the core of the story while appealing to a much wider audience. Of course what that "core" is may be different things to different people. For me, the core of Ultima IV is the combination of open-world mechanics, conversational freedom, and its rigid morality system. These aspects of the game work together to make Ultima IV an exploration of the world, its inhabitants, and one's self – which, at the time, also meant an examination of the player's relationship with computer games as a whole. Yes, it really was that special.
BioWare-Mythic says F2P is the 'democratization of game prices'
What's this, another studio bigwig has said that microtransactions are the consumer-friendly way of the future? We're positively shocked! This time around, the refrain was sung by BioWare-Mythic vice president Eugene Evans. The occasion was the Develop conference in Brighton, where Evans also opined that cheaper needs to be better. "The lower the price, the better your product needs to be, especially if it's going to stand out. Any notion of pay-to-win means we've done a bad job of it," Evans said. He also touched on the challenges developers will face as the current console generation gives way to the next. Gamers are already part of large communities connected to their current hardware, he says, and the company that best manages a large-scale community migration from one platform to the next will be "the most successful," according to Evans.
Drew Karpyshyn set to pen another Star Wars: The Old Republic novel
Drew Karpyshyn, a lead writer for Star Wars: The Old Republic and the author of the tie-in novel Revan, is no longer with BioWare. That's old news. What might be somewhat more surprising news is that he is still penning novels for the game, with new information about the second novel having finally surfaced from a Facebook posting by Del Ray Books. If you've been eagerly awaiting more details about the bridge between Knights of the Old Republic and the MMO's setting, it's your lucky day. Titled Annihilation, the novel will focus on agent Theron Shan and his companion Teff'ith as they investigate an Imperial counterattack spearheaded by an apprentice of Darth Malgus. The posting goes on to confirm that the novel is currently on target for release on November 13th of this year. So if you can't get enough of your story in the game, it looks like it won't be too much longer until you can get even more story out of game as well.
Another round of Star Wars: The Old Republic questions answered by the developers
It's been two months since Star Wars: The Old Republic launched, and players have some questions. So it's a good thing that the development team is still hosting a weekly question-and-answer session for the community, with the latest installment addressing several new concerns about future updates. Among the answers are new features that will be coming with the second major patch, including animation adjustments for cross-faction parity and tweaks to docking at planets with orbital stations such as Tython and Korriban. There are also plans for players to gain the ability to roll on equipment specifically for companions; the Need option will be disabled unless the item in question is designed for your advanced class. Amidst all of the good news, however, there is some bad in the sense that new ship models and customization are apparently on the table -- but for much further in the future. Take a look at the full list of answers if you're interested in seeing what players can expect for new features in the near future and the slightly further future.
WAR producer's letter talks bug fixing, patch schedules
Hey kids, it's time for another Warhammer Online producer's letter (no, it's still not dead, doomsayers). The dev team is currently hard at work on the 1.4.5a patch, and in case you were wondering, that little "a" basically indicates additions to the previous 1.4.5 update. Said additions will take the form of "functionality, messaging, and tweaks to the fortresses and relics," all of which are still being discussed on the official WAR forums. Next up is the 1.4.6 patch, and Mythic has switched gears to focus on bug fixing instead of the previously planned open RvR tweaks. There are also some additional items of interest on the horizon, including a new live event and some changes to crafting. Head to the WAR Herald to read up on all the details. [Thanks to Benjamin for the tip!]
Star Wars: The Old Republic lets you make a holocall to the first guild summit
Maybe you want to head down to the first guild summit for Star Wars: The Old Republic but just can't quite fit a trip to Austin into your budget at the moment. The bad news is that no matter how awesome your guild is, BioWare is not going to provide you a private jet. The good news is that you can still get some of the impact of the event, as portions of the event will apparently be available via livestream for those who can't attend in person. Watching the event rather than attending might sound like a weak compromise, but according to the official announcement, players watching via livestream will be able to participate in some of the event discussions. It also looks like the streams will be covering the most important elements and highlight the developer presentations and feedback discussions. So you might not be able to take part physically in the events, but you can still get some of the feel.
BioWare kicks off Star Wars: The Old Republic Q&A Fridays
When BioWare first announced the addition of a regular community Q&A feature for Star Wars: The Old Republic, the team stated that each session would answer about 10 questions. However, the first installment has gone up with a grand total of 15 and answers more questions about the Legacy system. Patch 1.2 will bring in the first set of rewards, allowing players to combine races and classes in new ways, but the company promises there will be more enhancements and expansions for future patches. In fact, the next major patch is will bring several requested features. A new same-faction Warzone, the Hue to Chest feature, Medium and Heavy social armor, and guild banks are all on the table for the update. For players more concerned with the immediate state of the game, there are also answers about the best ways to submit feedback and how the team prioritizes which bugs to fix. It's certainly a good place to kick off the series, and community members should find something to be pleased with in the answers.
BioWare bringing weekly blogs and video guides for Star Wars: The Old Republic
Bringing someone new into the world of an MMORPG can be a difficult task. BioWare is trying to make it easy for MMO newcomers to get into Star Wars: The Old Republic, and to that end the team has launched the first of a series of video guides to playing the game. The first video, narrated by Social Media Coordinator Eric Musco, covers starting fresh in the game, creating a character, and taking part in your first conversations. Of course, you might be an old hand at playing the game by now. (If not, the video is embedded just past the cut.) For those players not in need of a helping hand, BioWare has also announced the launch of two weekly features -- a blog post rounding up all developer posts to the forums over the prior week, and a Q&A session that will pull 10 questions from a community thread to be answered each week. So even if you don't need help getting into the game, you can have a little extra guidance about what's going on behind the scenes.
Subscriber numbers lead to a new hope for Electronic Arts stock
It's official: As of yesterday, Star Wars: The Old Republic has 1.7 million active subscribers and has sold 2 million copies. That's good news for fans of the game, but it's also good news for both BioWare and Electronic Arts. Apparently, it's seen as very good news for Electronic Arts, as the company's stock has gone up by 6.1% in the announcement's wake. The stock closed on Wednesday at $18.44 a share and closed today at $19.56, an appreciable gain for the company and a sign of good health. This is sharp contrast to some of the early analyst responses before subscriber numbers were released, as well as some suspicions that the game was falling after a few first-patch fumbles. Whether the game will rise further or stabilize where it is remains to be seen, but it's certainly making a strong showing out of the gate, and the financial sector is taking note. [Thanks to Robert for the tip!]
A WoW player's guide to The Old Republic
Whether you're a longtime World of Warcraft player or someone who's just recently tried the game and fallen in love with it, you're probably aware that there are other MMORPGs out there. Recently, the game that's been getting the most press is Star Wars: The Old Republic. And if you've sat down and tried it out as a veteran on World of Warcraft, you probably had some idea of what was going on when you started playing, with the only initial speedbump being the lack of an auto-attack feature. But there's more to the game than combat and more things that might trip you up in the long run. So Eliot Lefebvre and Matt Daniel are here to help you out with a massive guide to coming into TOR when you're accustomed to the environment of WoW. Take a skip past the break to find out almost everything you'll need to know when converting from the world of Azeroth to the galaxy of Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Star Wars: The Old Republic posts new video for future content updates [Updated]
It's safe to say the past two days haven't been the best for the nascent Star Wars: The Old Republic, with its bugs, breaks, and bearish concerns. That doesn't mean that BioWare is packing it in and heading for the hills, however; the studio has just put out a new video detailing the content slated for the game in the coming months. Director James Ohlen lays out several new additions planned for the near future, several of which are features players had been asking for. PvP will see the addition of a new Warzone as well as an overall ranking system for avid PvP players to track personal progress. UI customization is also coming, starting with a fully resizable and reconfigurable layout. And the Legacy system is being rolled out in full, complete with the promise of new races being available as Legacy rewards for the factions. So if you're a Star Wars: The Old Republic fan and have been feeling a bit down with recent news, this might help perk you back up. [Update: A reader named Jon has tipped us off to an article on Gamesradar in which BioWare's Daniel Erickson confirms that the character in today's video is "definitely a Miraluka Sith," which suggests that the Miraluka may be ported cross-faction as part of the Legacy system rewards.]
Analyst believes Star Wars: The Old Republic had a $500 million price tag
Is Star Wars: The Old Republic the next big thing in MMOs? The same old thing in a new shell? Innovative? Routine? Polished? Buggy? Ask seven different people and you'll get nine different opinions. The one thing that everyone can agree on is that the game was expensive, and while most analysts are estimating somewhere between $100-$300 million, analyst Doug Creutz suspects that Electronic Arts has sunk nearly half a billion dollars into the project. This is in stark contrast to the estimate from analyst Michael Pachter, who targeted the price tag at roughly $80 million when all was said and done. Unfortunately, the precise cost won't be known unless EA decides to release the game's official budget and how much was spent on development, which seems unlikely. What is certain is that the performance of Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to be under close scrutiny over the coming months among both fans of the game and fans of financial speculation. [Thanks to Ben for the tip!]
First major patch and maintenance delayed for Star Wars: The Old Republic
Cleared your schedule later today to try out the new content in Star Wars: The Old Republic's first major patch? Well, we hate to disappoint you, but it looks like your adventures against hordes of space zombies will be delayed a little longer. According to an official announcement this morning, the scheduled maintenance has been delayed and patch 1.1 along with it, with the most definitive new information simply being some time next week. While the announcement doesn't go into details about the rationale, it notes that there were late-surfacing issues uncovered by players on the test realm that required additional maintenance to correct, forcing the team to bring the patch back and polish it a few more times. A definite time will be posted to the community as soon as it's available. It's disappointing, certainly, but the idea of putting out the game's first major patch before the game had even been out of retail release for a month may have been overly ambitious.
BioWare's docs: Free-to-play can't invest and create at our level
If BioWare's not in a war against the free-to-play business model, it certainly is skirmishing with the notion that F2P is the only way to go. In speaking with our sister site Joystiq, BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk defended the traditional subscription model by saying that it not only works but allows dev teams to achieve games on a larger scale. Zeschuk mentioned that it was simply a case of the right business model for the right game: "I'm not saying it's better or worse. It just doesn't supplant the other things. 'Cause we can do some things no one else can. The free-to-play people can't invest to the level we can invest, and can't create something of the size and scale of something we can create." Even with its love of the subscription model for Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare is open to free-to-play where it sees fit. Muzyka dropped a tantalizing hint as to the company's F2P aspirations: "We have some other stuff we haven't announced yet coming from our play-for-free team that I'm really excited about. It's gonna bring back some IP that people have a lot of fond memories around."
BioWare docs defend subscription model, tease free-to-play iteration of classic IP
Understandably, BioWare heads Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk seem tired of beating the drum for Star Wars: The Old Republic's subscription-based business model. I didn't actually bother asking them about their thoughts on subscription vs free-to-play gaming during an interview early last week, but Zeschuk launched into a spirited defense nonetheless, perhaps conditioned by being asked over and over in the run up to SW: TOR's launch last Monday. "You look at the online space in general and it's fragmenting into all these different areas, but the core still works. The subscription model still works," Zeschuk said. "We know a lot of people say, 'Oh, everything's just going free-to-play.' But that's just one slice. There's one slice that's free-to-play, there's one slice that's social, there's traditional subscription still going." He was also quick to point out that, "it's obviously been the free-to-play guys trumpeting this," though his own company certainly isn't above working in the free-to-play space, as evidenced by Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes. "I'm not saying it's better or worse. It just doesn't supplant the other things. 'Cause we can do some things no one else can," Zeschuk added. In his eyes, a free-to-play dev isn't able to throw the same amount of resources and time at an MMO project, and that marks a big differentiation between the two business models. "The free-to-play people can't invest to the level we can invest, and can't create something of the size and scale of something we can create," he said. The idea that free-to-play will take over all other MMO business models, he said is, "from a business perspective, ridiculous."
Ring in the new year with Warhammer Online's Keg End
Amidst the news of server merges, Warhammer Online fans could probably use something to celebrate, something to lift the spirits a bit. So it's fortunate that the annual Keg End celebration is just around the corner, giving everyone a chance to get drunk and rowdy even by the already aggressive status of the world's inhabitants. Running from December 14th until January 4th, Keg End is a chance to celebrate in style in the Dwarven tradition. The rewards for the event haven't changed much this year, with the usual assortment of Party Kegs, Keg Taps, and Battlebrew Backpacks. There are giants roaming the field looking for their own ale and a handful of sporting battles, and there are plenty of special drinks to be sampled just for the event. So get yourself ready to log in tomorrow and take a nice roll through fields filled with blood, beer, and battle. Especially beer.
Star Wars: The Old Republic preps for guild imports, server list takes shape
At 7:00 a.m. EST tomorrow morning, the coveted early access invitations will be sent out for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Some of them, anyway. (Some players will have to wait a little bit longer.) If you're in one of the many guilds that prepared and recruited prior to the game's launch via the on-site recruitment feature, you're also in line to start in on the early guild deployment, which is outlined in detail on the official site. Long story short, you'll be given your guild's server assignment, and if you're unhappy with it, you're going to have to start up on a different server rather than using the automated joining. Unfortunately, players aren't being given a full preview of servers ahead of time, but based on the deployment messages, a list is taking shape over on Ask a Jedi. The list is, of course, not absolute -- it's simply what servers are known that have been passed along -- but it's certainly extensive, with several different PvE, PvP, and RP servers for both US coasts and Europe. Keep checking back for more information, and keep your eyes on your mailbox early tomorrow morning. Star Wars: The Old Republic is finally here, and the Force is with Massively! We've prepared a Hutt-sized feast of class introductions, gameplay guides, lore roundups, and hands-on previews to help you navigate the launch period and beyond. And don't forget our weekly SWTOR column, the Hyperspace Beacon!
Waaaghon Ho!: Warhammer Online merging servers following free transfers
Saddle up, rough riders: It's time to head to more fertile lands! Starting next week, select Warhammer Online players will be given the option to transfer between servers for free. The decision is Mythic's attempt to merge underpopulated servers, and the company hopes that this move will drive up the action in RvR for previously quiet locations. Players on the Gorfang (North America) and Karak Azgal (Europe) will be able to move house to Badlands and Karak Norn, respectively, starting December 14th. Once this happens, Gorfang and Karak Azgal will be marked as "Legacy" servers, keeping new players from rolling on them, and then after three weeks, the two servers will be shut down completely. Any characters left on those servers will not be playable until they transfer to their new homes. Mythic is also paving the way for guilds to move wholesale to new servers, with more information about this coming next week.
