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SWTOR writer talks economy, endgame, and polish
We told you yesterday about your chance to get your hands dirty with a Star Wars The Old Republic flashpoint demo later this month. Today we've heard tell of a new video interview with TOR lead writer Daniel Erickson that's worth a viewing. Game Reactor has just released a 15-minute sit-down with Erickson from this year's E3, and the discussion ranges from story, to endgame, to the possibility of an open beta in the near future. "It's our launch year," Erickson says, "so I finally get to quit saying -- for the most part -- I can't talk about that." Head to Game Reactor to see what Erickson can talk about, including blurbs on the player economy, raiding, and polish, and don't forget to let us know what you think in the comments. [Thanks to Petter for the tip!]
SWTOR flashpoints playable at Comic-Con [Updated]
Several weeks ago we told you about BioWare's plans to stage a public demo of its Star Wars The Old Republic MMORPG across the street from this month's San Diego Comic Con. Today, MMORPG.com has picked up on the news from the official forums, pointing out that the demos will feature the game's first two flashpoints. Interested players will get to work their way through the Black Talon and Esseles instances beginning Thursday, July 21st at 7:00 p.m. Pacific and running through Saturday, July 23rd. The sessions will last approximately one hour and are open to the general public. You'll want to get there early, though, as spots are limited and interest in BioWare's sci-fi opus is ramping up in anticipation of a possible 2011 release. [Update: Apparently, this isn't open to the public. There's a lottery to get in. Good luck with that!]
EA quotes '200 hours of gameplay per class' in SWTOR
For most single-player video games, eight to 20 hours of gameplay is currently considered "sufficient." For Star Wars: The Old Republic, those numbers are merely a prologue to the main event. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Electronic Arts' Frank Gibeau said that players should expect around 200 hours of core gameplay per class, not including side activities like PvP and raiding. He was responding to a question about the game's allegedly high budget, which Gibeau says is worth the investment: "It's vast. It's a gigantic game. And that costs money. But when you get one of these launched they persist for a long period of time." Gibeau also commented on the decision to exclusively release the digital version of SWTOR through EA's Origin service: "In the case of Star Wars we're trying to build an audience for Origin. And it's also an opportunity for us to better manage the downloads and how we bring people over from the beta and that sort of thing. For a lot of reasons it made sense for an MMO, which is a highly complex deployment."
The Old Republic's Daniel Erickson says writers are game designers
Can game writers be classified as game designers? BioWare writing director Daniel Erickson thinks so. In a brief interview at PC Gamer, Erickson lays out his views on the legitimacy of game writing in no uncertain terms. "You can teach a writer to be a junior game designer. You cannot teach a junior game designer to be a writer. You need somebody who is a senior master level writer and then you teach them the basics of game design," he says. Erickson goes on to describe BioWare's writer boot camp, which involves a three-month training period and a lot of work that will never see the light of day. While the article doesn't directly mention Star Wars: The Old Republic, it's clear that Erickson and BioWare are looking to further spread the word regarding the upcoming MMO's heavy narrative focus.
BioWare setting up public TOR demo outside San Diego Comic-Con
Star Wars: The Old Republic community coordinator David Bass unleashed a pleasant surprise on unsuspecting BioWare fans earlier today. In a post on the official TOR forums, Bass told of a playable demo at the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con. Big deal, I don't have a Comic-Con badge, we hear a few of you saying. Well, take heart. BioWare also recently announced that Mass Effect 3 (as well as downloadable content from Dragon Age II) would be playable at a hotel across the street from the con, and Bass says that The Old Republic will be there as well. "Anyone (yes even you!) can come to the Hilton and wait in line to play any of the BioWare games," Bass wrote. You'd better get there early, though, and plan on packing your patience as well as a slew of your favorite portable Star Wars games to pass the time.
Duel of the fates: Two class previews outline the positives and negatives of SWTOR
Star Wars: The Old Republic previews are coming fast and furious in the afterglow of E3, and PC Gamer adds to the mix a pair of them that focuses on extensive (and class-specific) play sessions. First up is a 17-hour session with the Bounty Hunter, and the reviewer has nice things to say about BioWare's story-telling prowess (and a whole lot of meh for TOR's MMORPG elements). The lengthy piece touches on combat, grouping (which is described as quite awkward due to the narrative focus), and BioWare's infamous penchant for NPC romance. The author concludes that TOR is worth playing if you're into single-player storytelling. "If BioWare had sacrificed the story-driven aspect of their game, there wouldn't be much reason to play The Old Republic. Other MMOs have better combat models and more impressive worlds," the magazine says. The second preview (by a different author) also features a 17-hour stint, this time at the controls of an Imperial Agent. The piece focuses on the specifics of the Agent questing experience and also paints TOR in a more positive light. "The quest design feels reminiscent of World of Warcraft's Burning Crusade expansion [...] and the game's PvP system feels like a refined and upgraded version of Warhammer Online's," the author says. You can read the full text of both articles at PC Gamer.
E3 2011: New Daniel Erickson interview on Star Wars: The Old Republic
E3 is already bringing out the goodies for fans anticipating the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic, with the trailer earlier today putting the game fresh into everyone's mind. But the trailer was all about the atmosphere and visuals, while a new video interview with Daniel Erickson is focused instead on the content of the game. The interview starts off with a brief discussion of the game's raid content, which Erickson is quick to stress is just one of the game's offerings for endgame. Moving along, Erickson talks about the difficulties involved in creating a fully voiced game and how Mass Effect's success was a big part of what led to the full voice for player characters as well as NPCs. While not everything in the interview will be revolutionary new information for longtime Star Wars: The Old Republic fans, it's still worth a watch to learn more about the upcoming game. Massively's on the ground in Los Angeles during the week of June 6-9, bringing you all the best news from E3 2011. Whether you're dying to know more about Star Wars: The Old Republic, RIFT, or any MMO in between, you can bet we'll have it covered!
Analyst predicts a Mass Effect MMO could top The Old Republic
Still having geek dreams about a Mass Effect MMO? Your flights of fancy have another advocate today, as an analyst thinks it could be not only feasible but extremely profitable to boot. In a recent investor's note, Janco Partners' Mike Hickey predicted that a hypothetical Mass Effect MMO could make more money for Electronic Arts than Star Wars: The Old Republic will. Hickey made this claim based on the strength of BioWare's science-fiction series and the historical weakness of Star Wars games: "Looking forward, we believe BioWare could develop an MMO based on their highly successful Mass Effect franchise, which should have a considerably better (relative Star Wars MMO) margin profile, given the dilutive nature of the LucasArts royalty." So far, BioWare's been fairly coy on the subject of a possible Mass Effect online game, although it hasn't ruled out the possibility.
The Old Republic dev blog outlines codex system, exploration mechanics
You may have heard about the fact that BioWare is banking heavily on story as a selling point for its Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG. Narrative has arguably been the focus of BioWare's marketing campaign over the past year, and by all accounts, TOR will have story in spades. How will individual players keep track of the sprawling mythology? And how will they keep track of how their particular class-flavored vignettes fit in with the larger whole? Enter the codex. If you're familiar with BioWare's single-player RPG titles, notably the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series, you'll likely feel right at home with TOR's version of the codex. In a new dev blog, TOR lead designer Damion Schubert explains how BioWare devs borrowed from Mass Effect's encyclopaedia-style codex and Dragon Age's chronicle-style codex to arrive at the perfect system for The Old Republic. Aside from being a lore dissemination tool, the codex also functions as something of a questing system, with many entries locked behind requirements such as exploring certain locations in the game world. "All of these features combine to make a nice little collection game for the player, where the reward for the act of collecting is more lore and context offering insights and depth into the world of Star Wars: The Old Republic," Schubert explains. Check out more of his codex-related insights on the game's official website.
The Perfect Ten: Why a Harry Potter MMO makes sense
The idea of a Harry Potter MMO is hardly a new one at this point -- we've even speculated on it around Massively for years now. Rumors and wishful thinking have brought up this hypothetical MMO time and again, and for good reason: It simply makes sense. In fact, the more you think about it, the more surprising it is that we haven't heard official word of a Harry Potter MMO by now. After doing some poking around, the most likely suspects to take on this project would either be Warner Bros. (which owns the rights to the franchise) or Electronic Arts (which purchased a license from WB to make the movie video games). Both companies have MMO studios at their command -- Turbine, BioWare, Mythic -- and both have the resources to make it happen. So why does Harry Potter make perfect sense for MMO-adaptation? Hit the jump and I'll run you down the top 10 reasons! And if you post a positive comment after this column, I'll add five points to the house of your choice (go Hufflepuff!).
Jeff Hickman hops over to Star Wars: The Old Republic
It might be a case of in-house talent poaching or just a good opportunity for all parties involved, but BioWare has hired Jeff Hickman away from Mythic to be Star Wars: The Old Republic's new Executive Producer of Live Services. The hire was announced at the recent BioWare's Fan Site Summit, according to Ask a Jedi. Hickman was previously the Studio Executive Producer for all of Mythic's MMOs. He'll step into the role left open by Gordon Walton, who left BioWare earlier this year. With both BioWare and Mythic under the same parent company -- Electronic Arts -- it stands to reason that the two studios have a strong network and relationships that could lead to such transfers of personnel. We'll look forward to seeing what Jeff Hickman will bring to TOR as it progresses toward launch!
The Old Republic's Cory Butler talks flashpoints, testing and launch
With all of the buzz surrounding Star Wars: The Old Republic these days, some fans may be frustrated that they've yet to be accepted into the hallowed halls of game testing. However, soaking up interviews and developer diaries is an acceptable distraction from the wait, which is why we're glad that the folks at Darth Hater grabbed some face time with Associate Producer Cory Butler to talk about TOR's flashpoints and testing progress. Butler is pleased with how BioWare is raising the bar for instances by including a gripping tale to enrich the experience: "Every Flashpoint begins with an exciting story and contains difficult decisions which have meaningful impact on the challenges you'll face, the enemies you'll fight, and the outcome of the Flashpoints." Butler said that testing is in full swing and BioWare's gathering great feedback from the process. While he declined to disclose the amount of current testers, he did admit that "it is a bunch." As The Old Republic grows nearer to launch, how does Cory Butler envision the launch day happening? "Honestly, our hope is that as important and exciting as it is, Launch Day is another day at the office for us. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay how significant a smooth launch of the game is to us. It is just that we are working on plans and backup plans and backups to the backup plans for quite some time now, so we're ready to execute all these plans at launch."
BioWare talks environmental polish in The Old Republic, answers class-related questions
Ever wondered what "polish" entails when it comes to an MMORPG? The word is tossed about on forums often enough, and just as often, newly released titles are lambasted by gamers who feel that polish is severely lacking in some form or fashion. Today's Star Wars: The Old Republic update goes behind the scenes at the Jedi dream factory to give readers an inside scoop on how the developers at BioWare define polish and how the team is implementing it into TOR. Senior environment artist Robby Lamb is our guide, and he walks us through the various stages of the art asset creation process, noting the various opportunities to polish and perfect along the way. Also new this week is a TOR Community Q&A with senior designer William Wallace (no, not that one) in which a smattering of class-related questions are summoned from the depths of TOR's pre-release fan community and subsequently answered at length. Check out all the details on the official TOR website.
New Star Wars: The Old Republic dev blog dishes on advanced classes
Ready for another Star Wars: The Old Republic Friday feature? Whom are we kidding, of course you are! BioWare's Georg Zoeller is happy to oblige via his new dev blog that focuses on TOR's advanced classes. His previous entry laid the groundwork, whereas today's exercise is all about the details. Players will choose their advanced class at level 10, and each base class offers two advanced class choices (i.e., the Smuggler will need to select either the Gunslinger or Scoundrel as her advanced class). Each advanced class provides two exclusive skill trees and shares a third tree with the other (non-selected) advanced class. This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, since Zoeller goes into quite a bit of detail in terms of the various skills, skill trees, and even decision-making and testing metrics (and of course, it's all sprinkled with a liberal dose of pretty pictures). Devour all the details on the official TOR website.
The Perfect Ten: Predictions for The Old Republic
I'm going to share with you a deep secret about the Massively staff: Pretty much all of us hate Larry. Oh, as a person he's likable enough, and he showers regularly, so no complaints there. He even saved the President's dog once and earned the Merit of Patriotic Pooches. Women swoon at his feet, and men occasionally throw their billfolds at him just so that he can afford to live the luxurious lifestyle that he obviously deserves. No, we hate him for a different reason entirely. You see, Larry gets the privilege and honor of being the Star Wars: The Old Republic reporter in these here parts, which has earned him no end of envy from the rest of us. Whenever we're all talking about TOR, Shawn will come in the room and tell all of us to cut it out -- except Larry. "Larry, it's your job to talk about The Old Republic. Keep on truckin', pal! You're the best!" And then Larry sticks his tongue out at us and makes pretend lightsaber noises for an hour or so while we grit our teeth. But then I remembered: I have a top ten column! In which I can talk about anything! And if that subject so happened to be TOR, then for one glorious week I could actually talk about BioWare's upcoming MMO without fear of reprisal from upper management! So today is all about my predictions for The Old Republic. Nine of them will come true; one will not. Have fun guessing which one!
The Old Republic attracts close to 1.5 million for beta testing
If six-hour lines to play the demo at PAX East didn't give you a clue, Star Wars: The Old Republic is shooting into "crazy-huge" levels of popularity these days. Even the beta for the game is hot property, as EA reported that almost 1.5 million players have signed up to be a part of the testing cycle. EA CFO Eric Brown sees this as a terrific starting point to rule the galaxy as father and son: "It's a great indicator in the interest level in the franchise," he said. Brown estimates that there are around 12 million potential MMO players in North America and Europe right now, a market that he hopes to widen with The Old Republic's launch. "For us it's about creating the right experience for expanding from tier 1 and the tier 2 users to getting people who have never played an MMO before, but are interested in Star Wars, to engage and give it a try," he said. "If we do that, our addressable market is well beyond 12 million people ... into more of a general gamer population, pretty much anyone that has a minimum spec personal computer." We still have a while to go before SWTOR's launch, particularly with the recent news that there's no chance of the game launching before July 1st.
GDC 2011: BioWare's Damion Schubert on designing for loners
Nothing stirs up a good MMO debate like the age-old question of whether or not the genre should cater to solo players. BioWare's Damion Schubert, lead systems designer on the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic, recently added a bit of fuel to that particular fire during a presentation at last week's GDC in San Francisco. Schubert's talk focused on loners in the massively multiplayer space, and while it's no surprise to anyone that TOR is being built with the solo player in mind, it may come as a bit of a revelation that BioWare isn't aiming to "dumb down" the MMORPG as some fans have suggested. On the contrary, Schubert states that MMOs feature "hardcore stuff. This is hardcore gameplay, and we have to figure out how to get the solo player in a position where they want to take part in this, where they feel comfortable with the social circles, where they feel like they can be contributors."
The "big bet": EA aims at a half-million subscribers to make SWTOR profitable
"It's a big bet, but it's the right kind of bet to make for EA." These are the words of BioWare's Ray Muzyka, responding to a conference call to EA investors in which the company admitted that Star Wars: The Old Republic will need to pull in at least 500,000 subscribers to become profitable. This is substantially less than the two million subscriber mark that industry analysts previously predicted. During the conference call, EA CEO John Riccitiello drew a line in the sand between financial failure and victory for The Old Republic: "At half a million subscribers, the game is substantially profitable, but it's not the sort of thing we would write home about. Anything north of one million subscribers is a very profitable business. Essentially it turns on a dime from being quite sharply negative in terms of its EPS [Earnings Per Share] impact to positive the day the product ships. So it's our view that we can be very successful without fundamentally challenging the market leader [World of Warcraft] because we think we'll probably hit the smaller competitors harder when we get out there. Of course, we have no particular ambition to be a distant number two. Our ambitions are higher than that, but we throttle back a little bit relative to our financial projections." While Riccitiello admitted that the title has seen "significant development costs," he claims that costs proposed by the public are far higher than the actual costs of The Old Republic's development. He declined to share the actual costs or the number of staff working on the game. EA also announced that The Old Republic's release date will be in calendar 2011. BioWare has as recently as this January targeted a spring 2011 release. EA's estimate puts its launch somewhere between March 31st and December 31st of this year.
The Perfect Ten: The movers and shakers of 2010
Even though MMOs are the products of great teams of talented workers -- from sound artists to writers -- it's inevitable that a few of the people behind the curtain step out into the limelight. It's a smart move, really; it provides a personal face for people to associate with the game, it keeps messages consistent, and it draws any potential hate onto one person instead of the team at large. It stands to reason that these public figures end up being some of the major movers and shakers in the industry because of their high-profile positions. From CEOs to community managers, these are the people with power to make decisions, the voice to change opinions, and the personalities to inspire millions. Oh, that last sentence is pure poetry. Let's re-read it again, shall we? So in our last Perfect Ten of the year, I've asked the Massively team to compile a list of the 10 biggest MMO movers and shakers of this year. All of these people now owe us cupcakes of gratitude. (Legal Disclaimer: This does not signify a binding cupcake-blogger contract.)
Bigpoint vs. BioWare: CEO says The Old Republic will never be profitable
As a high-profile MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic is proving itself to be a big target for attack. Bigpoint, the German game developer that's working on Battlestar Galactica Online, stepped up to take a swing at the as-of-yet-unreleased title. At the London Games Conference, Bigpoint CEO Heiko Hubertz made the bold prediction that The Old Republic will never see a profit: "If you look at Star Wars from EA and BioWare, they estimated a development budget of over $100 million. This is an online game for many million of subscribers, so the publisher does not understand that a subscription model is not the future. With microtransactions maybe I see the game having a chance but I don't think that EA or BioWare will ever be profitable with this game." EA BioWare has yet to release a definite pricing plan for TOR, although it is widely believed it will be subscription-based. Earlier this year, Dr. Ray Muzyka said that there will be "more of the traditional business model with maybe some twists as well."
