Star Wars: The Old Republic release date

[Broken]

I just got the email from Bioware. Star Wars: The Old Republic will launch on:

12/20/2011

Early access for preorders will be in the few days (up to a week?) before the official launch date. It is basically World of Warcraft with a Star Wars skin, but EVERY npc is voiced. From what I understand, the beta sound file is something like 9 gigs. Nothing revolutionary here, although someone I work with mentioned it might be the largest voice-acting project ever, but if you like wow-style, themepark MMO's this is a Star Wars themed flavor.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

It'll be all about the story for me. And from what I've heard from testers of the game, story is what's going to make this game succeed or fail.

[Skgoa]

but EVERY npc is voiced. From what I understand, the beta sound file is something like 9 gigs. Nothing revolutionary here, although someone I work with mentioned it might be the largest voice-acting project ever,

Funny that it took the industry as a whole so long.

[Havok]

Sorry, but this game looks too horrible visually to be saved by any story telling. Star Wars has never been about the story. It is about the visualization of the story, the sound of the story. From what I have seen so far, it is already a colossal failure.

That said, I'm sure the fanboys will flood the digital world with Jedi and bounty hunters anyway.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

but EVERY npc is voiced. From what I understand, the beta sound file is something like 9 gigs. Nothing revolutionary here, although someone I work with mentioned it might be the largest voice-acting project ever,

Funny that it took the industry as a whole so long.

Should the industry have gotten there faster than it did? I don't think 900+ voice actors for a single project is a simple feat.

[Skgoa]

Well, I expected it to happen much sooner. The way the MMO market is right now, a new game needs to be just so much better than WoW. That means any serious contender needs to be a massive investment and effort and has to try every possible avenue to set itself apart. Voice acting/auditory immersion is one of the things were WoW is sorely lacking. I have said as much back in '06 and its still true.

e/ It was especially grating when Blizzard started having NPCs have long monologue or even had them "shouting" in the local chat. It didn't add anything to the game other than making using the chat much more tedious for a while.

[Meest]

Too bad it's nothing really above the norm for MMOs. Going to wait and see, more weighted towards RPG than MMO, surprised still releasing this early.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Well, I expected it to happen much sooner. The way the MMO market is right now, a new game needs to be just so much better than WoW. That means any serious contender needs to be a massive investment and effort and has to try every possible avenue to set itself apart. Voice acting/auditory immersion is one of the things were WoW is sorely lacking. I have said as much back in '06 and its still true.

While VO has been lacking in MMOs, it's still hideously expensive to VO every character in a game the size of WoW. Sure, Blizzard could have funded the effort but considering that they dominate that market, it makes little business sense to do so. Also, SWTOR started in 2006 (same year as your stated complaint) so based on that, I would say VO in the MMO genre is probably developing at the rate I would expect it to.

e/ It was especially grating when Blizzard started having NPCs have long monologue or even had them "shouting" in the local chat. It didn't add anything to the game other than making using the chat much more tedious for a while.

You can't just throw VO in and expect it to come out well. SWTOR uses Bioware-style cinematics for long conversation sequences whereas WoW has no such system in place. Thus, you get this annoying effect where it feels like Blizzard is hand-jamming long monologues into places where it doesn't belong.

Though from what I've also read from testers, the Bioware-style cinematics are both good when you want to listen to the NPCs and bad when you don't. Some people end up wanting to click through the entire conversation instead of waiting for the whole sequence to end on its own.

[Darth Yan]

I've heard spoilers for the game Spoiler

Revan does show up. He's a raid boss. and each player has a story arc that effects the universe and plays a key role in events.

[Mr Bean]

About that Yan Spoiler

It makes no godamn sense as the game is 200 years plus Kotor 2 meaning the Exile, Revan and all of the old crew except the wookie and the robots should be dead and in the ground by a hundred years. Yes there is suspended animation and the like but seriously? Why set it 200 years later instead of just 20?

Still I per-ordered months ago as I've been needing a new MMO as every one to launch in the last two years has only kept my interest for a month or two, Champions and DC Universe online being the worst examples of that. If not for TOR works out I'll give Guildwars 2 a try as nothing else on the market interest me.

[Meest]

Guild Wars jaded me towards pre-ordering TOR, if half the stuff in the guild wars 2 wiki is true TOR is a generation behind at best.

[Stofsk]

Guild Wars jaded me towards pre-ordering TOR, if half the stuff in the guild wars 2 wiki is true TOR is a generation behind at best.

Stuff like what?

I don't know what to think about TOR except that I want to like it.

[charlemagne]

I don't get why anyone would want full voice overs in an MMO, especially in a Bioware-style one, I honestly think this is money that could be spent on better things when making an MMO (like actually delivering a lot of content). Voice the main character questlines, fine, AoC did it that way and to me, that always was enough.

Maybe I'm not the target audience, but in Bioware games I always skip the voiced dialogue once I've read the line anyways.

Regarding TOR, I'll check it out when there's free buddy invites or trial accounts, but I've been burned by preordering both AoC and Warhammer

[Meest]

Guild Wars jaded me towards pre-ordering TOR, if half the stuff in the guild wars 2 wiki is true TOR is a generation behind at best.

Stuff like what?

I don't know what to think about TOR except that I want to like it.

To many things to list on the plus side for GW2, everything sounds great and refreshing from the current crop of MMOs. Things like each weapon changes the animations and skill sets you can use based on what class is using them. Their trinity system drops heals in favour of mitigation so preventative shields are more effective than reactionary "heals", also no tanks.

Everything just makes sense while still sounding fun, here's example of the Dynamic System content "Once an event has triggered, it will develop whether or not a player attends it. Because of this, there is no real concept of failure or success – the result of any event will simply cause a change in the surrounding area. For example, if monsters are successful in raiding an area, they may become strong enough to occupy a fort, which could then be taken by players."

Their Server vs Server vs Server idea is a good step, the 2 faction system is stagnant at least in the current crop of games. Then battle over resources is another good thing, helps promote server pride/unity. Dynamic scaling of difficulty for boss battles, there's a video out of one, 3-4 things of different things to do instead of just pouring dps into a target etc, and will react to more people joining.

Anyways can go on but once looking at stuff upcoming like that, the same old MMO formula just isn't enticing anymore, TOR is just a polished WoW/War clone with class storylines. Only other new thing is the companion system, but then it just makes it more of a single player MMO with occasional co-op play online since you can bring along whatever class pet you need.

[Skgoa]

Also, SWTOR started in 2006 (same year as your stated complaint) so based on that, I would say VO in the MMO genre is probably developing at the rate I would expect it to.

Oh, alright then.

e/ It was especially grating when Blizzard started having NPCs have long monologue or even had them "shouting" in the local chat. It didn't add anything to the game other than making using the chat much more tedious for a while.

You can't just throw VO in and expect it to come out well. SWTOR uses Bioware-style cinematics for long conversation sequences whereas WoW has no such system in place. Thus, you get this annoying effect where it feels like Blizzard is hand-jamming long monologues into places where it doesn't belong.

Though from what I've also read from testers, the Bioware-style cinematics are both good when you want to listen to the NPCs and bad when you don't. Some people end up wanting to click through the entire conversation instead of waiting for the whole sequence to end on its own.

What I meant is that Blizzard rendered the "speech" of NPCs as text. Sometimes you would just sit there waiting for it to scroll past in the chat window, because they tried to do these epic, suspenseful scenes that way. E.g. summoning the last boss in a raid. Many people never ever got the backstory of these encounters, since they were to busy making the last tactical preparations before the battle. Another thing that always annoyed me were the quest texts. Why would anyone WANT to read hundreds of words of interchangeable drivel, when you could just scroll down and get on with playing?

[Stark]

Nobody is going to want to listen to it either. Most people just want their kill 10 jawas quest and don't care about the fluff nonsense.

[charlemagne]

...and even if you normally care about the fluff and enjoy an immversive RPG, you won't care with the third and fourth alt and when doing the inevitable daily quest grind.

Doing full voice overs for a MMO is just burning money. No one besides a die-hard roleplaying minory or maybe the people writing the reviews will care.

[Sharp-kun]

...and even if you normally care about the fluff and enjoy an immversive RPG, you won't care with the third and fourth alt and when doing the inevitable daily quest grind.

Yeah. That was the problem with "Culling of Strathholme" in WoW. First time, cool, Arthas, uther etc fully voiced acting it out. Brilliant.

Then its a year later and you just want to skip it.


I can see it now in Old Republic. 4 players wanting to skip the story section but unable to as 1 person hasn't seen it.

[charlemagne]

Yeah. That was the problem with "Culling of Strathholme" in WoW. First time, cool, Arthas, uther etc fully voiced acting it out. Brilliant.

Then its a year later and you just want to skip it.


I can see it now in Old Republic. 4 players wanting to skip the story section but unable to as 1 person hasn't seen it.

Heh, same thing with the Rift raid instance in LOTRO, the final boss fight starts with an ancient Elf explaining the how and why of the whole instance, but it's voiced and can't just be skipped. Gets on your nerves when you wipe a couple of times and just want to get back to the fight.

[Skgoa]

Well, obviously the player should be able to skip it. My point is that it can add to immersion, if the player wants it to. Maybe its just my taste, but I just never enjoyed having backstory as in-game text. The moment I lost interest in WoW was when it turned from me being part of the WORLD of Warcraft and into a weekly whack-a-mole minigame. (I.e. raiding as a healer.)

[TheFeniX]

WoW's biggest failure IMO is removing the animation for /facepalm. Other than that, I'm ok with it.

I pre-ordered TOR because, you know, I'm a huge whore to the Star Wars establishment. Supposedly, crafting is going to be cruise-controlled with you dumping all of the work on your NPC companions and they will succeed/fail based on certain criteria. Combat is pretty slow paced from what I've been told, much like KOTOR. Your auto-attacks will make up a large portion of your damage with you having certain "go to" abilities that won't quite be spammed, but also won't offer a lot of variety. There are no raids to start and PvP is limited to two areas in open-world and 1-2 Battlegrounds that are 4 vs 4.

The problem is this information came from someone who gave me a blank look when I asked "is the combat limited by a global-cooldown or did your class have numerous ability-cooldown limitations?" It matters to me, because after playing a Paladin for so long (Ability-cooldown class), I found my calling playing a class only limited by the GCD (Death Knight), at least for DPS.

Pretty weak start, but I'm giving it an honest shot. I wasn't very impressed with WoW at the start either, but it kind of grows on you... for better or worse.

[White Haven]

Many of those points you noted are wrong in almost every particular. I can't say much more on account of NDA, but a lot of those points are way off-base.

[Sharp-kun]

Well, obviously the player should be able to skip it.

The problem with that comes in group content, where you have 3 people that have seen it and want to skip, and 2 people that haven't and want to see it.

[White Haven]

Then the three can tough it out, just as they would in an instance of two party members wanting to read long non-voiced quest text and three party members who just want to start stabbing gungans. It being voiced or not doesn't change that. Parties move at the speed of the slowest member, voice, text, or shitty priest who keeps running out of mana.

[OmegaChief]

Many of those points you noted are wrong in almost every particular. I can't say much more on account of NDA, but a lot of those points are way off-base.

Heck NDA aside they at least have multiple team dungeons, I'd use the term Raid but I'm not entirly sure of the full WoW implications, having never got that far, such as the Eternity Vault thing they showed off playing through the first boss of just a few weeks ago