The Most Unsurprising Announcement In MMO History

Posted on October 21, 2008 by Scott Jennings| 22 Comments

Bioware unveils Star Wars: The Old Republic

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  • Vaxhacker

    I’m shocked, shocked I say.

  • Dekyriel

    When I see that and people saying “Diablo 3 was the worst-kept industry secret”, I laugh. ^^

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    Odds that this Star Wars will go better than the SOE one. 100/1.

  • glasseye

    Hopefully they’ll do a better job than the folks who made the utter train wreck that was SW:G…

  • dartwick

    If SWG should have been more like PlanetSide but with HellGate:London style aiming so slow witted MMO players could handle it.

  • ubvman

    Coffin, nail = SWG

  • Iconic

    Poor Raph. Bioware finally announces their game and all any one can say is “LOL @ SWG”

    One thing I can say with 99.9% certainty: The crafting in SW:OR won’t be nearly as cool as SW:G was. And I seriously doubt the ability to mix and match classes will be as cool either.

    Then again, SW:G isn’t even the same game that Raph made, so I guess he can’t feel too bad.

  • http://emergentfuture.com Arrakiv

    I am surprised and totally, in no way, at all, saw this coming. For truth.

    … Okay, maybe not for truth.

  • Pingback: I’d like a lightsaber, please.

  • Hatch

    When is Lucas just going to get fed up with all of this and staff up Skywalker ranch for in house MMO production? People are just going to keep botching his brand until he does it himself.

    OR would take care of the issue of Jedi being rare… since they were a bit more common back then. Also, everyone can have mandalorian armor. Nice bonus.

    Apparently, I can haz lightsaber now.

  • Ashendarei

    Not that George really seems to care what happens to his IP anymore … His releases on his OWN have been crap for the last 6 years independant of other companies taking a shot at the genre.

  • http://www.ihaspc.com Chris F

    Story driven MMO? Will be interesting to see how they encourage people to read the quest text. Something new to talk/think about, another MMO in our basking geekdom Star Wars glory. I certainly hope it pans out to expectations. People have a lot of faith in Bioware (word on the street, anyway).

    Unfortunately, already I have a pending feeling of dissapointment incoming.

  • Nicademus

    I wanna be a wookie jedi knight fighter pilot blockade runner. Failure to allow for this shall result in ferocious repercussions via forum posting.

  • http://simple-n-complex.blogspot.com Openedge1

    @ Chris F
    Will be interesting to see how they encourage people to read the quest text.

    Simple…cutscene with choices for answers. Change answers around, and for that button pusher that keeps hitting one, make answer one kill the player every once in a while.

    Ok…maybe get good voice talent instead.

  • Freakazoid

    I wonder if they’ll go for having actual choices affect your character? I don’t think the typical MMO player is really ready for that sort of thing, as it will certainly get in the way of min/maxing. I’d hate for thousands of people to be seen as unviable in end-game raiding just because they spared an npc’s life 40 levels ago.

  • Drey

    @Hatch:

    “People are just going to keep botching his brand until he does it himself.”

    Lucas already botched his brand with the 3 prequel movies. Wait, that isn’t exactly what you meant, is it? :)

  • Hatch

    He can’t botch his own brand. It’s his brand. Just because you disagree with the hetai pr0n jedi tentacles doesn’t mean he can’t put them in if he wants to.

  • Mark

    He can’t botch his own brand. It’s his brand. Just because you disagree with the hetai pr0n jedi tentacles doesn’t mean he can’t put them in if he wants to.

    This is the kind of thinking that has people in Congress establishing retroactive pseudo-perpetual copyright.

  • Dave G.

    The most recent three star wars movies and the utterly dreadful star wars animation have shown that George Lucas is, and probably always has been, hugely overrated. He was simply fortunate enough in his early career to have better people working with him. I don’t think there’s any question about GL “destroying” his brand – he’s managed that quite well himself. Any delusions about this man being a genius should have been vanquished years ago.

    Back on topic. I am very hesitant to want to get involved with this game, mostly because of what happened with SWG. The original SWG was great if you were into crafting (and I was) – the best crafting system in any game hands down. The skill system was also very impressive in terms of flexibility and variety. Unfortunately, given the current crop of MMOs, I seriously doubt we’ll see anything like that. I am picturing another grind-fest clone. Hey, maybe they can call it Grind-Fest Clone Wars.

    Mostly, though, I am very distrustful of an institution that screws its players over as badly as what happened with the NGE. That was unforgivable. Now, it’s true that Sony was in charge of that mess, but I would bet my bottom dollar that Sony couldn’t budge on big issues like that without getting approval from LucasArts, likely from Lucas himself.

    Clearly, some felt that a game with strong IP like Star Wars shouldn’t be relegated to a niche role in the market. They ripped the guts out of the game as a cash grab without regard for their paying customers. Can we really expect this new game to be anything but another cash grab designed to make even Skinner and Pavlov envious of the master machine they’ve created? When earnings don’t meet projected targets, are they going to screw everyone again?

  • UnSub

    He can’t botch his own brand. It’s his brand. Just because you disagree with the hetai pr0n jedi tentacles doesn’t mean he can’t put them in if he wants to.

    Please see Coke vs New Coke for evidence of how wrong you are. In fact, a hell of a lot of brands are destroyed by the people who are meant to develop them.

  • Dave G.

    While I agree with you in general, it’s been argued that the introduction of New Coke played a significant part in the restoration of original Coke’s market share over Pepsi. At the time New Coke was introduced, Coke’s popularity had been in slow decline for years in favour of Pepsi. People didn’t realise how badly they’d miss it though until it was gone.

    When Coke came back, people had found renewed passion for all things coke, and their marketshare rocketed. Although new coke was a flop, it actually turned out to be very beneficial to the coke brand as a whole. :)

    I guess the same thing happened with SWG and the NGE, except they left out the bit where you bring the declining but much more popular original product back to a re-enthused fanbase who are just happy to have what they thought was gone forever once more. Looks like they didn’t even know how to market it properly.

  • http://www.whatwouldmattdo.com wzrd

    Funny enough, George Lucas is the worst thing to happen to Star Wars…since well, he created Star Wars. Ever since he started working without others to guide him and tell when he’s being stupid, his product has gone down hill.

    At least it still has lightsabers…so far.