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I'm a little surprised that anyone would be the least bit concerned about the quality of the forthcoming Old Republic game based on this guy's opinions. This tirade reads exactly like a manuscript for every 'terminated employee with an axe to grind' ever written.

Which isn't to say that everything he's saying is libelous, I'm sure much of the facts he presents about the upper management are true. But a lot of what he's saying sounds like the upper management of many, many, many companies, even those that are incredibly successful.


But the fact that he's slamming on Bioware because they're proud of making the first MMO to have completely voiced content just shows how clueless he is. That *IS* a huge accomplishment, and anyone who's played a completely voiced RPG game knows what a giant advancement in the genre this was over text-based RPGs. So if he can't 'get' that simple fact, IMHO it puts the rest of his assessments about his industry into very dubious standing.

here's why war failed.

Grot 6 wrote: You don't make money spouting off at the hole about being a WOW killer, you do it by making a good game.

The problem game companies run into is that they decide they want to be as successful killing WOW as WOW was at killing EQ, but don't look at why WOW did so well at release. It wasn't just an EQ clone, the developers set out to fix what they (and a lot of other people) saw as flaws in EQ, like too much forced grouping, too much grinding, camping, 'death touch' spells, and a bunch more. They didn't just slap together something kind of like EQ, they had a polished game at release with no major bugs, decent graphics with a distinct art style and low system requirements, and content all the way to level cap.

Games like WAR touted as WOW-killers tend to copy heavily from WOW without improving on it, lack big chunks of content at release, have crippling bugs at release, have much higher system requirements, and copy systems that some players find annoying without trying to reduce the annoyance. They'd have a hard time competing with WOW and EQ at WOW's release, much less trying to knock over WOW after 2 major expansions, a truckload of content patches, and an entrenched player base.

Hope EA doesn't screw up Bioware. They're one of my favorites.

This.

One of the most annoying relatively recent developments in internet message board discussion is the 'This' reply. Who came up with it? Is it now an acceptable English response to another person's argument? I argue that the sky is blue, and instead of you replying 'I agree' you simply say 'This'. Absolutely wonderful, and by wonderful I mean slowed.

WAR failed because of multiple reasons, few of them being the aforementioned hardware requirements and Blizzard delaying Wrath of the Lich King release to specifically take the air out of the WAR release.

I have a few friends who are artists, and they perceived the WAR art design to be all about throwing enough pixels and tech at the screen and hoping people wouldn't realise the artists behind it all aren't all that talented. Blizzard guys on the other hand have always been able to make the most out of their limited 'tech allowance'. The game looks billions of times prettier than the hardware requirements would imply.

In addition to that, I agree that the WAR never seemed to have a plan. When I bought the game I asked my friends who were also trying it out what the game was all about. People were all talking about how we can level while doing RvR etc, but noone could give me a clear answer what the game will be all about once we reach maximum level. Would we be getting a competitive RvR ladder system with seasonal rewards and trophies and/or constant PvE content patches? Noone knew, noone cared, but once people had leveled a bit, people realised the game was incomplete all around and simply didn't subscribe.

Therion wrote:Blizzard guys on the other hand have always been able to make the most out of their limited 'tech allowance'. The game looks billions of times prettier than the hardware requirements would imply.

One thing that's really telling on that: If you played WOW for a good while and leveled up in traditional style hitting all of the zones, you can almost always tell what zone an outdoor screenshot was taken in just from the way the background looks, and at least which dungeon family an indoor screenshot was taken in (lots of places will have 2-4 dungeons with very similar look). The graphics aren't super-high on the pixel count, but they really put a lot of effort into making things recognizable. Lots of MMOs seem to like to give you lots of near-identical browns and greys all over the place.

Im sorry, they made a crappy version of C&C and RA.