Whoa, I didn't expect so much response after being away for a few days. :D
To Shem,
I can see the reasons as to why someone would not want to pay monthly fees to play a video game, but just think about it this way. Say you get a new game every couple of months, that's around $60. Meaning it's around $500-600 a year. When a TOR membership would be around $240 a year or so.
Well, the time I have put into gaming has changed over the last year since the birth of our daughter, Lindy. I've devoted more time into spending time with my little girl because I can't get enough of her at times, especially as she gets older and she is capable of more interaction. If any of you have followed me on Xbox Live, I've been on it for 3 years and most of the points I put on my gamerscore was put on before Lindy's birth. I think this year alone I'd be lucky to have put 2000 points into it and that's considering I have over 27,000 on it right now.
Another thing is the money put into gaming right now. I've bought only two games so far in 2011, and one of them I haven't put a lot of time into yet. And both of those I didn't pay $60 for. Though I do get free games from 2K Sports and that's because I've been a board moderator there for 2 1/2 years now. So every year when their new baseball and basketball games come out, I get a free copy. So I have received three games so far this year, but only two I've paid for. I will be getting the next basketball game NBA 2K12 very soon in the mail and I will be getting new Batman game (Arkham City) next month.
And FYI, a new game every couple of months at $60 would be $360 a year. ;) There is sales tax for most people if you want to include that as money invested in games, but I never pay it. I live right by the Oregon border and in the state of Oregon, there is no sales tax and I always make purchases like that in Oregon.
The outdated graphics are linked to the economic recession. As you stated, you don't wish to get a new computer and spend money for upgrades. Which is why BioWare made the graphics, for lack of a better term, crappy. They want as many people to play as possible, and when they have games with high end graphics, not as many people will be playing.
I would think the graphics look the way they do because they started working on the game in 2005. And those graphics look more like a 2005 game. The issue then becomes it took 6 years to complete.
TOR couldn't have worked on consoles, not at all. A big part of the game is talking to other players, which would be hard on consoles. In the end, MMO's just work best on PC's.
If talking to players is the "big" part, then that wouldn't be a problem. I've talked to people on Xbox Live and even talked with them while playing a game with them. All you have to do is plug a headset into the controller. That solves what you believe to be the biggest issue. And yes, you can talk to multiple people at once in an Xbox Live party. ;)
1. Valid reasoning dependent on one's financial situation, for myself a month of pay equates to less than an hour of work so it isn't a big deal, but for others the turn off is easy to understand.
Well, if you're single and making $20, you have lots of money to spend if you're not up to your ears in debt and you don't have an expensive life style. It's a little different when you have mouths to feed.
1. The game graphics looking outdated and stylized is intentional with respect to one of your above arguments, not everyone has the money to upgrade their computers. From the get go BioWare has stated that their intent behind their design was to make the game accessible to as many people as possible.
Well, come to think of it, they have to make it that way to make sure they can make a profit from it because of all the money they have invested in it. But then again there were other things from watching demos and such that didn't look very appealing besides the graphics. The graphics were one part of the reason why the game looks outdated.
2. Personal point of view, I for one think some of the Smuggler outfits (
http://www.thatvideogameblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/tor_smuggler.jpg) are awesome though.
Well, to make sure everybody knows what I was trying to say, I was generalizing it overall. Personally the styles they made in the previous two KOTOR games were much better. But that’s just my personal opinion.
The Rest - BioWare's stated that a majority of the game can be played solo
But that’s just it. You can’t play the “whole” game solo.
but the experienced is enhanced with friends, as for 10 year olds, that's why you'd play with the folks here, right? ;)
I admit, that is one of very few appeals is hooking up with all of us KOTOR vets at Holowan Labs. The problem is people’s schedules along with the possible time zones they may live in and such. Like some people can put more time in than others.
I also think it is a bit of a leap to talk about how well the game continues the KOTOR tradition before seeing what it is actually made of.
The part that breaks it for me is making it a different type of game than the previous two. That’s a huge part of the tradition IMO. Had BioWare made a new KOTOR game using the same engine they have been using for the Mass Effect games, I would be sold on playing it.
There have been arguments to both sides about how the recent economic recession has affected video games. I tend to believe that people facing financial trouble take solace in entertainment media. I know we aren't talking about the same genre or even audience of gamers, but Call of Duty, for what it's worth continues to break sales records each year. World of Warcraft's latest expansion broke several sales records for its respective genre. Also, if EA and BioWare are to be believed they have a massive amount of pre-orders for TOR and are expecting the largest launch for a MMO ever.
And it will have to have a big start to make up for all the money invested in making this game. But again and if I read it right, you did in a subtle way acknowledge Call of Duty breaking sales record may have to do with the fact they’re being sold on consoles. How well would it do if it was a PC only game? We’d be talking a different story.
As far as PC gaming dying that's another hotly debated topic, that for the purpose of thread derailment I wont really get into more than saying that I don't believe PC gaming is dying.
Maybe dying is a strong word, but it is slowly slowing down. I don’t think it will completely die, but it isn’t what it used to be.
1) It always pains me to hear a grown adult say the word "retarded".
Saying that opens the door to a political correctness debate. Sometimes I really just want to spit on that as many ways to describe things become a political correctness thing and I usually make a habit of changing my habits on what I think is the most important issues. Like how to describe a person’s race for example. Too many people easily get offended by that so that’s when I feel it’s important to make a change on what words that should be used in those types of situations.
Anyway, using that word has been a habit of mine easily for over 20 years of my life and have used it to describe something I think is or looks stupid without a second thought. And everybody has a point-of-view of what is offensive to say and what isn’t. My only advice is to learn to accept what you perceive to be little faults in others and not take offense over something so small and let it “pain” you. ;)
2) Why would the bulk of players be 10 year olds if you've already established just how expensive the game is going to be?
I thought I made myself clearer. It wasn’t talking about just 10 year olds. I was talking about the age group in general. From my point of view, I was also trying to include the teenagers since they’re technically in their 10’s and those younger than that. It’s just we don’t call it that. We say 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, etc, we just don’t say 10’s. And I could have said teens, but that is 13-19, not 10-19.
Anyway, that age group depends on their parents for the majority of them. I could go on to talk about those who have a job part time that could pay for it, but if you don’t include their summer breaks, they’re going to school and working, which will take up most of their days on most days. That leaves the majority of the age group depending on their parents to pay for their monthly subscription since they’re the ones with the credit cards necessary to pay for it.
But since you also established how I brought up how expensive it is, I thought I covered that in why I think this game could be a financial failure later on in my post; because most of the gaming is done by 10’s age group from what I understand.
3) I was under the impression that you could complete the quests on your own and have "bots" running the quests by your side.
I’ve read on the TOR site and others have elaborated on it in this thread that you will need to team up with other online players to complete some quests.
Considering the nature and environment of PC gaming, I actually think it's impossible for it to 'die' at all. It might get pitifully weak and slow or even outdated, but it's never going to be a dead platform unless something bizarre happens like Microsoft creating a new kind of OS that removes all backwards-compatibility or PC users adopting increasingly disparate OSs, both of which are highly unlikely unlikely scenarios.
Like I said earlier, dying may have been the wrong word to use since everybody has a point of view of how to interpret what someone makes by a word.
The combat is no different than in WOW.. It is basically turn based, you have skills, cool downs, you have force power or energy.. It is essentially the same combat mechanic as WOW..
And that is an outdated combat system. After playing a role playing game like Mass Effect, I don’t want to go back to that style of combat. It’s not as fun.
I am a beta tester and have been playing it since July..
Sounds like fun and it sounds like you’re really enjoying it.
As for pay?? WOW was a pay MMO.. All of the better MMO's usually are subscription.. WOW was a game that was forever evolving.. With the exception of their expansion packs.. Blizzard was pretty good at adding new content in between expansions at no charge.. The subscriptions also pay for the servers and the 24hr maintenance of the servers.. Blizzard made a lot of money off of WOW.. They also had about 50 servers or more world wide.. I can't imagine how much it costs to maintain them, upgrade them when needed, and staff them on a 24hr basis.. Not to mention pay for the bandwidth needed to allow all of us to log in to play..
That right there is a possible reason why this game can fail. All the money for the monthly subscription needs to go to financing the servers and such. That means it needs to make up for all the money that was invested in making this game in the amount of games sold. And since it is a PC only game in a tough economy; that could be a big OUCH!
...It's not turn based. An example of a turn based system would be Pokemon.
:lol:
It does suck for a lot of people who don't want to or can't invest in an MMO though, in interviews they've been touting how if people want to play it by themselves, they can go through the entire game without really interacting with anyone... but they don't mention the fact that you'd still need to pay to play online even though you don't WANT to play online haha.
And that is one of its turnoffs from my point of view as well. Personally if they wanted to make sure they made a profit from this game, they should have made available on consoles as well. Even if it meant converting it as a single player game.