Category: Star Wars: The Old Republic

Pew Pew Pew! Weeeeeeeee-oooow!

Posted on by Gazimoff

Over a year ago, I was drinking an ice-cold lemonade in EA’s Gamescom business suite. Across from me sat Jeff Hickman, VP for Live Services and head of Star Wars: The Old Republic. BioWare had just announced the switch to a hybrid free-to-play approach, and was planning an aggressive update schedule.

During the interview, we also discussed the state of SWTOR’s space game. I mentioned that I was a fan of the old X-Wing and Tie-Fighter series, and was hoping to see something similar in the MMO. Hickman wouldn’t be drawn on any plans, but told me that he had a dedicated space team working on “interesting things.”

As we wrapped up, I shared a promise with Hickman: I’d subscribe just for the chance to dogfight in space once again. Today, some 14 months later, BioWare finally revealed the Space game.

I’m a man of my word, and I’m going to stick to what I said. Later this month, I’ll be resubscribing as promised.

For the Empire!

(Note: I previously put the meeting at Gamescom 2011, not 2012. I’m an idiot.)

Building a Character: Bay Stuggs

Posted on by Gazimoff


I’m a strange breed of MMO player. Even though I love raiding, questing and the occasional spot of PVP, I have been known to dabble in the mysterious arts of roleplaying. It’s a habbit – creating a character in a fictional universe who’s more than just an extension of myself. They become their own thing, take on their own life. I guess it makes me more attached to them as characters.

As a result, I tend to do this for all my new characters, even if I don’t end up roleplaying with them. So when I created a new Bounty Hunter in Star Wars: The Old Republic, I gave him a backstory. Who he is, where he came from, who he knows. That kind of thing. It’s your typical trashy pulp sci-fi, but I thought I’d share it, if only to raise a laugh.

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SWTOR Endgame: Fixed!

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been talking with a couple of people about the state of endgame in Star Wars: The Old Republic and we pretty much all agree the same thing – it’s good when you can get into it. The lack of an LFD tool and low number of raiding guilds mean that a lot of players are left choosing between PvP or daily quests.

That isn’t such a great choice for me – my PvP skills are slightly worse than my ability to paint the Mona Lisa using tarmac, with my feet, and blindfolded. Daily quests have a tendency to get very old very quickly, leaving me looking at raiders like a kid with his face pressed up against the toy shop window, peering in at all the goodness without being able to take part.

So we had a think about what else we could do, and we think we have a solution that everyone will enjoy.

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Replacing the Superficial Intelligence

Posted on by Gazimoff

I have an opinion on Non-Player Characters. It emerged in the days of the first escort quest I attempted, when the computer-controlled NPC I’d be chaperoning would sprint ahead to certain death at the hands of hungry skeletons. If they weren’t sprinting ahead they’d probably stopped to admire a particularly intricate pebble and forgotten all about me. Either way you’re probably looking at death or failure, or more usually both.

At that point my opinion of NPCs was cemented: dumb as a bag of bricks.

Since that day we’ve had Warlocks and Hunters in World of Warcraft trying to order around pets and minions. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Spin the artificial intelligence roulette wheel and find out if your trusty sidekick is going to help or just stand there like a lemon. And although things have improved over the years, the lemon is still on that scoring board.

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LFD: No Simple Answers

Posted on by Gazimoff

Looking around the blogsphere today reminds me of battle re-enactment. I can see the same people pulling on the same uniform and dusting off the same weapons to have the same good-natured scrap over something. The sheep-skin drums are beating, the blue and red overcoats are being pulled on. The beer tent is filling up as the two sides filter in and catch up on old times. The battleground? Looking for Dungeon.

The argument is that Star Wars: The Old Republic needs a Looking for Flashpoint tool in order to help groups form for both levelling instances and endgame content. There are currently a large number of players unable to experience this content, either because their guild doesn’t have enough players at the same level or because they’re too busy enjoying the stupidly good questing content.

The choice seems to be between a Warcraft-style Looking for Dungeon tool, or not having one at all and just making do with shouting in the chat channels like some market trader. Neither is a great solution – one end leaves you frustrated with anonymous people you’ll never encounter again, while the other leaves you frustrated at the lack of response from other players as you sit doing nothing for hours on end. Either way you’re left frustrated.

The exception is if you have a guild that’s both large enough to support flashpoints (and populated with people who want to do that content) and which has people in broadly the same level bracket. If either is not the case then even with the best of intentions the guild is less of a guild and more of a social chat channel. But I digress.

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How SWTOR Will Make A Profit

Posted on by Gazimoff

There’s been a lot of talk recently about how Star Wars: The Old Republic was going to be BioWare’s most expensive mistake, ending up consigned in the footnotes of history as a video gaming failure. It’s easy to see where this comes from – at a $200 million price tag this is one of the most expensive games yet made. Yet it will, in time, make a profit.

When looking at console games the main driver is to make back the cost of the game in boxed sales. An XBox 360 game that shifts 2 million copies globally equates to roughly $120m in sales, of which the publisher is likely to see roughly $30m. If your game comes in at less than this budget or you sell more copies than the forecast then you’re into profit territory.

MMOs break this mold by placing some of the budget for the game against forecasted subscription, micro-transaction or “in-life” revenues. The Old Republic pushed this further than most, assigning a huge chunk of the project budget against these in-life revenues. It’s a bit of a gamble, which is why building up preorders is so important. But in this case, it should also pay off.

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SWTOR: The Retention Rate Question

Posted on by Gazimoff

Earlier today I was listening to Talk of the Galaxy over on Galactic Public Radio, when they reminded me that the month of game time bundled with the full version of the game was about to expire and that subscriptions were just about to kick in. There was a little bit of debate about how many players would actually maintain their subscription after the end of the month, with the show hosts generally feeling that it’s a difficult thing to predict.

Trying to forecast renewal rates is pretty challenging at the best of times, mainly because there’s very few benchmarks on these figures for MMOs. The most common figure that’s announced is the total subscriber base, although sometimes we’ll hear about how those subscribers are distributed by market. We’re also not given churn rates, so we have no clue about the number of new subscribers coming in versus the ones that are leaving.

So what exactly is there to go on? Well, assuming that the best renewal rate BioWare can hope for is 100%, let’s have a look at what will help them keep that number high and what’s dragging it down like a lead weight.

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SWTOR: So Now What?

Posted on by Gazimoff

Last weekend I finally managed to hit the level cap on my Sith Smuggler (edit: Sorcerer) in SWTOR and complete the class quest chain. Darth Gazimoff is now pottering around Illum and doing the occasional bit of space combat, but I’m realising it’s not enough to keep me interested for more than a few weeks. Once the quests run dry I’m left with the usual choices – alts or end game.

As Tobold puts it, there’s not really enough story in one class chain to last through more than a month of moderate play. I’ve decided to roll some alts, although rather than it being a new story it’ll just be the same one but told from a different perspective. The stories themselves are very good, but just like finishing a new book I’m left with a feeling of “now what?”.

The levelling experience has also highlighted a few things to me. I’ve only done a single dungeon – the Black Talon. I’ve not taken part in PvP and I’ve not done any operations. The guild that I’m in only has a small number of people at 50, so I’m currently kicking my heels a little. Space combat is still fun apart from the top-end missions that need every single ship upgrade.

For an MMO, it feels like I’m not getting into the multiplayer aspects of the game at all. The server – Trask Ulgo – has a pretty good population. So what gives?

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That 6AM Moment

Posted on by Gazimoff

Have you ever had that moment when you’ve been playing an MMO for so long that you lose track of time completely? Where the darkness outside slowly gives way to grey sunlight? Where you mistake the dawn chorus for someone playing Angry Birds nearby?

When I started playing Star Wars: The Old Republic with my wife, I expected her to be a moderating influence on me. Alas, unlike Syp over at Bio Break, Molotovchicken has been playing MMOs for longer than I have. As a result  we’re both having so much fun that we’re egging each other on. Just finish this zone. Just finish this class quest. Just finish this planet. The next thing you know it’s 6AM in the morning and you’re wondering where the time has gone.

That’s Bioware’s biggest hook though – the story grabs you by both hands, pulling you through the game. It might still be Kill Ten Rats in places, but by golly these Republic Rats have got away with it for long enough and their actions are an insult to the Empire!

Ahem.

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To The Future!

Posted on by Gazimoff

What a year it’s been! There’s been a couple of major launches with both RIFT and Star Wars: The Old Republic attracting a lot of attention and enjoying success. There’s been a whole series of subscription MMOs switching to a free-to-play model and doing really well with it. And regrettably there’s also been a few shutdowns, with both Lego Universe and Star Wars: Galaxies switching off their servers.

I’m told that it’s traditional to spend today reflecting on the year just gone and make resolutions and predictions for the future. I’m not going to bore you with my own version of  the Year In Review – there’s some great month-by month roundups over at MMO Melting Pot. I’ve donned my Soothsaying Hat though (it’s very impressive) to bring some forecasts for the future, though I’m not confident they’ll all hit in 2012.

The last year has been a little strange for me. I’ve been playing World of Warcraft for nearly seven years now and I keep on expecting for a game to replace it. So far none have provided more than a few week’s diversion, but now that I find myself playing Warcraft only to raid I think the switch can’t be far off. I’m currently playing both SWTOR and Warcraft, with the former grabbing the most of my gaming hours. I’m not sure how this will evolve in 2012, but I’m expecting one of them to lose out to Guild Wars 2.

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