Wrath of Dagon

They made a lot of noise about being able to play TOR as you would a single player game. Yes, I'm skeptical, hopefully there's a demo.

What are you on about? They DO have a wind direction indicator. They do? All I saw was the compass, of course the game run so bad on my PC I only played the tutorial and gave up. The compass has a huge arrow on. Presumably that's the wind direction. Well, the arrow was just pointing North, so I assumed it's just the compass, since the tutorial didn't mention wind at all.

What are you on about? They DO have a wind direction indicator. They do? All I saw was the compass, of course the game run so bad on my PC I only played the tutorial and gave up.

Because they want to force KOTOR fans to pay subscription for the MMO. Just another in the long line of indignities by LA against KOTOR fans.

Got Braid on sale for $10 from Xbox Live.

I don't think they take wind into account at all. If they did, they'd have a wind direction indicator. The ships just act like they're motorized.

Yes, a small group of lunatics that shows up at funerals to celebrate the death of American soldiers clearly represents all of Christianity.

Well, may be I never got to the more exotic places in Morrowind, I spent a lot of time trudging back and forth across Vivec, argh.

Actually Oblivion was more medieval and less fantastic, in fact I thought art design was competent but pedestrian, pretty much like the game itself. If anything it was similar to Morrowind, except prettier and higher res. I still don't see the problem with the art design of a game being similar to the art design of very successful series of movies. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and I don't see how it would prevent the game from being good so long as it has quality gameplay.

@Rhomal: Art direction is important, but being reminiscent of LOTR doesn't mean art direction is bad. Anyway, so far as I know there hasn't been a good LOTR RPG, so even if it was LOTR, what's the problem? Also, Medieval Fantasy, thus looking both fantastic and medieval, pretty much hard to escape LOTR comparisons.

Clearly any fantasy game that resembles LOTR must be generic crap and suck, because we all know RPG's are about how the environments look.

If it comes out in the summer, I think it can get some buzz, just because there's nothing else out at the time.

Almost as good as Carth, but insane instead of whiny. Edit: The last paragraph in part 2 is wrong though, clearly the proper way to do it is to write everything out in the Codex. Edit2: Btw, here's an older interview they did with Chris about TSL, which explains a lot of stuff that was kind of obscure in the game: http://www.starwarsknights.com/fullstory.php?id=386

Do I need your permission? There's still a 20% chance ME2 might be good, and sometimes I like to talk about bad games and why they're bad, not just good ones.

Well, that's what I meant, concept art looks nice, but I'm not going to jump to any conclusions about the final game just yet. Misleading marketing hype was really a reference to the problems I have with their marketing of the first game.

Looks nice and evocative, but I don't trust Bioware's misleading marketing hype.

How well the health system works has to do with how well it works with the rest of the gameplay. There's no one approach that's best for every game.

They didn't have any choice on having a Star Wars license for ME, but they did have a choice of gameplay. And so what, Assassin's Creed was an unknown IP, yet sold more than twice as much as KOTOR.

Hmm, third person shooter with cover vs. D20 rules. I wonder which one has more post-pubescent male appeal, hmm. The EA purchase was announced before ME came out. And I said hoped, not expected, in fact I said that twice already.

But KOTOR isn't a cinematic action "RPG" clearly designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience. From the way they were talking before release clearly they expected ME to be their break out "mainstream" game. And of course you wouldn't ship the entire amount you expect to sell at once, what would you do with the stock that doesn't sell? It got money tied up in it after all. As far as analysts, Michael Pachter for one. They were talking about $300 million/year in revenues from Bioware/Pandemic combined, which means 3-4 million copies for every AAA game that comes out. That's the only way you could justify the insane purchase price for Bio/Pan.

No, I guess their target audience won't.

That's what I think, about 2-2.5 million, some of it possibly after price cuts. But I think they wanted 4-5 million, similar to Assassin's Creed. At least from the way the analysts were talking about Bioware's potential when EA bought them.

I know it's not proof. I don't have the numbers, I'm working from memory. I remember I was surprised how fast the price dropped, and I know they initially announced they shipped 1.6 million to retailers (not sold through) and then I never saw another sales announcement. I'm going on my gut feeling here, based on all the little scraps of info I picked up here and there. Only insiders have the full story. And I didn't say "expected", I said "hoped for". You are right though in that Bioware no longer exists as a separate legal entity.

Tried Empire Total War demo, doesn't really work at all, you'd think they'd at least do minimal testing. And what's the deal with the ships? They're supposed to be sails but work like motorized, there's no wind direction at all!

Because if it sold well they'd be boasting from here to creation, see Ubisoft and Assassin's Creed. Plus the price was dropped a few months after it came out, never a good sign. And no, it wouldn't be a failure if it at least paid for itself, most games don't even do that. The current theory is that a game has to become a franchise to make money, which is why it was planned as a trilogy to start with.