BioWare Founders Retiring!

[Gorth]

Also TOR as a WoW killer was always a ridiculous idea, no one from EA or Bioware ever said it was supposed to compete at that level.

Yet it is hard not to think that at least the dream of putting up such an MMO with the popularity of the Kotor name and Lucas Arts backing it with the Star Wars name was one of the motivators for EA's bid on the company. If you look at how EA otherwise runs their business, something like Bioware fits like a foot in a glove. Long production times, niche target groups (compared to EA's other franchises), deliberately leaving out multiplayer of their research into NWN numbers etc. Suddenly they have to release games on a regular schedule and shoehorn in multiplayer, have to appeal to ever broader target groups etc. Personally, I still think it was the dream of creating a Star Wars MMO money machine that was at least a significant factor. Besides, I think Raithe might have been on to something with the 5 years thing. Not sure that EA actually let them go, but they might have had a clause that required them to stay with Bioware for at least 5 years after the take over to insure stability. Not uncommon in the corporate world.

 

[Zoraptor]

I've just read a lot of criticism against TOR and very few positive statements about it. From players and critics alike.

I haven't played TOR personally, but that isn't my experience of the reaction at all. The main relevant criticism I've seen (ie not stuff like "I hate mmos and it should have been KOTOR3", which is fine but is stating a preference rather than being criticism) is that it was good, but not good at the things MMOs need to do to keep subscribers, ie not much for high level peoples/ not enough replayability etc. I've seen a lot of people saying they played through two storylines then cancelled their subscription, from Bioware/ EA's point of view that is definitely bad, but it isn't the sign of a bad game just a 'bad'- well, inappropriate is probably fairer, a whole lot of people thought it was a fine model a few years ago- business model attached to the game.

 

DA2 is a rushed and unethical cash grab that ruined Bioware's reputation. To call ME3 a success story in term of critical reception is borderline trolling .

Unethical? I think everyone has a good idea as to the ultimate reason why it was rushed (Mass Effect and Dragon Age productions were overlapping too much, so one or the other had to be either rushed or delayed, no surprise which was chosen) but I'll save unethical for those who outright lie about the stuff they're making, not just the typical PR overegging that goes on for pretty much every game ever made. Ultimately it's a business not an artists' collective, and businesses gonna business; it's what they do.

[alanschu]

You take comments about your employer seriously ?

 

Not nealy as much as I once did. After all, I am back

 

Thank Project Eternity (and that guy Deraldin). Well, thank or blame. Your choice!

 

 

I haven't played TOR personally, but that isn't my experience of the reaction at all. The main relevant criticism I've seen (ie not stuff like "I hate mmos and it should have been KOTOR3", which is fine but is stating a preference rather than being criticism) is that it was good, but not good at the things MMOs need to do to keep subscribers, ie not much for high level peoples/ not enough replayability etc. I've seen a lot of people saying they played through two storylines then cancelled their subscription, from Bioware/ EA's point of view that is definitely bad, but it isn't the sign of a bad game just a 'bad'- well, inappropriate is probably fairer, a whole lot of people thought it was a fine model a few years ago- business model attached to the game.

 

I think TOR's greatest strength is small group gaming for people that want a story. I actually encourage everyone that hasn't played it, but loves the KOTOR games, to give it a try once it goes F2P. If you need people to flesh out the party I'd even join up. It is so much fun to run through with a group of 4 made up of each of the factions classes and to run through the game. Way more than just single playering the game. Heck, we even kept track our our PC's "approval" of other PCs similar to the way the NPCs do just for our own fun. It also meant that during group story content, I was more likely to pull aggro off the guy I liked sooner than the guy I didn't like

 

Loads of fun.

 

 

But yes, it is disappointing that it wasn't as big of a success as many of us were hoping. The idea of financial automony similar to how Blizzard and Valve can provide for themselves was definitely something we really wanted to have. Oh well. Curious how the F2P model works out for them though.

[Orogun01]

Greg was heavily involved with SWTOR and actually had been living down there (away from his family) for upwards of two years working on it. Greg always seemed to be more camera shy than Ray in terms of amount of public appearances.

Then it seems that they actually failed to adapt to their new projections under EA and should definitively quit while they're ahead.

I'm not even sure what conclusion you're drawing here.

With every console generation there's a lot of studios that go out of business because of new technology and failure to adapt to changing currents, E.G: Troika.

It seems that BW is good at what made them famous; doing WRPGs, but this new current of Action/Hybrids is pulling them down. I don't really know if BW will survive much longer, but in the state that the industry is in, everything is in the air.

[alanschu]

With every console generation there's a lot of studios that go out of business because of new technology and failure to adapt to changing currents, E.G: Troika.

 

It seems that BW is good at what made them famous; doing WRPGs, but this new current of Action/Hybrids is pulling them down.

 

Errrr, that's nice I'm still not sure how this relates to SWTOR, and Troika wasn't a console developer... Your clarification more confused me haha.

 

 

I guess here's the TL;DR of my assessment.

 

SWTOR didn't do as well as hoped

Team had to lay people off

This bummed Greg out (BioWare has never done layoffs before).

 

 

Not sure about Ray though. His was more of a surprise to me.

[Nepenthe]

I think TOR's greatest strength is small group gaming for people that want a story. I actually encourage everyone that hasn't played it, but loves the KOTOR games, to give it a try once it goes F2P. If you need people to flesh out the party I'd even join up. It is so much fun to run through with a group of 4 made up of each of the factions classes and to run through the game. Way more than just single playering the game. Heck, we even kept track our our PC's "approval" of other PCs similar to the way the NPCs do just for our own fun. It also meant that during group story content, I was more likely to pull aggro off the guy I liked sooner than the guy I didn't like

Yep. I found a guy on Hoth with whom we wound up running all from there to Voss together. Didn't really need anyone else along, as we were suitably overleveled for even the H4s. Practically all of my good experiences and "stories" from the game are from that period. I'm now catching up to a friend's secondary on the empire side, so hoping we get to pull stuff together soon...

[Volourn]

DA2, ME3, and SWMMO all sold 2mil+ copies and had okay ratings to very good ratings so they wer enot fialures no matter how much the cyrbabies claim it to be so. Then again, these are the same people who say DA2 was a bomb at 2mil+ but then claims that AP was a success when it sold half a mil(if lucky) *and* the publisher flat out said it bombed. EA has never done that and don't tell me EA wouldn't as EA has, in the past, had no problem stating when a poroduct was a failure. if DA2 bombed so bad they would not be making DA3. Period.

[WorstUsernameEver]

This bummed Greg out (BioWare has never done layoffs before).

 

Wait, didn't BioWare do a bunch of layoffs of the DA2 team? I remember Tony Evans, for example, said he was let go from there.

[Orogun01]

 

Errrr, that's nice I'm still not sure how this relates to SWTOR, and Troika wasn't a console developer... Your clarification more confused me haha.

 

 

I guess here's the TL;DR of my assessment.

 

SWTOR didn't do as well as hoped

Team had to lay people off

This bummed Greg out (BioWare has never done layoffs before).

 

 

Not sure about Ray though. His was more of a surprise to me.

Ok let me try to simplify my thoughts, BW is good at making CRPGs which they don't do anymore in favor of action/hybrids that aren't quite good but still get a pass because of the novelty of the experience. But at their core they are still a CRPG developer therefore they can't make ME have the same level of mechanics as GoW, and as they kept expanding into newer more diverse projects oversight fell down and they exploded.

[Gorth]

?

What?

 

[alanschu]

Ok let me try to simplify my thoughts, BW is good at making CRPGs which they don't do anymore in favor of action/hybrids that aren't quite good but still get a pass because of the novelty of the experience. But at their core they are still a CRPG developer therefore they can't make ME have the same level of mechanics as GoW, and as they kept expanding into newer more diverse projects oversight fell down and they exploded.

 

Errrr. Okay?

 

I think this is more falling into the realm of concluding what you want to conclude. I think Greg was burnt out. You seem to think something else.

[WorstUsernameEver]

I actually think BioWare is the developer that best managed to cope with shifting to action mechanics. Mass Effect 3 has a lot of examples of more elegant and deeper design than the original and 2, but they were overshadowed by the "lol what?" story.

[alanschu]

By my impressions, ME3 has exceeded expectations financially.

Edited September 24, 2012 by alanschu

[Nepenthe]

I actually think BioWare is the developer that best managed to cope with shifting to action mechanics. Mass Effect 3 has a lot of examples of more elegant and deeper design than the original and 2, but they were overshadowed by the "lol what?" story.

Couldn't agree more.

 

Well, the "lol what" ending and the "wtf were they thinking" journal.

Edited September 24, 2012 by Nepenthe

[WorstUsernameEver]

Couldn't agree more.

 

Well, the "lol what" ending and the "wtf were they thinking" journal.

 

I was about to write "Lol what" ending but then I remembered Kai Leng. KAI LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENG.

[Guest Slinky]

But yes, it is disappointing that it wasn't as big of a success as many of us were hoping. The idea of financial automony similar to how Blizzard and Valve can provide for themselves was definitely something we really wanted to have. Oh well. Curious how the F2P model works out for them though.

 

BW put too much hope on the story of the game, I think. When the game was released, it's end game content was lacking big time and was unbelievably buggy. I'm not sure is there a hardmode bossfight in the game that hasn't bugged at some point. So I don't really blame people who have quit or gone back to WoW that has had. what, 8 years of polishing

 

And I agree competely with group playing, I've had a blast playing it with friends even if the quests have been "stage 1: kill 20, stage 2: kill 40" horror.

[Nepenthe]

Couldn't agree more.

 

Well, the "lol what" ending and the "wtf were they thinking" journal.

 

I was about to write "Lol what" ending but then I remembered Kai Leng. KAI LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENG.

Right, I keep forgetting him. Just shows that no matter what happens during the road, it's only the ending that matters.

[Humanoid]

I never even got to see Kai Leng's introduction (not counting the peripheral shot of his yet-to-be-named-self in TIM's office near the start).

 

Well and truly off on a tangent perhaps, but I have an odd relationship with the Mass Effect series in general. The initial release completely passed me by: my thoughts were probably along the lines of "huh, Bio's released a shooter game for the XBox, weird" - I may have even thought it was an FPS - and I more or less forgot about its existence. ME2 I ended up playing only out of near-happenstance: a cheap game picked up in a retail shop (back before I turned into an online shopping addict) during a very boring week. I liked it enough, in isolation, to later pick up ME1 for a fiver during a Steam sale some months later. It felt very rough and wonky and I was probably on the verge of abandoning it a couple times during my only playthrough, but the story, at least in the sense of wanting to see how it segued into the ME2 that I knew, kept it going. At this point in my mind, ME2 was clearly and by some distance the better game, and a good-to-very-good one overall.

 

And then the slide: I exported that character to attempt a second playthrough - something I very rarely do with any game - and found myself wincing on multiple fronts. The least of them was the dull-as-dishwater gameplay of the Adept class, which seemed to be mostly only good for trying to stage novelty kills. But the big regret was, unsurprisingly, how the vaunted "real choice", plotting continuity and character development flaws got exposed in full. (Hey, I came into the series believing Cerberus was legitimately a respected and competent entity ) I could see where the complaints of folks both here and in other nooks of the interweb were coming from. So yeah, playing ME1 kind of retrospectively ruined ME2 for me.

 

And so ME3. Maybe I was slightly unfair to it, coming under a cloud of negativity born both out of that prior experience, and the general PR storm over the ending and all that. But whatever the final cause, ME3 was more or less sunk as soon as it left port: the terrible and cheap opening (one I think doesn't get its fair share of the flak relative to the ending) set the tone on a downward spiral that turned out to be irrecoverable.

[Malcador]

BW put too much hope on the story of the game, I think. When the game was released, it's end game content was lacking big time and was unbelievably buggy. I'm not sure is there a hardmode bossfight in the game that hasn't bugged at some point. So I don't really blame people who have quit or gone back to WoW that has had. what, 8 years of polishing

 

And I agree competely with group playing, I've had a blast playing it with friends even if the quests have been "stage 1: kill 20, stage 2: kill 40" horror.

 

Shame the instances were story "lite" for the most part, after the hook of Black Talon I felt all the other ones were pretty poor. I suppose this has changed though, since I played at release.

[HoonDing]

KAI LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENG.

[Malcador]

I hate this planet.

[Humanoid]

I'm surprised he had the restraint to not have a version with Sheploo there instead.

[Nepenthe]

BW put too much hope on the story of the game, I think. When the game was released, it's end game content was lacking big time and was unbelievably buggy. I'm not sure is there a hardmode bossfight in the game that hasn't bugged at some point. So I don't really blame people who have quit or gone back to WoW that has had. what, 8 years of polishing

 

And I agree competely with group playing, I've had a blast playing it with friends even if the quests have been "stage 1: kill 20, stage 2: kill 40" horror.

 

Shame the instances were story "lite" for the most part, after the hook of Black Talon I felt all the other ones were pretty poor. I suppose this has changed though, since I played at release.

Imperial Agent's been pretty good in that way. There are, or at least it looks that way, a lot of areas that really encourage you to stealth through, and the dialogues are really nice. The chapter 1 story is so far pretty cookie cutter, but I have this nagging feeling there's going to be a particular Plot Twist at the end of it.

 

Slow: I see you were talking about the flashpoints, I was just thinking about the leveling instances. Yes, unfortunately nothing has changed on that front. Of course, in pick-up groups most people insist you fast forward all dialogue, so you wouldn't really get to enjoy it in high-level content unless you're playing with actual nice people instead of random internet tough guys.

Edited September 24, 2012 by Nepenthe

[Malcador]

Well, won't spoil much but the IA story does have some nice twists to it, Chapter 1's is probably the best - the boss fight was fairly buggy for me, had to kill him three times. Jjust a hint : take him off the stairs, somehow. It does get a bit better, the antagonists of the ending are cliche as hell but it's satisfying.

Edited September 24, 2012 by Malcador

[Oner]

It's funny that you mention Guild Wars 2 when talking about TOR, it is a free to play MMO.

 

I know that GW2 is F2P. But it allways been.

I'm not sure where you guys get the F2P from. I'm pretty I payed 60 euros for the thing.

No subscription fee =/= F2P. Just to be clear, before you guys give other people the wrong idea. >.>