Rants tag

Rants, ruminations, and rambling remarks from my mad, muddled, meandering mind.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Waiting for Star Wars: The Old Republic

So Adventure Historian has weighed in on the churnings and rumblings over at SWTOR's community pages over BioWare's apparent shroud of secrecy surrounding the game. The bulk of this post was a comment I left on his blog.
I guess some fans over at the SWTOR forums are not happy with BioWare's progress, or lack thereof, in getting the game ready for release; this compounded by a perceived lack of information flowing out of BioWare's Austin studios. They say the game will inevitably fail because of the opacity of the development process.

All I can say is look at Blizzard, a company not exactly known for being open about its projects and that often famously says, “We’ll release it when it’s ready.” The same company whose MMO success all others would sell their kidneys to approach.

Is Google languishing because we don't know what their search algorithms are? How they seem to know instinctually exactly what I am looking for? Of course not.

Soliciting feedback is not submitting to the whims of a few overzealous fanbois. Just because a developer opens up a bulletin board forum for interested people to join in chats about a game does not mean the developer has to acquiesce to everything or anything the people who post on those forums dictate; some of which would probably be impossible to do anyway because of mutually conflicting ideas.

BioWare has a reputation for quality, entertaining games. I, for one am willing to give them benefit of the doubt. They will release TOR when it is ready. Better that than a rushed-to-market, half-finished PoS that nobody will want to play past the included first month. If SWTOR is good, people will stay with it, if not people will drift away.  The same fanbois crying now on the forums will be there at the Midnight Release Parties, dressed up like Jedi and squeeing like their Twilight-addled female counterparts.

3 comments:

  1. i have often said much the same thing. They could be releasing jack right now, but they aren't, theres an update every week. Bunch of spoiled cry babies.

    I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

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  2. I think one of the biggest mistakes they did was releasing weekly Friday updates. This is why we can't have nice things. Fine and good for people who appreciate them, but I think the loudest are also the most disgruntled who don't seem to realize this is much more preferable to big reveals every few months with absolutely nothing, zilch, nada in between.

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  3. The Friday Updates perfectly illustrate that BioWare is cognizant of fan interest, and willing to share what they can. I think you may be right that it has created a sense of entitlement among some would-be players.

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