Controlled Chaos

Hubris fells everyone eventually, though it's sad to see the innocent folks who just wanted to do their job getting the shaft in this one.

I'll be the first to admit that there's no real way of keeping all of the players happy, but to start thinking of oneself as infallible while blaming the fans is definitely not a manner in which one will keep themselves afloat. There's a surprising number of companies out there that almost feel like an internal war is waged. Developers and the like try and get the game to work right and make the customers happy while the executives decide what they want to see happen, even if it isn't all that aligned with reality. Kind of sad, really. That can't make for a fun environment.

My best to the laid off. With luck, they'll find some new jobs soon.

It's always nice to see the fruits of experimentation. While it may be fairly rough now, who knows? In ten years, it could be the basis for far better interfaces and what not in products that go well beyond their intent. If nothing else, seeing this type of thing will inspire those who want to take the tech a step further still.

Have to admit, no matter the capability of the result, the company does try and aim high. Gotta respect that.

I'm sorry, but looking through the forums even now? Passion is on show, but a decent portion isn't exactly positive. It seems like for every person who actually feels like the game will be cool and are happy to go F2P are one or two that are screaming against some meager little aspect of things. A good few of the Everquest II people were pretty elitist about their game's switch and the paying aspect of it, but even they didn't yell this loud about how they figure they should get so much more than freebie players. I mean, come on, even a portion of the lifetime subscribers are turning on pay per month people like jackals over the last piece of meat, trying to get the most entitlements.

It's like watching people who are screaming that they're right about the end of the world. They want so desperately to be right that they kind of forget that, oh, hey, if you're right, the world ENDS. Some of these guys want the F2P (and thus STO in general) to completely fail so bad so they can be right that they don't realize that the game would be pretty worse off if all this comes to naught.

I'll be playing when it goes free to play and this furor will likely calm when it switches over, but ye gods. I wouldn't be claiming a lot of rational feedback when you get the amount of white noise between those particular posts.

I have to admit, checking out older, more matured games is one of the reasons I love free to play coming to so many of them. When you're on a tight budget (as a lot of people are, these days), one doesn't always check out the older games because sometimes it just doesn't feel worth the risk to start spending subscriptions on games when you don't really know what they're like or they're a little too new to tell if you're going to like them, etc. It's often a budget thing, all in all.

I started off with UO's beta years ago, but ended up missing the bus on a lot of these oldies because it just never seemed worthwhile to cash out each month. Hell, I've never even played WoW. Now, though, I couldn't agree more with the author, as a lot has changed and these old folks of the MMO game still have a good amount of life left in them. True, it can be difficult to get into the community and some are set in their ways, but those are just the loud idiots who cause those issues, the elitist twits who believe that its their lawn and you shouldn't be anywhere near it. Look a little deeper and you'll find those who are more tolerant.

Gamers should be a little more adventurous, in my opinion. One never knows the fun they'll end up finding.

Have to love those who come out of the woodwork and immediately start screeching about how F2P is evil, blah blah blah, when it's pretty obvious the guy is offering up a joke. People need to lighten the hell up a lot, like usual.

It was an amusing little dig and the guy got a platform for plugging APB. Good for him. heh But, who knows? Maybe, someday, we'll finally find someone who actually takes Kotick down a peg or two.

Ahh, WoW, redefining the phrase, "The first one is free...then it'll cost you."

As one of those hold outs who has never played WoW, even I might end up having to try this out. Should be interesting...

Well, if there's one thing about EVE that I always find in these articles, it's that it's far from boring. *chuckles* If it isn't in-game stuff irritating people or causing controversy, it's the fact that it's finally come to the point of realization that developers, on the whole, couldn't give a single crap what their players have to say, so long as they keep paying (there are cases otherwise, but they aren't exactly in the majority). It might be a little harsh to say, but business is business. Veteran player satisfaction has been a casualty for some time. Now it's just a weighing game to see if the pros still outweigh the cons, because, simply put, it's not usually the developers who flinch first. They've worked on this for a while and this is where they think the next step of their game lies. They're not going to back down.

No matter which side of the coin you are on this one, good luck either way.

Give it ten years or so and those in government are going to end up getting tired of attacks on economic aspects of their countries. Monetary losses will add up and finally get to the point where they end up dealt with in a slightly less subtle manner. That'll be followed by the death of internet anonymity as everyone ends up having to put their personal stamp on everything they do. This will, of course, be argued against and protested by the same people who ended up causing these new laws to get enacted in the first place...

Not much that's new here. A few new and interesting mechanics, like the NPC romance stuff, but it sounds like the game isn't going to be the revolutionary step forward that Bioware claimed to have. That's a bit of a shame.

Don't get me wrong, I actually love a good story and I'm a rather large fan of soloing the things that I can, but one can't really look at all of the hype and interviews without having more or less been set for seeing something that would make WoW or RIFT or any other game look like a giant pile of crap. They pumped themselves up so much that there really wasn't any way that they were going to be able to completely please the very people they were courting for play. The die hard types and the Star Wars fanatics will likely think its the best thing ever and the entire reason the internet deserves to exist, but I fear the companies are going to be a little disappointed when this thing doesn't turn out to be the monster they're hoping for.

Is it a decent MMO? Aye, sounds like it. But will it add anything really new and improved to the genre, beyond a story? Probably not. A little sad, as I got caught in the hype train too, hoping for a heck of a lot more than the things I keep hearing and seeing.

@(Unverified)

A lot of people, considering that it was Bioware and EA who were hyping this game as the next big thing in MMOs, that it would change the industry, that the 'grind' would disappear...

People already have extremely high expectations for Bioware. They just raised their own bar high enough that even they couldn't get over it well enough to get people thinking that TOR is revolutionary.