the issue of the license is not a real problem. we have had KOTOR and SWG coexisting without problems. IP the same, time frame of it, totally diferent.
I think you don t' get the fact that offline games and MMO games are 2 different markets, therefore they can have different IP owers at the same time........
Dungeons and Dragons has also lots of Licenses going on in the normal game market.
But you won't see 2 MMO with Dungeon & Dragons in the title. trust me.
The normal game market works this way.
The IP owner sell the license to a company for a limited time or for 1 title only (o maybe 2 or 3, although is rare).
The game gets developed it gets sold, then if the developers want to produce another game with the same IP they need to buy another license (unless the original one allowed the production of 2 games).
In this case the license expires when the game is produced and sold, so someone else can buy it to produce another game related to that IP.
The MMO market is different.
The games are "on going" which mean they are always in developement, and publishers get a periodic profit (monthly subscription fee), therefore if the developers who bought the licence want to keep the future profit from future subscription they need to hold a long term licence.
Because in this case the licence is long term, anyone who wants to make another MMO need to wait that the licence from the previous license holder expires.
And that's what is going on with SWG and KOTORO (if the rumor is true).
Look....... you will never see 2 Batman movies being produced and released at the same time, because DC Comics will licence only one Hollywood studio at a time.
Same is for the games.
So, it is normal to see 1 or more titles of the same IP in a normal game market.
It is also normal to have normal games and the MMO game of the same IP co-existing.
But it is not possible to have 2 MMO co-existing.
That's the real reason behind all this secrecy.
This is just speculation. For all we know SOE could be revamping SWG and let it co-exist with The Old Republic. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No.
It wouldn't be a bad idea for the most part.
One of the biggest things kinda holding SWG back is the games Engine. Lets face the facts here, the Engine doesn't have a working Z-Axis. The Engine was already kinda outdated in 2003 when the game came out. SWG's Engine is very well known for having more code in it then any other MMO on the market. Not only that for a 5 year old Engine, SWG just never works right.
Then we do have things that well I just cannot see them with the Engine they have now. Take Player Controled ISD's, can anyone besides myself really see one of those working in the game? I mean I can already see the Lag if you had more then one in a system at once. Remember Deep Space doesn't have a whole lot in it, think of what 3 Player Controled ISD's would be like in a system like Naboo! Hell the Space Zone's are not all that big as is...
Then you have things like AT-AT's that just never looked good when moving around and what not. You have people wanting things like being able to Hoster Weapons... Really putting in a new game engine wouldn't be a bad move at all.
As for running more then one game at a time? It can be done...
Lets take the whole D&D thing, and the big thing you have to remember about D&D is D&D is just the core rules. In the next year or two I wouldn't put it past seeing work being done on a Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms Online. Granted both would more then like run with the D&D rules, but both are not the same in the long run.
So chances are you will have people who would rather stick to the GCW Setting rather then go play in the Old Republic. Chances are you would have people who would jump at the chance to play in the Clone Wars rather then the Old Republic or GCW settings.
At the sametime another thing to think of...
If lets say SOE doesn't upgrade or overhaul the Engine... You still have a game that for the most part can run on any system at this point. Hell why do you think EQ and UO are still around? You don't need a high end system to run the games on. One of the faults AoC has been having is it's not very friendly with older systems. Hell I'm running a high end gaming system that is about 6 months old and AoC still tends to run badly on it. Having a game that anyone can run and play isn't a bad thing.
This is just speculation. For all we know SOE could be revamping SWG and let it co-exist with The Old Republic. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No.
It's possible that every airplane in the sky is going to fall at the same time too. However, the point of a dicussion is to deduce what is reasonable to believe, not present every absurd option that has less then a .000001 chance of being true.
Well i am not so super convinced that swg will close because of the new bioware mmo.
Neither am I super convinced that the new mmo is a real mmo as in swg.
Furthermore I think Bioware's secrecy is to have some quiet time to develop before the masses charge in.
that i can agree with. I think the likelyhood isn't any of those, but certainly not a 100% .
But following the information we do have it's very very probable that Bioware is making a SW game, and that SWG will be closing.
All that being said I admit that following patterens of surface information is how a lot of crazy conspiracy theories get made. However, i have been pretty successful in predicting the game development based upon the patterns of information thus far.
I had this thought today that Bioware might do a glorified singleplayer game with some options to go online and join others, some pvp and even more cooperative gameplay for common goals.
There is absolutely zero reason for SOE to withhold the launch of classic servers. Its a guaranteed revenue base of 150k (minimum) paying customers.
lol, no it isn't.
I don't know why SWG vets think that there are SO MANY of them around that they can pull off numbers like this...even if there were 150k people who wanted to return to pre-CU SWG...you take out the number of people who are fed up with SOE and won't play one of their games, then the number of people who don't know that they are returning to launch codes, then the number of people who are just going to wait for BW's MMO....you aren't going to get 150k people...they would probably get a few thousand, and they would probably lose some of the people who enjoy the NGE, few as they may be, they DO exist.
Your argument is like a two legged dog with an eating disorder...weak and unbalanced.
This is just speculation. For all we know SOE could be revamping SWG and let it co-exist with The Old Republic. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No.
It's possible that every airplane in the sky is going to fall at the same time too. However, the point of a dicussion is to deduce what is reasonable to believe, not present every absurd option that has less then a .000001 chance of being true.
Well i am not so super convinced that swg will close because of the new bioware mmo.
Neither am I super convinced that the new mmo is a real mmo as in swg.
Furthermore I think Bioware's secrecy is to have some quiet time to develop before the masses charge in.
that i can agree with. I think the likelyhood isn't any of those, but certainly not a 100% .
But following the information we do have it's very very probable that Bioware is making a SW game, and that SWG will be closing.
All that being said I admit that following patterens of surface information is how a lot of crazy conspiracy theories get made. However, i have been pretty successful in predicting the game development based upon the patterns of information thus far.
I had this thought today that Bioware might do a glorified singleplayer game with some options to go online and join others, some pvp and even more cooperative gameplay for common goals.
We really dont know at this point.
That could be, but even that wouldn't be something with "MMO Elements"
Something like that sounds alot like what they have planned with Too Human and Fable 2. I know in Fable 2 if you have any friends on Xbox Live playing it when you are, they will show up looking kinda like a ghost in your game. But you can invite them over to play in your game world. The word on Too Human is it should use something like that, namely letting friends join your game on the fly.
Anyway... Wanna make any betas on Diablo 3 having some kinda system like that?
No I am not John Smedley, but I have an idea how those things work.
The reason why Bioware didn't announce KOTORO yet, it's because then SoE will have to answer a very important question: "What will happen to SWG?"
Because KOTORO is not official at the moment they can dismiss the question with a "no comment", since all the info are speculations.
Once the game will become official, SoE will have to answer that question, and a "no comment" will not be acceptable.
They will have to say if it will close or stay open.
And if they say that the game will close its door in one year time, most people will probably leave the game, since most won't feel like investing in a game with no future.
Because I think that the licence in the MMO market is exclusive, which means that it has to be transferred from a company to another, I guess that the begin of KOTORO will mean the end of SWG.
And to avoid SoE and LA losing even more customers, they are keeping it under wrap as much as they can to limit the damages.
Discuss
You are Spot on - Lets see what Lucas Arts does with the August 15th opening of The Clone Wars.
That would be an ideal time to announce it.
I actually thought there was supposed to be an announcement coinciding with that premiere? Maybe it was just one of the speculative posts made over here months ago saying that it would heh.
There is absolutely zero reason for SOE to withhold the launch of classic servers. Its a guaranteed revenue base of 150k (minimum) paying customers.
lol, no it isn't.
I don't know why SWG vets think that there are SO MANY of them around that they can pull off numbers like this...even if there were 150k people who wanted to return to pre-CU SWG...you take out the number of people who are fed up with SOE and won't play one of their games, then the number of people who don't know that they are returning to launch codes, then the number of people who are just going to wait for BW's MMO....you aren't going to get 150k people...they would probably get a few thousand, and they would probably lose some of the people who enjoy the NGE, few as they may be, they DO exist.
I think this is a fair assessment. I know I am done with SWG and SOE completely. I am sure there are people that play the NGE because it is the star wars license and even if they do not like the NGE keep hoping for the pre-cu/pre-nge servers to come.
The one thing I differ, opinionwise, on this is that it is not the numbers of people that keep soe from doing this... if they gained back 5k people to play pre-cu servers (seperate from current subscribers) it would be a win. The thing is opening these servers would be admittance of failure. To this day smedley and SOE in general think the NGE was the right course of action and that the only faux pas concerning the NGE was the way it was released. Secondly they have no developers there that could support the legacy code, nor have they had any of those people for many years. Which, in all honesty, is probably one reason why they went in the direction they did.
There is no KOTORO. There will be a Star Wars: The Old Republic game which is speculated to be a MMO, but that is not KOTOR.
Well you dont know that any more then he does know it. the only thing that anyone has to go by is what the EA president said. if you believe it or not is up to you.
There is no KOTORO. There will be a Star Wars: The Old Republic game which is speculated to be a MMO, but that is not KOTOR.
Well you dont know that any more then he does know it. the only thing that anyone has to go by is what the EA president said. if you believe it or not is up to you.
well to be fair there is no knights of the old republic online patented for media near exact to SWG patent. There is a Star Wars The Old Republic that has a patent bought recently thats accurately comparable to the SWG patent made so long ago =P so i think it may be safe to say its not KOTORO and a little more accurate to say SWTOR or TOR. i wont link the patents just search for them its hear somewhere.
There is no KOTORO. There will be a Star Wars: The Old Republic game which is speculated to be a MMO, but that is not KOTOR.
Well you dont know that any more then he does know it. the only thing that anyone has to go by is what the EA president said. if you believe it or not is up to you.
well to be fair there is no knights of the old republic online patented for media near exact to SWG patent. There is a Star Wars The Old Republic that has a patent bought recently thats accurately comparable to the SWG patent made so long ago =P so i think it may be safe to say its not KOTORO and a little more accurate to say SWTOR or TOR. i wont link the patents just search for them its hear somewhere.
There was also Star Wars Sagas and Star Wars Legends with the same wording, and the trademark applications were filed at the same time. I assume Lucasfilm trademarked three potential titles for the same product. They did the same thing with the title for the latest Indiana Jones film (some were as bad as the prequel titles, you can find them by searching for "Indiana Jones" on the trademark site).
Since almost everything said regarding the closing of SWG or the features/title of the new game are theory and conjecture in this thread, I might as well toss in one of my own that is just as plausible as any other.
Hows's this: People are right, LA won't want two companies competing for the same license, so an agreement is hammered out for EA/Bioware to take over development and support for both games, and removing SOE forever from the equation.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
lol whatever happens happens. I could care less what they do with SWG because I won't be playing it, and it has no effect on me playing another SW mmo.
Sorry, but SWG will continue to stumble on as long as it is making money and that's the bottom line. The game IS making money, otherwise it would've been shutdown the moment it went negative.
I am not currently playing the crap they now call SWG.
I am excited about SW:OR.
But SW:OR won't kill SWG by default, SWG will live or die by the green and that's all there is to it.
the issue of the license is not a real problem. we have had KOTOR and SWG coexisting without problems. IP the same, time frame of it, totally diferent.
I think you don t' get the fact that offline games and MMO games are 2 different markets, therefore they can have different IP owers at the same time........
Dungeons and Dragons has also lots of Licenses going on in the normal game market.
But you won't see 2 MMO with Dungeon & Dragons in the title. trust me.
The normal game market works this way.
The IP owner sell the license to a company for a limited time or for 1 title only (o maybe 2 or 3, although is rare).
The game gets developed it gets sold, then if the developers want to produce another game with the same IP they need to buy another license (unless the original one allowed the production of 2 games).
In this case the license expires when the game is produced and sold, so someone else can buy it to produce another game related to that IP.
The MMO market is different.
The games are "on going" which mean they are always in developement, and publishers get a periodic profit (monthly subscription fee), therefore if the developers who bought the licence want to keep the future profit from future subscription they need to hold a long term licence.
Because in this case the licence is long term, anyone who wants to make another MMO need to wait that the licence from the previous license holder expires.
And that's what is going on with SWG and KOTORO (if the rumor is true).
Look....... you will never see 2 Batman movies being produced and released at the same time, because DC Comics will licence only one Hollywood studio at a time.
Same is for the games.
So, it is normal to see 1 or more titles of the same IP in a normal game market.
It is also normal to have normal games and the MMO game of the same IP co-existing.
But it is not possible to have 2 MMO co-existing.
That's the real reason behind all this secrecy.
This is just speculation. For all we know SOE could be revamping SWG and let it co-exist with The Old Republic. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No.
Isn't all the many "re-vamps" to SWG the reason for all it's problems in the 1st place? Makes perfect sence they'd try it again tho. The definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
the issue of the license is not a real problem. we have had KOTOR and SWG coexisting without problems. IP the same, time frame of it, totally diferent.
I think you don t' get the fact that offline games and MMO games are 2 different markets, therefore they can have different IP owers at the same time........
Dungeons and Dragons has also lots of Licenses going on in the normal game market.
But you won't see 2 MMO with Dungeon & Dragons in the title. trust me.
The normal game market works this way.
The IP owner sell the license to a company for a limited time or for 1 title only (o maybe 2 or 3, although is rare).
The game gets developed it gets sold, then if the developers want to produce another game with the same IP they need to buy another license (unless the original one allowed the production of 2 games).
In this case the license expires when the game is produced and sold, so someone else can buy it to produce another game related to that IP.
The MMO market is different.
The games are "on going" which mean they are always in developement, and publishers get a periodic profit (monthly subscription fee), therefore if the developers who bought the licence want to keep the future profit from future subscription they need to hold a long term licence.
Because in this case the licence is long term, anyone who wants to make another MMO need to wait that the licence from the previous license holder expires.
And that's what is going on with SWG and KOTORO (if the rumor is true).
Look....... you will never see 2 Batman movies being produced and released at the same time, because DC Comics will licence only one Hollywood studio at a time.
Same is for the games.
So, it is normal to see 1 or more titles of the same IP in a normal game market.
It is also normal to have normal games and the MMO game of the same IP co-existing.
But it is not possible to have 2 MMO co-existing.
That's the real reason behind all this secrecy.
This is just speculation. For all we know SOE could be revamping SWG and let it co-exist with The Old Republic. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No.
What is speculation?
Of course it is speculation that Bioware is producing a Star Wars MMO, nobody has offiially announced it after all.
But it is not speculation the way Licences agreements work, and I explained pretty well I think.
If we talk about big IPs, you cannot have the same kind of product made by 2 different companies for the same market at the same time, and that's for any kind of product (not just games), that's really simple to understand.
SoE might re-work SWG as they like and make it the next WoW, but they will have to pay an higher fee than Bioware to keep hold of the License, and I don't think they will.
Simple as that.
Shared ownership of the licence is possible, but very rare, and that's doesn't seem the case.
So if it is true that Bioware is making KOTOR Online (Speculation), then SWG will close (Not speculation).
Unless LA and Bioware grant a shared ownership to SoE, that's the only case SWG could stay open, but don't count on it, doesn't make any sense at all in business terms.
Comments
I think you don t' get the fact that offline games and MMO games are 2 different markets, therefore they can have different IP owers at the same time........
Dungeons and Dragons has also lots of Licenses going on in the normal game market.
But you won't see 2 MMO with Dungeon & Dragons in the title. trust me.
The normal game market works this way.
The IP owner sell the license to a company for a limited time or for 1 title only (o maybe 2 or 3, although is rare).
The game gets developed it gets sold, then if the developers want to produce another game with the same IP they need to buy another license (unless the original one allowed the production of 2 games).
In this case the license expires when the game is produced and sold, so someone else can buy it to produce another game related to that IP.
The MMO market is different.
The games are "on going" which mean they are always in developement, and publishers get a periodic profit (monthly subscription fee), therefore if the developers who bought the licence want to keep the future profit from future subscription they need to hold a long term licence.
Because in this case the licence is long term, anyone who wants to make another MMO need to wait that the licence from the previous license holder expires.
And that's what is going on with SWG and KOTORO (if the rumor is true).
Look....... you will never see 2 Batman movies being produced and released at the same time, because DC Comics will licence only one Hollywood studio at a time.
Same is for the games.
So, it is normal to see 1 or more titles of the same IP in a normal game market.
It is also normal to have normal games and the MMO game of the same IP co-existing.
But it is not possible to have 2 MMO co-existing.
That's the real reason behind all this secrecy.
This is just speculation. For all we know SOE could be revamping SWG and let it co-exist with The Old Republic. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No.
It wouldn't be a bad idea for the most part.
One of the biggest things kinda holding SWG back is the games Engine. Lets face the facts here, the Engine doesn't have a working Z-Axis. The Engine was already kinda outdated in 2003 when the game came out. SWG's Engine is very well known for having more code in it then any other MMO on the market. Not only that for a 5 year old Engine, SWG just never works right.
Then we do have things that well I just cannot see them with the Engine they have now. Take Player Controled ISD's, can anyone besides myself really see one of those working in the game? I mean I can already see the Lag if you had more then one in a system at once. Remember Deep Space doesn't have a whole lot in it, think of what 3 Player Controled ISD's would be like in a system like Naboo! Hell the Space Zone's are not all that big as is...
Then you have things like AT-AT's that just never looked good when moving around and what not. You have people wanting things like being able to Hoster Weapons... Really putting in a new game engine wouldn't be a bad move at all.
As for running more then one game at a time? It can be done...
Lets take the whole D&D thing, and the big thing you have to remember about D&D is D&D is just the core rules. In the next year or two I wouldn't put it past seeing work being done on a Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms Online. Granted both would more then like run with the D&D rules, but both are not the same in the long run.
So chances are you will have people who would rather stick to the GCW Setting rather then go play in the Old Republic. Chances are you would have people who would jump at the chance to play in the Clone Wars rather then the Old Republic or GCW settings.
At the sametime another thing to think of...
If lets say SOE doesn't upgrade or overhaul the Engine... You still have a game that for the most part can run on any system at this point. Hell why do you think EQ and UO are still around? You don't need a high end system to run the games on. One of the faults AoC has been having is it's not very friendly with older systems. Hell I'm running a high end gaming system that is about 6 months old and AoC still tends to run badly on it. Having a game that anyone can run and play isn't a bad thing.
This is just speculation. For all we know SOE could be revamping SWG and let it co-exist with The Old Republic. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No.
It's possible that every airplane in the sky is going to fall at the same time too. However, the point of a dicussion is to deduce what is reasonable to believe, not present every absurd option that has less then a .000001 chance of being true.
Well i am not so super convinced that swg will close because of the new bioware mmo.
Neither am I super convinced that the new mmo is a real mmo as in swg.
Furthermore I think Bioware's secrecy is to have some quiet time to develop before the masses charge in.
that i can agree with. I think the likelyhood isn't any of those, but certainly not a 100% .
But following the information we do have it's very very probable that Bioware is making a SW game, and that SWG will be closing.
All that being said I admit that following patterens of surface information is how a lot of crazy conspiracy theories get made. However, i have been pretty successful in predicting the game development based upon the patterns of information thus far.
I had this thought today that Bioware might do a glorified singleplayer game with some options to go online and join others, some pvp and even more cooperative gameplay for common goals.
We really dont know at this point.
____________________________
CASUAL CONFESSIONS - Draccan's blog
____________________________
lol, no it isn't.
I don't know why SWG vets think that there are SO MANY of them around that they can pull off numbers like this...even if there were 150k people who wanted to return to pre-CU SWG...you take out the number of people who are fed up with SOE and won't play one of their games, then the number of people who don't know that they are returning to launch codes, then the number of people who are just going to wait for BW's MMO....you aren't going to get 150k people...they would probably get a few thousand, and they would probably lose some of the people who enjoy the NGE, few as they may be, they DO exist.
Your argument is like a two legged dog with an eating disorder...weak and unbalanced.
This is just speculation. For all we know SOE could be revamping SWG and let it co-exist with The Old Republic. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No.
It's possible that every airplane in the sky is going to fall at the same time too. However, the point of a dicussion is to deduce what is reasonable to believe, not present every absurd option that has less then a .000001 chance of being true.
Well i am not so super convinced that swg will close because of the new bioware mmo.
Neither am I super convinced that the new mmo is a real mmo as in swg.
Furthermore I think Bioware's secrecy is to have some quiet time to develop before the masses charge in.
that i can agree with. I think the likelyhood isn't any of those, but certainly not a 100% .
But following the information we do have it's very very probable that Bioware is making a SW game, and that SWG will be closing.
All that being said I admit that following patterens of surface information is how a lot of crazy conspiracy theories get made. However, i have been pretty successful in predicting the game development based upon the patterns of information thus far.
I had this thought today that Bioware might do a glorified singleplayer game with some options to go online and join others, some pvp and even more cooperative gameplay for common goals.
We really dont know at this point.
That could be, but even that wouldn't be something with "MMO Elements"
Something like that sounds alot like what they have planned with Too Human and Fable 2. I know in Fable 2 if you have any friends on Xbox Live playing it when you are, they will show up looking kinda like a ghost in your game. But you can invite them over to play in your game world. The word on Too Human is it should use something like that, namely letting friends join your game on the fly.
Anyway... Wanna make any betas on Diablo 3 having some kinda system like that?
They will have it for extended universe.
You are Spot on - Lets see what Lucas Arts does with the August 15th opening of The Clone Wars.
That would be an ideal time to announce it.
I actually thought there was supposed to be an announcement coinciding with that premiere? Maybe it was just one of the speculative posts made over here months ago saying that it would heh.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
lol, no it isn't.
I don't know why SWG vets think that there are SO MANY of them around that they can pull off numbers like this...even if there were 150k people who wanted to return to pre-CU SWG...you take out the number of people who are fed up with SOE and won't play one of their games, then the number of people who don't know that they are returning to launch codes, then the number of people who are just going to wait for BW's MMO....you aren't going to get 150k people...they would probably get a few thousand, and they would probably lose some of the people who enjoy the NGE, few as they may be, they DO exist.
I think this is a fair assessment. I know I am done with SWG and SOE completely. I am sure there are people that play the NGE because it is the star wars license and even if they do not like the NGE keep hoping for the pre-cu/pre-nge servers to come.
The one thing I differ, opinionwise, on this is that it is not the numbers of people that keep soe from doing this... if they gained back 5k people to play pre-cu servers (seperate from current subscribers) it would be a win. The thing is opening these servers would be admittance of failure. To this day smedley and SOE in general think the NGE was the right course of action and that the only faux pas concerning the NGE was the way it was released. Secondly they have no developers there that could support the legacy code, nor have they had any of those people for many years. Which, in all honesty, is probably one reason why they went in the direction they did.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Well you dont know that any more then he does know it. the only thing that anyone has to go by is what the EA president said. if you believe it or not is up to you.
Well you dont know that any more then he does know it. the only thing that anyone has to go by is what the EA president said. if you believe it or not is up to you.
well to be fair there is no knights of the old republic online patented for media near exact to SWG patent. There is a Star Wars The Old Republic that has a patent bought recently thats accurately comparable to the SWG patent made so long ago =P so i think it may be safe to say its not KOTORO and a little more accurate to say SWTOR or TOR. i wont link the patents just search for them its hear somewhere.
Well you dont know that any more then he does know it. the only thing that anyone has to go by is what the EA president said. if you believe it or not is up to you.
well to be fair there is no knights of the old republic online patented for media near exact to SWG patent. There is a Star Wars The Old Republic that has a patent bought recently thats accurately comparable to the SWG patent made so long ago =P so i think it may be safe to say its not KOTORO and a little more accurate to say SWTOR or TOR. i wont link the patents just search for them its hear somewhere.
There was also Star Wars Sagas and Star Wars Legends with the same wording, and the trademark applications were filed at the same time. I assume Lucasfilm trademarked three potential titles for the same product. They did the same thing with the title for the latest Indiana Jones film (some were as bad as the prequel titles, you can find them by searching for "Indiana Jones" on the trademark site).
Since almost everything said regarding the closing of SWG or the features/title of the new game are theory and conjecture in this thread, I might as well toss in one of my own that is just as plausible as any other.
Hows's this: People are right, LA won't want two companies competing for the same license, so an agreement is hammered out for EA/Bioware to take over development and support for both games, and removing SOE forever from the equation.
Hey, its just a thought.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
lol whatever happens happens. I could care less what they do with SWG because I won't be playing it, and it has no effect on me playing another SW mmo.
I don't think SOE is paying for the Star Wars licence any more...
After the NGE disaster, the 10 million a year licence fee was waivered... So that SWG could keep afloat.
Or thats what I've been told.
Sorry, but SWG will continue to stumble on as long as it is making money and that's the bottom line. The game IS making money, otherwise it would've been shutdown the moment it went negative.
I am not currently playing the crap they now call SWG.
I am excited about SW:OR.
But SW:OR won't kill SWG by default, SWG will live or die by the green and that's all there is to it.
I think you don t' get the fact that offline games and MMO games are 2 different markets, therefore they can have different IP owers at the same time........
Dungeons and Dragons has also lots of Licenses going on in the normal game market.
But you won't see 2 MMO with Dungeon & Dragons in the title. trust me.
The normal game market works this way.
The IP owner sell the license to a company for a limited time or for 1 title only (o maybe 2 or 3, although is rare).
The game gets developed it gets sold, then if the developers want to produce another game with the same IP they need to buy another license (unless the original one allowed the production of 2 games).
In this case the license expires when the game is produced and sold, so someone else can buy it to produce another game related to that IP.
The MMO market is different.
The games are "on going" which mean they are always in developement, and publishers get a periodic profit (monthly subscription fee), therefore if the developers who bought the licence want to keep the future profit from future subscription they need to hold a long term licence.
Because in this case the licence is long term, anyone who wants to make another MMO need to wait that the licence from the previous license holder expires.
And that's what is going on with SWG and KOTORO (if the rumor is true).
Look....... you will never see 2 Batman movies being produced and released at the same time, because DC Comics will licence only one Hollywood studio at a time.
Same is for the games.
So, it is normal to see 1 or more titles of the same IP in a normal game market.
It is also normal to have normal games and the MMO game of the same IP co-existing.
But it is not possible to have 2 MMO co-existing.
That's the real reason behind all this secrecy.
This is just speculation. For all we know SOE could be revamping SWG and let it co-exist with The Old Republic. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No.
Isn't all the many "re-vamps" to SWG the reason for all it's problems in the 1st place? Makes perfect sence they'd try it again tho. The definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
I think you don t' get the fact that offline games and MMO games are 2 different markets, therefore they can have different IP owers at the same time........
Dungeons and Dragons has also lots of Licenses going on in the normal game market.
But you won't see 2 MMO with Dungeon & Dragons in the title. trust me.
The normal game market works this way.
The IP owner sell the license to a company for a limited time or for 1 title only (o maybe 2 or 3, although is rare).
The game gets developed it gets sold, then if the developers want to produce another game with the same IP they need to buy another license (unless the original one allowed the production of 2 games).
In this case the license expires when the game is produced and sold, so someone else can buy it to produce another game related to that IP.
The MMO market is different.
The games are "on going" which mean they are always in developement, and publishers get a periodic profit (monthly subscription fee), therefore if the developers who bought the licence want to keep the future profit from future subscription they need to hold a long term licence.
Because in this case the licence is long term, anyone who wants to make another MMO need to wait that the licence from the previous license holder expires.
And that's what is going on with SWG and KOTORO (if the rumor is true).
Look....... you will never see 2 Batman movies being produced and released at the same time, because DC Comics will licence only one Hollywood studio at a time.
Same is for the games.
So, it is normal to see 1 or more titles of the same IP in a normal game market.
It is also normal to have normal games and the MMO game of the same IP co-existing.
But it is not possible to have 2 MMO co-existing.
That's the real reason behind all this secrecy.
This is just speculation. For all we know SOE could be revamping SWG and let it co-exist with The Old Republic. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No.
What is speculation?
Of course it is speculation that Bioware is producing a Star Wars MMO, nobody has offiially announced it after all.
But it is not speculation the way Licences agreements work, and I explained pretty well I think.
If we talk about big IPs, you cannot have the same kind of product made by 2 different companies for the same market at the same time, and that's for any kind of product (not just games), that's really simple to understand.
SoE might re-work SWG as they like and make it the next WoW, but they will have to pay an higher fee than Bioware to keep hold of the License, and I don't think they will.
Simple as that.
Shared ownership of the licence is possible, but very rare, and that's doesn't seem the case.
So if it is true that Bioware is making KOTOR Online (Speculation), then SWG will close (Not speculation).
Unless LA and Bioware grant a shared ownership to SoE, that's the only case SWG could stay open, but don't count on it, doesn't make any sense at all in business terms.