SWTOR is EA's "largest ever" project News

I hate MMO's but I already know ill be addicted to this

$100m a month!?!?

*waves hand* This is the game your looking for....

Unfortunately it won't topple WoW. I'm just hoping its a MMO I can enjoy playing solo for as much as possible. Yeah I know playing solo in a MMO doesn't make much sense but I'm not a fan of playing with strangers. Anyway woooo more SWTOR.

Why would you want it to "topple WoW"?

Anyway, from what I've read it's designed to be playable solo and is largely instanced so you won't have to worry about competing with other people for quests or kills and whatnot. I just hope you bump into other people every now and again.

http://www.swtor.com/info/faq#348

Can I play alone?

While there are some tasks that cannot be completed without the cooperation of others, the majority of the game can be accomplished by playing alone.

Really look forward to this.

Playing solo in an MMORPG DOES make sense, since there are no single player games that can give you the same experience. I prefer playing solo, actually, and wish MMO would start including single-player dungeons where you can't play in a party. It's nice to wander around a huge world, doing whatever you like, whichever quests you like and just explore and enjoy the atmosphere.

$100m a month!?!?

Not exactly. Many players pay upfront for blocks of 3, 6 or 12 months in order to take advantage of discounted rates for long term play, these are often disregarded in order to make the maths easier, in this case the assumptions make the revenue roughly equal to number of accounts x $10 per month. And generally speaking MMO publishers give figures for total number of accounts created, not number of accounts that are currently paid for, so the true revenue of WoW is almost certainly lower slightly than 100 million USD. It's still a massive figure though, for a standard game to achieve that sort revenue it would have to shift over three million full price copies, every month.

Small wonder why every publisher is chasing the subscription model when you compare it to standard retail.

Sounds vaguely like STO, being able to play (the vast majority of it) on your own.

Ok, the $100m budget doesn't sound like STO, but that's something else again.

I had a STO conversation with a STO-playing friend, we agreed that were essentially playing it 6 months early but we dont really care (Lots of potential). I know TOR wont be released early tho

EA has a tradition for killing off their MMOs before they really get off the ground. Wonder if they manage to resist the urge this time?

I just hope this is as good as I want it to be. If so, WoW can finally be uninstalled from my PC!

AQFanboi, SWTOR has already been in development for years and they have shown a considerable amount of gameplay footage so I reckon it's pretty safe. It's also being made by Bioware, who EA realise basically shit money.

Would rather they'd spent it on KotOR III.

Whats the betting Activision kick up a legal shitstorm when this draws closer to release being that they publish all lucas arts material outside of the US?

*hopes to be wrong*

thelzdking - this is KOTOR 3, and 4,5,6 according to Bioware

@Shikasama

True story...

Well they consistantly WONT answer whether or not we find out what happened to Revan, which means you will probably find out. Thats all I need from a KOTOR game

$100m a month or thereabouts is fucking staggering. I never realised it was so lucrative. No wonder so many people want a slice of the MMO pie.

too far off, dont care yet...

@murton - I think they may have got the $100 million from this article

http://www.techdigest.tv/2008/10/world_o...

and as you point out not all the subscribers pay the 'British price' of 9 pounds a month, however I think with WoW subs figures they always show the number of active subscriptions - ie those that are being paid for - maybe we should say they spent a good bit making it, but make shedloads back every month :)

Although I do enjoy solo play in MMOs, I still like to see other people running about and have random encounters with them; it's what gives the constant world that epic feeling. With this in mind I hope it's not heavily instanced as that means I might aswell be offline and not paying a monthly subscription.

The 100m a month figure is inflated - yes, wow has 10m or so subscribers, but not all of those pay the full EU/US subscription fee. Something like 70m is closer to the truth ;) Although then you have to factor in paid account services, which probably equal a thirteenth month's revenue.

I have room in my life for this and WoW, actually I have room for loads of games which is nice.

@Kerome....you really sucked the fun out of that 100m statement.

"Would rather they'd spent it on KotOR III"

This.

Hmm, am I only one now wondering what kind of a budget does SWTOR have? I'd reckon that using voice acting for every quest in the game would, for a start, be pretty expensive. The figure they give for WoW isn't all that surprising as I do recall reading somewhere that the project Copernicus or what they call it from 38 studios has a similar price tag.

Also, the revenue Activision-Blizzard makes with WoW is likely to be close to that 100 M$. For example, their item shop for one seems to fill in the gaps of "chinese players being less" -syndrome. Didn't they make roughly 2 million dollars from selling a pandaren monk mini-pet out of which they donated a million to some charity? And that's for one mini-pet for one month. Then all those race changes, faction changes, name changes etc. and you quite quickly reach that 100 million mark. And I do think that their current playerbase is quite close to that 11.5 million they announced a few years back, atleast so suggests http://mmodata.net on their front page.

Please be good. Please please be good...