Story or just loooooong cut scenes?

[Talon]

Well if your in the Beta tell all.

[DraconianOne]

Well if your in the Beta tell all.

No, not in beta and would probably avoid it even if offered as I'd like to wait until live before playing. This was more in response to "Bioware... have never done an MMORPG before". There's a distinction to be made that SWTOR is being developed by Bioware Austin which is part of Bioware but essentially it's a different studio and their primary focus, iirc, is MMOs. This means that there are different personnel involved. This is where it gets more interesting.

The co-director of BWA is Gordon Walton, previously responsible for deveeloping producing SWG, Sims Online, Ultima Online
Also leading BWA is Rich Vogel who has MMO experience on, funnily enough, SWG.

Other ex-SOE staff and SWG alumni working on SWTOR:
Jeff Dobson (Art Director)
Jake Neri (Producer)
Pete Warner (Senior Systems Designer)

Also there's:
Wynne McLaughlin - World Designer (previously on Tabula Rasa)
Dale Homburg - Assistant Art Director (previously on Tabula Rasa)
Patrick Ditterline - Senior Gameplay Programmer (previously on DAOC)

So while Bioware haven't produced an MMO as a company, many of the people calling the shots on the game's production have got experience on those types of games. It's just that, you know, it was SWG. I'm avoiding mentioning that Mythic are now a part of Bioware and that they're all under the EA umbrella.

That being said, there are a fair few people who were drafted from Bioware Edmonton to work on the game too so there are programmers and writers who have had experience on KOTOR, Mass Effect, Dragon Age and others.

Anyway, I'm still sort of looking forward to it.

[ki'babas]

It's just that, you know, it was SWG

Which to me may mean 2 things, they were partly or fully responsible for some of the best implemented ideas I have yet to see in any mmo (Housing(even tho it was too unrestricted), economy/crafting, vehilcles and I also loved the star wars space combat) or they were partly/fully or not at all involved in some of the worst decition making in any mmo ever...
Now I have no idea how much involved any of them were in any of these things but I am hopeful of one thing, they learned from them all.

[Talon]

SWG after the first Combat Upgrade and before the NGE was one of the best, if not the best MMO's I've ever played. Its problem was rather than building on the Combat Upgrade, fixing bugs, of which there were many and introducing new content, of which there was not enough, they went and scrapped all that ground work with the hated NGE and killed the game.

SWG had so much oging for it at this time, but the suits got greedy and wanted a WOW killer and tried, with one roll of the dice to win all. This failed miserably alienating the current user base, introducing a slew of new bugs and failing to bring in the WOW crowed because of the storm of negative reaction from everyone who had loved the game before.

I wouldn't blame any of the guys you mentioned above for that, the fact that TOR has some of the developers as SWG is a cause for hope as I see it not despair. As Ki said, they are probably the people best placed to know what NOT to do when developing a Star Wars MMO, more so than anyone else on the planet. As long as Ralph isn't involved I think we will be fine.

[Jimhada]

Raph is a God........


Smedley is the first bit of toilet paper you wipe your arse with.

[DraconianOne]

I wouldn't blame any of the guys you mentioned above for that, the fact that TOR has some of the developers as SWG is a cause for hope as I see it not despair. As Ki said, they are probably the people best placed to know what NOT to do when developing a Star Wars MMO, more so than anyone else on the planet. As long as Ralph isn't involved I think we will be fine.

Raph isn't involved. No idea what he's currently doing after selling Metaplace.

I believe Gordon Walton was one of the major driving forces behind "Jump To Lightspeed" - possibly even the senior producer on it - and that was (imo) the most unbroken part of SWG at the time (although if I were to play it now, I might resent the 2-3 hour missions I seem to have time for before). And yeah, you can't actually point the finger at any of the above for the NGE - that was the brainchild of Chris Cao who was SOE Studio Manager after Walton and Vogel left (if I remember the long post that poor old Jeff Freeman wrote about it all after he endded being the one who got unfairly saddled with the finger pointing).

Anyway, point remains that there is actually experience of MMO development/production on the SWTOR team. Whether that's a good or a bad thing remains to be seen.

[Kojack]

For what its worth my 'man on the inside' told me a long time ago there is strong influence from Lucas' people to get this right. They feel they have as much to gain from this as Bioware. I wouldnt worry to much about what people have worked on in the past, those directing them will get what they want from them and what they want is what we want.

Latest info i have (obviously i cant tell all and some may not be 100%) is that the team have been messing around with an Alpha build for over a year, the current beta they have let externals mess around with is months old already. I have heard they are still debating whether to include european testers at any stage, stress testing seems to be the most likely time we will get. Although im not going to touch it until release.

Im still being told summer is the most likely release time despite the official target time being spring....

[Talon]

365 days and counting then.