The Old Republic Beta Attracts Two Million Testers

[sir.rutthed]

Not that I want to hop on any bandwagons, but I know only one person who took part in the beta test, and he uninstalled it after one day. Which is of course the other risk with something like this: two million people telling you that your game sucks bantha nuts.

I hardly think that's the case. Myself and about half a dozen of my friends tested it over Thanksgiving and only one of my buddies didn't absolutely love it. I don't get why people are bashing it about being similar in gameplay to WOW. Sure it is, but frankly that plus Bioware storytelling is gonna make for an amazing game.

Is it just me, or does that trooper fellow in the pic look like he's wielding a giant dildo-cannon?

Also, I'm still really pissed off at Bioware about The Old Republic: Revan. Prolly going to avoid TOR simply because I don't want to see two of my favourite Star Wars characters reduced to mid-game NPCs/bosses.

DAMN YOU DREW KARPSHYN!!!! DAAAAAMNN YOOUUUUUUU!!!!!

I haven't read the book, but I did hear mention of Revan in the Beta with my Sith Warrior.

Spoiler: Spoiler..... IN SPACE!

There's a cult movement based around worshiping Revan on Dromund Kaas. Once you finish the quest line to join/destroy the cult, you find out that the cult leader believes that Revan is actually the Emperor and the Dark Council is somehow controlling him. She then tells you to bugger off and that she'll call you should the shit hit the fan. Needless to say, this opens up a LOT of potential story possibilities.

So I wouldn't ditch it just because the book sucks. Most Star Wars books do.

OT: I've said it before and I'll say it again: this game will kick ass. It has solid gameplay, great story, and regardless of what some folks are saying having fully voiced NPC's is a game changer, if a very subtle one. You actually give a damn now, the 'why' of questing matters. It's a definite step up from WOW where everything you did was just one form or another of farming.

 

[sir.rutthed]

Most reactions I heard were decidedly positive. There are however some people who went in with complete misconceptions about the game. And unfortunately a lot of people who don't realise it's not supposed to be a singleplayer game.

I don't think Bioware realise it's not supposed to be a singleplayer game.

I played up to level 29 and I grouped once, and never did any flashpoints or PVP. And you know what? IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME. That's the beauty here. I was able to down large groups of mobs and strong mobs with four levels on me while playing solo while all the scrubs were running around in groups getting killed. I felt like a badass, and since that's how I plan on playing up until endgame content it worked out just swell for me.

 

[sir.rutthed]

Is it just me, or does that trooper fellow in the pic look like he's wielding a giant dildo-cannon?

Also, I'm still really pissed off at Bioware about The Old Republic: Revan. Prolly going to avoid TOR simply because I don't want to see two of my favourite Star Wars characters reduced to mid-game NPCs/bosses.

DAMN YOU DREW KARPSHYN!!!! DAAAAAMNN YOOUUUUUUU!!!!!

Spoiler: You already spoiled part of it, but I'll spoil the rest...

That was a fake Revan. Not the real one.

Spoiler

They still turned the Exile and Revan into a pair of complete idiots in the novel, and ballsed up everything about KOTOR II's story that was meaningful. This may sound like the whining of a butthurt fanboy, but the Revan and Exile that I played would never have run headfirst into a fight with a Sith Lord while siding with an obviously treacherous Sith, only to get killed off/frozen in carbonite... simply because the characters I played had some actual brain cells, and because the ending of KOTOR II implied the battle in the unknown region was going to be more of a metaphysical war of beliefs anyway.

If it's a fake Revan, then that only serves to make the shitty outcome more convoluted, so I can hardly say it makes me feel any better.

That's more of a problem with George Lucas. KOTOR II was declared to not be canon (actually just about everything in Star Wars is not canon, but KOTOR II is less canon than most things...It's stupid and complicated) because of those interesting things that were unusual in the setting.

George wants the story to be simple and childlike, and any attempts to change it are shut down or bumped down the canon ladder.

Which is why I kind of hate Star Wars as a whole at this point, honestly. The first movies were great, the Old Republic games are neat, and that's about it.

Have you read the books by Timothy Zahn? They're both canon and damn good. They pick up after ep. VI and introduce some really interesting characters and ideas. Granted a lot of those ideas were seemingly retconned by the prequel trilogy, but we of the hivemind are at the point where we just tell Lucas to fuck off and accept the good stuff as canon on our own.

 

[Frenzy107]

One thing with the Beta that I found severely disappointing (dont get me wrong, I absolutely loved my time in the beta) was the Space combat. I just found it completely uninteresting and boring (ive never liked tunnel shooters much). That would have to be my only gripe with TOR, but everything else is amazing!

 

[sir.rutthed]

I haven't read the book, but I did hear mention of Revan in the Beta with my Sith Warrior.

Spoiler: Spoiler..... IN SPACE!

There's a cult movement based around worshiping Revan on Dromund Kaas. Once you finish the quest line to join/destroy the cult, you find out that the cult leader believes that Revan is actually the Emperor and the Dark Council is somehow controlling him. She then tells you to bugger off and that she'll call you should the shit hit the fan. Needless to say, this opens up a LOT of potential story possibilities.

So I wouldn't ditch it just because the book sucks. Most Star Wars books do.

Spoiler: Thoughts on Revan and the ending of KOTOR II

My annoyance comes from the fact that Bioware are routinely heralded as the best storytellers in the industry, yet their writers completely misinterpreted the ending of KOTOR II, and as a result ballsed up what happend afterwards.

KOTOR II was centred around the idea of ideological conflict as opposed to physical conflict. Indeed, the ending (what of it there was) almost outright stated it: Revan had gone to challenge the True Sith in the Unknown Regions, yet left behind every single one of his companions and co-fighters. The Exile went to join him, yet again, left behind every single person who could have proved useful in a physical fight. The implication was that just as the Exile managed to defeat Darth Sion by defeating his beliefs rather than his physical strength, Revan and the Exile were going to challenge the Sith in an ideological war. They were going to undo the Sith not through force of arms (in which case, why leave all their companions behind?), but by challenging their empire on its theological foundations, just as the Exile had undone the Sith Triumvirate.

Then Drew Karpshyn comes along, and suddenly it's a case of "Nope, Revan and the Exile were just planning on throwing themselves at the Sith Emperor and hoping for the best. Unfortunately they got betrayed by the obvious bad guy, so the Exile died like a noob and Revan's been locked away until you get to face him online in our brand new MMO."

I realise that trying to follow on from a story written by the same guy who wrote Planescape: Torment woudn't be the easiest task for anyone, but it would be nice if Bioware, celebrated storytellers that they are, had at least tried to recognise what sort of themes were at work and try and follow on from them.

As it stands, the entire summation of the KOTOR saga seems to be "Well, guess we'd better get this wrapped up as quicklyas possible."

Spoiler

Well... ya. I haven't played through KOTOR II in a few years, but that's pretty much how I remember it. Sounds like you've learned what all Star Wars fans have to learn eventually: stay away from the expanded universe books. I'll wait for the game to come out and see what they did with Revan in there, because it's heavilly implied that the Emperor was overthrown and the Council is making the decisions in his place. What I hope is that Revan killed/overthrew the Emperor, started making changes, and the Dark Council eventually just had enough and initiated a coup.

That said, I think Bioware's storytelling power lies in gameplay, not books so I wouldn't give up on them yet. Keep in mind after all that writing a book/comic is QUITE different from writing for a game, which is what these people are best at and best known for.

 

[JesterRaiin]

I don't remember giving you privilege of putting things in my mouth. Please kindly don't do that again. It's impolite - at least here in this sh*thole i call my country.

I never put anything in your mouth - without that assumption, your argument for free collective beta testing simply falls to pieces.

How about a benefit of doubt ? You didn't ask. Instead, you chose to jump straight to conclusion - and a wrong one (if i may add). I find it impolite since it seems that really, we have nothing better to do than exchange commentaries.

We revisit and redefine more and more things and ideas. Why not beta testing ?
I simply won't accept suggestion that it's impossible to create more stable products when there are that many people with free time, nothing better to do and a passion to play games.
I'll rather believe that it's lack of will to change things - and i blame both gaming industry and overcomplicated legal issues for that situation.

Scientific endeavor, erection of colossal monument of human greed and egoism, video game, baking a cake - all this things are "projects". No matter the importance, budget, aim or extent, principles stay the same. Someone gives orders, someone does the job, someone supervises it, someone makes reports and so on.

Sure, they're "projects". And not all projects are successful. I don't see where you're going with this.[/quote]

Nowhere in particular. I simply show that your former argument :

Besides, we're talking about entertainment products, not scientific discoveries.

is irrelevant to this topic.

True, some projects didn't make it, but that doesn't mean they were wrong. Sometimes it's a tiniest piece of machinery that's responsible for its downfall.

 

[Sixcess]

You must have missed all the information on Operations (Raids) that has been released so far.

I just can't see players who come for the story staying for the gear grind at endgame. If TOR follows the WoW model of levelling and story content in expansions then raids for the next two years then they are going to lose a lot of players. If they try to provide continuing story content and a raid endgame then they'll have a very hard time pushing out content updates at a rate that will keep both sides happy.

Some will do both, but I don't see there being enough of those players to deliver the lasting numbers a game this big needs. I may be wrong but I just can't see it. In any event, the first 6 months or so of updates will be interesting to see how they intend to handle this.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

Have you read the books by Timothy Zahn? They're both canon and damn good. They pick up after ep. VI and introduce some really interesting characters and ideas. Granted a lot of those ideas were seemingly retconned by the prequel trilogy, but we of the hivemind are at the point where we just tell Lucas to fuck off and accept the good stuff as canon on our own.

I haven't. Can you tell me, do those books do more than copy and paste the movies (same cantina band, same Twi'lek dancers, etc.) without going as horribly far out as this [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Beldorion]?

The biggest problems I've always had with Star Wars were those two things up there, the black and white morality, and the species-ism (humans are the heroes, everyone else fulfills stereotypical roles while speaking in wacky ooga-booga languages). But the premise is so cool that I've always wanted to see someone do something interesting with it.

 

[sir.rutthed]

Have you read the books by Timothy Zahn? They're both canon and damn good. They pick up after ep. VI and introduce some really interesting characters and ideas. Granted a lot of those ideas were seemingly retconned by the prequel trilogy, but we of the hivemind are at the point where we just tell Lucas to fuck off and accept the good stuff as canon on our own.

I haven't. Can you tell me, do those books do more than copy and paste the movies (same cantina band, same Twi'lek dancers, etc.) without going as horribly far out as this [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Beldorion]?

The biggest problems I've always had with Star Wars were those two things up there, the black and white morality, and the species-ism (humans are the heroes, everyone else fulfills stereotypical roles while speaking in wacky ooga-booga languages). But the premise is so cool that I've always wanted to see someone do something interesting with it.

Actually, in some respects they're better than the movies. I like how he explores the mysteries of the Force, as well as how a demigod deals with self imposed pacifism/zen attitude when it would just be easier to Force your way around. Start with the Heir to the Empire series; Grand Admiral Thrawn is one of the coolest villains you'll run across and I love reading about him. Humans are still the focus of the story, but in the Hand of Thrawn series the conflict revolves around the Bothans. They're the only Star Wars books that are worth reading to be perfectly honest.

As for your link, that's just further proof that most of the Star Wars stuff out there is nothing more than glorified fanfic. Seriously, fuck that shit.

 

[Qitz]

The real question is how many of those people actually gave feed back and bug problems instead of just "Lawl I'm playing before you can!"

Doubt I'll play SWtoR myself, sure it looks pretty neat and the stories cool but I'm tired of point-and-push MMOs, they get boring too quick now. I'm hoping that more and more MMOs will start to migrate towards more action based engines. Tera Online being an up coming interest.

 

[JesterRaiin]

How about a benefit of doubt ? You didn't ask. Instead, you chose to jump straight to conclusion - and a wrong one (if i may add). I find it impolite since it seems that really, we have nothing better to do than exchange commentaries.

Benefit of doubt has nothing to do with this. I simply assumed you wouldn't make an argument that defeats itself. Was that too much? Would I have been better off if I just took what you said as some pointless ramblings?

Being a child of other age i am very - VERY - supersensitive to what i said and what i didn't. It's probably overreaction from my side. Sorry.

We revisit and redefine more and more things and ideas. Why not beta testing ?
I simply won't accept suggestion that it's impossible to create more stable products when there are that many people with free time, nothing better to do and a passion to play games.

Because it's never that simple. Beta testing is a job, and for good reason. You don't want to make people play your game before it's done, and you don't want to hire unpaid work. Those are 2 different things, and both have an impact. The first is circumvented by open betas of online games because the game is replayable enough that people will want to buy it after the beta, and the second is circumvented by offering a large part of the game's content on trial, for free, before release. Neither of these things is viable with a single-player game.

I beg to differ. People overcame plenty of "impossible" obstacles in the past. Saying "it's not that simple" is pointless - nothing is that simple !

- As a rule of thumb - it really comes down to assembling a party of trustworthy, competent people.
I'm not saying you're mistaken, however i want to point out that your approach is a little too pesimistic. Two-point-four-million-people. That's practically small town full of gamers. Even if 10% are good enough to work with, that's still 240 000 people. Why assume that each and every of those people is a potential pirate, liar and a thief ?

- Current system is obviously wrong, and we don't have to look far for examples. Since the times of Tetris games were released flawed beyond acceptance.
The problem is, this is escalating. There are titles that simply can't run, destroy their own savegames, are badly "programmed", suffer from memory leaks and it's not just about a few strange cases. It can't be explained differently than "not enough testing prior to release".

- It's far easier to destroy or not act at all than try and change things. "It's simple as that".

Nowhere in particular. I simply show that your former argument [...] is irrelevant to this topic.

A project is not something that is guarranteed to succeed. Making a stairway to the Moon is also a project, but it's a rather stupid one that will never work, no matter how perfect the tiniest piece of machinery is. So saying "we've made projects that work, and free beta testing is a project, therefore it should work" is an illogical argument.[/quote]

That's oversimplification at best. Being the gamer, someone who plays SF games, you, of all people should know and believe it true, that there are things impossible right now, but that may change in the future. 1000 years ago people would laugh at someone postulating the need of Internet, yet, fast forward one millenium and here we are.

Another vital part of any given project is making plans, analysis, spotting strengths and weaknesess (precisely SWOT analysis), brainstorming and stuff. Stairway to Moon ? For now - no - but how about lift to Moon, antigravitational channel, sub-space tube and so ?

But we digress here. All i want to say is that any given project, if sane, rooted in reality, properly planned and supervised have very good chance for success so, it really doesn't matter what kind of project we're talking about here - the principles are the same.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Have you read the books by Timothy Zahn? They're both canon and damn good. They pick up after ep. VI and introduce some really interesting characters and ideas. Granted a lot of those ideas were seemingly retconned by the prequel trilogy, but we of the hivemind are at the point where we just tell Lucas to fuck off and accept the good stuff as canon on our own.

I haven't. Can you tell me, do those books do more than copy and paste the movies (same cantina band, same Twi'lek dancers, etc.) without going as horribly far out as this [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Beldorion]?

The biggest problems I've always had with Star Wars were those two things up there, the black and white morality, and the species-ism (humans are the heroes, everyone else fulfills stereotypical roles while speaking in wacky ooga-booga languages). But the premise is so cool that I've always wanted to see someone do something interesting with it.

Funnily enough, I'd always envisioned a 'Grey' force user who ascribed to both and neither of the Sith/Jedi's philosophies (As in, the Force is just that. There is no 'good' or 'evil' to it, it's just a force of nature. Rather than gain knowledge through power (Sith), or power through knowledge (Jedi), there would be a balance of the two.)

At some point, there was a force user like that. I forget the book and even his name, but I really liked him. Of course he was a villain and ended up trying to return the universe to nothingness, but such is life.

 

[Spitfire]

I was invited to the last two beta sessions, and I have mixed feelings about the game.

On one hand, the story is well implemented, the mechanics are solid, the visuals look good, and overall, the game feels like a continuation of KotOR, but on a much grander scale - in other words, pretty much everything I wanted from this game.

On the other hand, the story couldn't be more by-the-numbers if Bioware downright recycled it from one of their previous games.
There are also huge technical issues, not least of which being the sudden fps drops, which can happen right in the middle of a god damn 'Heroic 4' quest, and make your DPS skills not count for shit.

The glimpse I had of the game left me wanting for more, but until Bioware patch it up, I won't be committing to TOR, and I suspect that many of the aforementioned 2 million testers feel much the same way.

In conclusion, don't get too comfortable, EA and Bioware, because numbers don't mean anything in this case.

 

[Kingsnake661]

Not that I want to hop on any bandwagons, but I know only one person who took part in the beta test, and he uninstalled it after one day. Which is of course the other risk with something like this: two million people telling you that your game sucks bantha nuts.

Good thing, it would SEEM the majority of them 2 million don't think it sucks bantha nuts. I loved it. ALOT. I'm accually haven't a hard time getting any enthuasiaum built up for any other game currently. I'm just waiting on TOR at the moment. And most reviews i've read of the beta are positive, for the most part.

I think... most people are disapointed the game is very heavy based on WoW gameplay mechanics. Machanics I'VE never played with before. "Never played wow, ever, like once." So i'm pumped. And alot of people still love WoW, and will love it with a star wars skin. And still more love star wars, simply for being Star Wars.

This game won't be a WoW killer, i doubt anyone really thought it would be. But it'll be a sucess. It's going to be around awhile, and hopeful will only get better. All IMO and I hope, i guess i should say. *shrug* Time will tell for sure. But chalk me up to being one of the very eagerly awaiting masses. LOL

 

[JesterRaiin]

- As a rule of thumb - it really comes down to assembling a party of trustworthy, competent people.

I'm trying to argue from a pragmatic position, not an idealistic one. In the industry, you use what works, not what would work if everything was perfect.

Be my guest, however i'd like to remind you, that lowering standards for luxury-based industry is as far from pragmatism as possible. I guess it's only because plenty of customers are more or less kids and young people, prone to magic of commercials, easy to stimulate and manipulate that this whole industry is still thriving despite using cheap tricks that belong to sector of "dirty marketing".

And they DO assemble a party of trustworthy, competent people - they're called quality assurance testers, and get paid for their work. The problem can be one of two things:
a) there are not enough people, which is a human resources problem
b) there is not enough time to polish the game, which is a planning/luck problem
In the second scenario, no amount of testers will help. The game will be shipped buggy regardless of manpower.
So it really could be not a matter of not enough testing, rather not enough fixing bugs prior to release. Deadlines and all that.

Also, there's probability that :
c) results lands in closest trash bin because "aw f*ck, who cares, those morons will buy it anyway, beside who'll sue us ?"
d) tests aren't done correctly "suuuuuuuuuuuuuure boss, it works" and "wouldn't you look at that - last time i checked it was OK"
e) tests are unsolvable "i don't know, i really don't know, on my quantum based machine it worked good"

As for your observations :

a) Nothing changed. I'm still talking about millions of fans ready to sell their souls for a chance to beta testing.
b) I'll bite : there are countless small firms that release simple games and they are doing just fine. So do we really need THAT massive games ? Are all those special effects that needed ? Do people actually care about hidden mechanics that's working behind some rain, snow or god knows what ?
It's very easy to blame deadlines, bad luck and recent UFO sightings. Much harder is to admit that given product is "too much".

The current system works just fine... for them. It doesn't impact sales in any major way, and when it does, it can be fixed in the future by hiring more QA. Again, for the marketing people, this is way better than giving parts of the game to random people and hoping they outline the problems, professionally, for free, and are still still hyped enough to buy the game on launch date.

I have impression that you overlooked what i've said before : it's not about giving early releases to "testers" and letting them go, doing whatever they want completely unsupervised. No. There are other solutions.
Why not place adversitement, let's say... "we're looking for people living in Atlanta ready to spend 2-3 hours daily in our laboratory playing alpha versions of Mass Effect 3" ?

That's oversimplification at best. Being the gamer, someone who plays SF games, you, of all people should know and believe it true, that there are things impossible right now, but that may change in the future.

But we're talking about right now, not the future. In the future there might not be a need for QA in the first place. Doesn't change the situation at this moment.

No, we aren't and we weren't talking about now and here, but about possibilites. Where did you get that impression ???

You then proceed to go way offotpic so I'll just quote the conclusion:

it really doesn't matter what kind of project we're talking about here - the principles are the same.

And I'm saying that just because it's a project, doesn't mean it's a good idea. It has to be a good idea first to qualify as a project. That's how things work.

And this is another thing that i don't understand - it wasn't me who said that it is enough to consider something "a project" to magically make it happen.
Also : who said that successfull undertakings must be based on good ideas ? Any idea will do. That's why people invented and use brainstorming, fishbone diagrams, control charts and similiar techniques.
All i'm saying is : the principles for any kind of projects are the same. So it really doesn't matter what kind of project we're discussing here.