Activision CEO shrugs off Old Republic concerns
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick chimes in on the impending competition between World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Between its license and the reputation of developer BioWare, the impending release of Star Wars: The Old Republic could bring a real threat to Activision Blizzard's MMO dominance. Now Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has chimed in with his thoughts on World of Warcraft's competition.
"Lucas is going to be the principal beneficiary of the success of Star Wars," Kotick said at the Reuters Media Summit (via GamesIndustry.biz). "We've been in business with Lucas for a long time and the economics will always accrue to the benefit of Lucas, so I don't really understand how the economics work for Electronic Arts."
Kotick also reminded the summit that many MMOs that have tried to imitate the success of WoW. "If you look at the history of the people investing in an MMO and achieving success, it's a small number," he said.
Then again, WoW itself has seen subscribers slipping for several months. The MMO can still tout 10.3 million subscribers, but that shows a steady declining trend. And for all of Kotick's bravado, his company's stock recently downgraded in light of concerns that WoW would shed between 900,000 and 1.6 million subscribers once The Old Republic releases.
Star Wars: The Old Republic is set to launch on December 20.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, Activision CEO shrugs off Old Republic concerns.
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick chimes in on the impending competition between World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic.-
Bobby Kotick is a looney.
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Was that him? I was laughing during that scene. I just thought it was a look a like.
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I hate to agree with bobbycrazy, but the Lucasfilm licensing probably is substantial for Star Wars: TOR.
That said, these comments are being made by an executive of a company desperately clinging onto licensing contracts with Marvel and MGM (James Bond), and is releasing mostly mediocre games (aside from the GoldenEye remake; BTW, very clever to hold onto the contract by re-releasing a Wii exclusive on 360 and PS3 while appeasing Nintendo's lawyers). This is also post-peak-WoW, with subscriptions declining after the disappointment of Cataclysm, and subscribers souring away from Pandaria.
We'll see what Kotick's saying by February 9, 2012, which is the approximate time of Activision Blizzard's annual post-holiday house-cleaning.-
Licensing or not, he is just trying to change the focus from what is to come. I think WoW will still have subscribers, but it will most likely go the way of Everquest. Everquest is still going, but the populations reduced down to the hardcore EQ players that will never go anywhere else until Sony unplugs the servers.
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I really wish they would let go of the marvel license. :(
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Haven't played WoW in a while, but fucking Cataclysm was awesome (if a little short) so I don't know what you're talking about there. Agreed on Pandaria though.
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He turns up around every COD release to remind us all why we think of him what we think of him.
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He's got some valid points.
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Yes, because Bioware always release such primitive software!
Seriously, Bioware wrote the book on polish. I've been playing the beta of TOR during test weekends (never did make it into the full test) and TOR in beta is so far ahead of what WoW was at launch (and during open beta) that it's ridiculous.
Yeah after 8 years WoW is probably a more mature product, but wouldn't you expect it to be?
I've seen less bugs this weekend's build of TOR than I experienced during release of cataclysm. Right now they're more into optimizing the back-end of their customer support and knowledgebase than bug squashing. But it is possible that we were running an older build, same as the previous test weekend.
I, for one, will not be going back to WoW after experiencing the way TOR mixes story into questing. Even when it's "kill 10 of these monsters", it doesn't feel like grinding.
But that's just my 2 cents.-
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It'll be different seven years from now with all these damn F2P MMO's.
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You make a valid point, and I don't see TOR reaching the kind of numbers WoW did in its heyday (which is long since over) but regardless of what Kotick thinks, it will make money for EA as well as Lucasarts. And I don't think it will have any issues standing beside WoW and competing on a level field.
I would predict peak subscription numbers over 2 million, perhaps much higher.
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It still felt like grinding to me. :(
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It's got a level that is significantly less than other MMOs. It's similar to KOToR's design philosophy where if you quested out each area, you would reach the levels you needed. I detailed it here: http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=26865965#item_26865965
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Regarding your original post where you were noting the size of the starting zones - there's no way they're anywhere near the size of the northern half of Kalimdor. They're each extremely small. I'd compare the square footage of Tython to something more along the lines of just the Elywnn Forest zone from WoW. The starling zones are very linear and have an extremely boxed-in feel that I disliked.
The later zones do open up more to a little variety, but because of the design of the game as you jump from zone to zone, there's no smooth progression transitioning from one to the other, which I also disliked. Having to take a shuttle back to a space station and then taking a whole other shuttle down to the new zone just felt like the developers worked themselves into a world design conundrum and chose the laziest way out.-
I agree.. you should be able to walk to other planets from any zone in the game, using spaceships and space stations and whatnot is totally lame and shouldn't be in this kind of game. So dumb. In fact, it'd probably be cooler if you could just instant teleport to any coodinate in the entire game - in fact you shouldn't even be able to walk in any games, you should just be able to pick where you want in a large menu or type the coordinates exactly.
Hell, you shouldn't even have to kill anything, just get experience for being a douchebag. Or maybe start everyone at the highest level and max all the stats - or better yet, just show a big fucking "The End" the second you login with a new character.-
What the fuck are you talking about? That would be awful. You're an idiot.
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I was being sarcastic...
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The difficulty actually goes up in terms of combat 20+, but apart from the main storyline the quests are just typical MMO grind quests.
The dialogue is nice, but even that get repetitive after the 3rd or 4th planet and I found myself skipping it as fast as possible.
My fear is a total lack of endgame content, like age of conan. There will be roving bands of sith and republic on the final planet trying to fight each other while changing instances constantly till they get bored and cancel subs, like in age of conan.
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Combat in TOR doesn't feel nearly as good as WoW's, and given how much time you spend fighting in MMOs, that's a pretty big problem IMO.
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I found it to be about the same, and wow has 7 yers of polish. Swotor feels as polished as wow in beta. Looking forward to see what a year of improvements will bring.
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Sadly that's the jyst I've been hearing lately as well, now that people are coming off their "I got in!!!!" high. Better than WoW was out of the gate for sure, but not nearly polished enough to feel like a true competitor to WoW.
Still, it's TOR, and I'm going to treat it like KOTOR 3 and play it to max level.-
Yeah, it looks good for a beta, and I'm sure the final game will be decent, but I probably won't touch it until it's more polished and given that I've yet to play an MMO with combat that feels like I expect it to (outside of WoW), I don't know that I expect it'll ever be what I'm looking for.
I'll wait and see if people think the story is actually even close to KOTOR-level before I think about buying and just playing to max level.
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I thought the combat was basically the same, except I had to right click/press a key in between attacks to fill in time with regular attacks. Healing was a step back from wow, but no worse than healing eq (click target, hit spell)
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It's something about the time between actions and the time between clicking and seeing the sound/animations. Every other MMO I've played has some issue with it where it doesn't quite feel right.
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I still play AoC and the combat is still amazing so I'm getting a kick here.
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I don't think Bioware wrote "Day ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai" ("Let me grind, and you take a rest"). Although it is amusing that the first recorded Polish words translate so well to an MMO.
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Which is sad, because I though what I saw last weekend was crap.
I didn't notice a whole lot of bugs, I just thought the gameplay and graphics were shit. Particularly compared to just about any PC game released in the last 4 or 5 years. I mean seriously, it looked like a PS2 game for crissakes.
Add that to having to pay upfront, AND monthly for the game, its just not a good deal.
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^hasn't played a ps2 game lately
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It wouldn't be an internet argument without some retarded hyperbole.
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Any time someone uses "It looks like an [X SYSTEM] game!" it automatically invalidates their point. If you think it looks like a PS2 game than you either don't remember what PS2 games looked like or you're running SWTOR on a Radeon 9700.
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I went from the GeForce 3 to the 9700 and was blown away, never did end up going on to the 9800. Not only was the quality difference night and day, but I didn't have to upgrade for years. That line of Radeon cards were beasts!
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I went form GeForce 2 MX to a 9700 Pro.
I had a 9800 Pro in a Shuttle PC I built a year later when I was in Iraq that was quite awesome too.
That card ranks with the Voodoo 2 in terms of enjoying games with good settings. 9700 made AAO a blast to play and kick ass in.
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I'm running 2 8800GTs and, while it obviously doesn't look as good as a single-player game, it is still more visually impressive than any MMO I've played to date. The character models, especially, are remarkably impressive.
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Bugs were pretty minimal in the beta. Honestly, I just wanted them to go live during the past 2 betas.
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I closed the chat window during the beta weekend and it was awesome.
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I liked that I could run up to the objective to interact while someone else aggros the baddies and finish quests that way hahaha.
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I, for one, hope that WoW keeps almost ALL their subscribers.
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I just can't see them keeping it updated with fresh content regularly.
The "fully voiced" thing will hinder that. Every new quest will be more work than just having a programmer create scripts for an NPC. It's an extra pipeline that requires a lot of resources and lead time and none of it is cheap.
So basically you'll just see infrequent paid updates and people will moan about paying monthly for bug fixes.-
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Sounds like a fun pipeline when you have to setup studio time everytime you write a quest. Or when you have to add 400mbs of voice fixes to your patches.
I don't envy the quest designers on SWOTOR.
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haha I don't even know wtf half of you are babbling about.
I have been playing MMOs well before they even called them MMOs. I have also purchased and played almost every single commercial MMO except for a select few. This beta is the most polished and fun game I have played at this stage ever.
Some of you are so closed minded about things. I can't really believe half of you even played this shit for more then 5 mins with some of the comments in this thread.
I wouldn't be surprised if this game isn't the biggest MMO launch in history and dubbed the most flawless as well.
WoW had a few dungeons, a raid, and one of the worst launches in history.
SWTOR has 99% of the shit WoW has today. World PVP, Instanced PVP, Raids, Dungeons, No Tradeskill grinding, Vehicles, Space fucking ships, No God Damn Dragons, Full Voice, I CAN BE FUCKING EVIL and not just in name, but with my actions.
So I really don't know wtf everyone expecting. I had a good time, PRE-FUCKING-ORDER'D-
I would love to see WoW die or lose 200k subs, hopefully TOR can make this happen
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Of course it has more shit than WoW at launch. It's been seven years since WoW began and developers have learnt from that. WoW's launch was buggy and unstable because they didn't expect the enormous number of people to be playing it. In the end, people aren't going to compare SWTOR to WoW at launch. Nobody cares about WoW's launch, now. It will be SWTOR's launch to WoW now, which is so far ahead in every aspect. Sure, WoW had less things, but what it had was far more polished than what SWTOR has now, and more importantly, much more fun, in my opinion. Aside from the boring combat and lifeless world, there are so many things that bug me in SWTOR and I'm not even talking about the bugs. For the record, I played the bounty hunter to level 22.
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I agree with you on all fronts. The game is just plain boring and bland. I think most people who play MMO's have just come to expect MMO's to be boring and conveniently ignore it until it dawns on them that they've been running the same damn dungeon 10 times a day for the last six months. Not saying that MMO players are dumb. MMO's are just built to condition players to expect repetitious and mediocre nonsense, and sadly it seems to me that they have succeeded in that effort for the most part.
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I've played plenty of MMO's. You asked what I like to play in current tense. Regardless of whether I have any experience with MMO's, (I have plenty) it is perfectly reasonable to hold them up to the same scrutiny as any other form of entertainment. Don't get all offended because I'm willing to call something boring out for what it is to me: boring.
I'm sure there may be things you enjoy about it and by all means I'm in favor of you enjoying it. I think that it goes without saying however that MMO's are repetitious by their very nature. If you can enjoy something that is incredibly repetitious then all the power to you, but to me that is boring.
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In the MMO front, I've dabbled in Eve, SW Galaxies, AoC, Warhammer, and D&DO. I was in the beta for Matrix Online and Rift. I played quite a lot of Guild Wars pvp. I was in vanilla WoW since the beginning till just before the BC expansion, resubbed for three months when Cataclysm came out.
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So really the only MMOs I've really liked for more than a couple hours was WoW and GW.
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I would have preferred another single player KoTOR. By the time I hit 30, having to do all these filler quests so I was high enough level to see and get through the class quests got to be extremely bothersome as the gap between levels grew bigger. The novelty of every little quest having voice acting starts to wear thin by the 4th world hub. It just becomes another pack of NPCs who have annoying and simple problems only you can solve.
There are some decent side quests in there, but there's a ton of garbage too and they all kind of blow compared to the class quests. At least what I played of the Imperial Agent anyway. Fun for a while but I've had my fill and won't ever touch the game again. Not for me.
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heh, I really don't understand what they are bitching about. It's like bitching just to bitch without any kind of reason.
WoW Combat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYX2jpLsHL0
OMG SO FUUNNNN
TOR Combat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8e-Fl4D2NOE#t=88s
OMG SO FUCKING BORING AND BLAND-
You're comparing a user shot video of a dude testing his pet with a promo vid shot from angles that players won't see in combat? Do you work in PR?
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The combat really is tons of fun, way more interesting than anything I've seen in an MMO for a while.
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oh please explain why because that video looked terrible.
see this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-gkFL7G8ow this looks fun and i dont need explanation-
Looks like every other free to play MMO or action game that came before it.
DragonNest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zQeOcZSkRE -
Here is another one for you.
Soooo fun.
Vindictus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnKJpXZxmyU-
You seem unable to articulate why you think things are good or bad, but instead choose to respond with sarcasm and meaningless videos.
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oh yeah Mr tough guy? Ever played Kingdom of Drakkar?
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*I can hear you googling it now* ;)
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I don't remember if this is it, but did you ever play the one on CompuServe? I can't recall the name.
My parents almost killed me when the CompuServe bill for that came...-
OK. You are talking about something different. I did find the old CompuServe game though... :) How many of you have played this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_Kesmai
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There is a picture of the awesome "graphics" at the top of this gamespy article: http://www.gamespy.com/articles/110/1107250p2.html
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The Beta convinced 3 friends of mine who swore they'd never play an MMO. All 3 are sold.
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10 million is still alot
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WoW has leaked subs, had subscription dents and fluctuations with every MMO release. I think Blizzard actually acknowledged that Warhammer and Age of Conan caused several subscriptions to be cancelled, eventually the users returned to WoW.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/blizzard-warhammer-players-already-returning-to-warcraft
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Since WoW is losing subs like its cool now, WoW is the WoW killer :D
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I'm just pissed off this dick head (yes I'm aware he's a successful CEO that has the backing of the board and shareholders) is riding the success of something he had nothing to do with (Blizzard and WoW).
For all that I know the money I pay for WoW is going into making new DJ Heros.
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Read this post here: http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=27154850#item_27154850 .
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Whatever. I wanted to play a good Star Wars MMO. After SWG disappointed, I kinda didn't think it would be happening. TOR is really fun though and it's based on one of the substories that I've really learned to love in the Star Wars universe. My guildies and I are all pumped for it.
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What was the first symptom called? Denial?
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That's because the beta weekend ended. lol, They had no choice.
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He can shrug off whatever he wants, but SWTOR is going to be HUGE. I'd be surprised if it didn't pass up WoW in a few years. I just finished playing in the beta and that game is legit, story done right in an MMO for the first time. SWTOR seems to do everything well (or better) that WoW does, and doesn't make any of the mistakes.
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I'd be surprised if it didn't pass up WoW in a few years.
Would you put money on that? What level did you play up to? -
I feel bad for you and anyone else holding TOR up on this ridiculous pedestal.
I've played an awful lot of TOR, more than most here that is for sure (2 max level character, countless characters in the 10-20 area) and while I certainly believe it to be an amazing game it isn't anywhere close to as good as posts like this make it out to be; and it will never surpass WoW in any quantifiable way.
I'm especially sad for those of you thinking that A) The story remains as solid throughout the game as it does in the early portions and B) those that think it will have any end-game to speak of. Now, B has the oppurtunity to change but not in any time span that will matter and A is pretty much set in stone at this point.
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I love this video gaming news that has nothing to do with actual video gaming. Do us a favour Shacknews and stop reporting on pointless financial stories that interest no one but shareholders and trolls.
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sometimes you don't even need profiles!
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