Bad PR from SWTOR, why?

[emge]

Today I stumbled upon this http://images.bit-tech.net/content_images/2011/04/star-wars-the-old-republic-preview/3.jpg image from SWTOR. And it stuck me, does this look like a screenshot from a future MMO whitch there is being spent 2-300 million dollars on, or one from a random 5-10 year old game?

Why do they release images, screenshots and videos that look so bad it feels like it's not going to be worth the intial cost of just buying the game?

It's almost as if they are trying to keep the publics expectations so low we will be mind blown when we see how good the game actually looks.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[Woodsey]

That's an old image, and they've not even been beta-testing all that long.

 

[Irridium]

Most of the money is going towards the voice acting.

And besides, if the game is as expensive as rumored, you'd want to keep the graphics on the low end so you can sell to as many people as possible.

 

[Gralian]

Because, as i keep saying, a new MMO does not have the 7 years of patching that monoliths like WoW have. It's going to come out ugly, buggy and like every other MMO launch. SWTOR won't be anything special until a year from now, and that's if it hasn't tanked already. Given the risky nature of the MMO niche market - i'd say that's highly likely. Especially with EA handling it.

 

[shasjas]

Because, as i keep saying, a new MMO does not have the 7 years of patching that monoliths like WoW have. It's going to come out ugly, buggy and like every other MMO launch. SWTOR won't be anything special until a year from now, and that's if it hasn't tanked already. Given the risky nature of the MMO niche market - i'd say that's highly likely. Especially with EA handling it.

exactly. why cant they just make KOTOR 3 instead of an MMO thats most likely going to fail unless its extraordinarily lucky.

 

[dangoball]

does http://www.bagar.estranky.cz/img/original/1/wow.jpg look that much better than the picture in the first post? I don't think so. Why? Now let me use one argument (or two) that have been said many times before: it's NOT a god forsaken HALO! You do not expect an MMO to have graphics like FPS, alright? And, as was stated somewhere above, it's intended for a mass (as in Massive Multiplayer Online) of players, so you it doesn't automatically assume every one has the latest hardware on their desk.
That might seem like one argument said twice in different way, however, that is due to the fact I consider it as important as noting that we lack jet shoes if someone suggest using jet shoes to save ourself from utter destruction.

 

[Jamboxdotcom]

I'd like to know what world you're living in where that screen looks bad. It doesn't look amazing, but it's by no means bad. Also, as has been noted MMOs tend not to be as graphically intensive as smaller games, because of the other processing constraints and the need for a bigger audience.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

Because, as i keep saying, a new MMO does not have the 7 years of patching that monoliths like WoW have. It's going to come out ugly, buggy and like every other MMO launch. SWTOR won't be anything special until a year from now, and that's if it hasn't tanked already. Given the risky nature of the MMO niche market - i'd say that's highly likely. Especially with EA handling it.

exactly. why cant they just make KOTOR 3 instead of an MMO thats most likely going to fail unless its extraordinarily lucky.

It ~is~ KotOR 3, and 4 through 11. =p Each class has its own full story mode that lasts longer than the original KotOR.

 

[AlternatePFG]

Because, as i keep saying, a new MMO does not have the 7 years of patching that monoliths like WoW have. It's going to come out ugly, buggy and like every other MMO launch. SWTOR won't be anything special until a year from now, and that's if it hasn't tanked already. Given the risky nature of the MMO niche market - i'd say that's highly likely. Especially with EA handling it.

exactly. why cant they just make KOTOR 3 instead of an MMO thats most likely going to fail unless its extraordinarily lucky.

It ~is~ KotOR 3, and 4 through 11. =p Each class has its own full story mode that lasts longer than the original KotOR.

How much of that story mode will be grind? :V

Seriously, I don't mind grind but I think how BioWare is advertising like this is the quality of multiple KOTOR games is silly.

Anyway, that screen doesn't look horrible (extremely jaggy however) but pretty much everything I've seen of this game fails to impress me.

 

[dangoball]

It ~is~ KotOR 3, and 4 through 11. =p Each class has its own full story mode that lasts longer than the original KotOR.

That ~is~ what they said in one preview but I wouldn't bet on it. The story aspect is one that got me interested in SWTOR (apart it being SW) and hey, any kind of story is better than go-kill-fetch adventure of any other MMORPG, but with story instances - flashpoints - being repeatable, I have some doubt. Better not to get your hopes up much.

 

[Gwarr]

Every time somebody mentions this game to me I cannot get over the DULL graphics . No , I don't know how many pixels they have , but it's DULL . I get bored only watching photos of this game , which is bad . Maybe it's just me , but I doubt it .

Anyway , if this games fails , Ea is in big big trouble , it invested shit-load of money into it

 

[mduncan50]

Looks fine to me. More important that the game is fun, rather than have the best graphics so half of the people who want to play will have a crap experience because their computer isn't good enough.

 

[bob1052]

Today I stumbled upon this http://images.bit-tech.net/content_images/2011/04/star-wars-the-old-republic-preview/3.jpg image from SWTOR. And it stuck me, does this look like a screenshot from a future MMO whitch there is being spent 2-300 million dollars on, or one from a random 5-10 year old game?

Why do they release images, screenshots and videos that look so bad it feels like it's not going to be worth the intial cost of just buying the game?

It's almost as if they are trying to keep the publics expectations so low we will be mind blown when we see how good the game actually looks.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

That's not even the worst of it. All of the gameplay they have revealed looks a few years old too.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

It ~is~ KotOR 3, and 4 through 11. =p Each class has its own full story mode that lasts longer than the original KotOR.

That ~is~ what they said in one preview but I wouldn't bet on it. The story aspect is one that got me interested in SWTOR (apart it being SW) and hey, any kind of story is better than go-kill-fetch adventure of any other MMORPG, but with story instances - flashpoints - being repeatable, I have some doubt. Better not to get your hopes up much.

Considering they had to voice 250,000 lines of dialogue vs. 30,000 lines in Mass Effect, I'd say they've got us covered. =p

 

[moose49408]

It never ceases to amaze me how quick people are to judge something based on relatively little information. You can't possibly hope to get an accurate picture of something based on a single image, or a short review/description of a few features. If there's anything that games should have taught us in recent years its that no one feature (gameplay, graphics, story, presentation, etc) can make or break a game. It's all about how the entire package works together. I for one will reserve judgment for (or against) SWTOR until I (emphasis on that actually being me) get an opportunity to play the game for myself and see how all of these features work together.

Now, that disclaimer said, I'll be quite honest that I couldn't care less how the game looks; most MMOs don't even come close to measuring up to normal single player game level graphics, due entirely to the demand of having to generate so much more than "normal" games have to. If bioware can actually manage to deliver on half of their promises to make this game about story rather than grind/character leveling for the sake of grind/character leveling this might actually the first MMO that I can bring myself to play for more than a week or two before completely loosing interest.

 

[Tohuvabohu]

It looks good. For a Gamecube game. Seriously, I don't care whether or not you want to make a game that can run on any system, you should still start with modern graphics and then make it highly scalable. And given that screenshots/videos are always taken at the highest possible settings to show off, I am not impressed.

Black Prophecy, a F2P MMO, looks a lot better than TOR does. Doesn't bode well for the game. You can claim all the advanced story features you want, but at the end of the day MMOs come down to repetition, and people at least want something nice to look at while doing the same things over and over.

Just how important are the game's graphics? Because, I really don't think how "pretty" the game looks has much to do with how enjoyable it is overall.
I remember Age of Conan, I remember how pretty it was, but I also remember the astronomical amount of ass that game sucked. Sure it was pretty to look at while grinding, but that honestly didn't make any difference. I thought the game was just all around awful. Based on that very relevant experience, it's at least why I believe appearance doesn't have much to do with the goodness of a game.

 

[hermes]

I really hope this does well, since with the amount of effort and money they throw into this black hole; if it fail, it will fail big time for a lot of talented people (besides, I don't share the general "EA hate").

However, every time I see anything that is not a CGI trailer, I am concerned about the direction of this game. The game is being marketed as a WoW killer, yet it doesn't look like it tries to diferenciate enough. Creatively, the universe is not richer than The Clone Wars, and Gameplay-wise it plays and feel the same as any other MMO before it. A fully voiced campaign is nice, but its not what the MMORPG crowd cares about.

The Star Wars franchise is a good franchise to set an MMO, but other big franchises (Matrix, Star Trek, Conan, DC comics, LEGO, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars again, etc) have already tried to compite with World of Warcraft and failed miserably...