EA puts faith in The Old Republic's lifespan and profits

@SiML

If open-space combat is such a game breaker for the majority of players, then the majority of players can go play SWG where the space combat is awesome and open 3D space. The majority of players won't care about the controversial ground game changes since the majority of players only care about space combat anyways.

Right?

@RogueJedi86

Oh I'm not saying TOR will fail because it doesn't have free-form space combat - I think it will do very well with its vanilla-standard release content.
What i'm saying is It won't live up to all the hype and image most starwars fans have of the perfect all-round starwars experience until it is slightly less of a themepark and has a better space experience add-on. Theres plenty of time for that, it could come in a couple of years from now.

@SiML Well, I hated space combat in KotOR 1+2, and preferred the mods to disable it. Avoiding space combat is a plus for me.

@GeneralStobo

true, but I must agree that if they were to implement a more X-wing or Tie Fighter type space combat as opposed to the rail-shooter, it would sparkle the eye of more than a few people like myself that miss the days of space combat sims...

now, to their credit I did see the rail shooter vids and I must admit it's *VERY* well done, but even the best rail shooter is no match for a true space combat sim.

@GeneralStobo

Yep, yet more interference from LucasArts re: game design... just like they cocked up Kotor II by insisting Bioware try to make the fall release (which is why it was offloaded to Obsidian).
While I agree with you that Space Combat was never the focus of TOR, I can tell you Galaxies is not gonna last another 10 years, so Bioware had better start trying to shoehorn more player-requested features into what will be the only serious StarWars MMO, and not be quite so precious about their beloved game design. At the end of the day a successful MMO does listen to and try to implement player-requested features.

@Arkanaloth

The problem is properly meshing the game's priorities. Is it a character progression focused game or a space sim? They are two very different game genres, each requiring very different designs. The fidelity of flight physics you might need for space combat isn't needed for normal game world interactions. You would end up spending time developing two games instead of one.

The main thing is that TOR is not a space combat sim. It is focused on the characters of the Universe and their planetary conflicts. I think the on-rails approach lets them add some of that space combat flare without having to develop a completely separate game within the game.

@GeneralStobo

Lucasarts which also killed SWG with it's "Iconic" NGE classes. Some people say it died with the combat upgrade. But I don't think I actually saw anyone leave because of that. People weren't happy but it didn't kill the game.

Where as the NGE basically turned the game on it's head. That when everyone, including myself left. The difference between TOR's Iconic and SWG's iconic is that TOR was built from the ground up being told it had to be iconic. Whereas SWG had the rugged pulled form under them and told to make it iconic.

@Azev

Not everyone here are haters. It's just hard to accurately figure out the success of a game that we haven't even played yet. And to be honest, I don't really trust most CEOs.

And yes I do know three people who work at EA. None of them know the budget for the game, the closest any of them got was working on motion capture.