Jef

You guys realize that they'll likely be charging a regular subscription fee plus the microtransactions right?

Lol, all of this 'oh the RMT will save you money' sentiment is a little naive.

All of these comments, particularly the ones about 'success' and 'failure' are completely subjective, and thus, rather worthless.

Who is to say what DF's developer defines as success? I'll wager its nothing more than making a return on their investment, which is very probable.

Will it compete with WoW and the rest of its clones that have taken over? Absolutely not, but that doesn't mean its a failure, except in the eyes of people who prefer the more common type of gameplay.

DF is really a blip on the radar screen of the common online gamer, and rightly so, its not designed for them and never has been.

@seare:

No one said it was a conspiracy, genius, only that they're very reluctant to give out real information. Ultimately, that doesn't matter to unthinking fanboys like yourself, who will lap up whatever is spoon-fed to them because it says Bioware and Star Wars on the box.

For those who care to look deeper however, it could turn out to be an interesting, and not altogether positive, industry shift.

Time will tell.

True, they haven't released the payment model yet (to be honest they haven't released much information of substance at all, hence the speculation).

To your point B, where have they said its going to have all of the mmo services, and what exactly is their definition of those services? I'm not splitting hairs, I'd just really like to know if they've provided even a bare minimum feature list, because I haven't seen anything other than vague generalities about an awesome story.

I agree that we can't judge until we've played it, but I fear that one of these studios is going to up the subscription ante on what amounts to a single player game with a chat room, and because of all the fanboy goodwill towards Bioware and the underlying IP, this game would seem a golden opportunity for them to try something like that. I hope I'm wrong, but reading between the lines of everything that's been said about this game so far isn't doing anything to disprove my hypothesis.

I think the article is probably accurate in regards to postulating that SWTOR is going to be more of a co-op multiplayer game than a true MMORPG.

However, in my opinion, this is not 'innovation' as much as it is capitalism, simply because they're going to charge MMORPG subscription rates for what is, in effect, the multiplayer mode of a single player RPG. This has long been the holy grail for these gaming executives: recurring revenue, and I'm surprised that no one in the gaming press has put this question to Bioware.

Their shiny marketing-speak trumpeting story is all well and good, but at the end of the day, if we're all paying $15.00 a month for a glorified version of KOTOR 3, I think Bioware and EA will be having the last laugh, and I really hope people are smart enough to not buy into the recurring revenue for single player games model currently being espoused by Rock Star and other development houses.