I doubt the game can support any 3D movement beyond jumping. They couldn't even put deep water in the game.

Lucasarts dumped a holiday deadline on Obsidian basically at the last minute. Also apparently the KotOR engine that BioWare gave to Obsidian was a bug-riddled mess that required numerous workarounds to use. Even with all that, KotOR II is a vastly superior game to the first one.

People vastly overestimate the size of the Star Wars fanbase. Especially after the prequels.

HE. IS. NOT. STAFF. There's a difference between a contributor and a staffer. Forbes staff is on the Forbes payroll. Forbes tells them to write an article, the staffer goes and does it. It goes through the whole editorial process. That's why some of the writers on that site are labeled "Staff" and some are labeled "Contributor." A contributor is a freelancer. They write something, then send it to Forbes, and Forbes pays them, in this case probably based on pageviews. These guys are glorified bloggers.

It's right there at the top of the page, in italics, right beneath the author's biographical blurb: "The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer."

And that's fine, but it's dishonest to try and make his argument seem more legitimate by saying the article comes from a source that it does not.

Yes, because people keep throwing around op-eds by this guy like they have any sort of journalistic pedigree, when in fact they're just blog posts.

That article is not by Forbes. What part of "Contributor" or "The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer." do people not understand?

Arbitrarily selected numbers!

I've never understood these ideas where people have you running all over the ship to disable systems like the hyperdrive or the shields if you're just going to blow up the ship anyway. Why do you even have to land on the thing if you're going to blow it up? You can do that just as well from space. Probably more easily, actually.

Yes, in fact, they do pay-to-play, therefore, the only argument for not counting paying members of the Asian market is some sort of "Three-fifths of a person" logic.

You're the last person that should be saying that.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand we're back to "Asians aren't really people so they don't count."

Because eventually, you have to start seeing a return on your investment.

I don't get how TOR was rushed. It wasn't rushed. The flaws - the lifeless worlds designed to herd players through linear corridors, the terrible on-rails space game, the questionable engine, the emphasis on story instead of gameplay - these were all design choices. Nor did EA "corrupt" BioWare, as I keep seeing. This game is exactly like KotOR, just with a multiplayer element tacked on. edit: Well, KotOR by way of WoW's mechanics instead of D&D.

Grand Moff - Point out that Vader was just a henchman thug for a skeletal old British man in Episode IV.

Difference to what? Revenue? Subscriptions are illegal in China; if TOR was released in China, it'd have to use the exact same model. And you're certifiable if you think Blizzard isn't turning a profit off Chinese players. So you're carrying on about something that is completely and totally irrelevant. Your argument is on the same level as "Asian subscriptions don't count because they're not real people."

Considering India and China alone constitute about 40% of the world's population, that's not at all surprising. It's also completely and totally irrelevant to anything.

Get all the regular content updates without an extra cost. One of the hallmarks of the f2p system is that companies play fast and loose with the definition of words like "regular".

This whole "how many are from the East" thing is the most ridiculous red herring I've ever seen on an internet forum.

Revenue for DDO rose because it really couldn't get any lower. This is a key thing people are missing, and I actually find myself wondering if EA/BioWare missed it too: Turbine's profits rose exponentially on its projects because the numbers they were starting with were so small. They look like huge successes because it's really easy to increase small numbers by huge percentages. Increase $10 to $11 and that's a 10% increase, but to get the same increase starting with $100 would require making $10 more dollars, for a total of $110. As a percentage, TOR's revenue isn't going to go up nearly as much by switching to f2p.

Sorry, I guess I just can't fathom anybody in the 21st century trying to do three-fifths of a person style math.

Maybe you could explain to me what he was trying to say. Because I have no idea. It looks like he's trying to magic the math so that WoW has fewer subscribers than TOR, but that can't be it... can it?

Water combat would require water.

Even if that stuff is true, which is debatable at best (except for the "Blizzard nerfs stuff to make people buy more", that's just a lie), he's ignoring the fact that items are sold by players, not Blizzard. edit: Not the best-selling game thing, the "Blizz lies and cheats and allows dupes and botters" thing.