Pietrastor Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 But the biggest focus for our team in BioWare Austin will be on Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. As every Star Wars™ fan knows, this is a massive year in the Star Wars universe. We have some great plans for expanding this epic game this year, and look forward to sharing the news about those plans with our players in the coming weeks. full announcement: https://shadowrealms.com/blog/an-important-update-on-shadow-realms?sf36160139=1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickious Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 I feel like this is good news. Is it good news? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TUXs Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 (edited) full announcement: https://shadowrealms.com/blog/an-important-update-on-shadow-realms?sf36160139=1 Whoa! Good. But I'll hold my belief that this means anything for SWTOR until I see it. Until then, just more smoke and mirrors. Edited February 9, 2015 by TUXs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarthDymond Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 But the biggest focus for our team in BioWare Austin will be on Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. As every Star Wars™ fan knows, this is a massive year in the Star Wars universe. We have some great plans for expanding this epic game this year, and look forward to sharing the news about those plans with our players in the coming weeks. If this ends up being fundamentally true, with just some PR flavoring (as opposed to pure PR poodoo), then I think that's a good thing for this game. Even so, I've got to think cancelling BW Austin's only other game that had even gotten to the point of being announced is a significant black mark for the studio, and could have some negative implications for the funding EA would be willing to budget it in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XiamaraSimi Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 Heres to hoping they actually follow through on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wiredgutter Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 Hmm I really wasn't to interested in shadow realms but I barely knew anything about it. I'm a huge fan of DA, ME, and swtor so it seems to be good news from my standpoint Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TUXs Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 If this ends up being fundamentally true, with just some PR flavoring (as opposed to pure PR poodoo), then I think that's a good thing for this game. Even so, I've got to think cancelling BW Austin's only other game that had even gotten to the point of being announced is a significant black mark for the studio, and could have some negative implications for the funding EA would be willing to budget it in the future. I very seriously doubt this means anything good for SWTOR...it's not like they're going to keep the 200 Devs (I'm guessing) that were coding Shadow Realms and send em over to this game. They gambled huge on Shadow Realms and lost...this is the absolute opposite of "good news" for Bioware Austin since they need more than a shell of a game (SWTOR) to remain relevant. I suspect we will see Austin closed in the next year and all development moved to another office. The mismanagement out of Austin is why it needs to close imo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
menofhorror Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 We`ll see. Bioware Austin is always just like EA all talk. Let actions speak now words. Sure I am glad to see this but I don`t want to get optimistic only to be dissapointed again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pietrastor Posted February 9, 2015 Author Share Posted February 9, 2015 I suspect we will see Austin closed in the next year and all development moved to another officeThis makes no sense lol, MMO in active developement is not a plant you can just move to new office and water from time to time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TUXs Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 This makes no sense lol, MMO in active developement is not a plant you can just move to new office and water from time to time Yeah, you're right...with all the obvious development this game gets, I'm sure they'd never be able to replace the handful of Devs working on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerba Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 (edited) I'll just go ahead and quote what I wrote in the other threat. Well, it's nice to finally have a conclusive statement about the game. The last month there was confusion what happened to the game and apparently they were at that time still investigating how to move forward with the game. Apparently, they saw no future about the game, but in a way I can also understand it, because while the feedback from testers was positive, no one was really blown away by the concept. Sadly, I doubt this will have a good effect on SWTOR. The developers who moved from SWTOR to Shadow Realms have not been working on SWTOR for more than a year, so they have not been involved in GSF, GSH or SoR, maybe not even in RotHC. They can't be just reintegrated back into the SWTOR team since other devs have taken their place, and I can imagine that they are now ready to move onto another fresh game or even a different company. The new dev team is great, don't get me wrong, but looking back now, I still think Shadow Realms had a negative impact on the game. A lot of the head designers of SWTOR left the game and were replaced by junior designers with not so much experience. We now have developers that listen more to the players and are willing to change their stance, albeit not always, while at the same time we have more bugs, though this may also be due to budget cuts. Of course, even if this news does not bring the devs back, it hopefully means a bigger budget for SWTOR. Oh well, we never get the full story on executive decisions, so I may be completely off the mark here. What always angers me is the lack of transparency. For months now, the developers of Shadow Realms were left in the dark, not knowing if their game will ever be released, but still having to do something. Now hearing that the game is cancelled must be frustrating for them, especially after they talked about how Shadow Realms was their pet peeve and reminded them of their pen-and-paper games. Edited February 9, 2015 by Jerba Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heat-Wave Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 I feel like this is good news. Is it good news? It is PR spin... they are trying to make the cancellation of a game in progress sound good, so they mention SWTOR so you don't notice that they canceled a game that was well into development. They claim to have exciting expansion plans for 2015. Well, they had such plans for 2014. Putting side GSF and GSH, which were content to be sure, but side content compared to the core of the game... how was 2014? What new basic ground combat content did we get in 2014? We got 4 tactical flashpoints, the Forged Alliances, and we got Shadow of Revan, a mini expansion with a mini-planet and a daily area, and 2 new ops. Is this good? Personally I think it was the bare minimum they could have done to keep the game "alive", but it sure didn't compare to 2013 which had a LOT more stuff released. Now we have 3.1 launching tomorrow, the only "new" content in it will be HM versions of the two new tacticals. But that was developed before 3.0 launched anyway, you can even see the bonus boss areas on the map, which currently have nothing in them. And HM versions of 2 FP aren't really "new" content. So maybe April we'll see something new, a new daily area.... We might get 2 of those this year, and probably another 2 ops along the way, and maybe 2-4 new FP. Oh wow, exciting... I'd love to be wrong, I really would. But that is what I expect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heat-Wave Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 Of course, even if this news does not bring the devs back, it hopefully means a bigger budget for SWTOR. If it had, they would have said so... PR loves to talk about such stuff... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pietrastor Posted February 9, 2015 Author Share Posted February 9, 2015 Yeah, you're right...with all the obvious development this game gets, I'm sure they'd never be able to replace the handful of Devs working on it. It doesn;t matter how many are working on it. Moving it to a new office would require months of training new people in TOR-specific dev tools, adapting them with the engine, the projects cancelled and still in developement. Servers, community etc. All while keeping the game running. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerba Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 (edited) If it had, they would have said so... PR loves to talk about such stuff... Of course, it totally depends on the person making the budget decisions and his confidence in the studio. If Bioware gets the same budget as before, they can now make more investments into SWTOR or maybe even new games. On the other hand, if the execs feel that Shadow Realms was too big of a mistake, they may even reduce the budget or replace the person(s) in charge of the Austin studio. But I doubt they'd completely close SWTOR down, at least not while the game is still this profitable, it is the only Star Wars game at the moment with no competetition, and while they're doing so much advertisement for it. The studio can't be that bad just because they developed a game that got cancelled. it's not like they're going to keep the 200 Devs (I'm guessing) that were coding Shadow Realms and send em over to this game. 200 seems a little far-fetched, the game was still very early in development. I'd say more around 50 developers, with only a fraction of them actually taken from SWTOR. And I agree, those devs can't just be integrated into SWTOR, the games are too different, so they might as well hire new devs instead. Edited February 9, 2015 by Jerba Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TUXs Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 200 seems a little far-fetched, the game was still very early in development. I'd see more around 50 developers, with only a fraction of them actually taken from SWTOR. I only guessed that since we know 800 worked on SWTOR, 1/4th seemed reasonable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth_Wicked Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 (edited) I saw this one coming from a mile away to be honest. Kinda wish I hadn't though. Edited February 9, 2015 by Darth_Wicked Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickious Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 Wow mods are active today, why was this moved to offtopic? Its pretty relevant to swtor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerba Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 (edited) There's also an interesting discussion on Reddit about it in case you haven't seen it: When I first read the announcement, I missed this sentence, but it does tell us a lot about this year: As every Star Wars™ fan knows, this is a massive year in the Star Wars universe. We have some great plans for expanding this epic game this year, and look forward to sharing the news about those plans with our players in the coming weeks. From EA's financial report we know that EA wants to ride the Episode 7 wave with the Battlefront game. So, this does sound a little like the little brother who also wants a share of the cake. It would be idiocy to not do some Episode 7 promotion for SWTOR, so I can understand that they are doing it, but I doubt it will be as big as they claim if EA puts all Star Wars marketing budget into Battlefront. Also, comparing this to the final publication of the 2015 roadmap, I can't help but wonder if the Shadow Realms devs are now working on SWTOR after all. A new expansion only loosely tied to the base game like GSF was would be a great opportunity to bring in a separate dev team without impacting the main SWTOR devs. We'll find out eventually. Edited February 9, 2015 by Jerba Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pietrastor Posted February 9, 2015 Author Share Posted February 9, 2015 (edited) From EA's financial report we know that EA wants to ride the Episode 7 wave with the Battlefront game. So, this does sound a little like the little brother who also wants a share of the cake. It would be idiocy to not do some Episode 7 promotion for SWTOR, so I can understand that they are doing it, but I doubt it will be as big as they claim if EA puts all Star Wars marketing budget into Battlefront. We know that EA definitely wants lil' bro TOR to benefit from Episode 7 hype, they let it be known during their earnings call Star Wars: The Old Republic also contributed to the segment with the expansion, Shadow of Revan, attracting many more people into the with its epic new storyline. Star Wars fans remain deeply engaged in The Old Republic universe, and we're more excited to see how that will build, as we get closer to the launch of the new Star Wars movie in December."]Star Wars: The Old Republic also contributed to the segment with the expansion, Shadow of Revan, attracting many more people into the with its epic new storyline. Star Wars fans remain deeply engaged in The Old Republic universe, and we're more excited to see how that will build, as we get closer to the launch of the new Star Wars movie in December. http://seekingalpha.com/article/2856356-electronic-arts-ea-ceo-andrew-wilson-on-q3-2015-results-earnings-call-transcript?page=3 Remains to be seen how much they will invest themselves in marketing and how muhc will they just try to ride on free Ep 7 Disney promo Edited February 9, 2015 by Pietrastor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heat-Wave Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 Wow mods are active today, why was this moved to offtopic? Its pretty relevant to swtor The mods are based in India, as is customer service... according to the linked article above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerba Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 (edited) We know that EA definitely wants lil' bro TOR to benefit from Episode 7 hype, they let it be known during their earnings call Yeah my bad, you are right, looks like they are going to promote both SWTOR and Battlefront. I only remembered the Q&A where they mentioned it: Q: And I realize, Blake that you are not providing guidance, but perhaps as a broad stroke how you guys are thinking about your title count growth for frontline console releases in the year? A: And then, last but far from least, we've got a Battlefront, Star Wars title coming in before Christmas next year, aligned with the Star Wars movie rollout. We're extremely excited about that and we think there is huge potential for that title. More to come in the next couple of months on that as more about the movie comes out as well as more about our titles comes out, but you should consider that a very large activity for us next year and very large focus, similar to how we thought about Battlefields in the past. The mods are based in India, as is customer service... according to the linked article above. Definitely not true. The forum mods have a habit of letting threads live during the weekend and nuking them when they get in the office on Monday, and their work hours match up with the Austin timezone. Most of SWTOR's customer service is based in Ireland, especially the persons answering in-game tickets, and those are also active on the weekend as well as during the night. So they are a different team than the forum mods. The English phone support, on the other hand, is in fact based in India AFAIK, but I'm not entirely sure; I haven't had much reason to call them more than once or twice yet. Edited February 9, 2015 by Jerba Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MillionsKNives Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 The mods are based in India, as is customer service... according to the linked article above. Which article? The only one in this thread that even had India anywhere in it (ctrl+f) was the one TUXs listed, but that was for voice overs, and from a random commentor. On the other hand, the article itself specifically states that customer support is based in Ireland. This goes in hand with what I've experienced, as any customer support I've received has been with people who have what sounds like an Irish accent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XiamaraSimi Posted February 9, 2015 Share Posted February 9, 2015 This goes in hand with what I've experienced, as any customer support I've received has been with people who have what sounds like an Irish accent. I was wondering about that on my last call! (Was a pleasant suprise to call a support number where not only did I understand what they were saying, but they understood what i was saying without everyone having to repeat themselves over and over!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bachannal Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 (edited) The mods are based in India, as is customer service... according to the linked article above. Customer service based out of India? This explains EVERYTHING about why the customer service for this game is atrocious. EDIT: If they're based out of Ireland, not India, then I am just saddened by how bad the service is. Edited February 10, 2015 by Bachannal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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