Voice overs potentially ToRs downfall?

The best part of the game. Also could potentially be TORs biggest problem. We all know that leveling was the best aspect of the game. I think everyone could agree it was enjoyable, atleast the first time through. I think its going to hurt the game in the long run.

Reason 1... Voice overs are too costly to make. It takes a lot of money to not only pay the actors, for all the voice over work, but to also code everything and design cutscenes for it. The game is not doing as well as they had hoped it would do. F2P may turn that around and it may not. The funding may not be there for future voice over work.

Reason 2 ... Time it takes to create. Voice over work takes time. Not only in recording and editing but also, like above, in coding and cut scene design... syncing etc. I think that BW was pretty ambitious about future content and what they thought they could do.

I believe that because voice over work is both time consuming and costly, that it may not be that often. I dont think we will see the qaulity or quantity, of the leveling game, in the future. I think the past products are showing this already. We have had no story updates. The new dailies are all from a terminal, instead of quest givers with voice over. The planet Makeb has said to have world arc stories but no class stories and no companion stories, even though there will be a level cap increase. Sadly, I think the best part of the game is going to fall to the wayside for quicker and cheaper content. I also believe that this will turn away those that play the game for that experience alone. If that happens it will only get worse.

I think they would have been better off using voice over work for class story and companions as well as major world arc stories. I think all the side quests they should have just been like a terminal or the standard text box. This would have saved them in budget and time and those resources could have been allocated elsewhere. I dont expect to see the same quality as we had at launch, in the future.

I enjoy the voice overs. But...

I agree that if they spent as much time as they did perfecting the voice over content and spent 100,200 mill on the core of the game itself we would have a full flight space game, chat bubbles, customizable ships, more planets, faster load speeds, more classes, races, more spaceships to choose from, more things to encounter, and they could have had every planet being level 1-50 content. Want to level on Hoth? BAM! Want to level on Tatooine? BAM! Want to level any planet any time? BAM!

If they didn't put all their eggs into one basket such as strictly voice over, they could have had A LOT more things to do in this game. It's nice and all listening to the stories, for I LOVE the immersion, but I do agree with you. We would be getting content at a MUCH faster rate and I doubt it would have gone f2p option. That's honestly what I think about the whole thing.

if they ONLY did class voiceovers and all else normal then I agree there would have been much more time for innovation and management of other areas.

Think about the manpower and management involved with implementing hundreds of hours of voiceovers and graphics and synching, etc.

You need to involve so many groups. Also, this is time taken away from management who could otherwise be overseeing another part of the game.

shoulda/woulda/coulda. doesn't matter now though ...

You are correct. Class missions would have been GREAT for them to do. But nothing else. All others could have been done like when you get a new mission from the bounty box, just pops up and you accept it That's what I honestly think. When I truly think about it now. wow..did I just say that? lol

Voice overs have nothing to do with the failure of this single player online RPG.

if you are going to say it's a single player game then so is wow, tera, eve, aion, dcuo, and all the rest because every single one of them you can solo easy, no problem.

MMO is = having hundreds or thousands (considered massive) of people all online at the same time playing with each other in a world/universe. That's an mmo.

actually I agree with OP to an extent. But the true downfall of this game and then needing to go the f2p option is EA rushing it out the door (i.e. warhammer online) and EA constantly firing the people who had a certain vision for this game when BioWare was BIOWARE and not EAWARE and them dismantling the greatest gaming company that once existed! THATS what ruined this game. BioWare had a vision, before EA. BioWare was making it what the fans wanted. Then EA bought BioWare and EA thought they could make it a cash cow. All they saw was BioWare + mmo + Star Wars= money!!! They don't care about reputations, they only care about money. How cold.

EA

This would have rocked. I think it would have retained alot more subs this way. Your post was pretty much what I was getting at.

Repeating this tired canard (especially while maintaining a sub) shows how little weight anyone should give to your ideas.

I don't think it's going to be that much of a problem for them. If they really wanted to cut costs,they can recycle old voice overs adding bits and pieces to cover new content. As well as recycling alien voice overs, it all sounds the same just different sub titles lol.