Voice overs potentially ToRs downfall?

You're Malkavin right? Mah eyes!!!

I agree with you completely on this. The story/voice overs are by far and away my favorite part about this game, but none of the side quests are really worth watching. I only ever watch the main story quests and the main world arcs, but I play this game entirely for it's story. Something is wrong there.

I think the conversation needs to stop being approached as if it was one entity's decision to have voice overs drive the game. When this game was being developed, there was already a MMO that was Star Wars themed, and the motivations for EA, Bioware, and LucasArts were most likely different in nature. LucasArts already had an MMO Star Wars game, but obviously there was room in their eyes for improvement because SWTOR exists... they had to give the go-ahead. EA obviously saw a cash cow, and wanted to make a game that could capitalize on the gigantic size of the potential audience (an existing Star Wars MMO audience, plus any new Star Wars gamers they could get).

I also want to preface that I in no way view EA as a bad guy in this. Seeing a cash cow is not a bad thing; an idea needs to make money to become a game, and I truly believe that EA tried to do right by the game by throwing money and resources at one of the most respected development teams in the RPG field to make this. They were not "phoning this in".

So what most likely happened is EA had a discussion with LucasArts (well, a lot of them, but lets simplify this) where LucasArts probably asked why should we license you guys to create a game that competes with our currently licensed game? EA says we make lots of MMO's, we know what we are doing. LucasArts says that Sony also makes those games and knew what they were doing. EA says that they have Bioware to make it. LucasArts probably asks for a refresher on who Bioware is. EA says that they made the Mass Effect games.

LucasArts knows that it's that highly popular sci fi game, jots down some key components that make up why mass effect is so popular (narrative, voice overs, choices that affect your character and the story, romance options). They get back to EA and say for them to give the new Star Wars MMO the Bioware treatment and we have a deal.

From here, there may have been some interpretation, EA manages Bioware to create a multiplayer Bioware game in the Star Wars universe and then to add all of the popular MMO trappings. Mix it all together, and you have SWTOR.

Now, why do I think it happened this way? Because that's usually how business between companies goes; you find out what your client (LucasArts) wants and then you do it; it is now part of the spec and there's no more discussion about it because the bottom line becomes "the client wants it, so if we want to do this, it needs to have it".

I don't think this is bad, and really the narrative is what seperates this game from others. People are playing this MMO for the star wars story, and the narrative is really the driving force behind this; and the narrative is as powerful as it is because of the voice acting.

One last thing though is that I feel that the OP's statement about Voice Overs being the potential downfall of SWTOR is silly; Bioware and EA knew this was the direction they were going in from the beginning, and because of this, they had to have taken steps to make sure that new content could be added easily as anyone doing a brief analysis of the MMO landscape can tell that users outgrow original content, and frequent updates are needed to keep players interested. It's the same thing that is said by each developer of these games; that their game is going to have regular and substantial updates to set them aside from their competitors. We get told that this is why the subscription happens and why we're paying monthly.

And to dispel one more comment about the voice overs; this game was actually successful at launch... there was a good subscription base and initial sales were great for an MMO now a days. No, it wasn't the WOW killer; but no company makes an MMO with the requirement that it be a WOW killer or else it gets shut down, that's just foolish.

Somewhere along the way the updates ball was dropped. If it is for some unlikely reason the fault of Voice Overs, then the ball was dropped when either Bioware didn't tell EA that this would be cost prohibitive and time intensive, or when they didn't build their tools around updating the most unique portion of their game.

I would like to think Bioware did not neglect to tell EA something like this, nor build their tools to not take into account the foundation of their game's uniqueness.

So somewhere else the ball is being dropped on content updates. I doubt it's the voiceovers, and I doubt voiceovers are the future reason for this game's downfall, if it happens.

EA was not involved when TOR was started on.
The reason hey paid so much for Bioware was because of TOR

If their smart they will be able to continue the level of emersion by making everything but main story lines not in English. If 90% of convos are talking to alien Same emersion, no extra recording.

Ok, well the jist of it is there. My mistake.

Bioware was the one that had to convince LucasArts then of the idea, or it was more first hand knowledge and actually makes me believe even more firmly that Voice Overs can't be the reason why the content ball has been dropped. Bioware says we'll give it the ol' Bioware treatment, LucasArts likes the idea, and yeah, Bioware knows from the beginning that the client wants it to be a Bioware game with all the fix'ns.

Fair statement.

So where is all this new VO/cutscene content? I mean its easy to make so why are the new dailies terminal quests? Why is the new expansion comming without new class stories... even though there is a level cap increase?

We, as the gamers, cannot control this decision and future content. It has already been stated several chapters are done.

When they run out, if they money is there (because they had subs), voice acting is pretty damn easy to obtain (unless a voice actor dies or doesn't come back).

I knew we would agree on something eventually :