I want to say I doubt story will be on the back burner because this game's drive is on story.

 

That was the case with DEV team 1, but this is DEV team 3. And this team seems less interested in the RPG element of the game

That was the case with DEV team 1, but this is DEV team 3. And this team seems less interested in the RPG element of the game

 

Well then if that is the case once I finish my Warrior and if they refuse to make Kel Dor a playable race for my Jedi Knight they have lost another subscriber. PvP isn't enough to keep me playing and I only want to do Flashpoints/Operations once.

That was the case with DEV team 1, but this is DEV team 3. And this team seems less interested in the RPG element of the game

 

Where did you get that idea?

Where did you get that idea?

 

2 things

 

In all the work force restructuring the writers seem to have been hit hard, the guy that used to be head writer for the republic is now head of all writing. That is just one known example of how the writing team has changed

 

At gamescon there was that interview with the guy saying the main drive for now is OPs, flashpoints and warzones

 

I hope I'm wrong. But think of it this way. New people have been put in charge to change the fortune of this game, there is a good chance the direction of the game is also changed. The first DEV team tried to put the RPG into MMORPG, now there gone. It makes sense the new team are here to take the game back in a more conventional direction

 

The game is not a charity it has to be profitable. All the changes made are surely to do with money. And one really big expense is story

Edited August 29, 2012 by grandmthethird

Are they ALL gone, really? I know quite a few have gone, but I didn't see where everyone was replaced. I'm pretty sure for at least time being, they certainly are focusing on Ops and WZs because that's where they are lacking the most. Creating whole chapters of story is likely a very time consuming and expensive venture, so I wouldn't expect to see any significant expansion to that until they they are on the upswing in profits. Assuming they can get there. It's business, I understand their position. However, I haven't seen a reason to believe the entire philosophy/vision of the game has shifted radically to intentionally leaving the story behind. It's been the selling point and one thing that really stands out among all the other MMOs. It's one of the few things that's really keeping a lot of people on board. Edited August 29, 2012 by chuixupu

The problem with talking about what all of the corporate shuffling BW means is that we really have no idea of the context of any of the moves. Writing is only part of the process of production on these games. They could easily have already finished the writing for a full expansion pack and still be a year away from being far enough into production to be ready to announce it. Good script writers who are willing to work for the kind of money the gaming industry pays compared to the screen writers guild are hard to come by, and BW is presumably in the process of creating a new franchise to replace Mass Effect which they might want some of their more experienced people working on. All we can really say is that right now BW thinks they are at a point where they need fewer full time writers working on TOR. That is a very different thing than saying they are abandoning production on the story. At a guess I would bet it takes around 250 man hours to turn a single page of script into finished content and they've had a writing team producing copy for like five years now.

I have no doubt that there will be a Chapter 4, and more, it will most likely just be a while before we get it. I could easily see them releasing new Ops, Flashpoints, and Warzones every 6 weeks and releasing new Chapters as big up dates. Personally, I would hope that there would be a new Chapter each year.

what i wrote is an imo post, and in no way is gospel, i just took what we do know from certain interviews and logically looked at why these things are happening. i am not trolling or hating in any way, i love the story, heck i even started a thread called "rate the story you have played" i myself have played 4 toons all the way through for the story and am on my 5th. and there is nothing i want more than more story

 

but i am a realist and i truely do think the direction of the game has changed with the changing of the devs, if not then there would be no need to change the devs. and its not that i think more story is out of the question, but i think the only way we will get is if 2 things happen.

 

1) the game starts making decent profits - this is by far the most important thing

 

2) we, the community keep banging our drums, and make sure the new dev team realize how important the story is to us. the buzz word feedback

I would not until after the next novel.

 

So Christmas is looking good.

but i am a realist and i truely do think the direction of the game has changed with the changing of the devs, if not then there would be no need to change the devs. and its not that i think more story is out of the question, but i think the only way we will get is if 2 things happen.

 

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I really can't anyway...it's all conjecture on either side. You have read into the various interviews a feeling of moving away form the story, but I have read the same things and got the impression it's still something they're very much interested in pursuing.. There is a difference between putting something on the back-burner and completely changing their vision. Only time will tell...or else a clear statement from the developers.

But also keep in mind that changing developers on a game is not all that uncommon and it happens for many reasons, even for a game enjoying a high amount of success. There are several different teams in SWTOR. There's the Ops team, the WZs team, the story writing team, the space missions team.

 

One thing for sure though, if the game's profits don't rise after going f2p, then you won't be seeing a lot of things in the future. Whatever the developers want to do, the profits are going to determine the budget.

2 things

 

In all the work force restructuring the writers seem to have been hit hard, the guy that used to be head writer for the republic is now head of all writing. That is just one known example of how the writing team has changed

 

At gamescon there was that interview with the guy saying the main drive for now is OPs, flashpoints and warzones

 

I hope I'm wrong. But think of it this way. New people have been put in charge to change the fortune of this game, there is a good chance the direction of the game is also changed. The first DEV team tried to put the RPG into MMORPG, now there gone. It makes sense the new team are here to take the game back in a more conventional direction

 

The game is not a charity it has to be profitable. All the changes made are surely to do with money. And one really big expense is story

 

Lot of supposition and conjecture going on in here. I'd suggest you start with listening to Torwars recent interview with Hall Hood, the new lead writer. He talks about the game overall and then talks about story lines and the possible future of the story and what we could expect in the Spoiler section of the interview.

 

As far as I am aware, he was the lead writer for the JK and Smuggler before being promoted to lead, but he could of been kicked up to lead Republic writer somewhere in between or I just didn't pay enough attention to all his writing credits.

It will. A recent interview with Hall Hood,the new lead writer, had him likening story content to the Marvel superhero movies like Iron Man,Thor,The Hulk etc and The Avengers. Basically, the leveling class story was the individual "movie" and new story content will be more encompassing of all the classes and group story centric like the Avengers was.

 

Um....does this still mean separate stories for each class or just a conjoined thing like at Ilum.

It was such a brief, vague comment that you can't really draw any concrete conclusions from it. I wish the interviewer had asked for a little more clarification, but it came at the very end of the interview when they were out of time.

For ****s sake you guys are worrying too much. Of course there'll be a chapter 4, and 5, 6 and so on. Now is interlude.

Give it time - expansion and you'll see I'm right.

All right, I spent some time reading on the site and watching some interviews and have formulated an opinion. Ok, in the Matthew Bromberg interview he said that they were going to be continuing story content but that it would not come out as frequently as the operations and warzones since it is both expensive and, more importantly, highly time consuming. However, he did say that they were going to be coming out with more story content. As for the dev team being purged, I know for a fact that the dev who did most of work for the Consular story is gone, yet the dev who did the knight story is now the lead writer. This does not seem like surrender on story content but more like a course correction for the direction that the story will take. The consular story was one of the less popular while the knight got rave reviews so it seems to me like Bioware and EA are going to continue the story and have put their most skilled writer in charge. Just my two creds though I admit that I am not an expert.

I know for a fact that the dev who did most of work for the Consular story is gone, yet the dev who did the knight story is now the lead writer. This does not seem like surrender on story content but more like a course correction for the direction that the story will take. The consular story was one of the less popular while the knight got rave reviews so it seems to me like Bioware and EA are going to continue the story and have put their most skilled writer in charge. Just my two creds though I admit that I am not an expert.

 

I think all that really affects is who will be writing the story, the story will be written just by someone else and might go a different direction as a result.

 

But we have also been told that Makeb(sp) will further the class stories, similar to how The Avengers continues the story of Iron Man-Hulk-Thor-Captain America.

Not meaning to fan the flames, because I'm certain they know how much people want their class stories to continue, but layoffs weren't based on popularity of material. The writers for the agent and warrior stories are gone too. That being said, I doubt they laid people off because they wanted to and people are screaming for more in every aspect of the game. Right now, the loudest screaming is about endgame, so that's where they'll have to focus their remaining resources first. It's like trying to appease an angry daycare. First they'll pass out soothers, then we'll see more story further down the road.

So what form do you think that the story on Maykeb(sorry, I have trouble with this planet's name) will take? Will we have to team up with other classes since it might be more like the Avengers? Will we have companion dialogue? Just curious to get some opinions.

not meaning to fan the flames, because i'm certain they know how much people want their class stories to continue, but layoffs weren't based on popularity of material. The writers for the agent and warrior stories are gone too.

 

whaaaaaat??!

:(:(

I have this concern about the story content, too. I think the source of these concerns come from interviews at Gamescom... here are some of the quotes when they were specifically asked about story:

 

Matthew Bromberg, GM of Bioware Austin:

http://vid.buffed.de/video/10222/SWTOR-Interview-mit-Bioware-zur-Zukunft-des-Star-WarsMMORPGs

"In the immediate future, the next few months, we're focused on group content not solo content. From a strategic perspective, I think it's very very important for us to introduce group content very frequently. So we're very focused on that, I believe in that."

 

"We're going to continue to add to the story, but we're going to do MORE group event based content than we did before, like the event which is going on now, we have a warzone coming up, a new operation, we're going to focus a lot more on those kinds of things. My own feeling is that on an on-going basis, multiplayer is really where our future is."

Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer:

http://vid.buffed.de/video/10276/SWTOR-Interview-mit-Executive-Producer-Jeff-Hickman

He was specifically asked about the above interview, and what the future holds for the story content:

"Even some of the things Matt is talking about really will continue to be focused around story. It's what makes this game great, it's that '4th level' that we take the game to of story that Bioware is so famous for..."

 

"Here's some of the things we found: we basically said, look we know that players, just from our data and what people are saying, we know that players love our warzones, they love operations, they love flashpoints, they love the events that we do, so we've been focusing on quickly getting some of those pieces out: a new warzone, a new operation, we just had a new event start two days ago, so we focused on that for our six week rate and we've looked at story content, such as the planet Makeb, as something that will take us a little bit longer..."

 

So they're not going to come out and say "yep, class story content is on the backburner, don't hold your breath story fans!" But if you read between the lines, yeah they're clearly focused hard on warzones, operations and group events, and story is a side thing now.

Edited November 7, 2012 by Arodin

If I had to guess, I would guess that there's not a big rush for Chapter 4. We may see individualized chapters for each class, but I doubt it. I hope I'm wrong, because I really want to see what can possibly happen next for my Warrior. I also would like to see a competent writer redeem my bumbling oaf of an Inquisitor. I would guess that Q2 2013 or 2014 are the earliest we will see class story updates. Edited November 7, 2012 by Heimskringla

whaaaaaat??!

:(:(

 

About the IA's writer, he announced he was leaving Bioware to go freelance a while back. I follow him on Twitter. I have no doubt about his sincerity that it was entirely his decision to want to branch out into new things and nothing to do with having issues with Bioware. He also said he wrote a ton of material for future content that hasn't been introduced in the game yet.

I'm not convinced that the class story itself will continue, but they may try to integrate some aspects of that part of the game (like companions) into the main narrative. Edited November 8, 2012 by DarthCraeth

It will. A recent interview with Hall Hood,the new lead writer, had him likening story content to the Marvel superhero movies like Iron Man,Thor,The Hulk etc and The Avengers. Basically, the leveling class story was the individual "movie" and new story content will be more encompassing of all the classes and group story centric like the Avengers was.

 

Oh man I would love that, although I'd still want me a Chapter 4

 

 

 

The Sith Warrior and Sith Inqusitoner have exactly what incentive to take down the Empire?