Bioware's budget consisted of ~$278-$300 million USD. Seeing as how little content Bioware has in their over-all game, with people hitting max level cap in under a week, and with people clearing ALL content already, what was this colossal budget spent on?

 

There's a reason why Blizzard didn't want to implement voice-over fully into WoW. It's because it is simply unsustainable. Eventually, I'm sure EVERYONE will see Bioware not living up to its promise of "fully-voiced over content." Unless they don't add in many quests at all, fully-voicing over all content would be an insurmountable task for Bioware. They simply lack the funds.

 

 

- There's only 3 warzones.

 

- There's only 1 operation.

 

- There's only 1 end-game operation, and the rest are recycled from lower-levels.

 

- It took 1-2 months to reach level 60 at WoW's launch, but in SW:TOR, a game supposedly based on leveling, it takes ~50-60 hours to reach maximum level. Don't believe me? A guild mate of mine went to great lengths to ensure that his time spent logged in was spent questing so that he could see how long it took to reach max level. He did not spam space-bar, he ran everything at normal speed, and that's how long it took him. WoW is 7 years older and launched with a longer level path? Not to mention WoW also had a smaller budget.

 

- Some zones, such as Nar Shaddaa, are incredibly small.

 

 

From this, it can only be concluded that Bioware spent most of its money on VOICE ACTING.A/B-list voice actors cost a lot of money, and Bioware decided to use them for some reason. It appears as though they consumed most of Bioware's budget. I would not be surprised if $200 million alone was spent on voice acting.

 

 

It's saddening that Bioware would waste money that could've developed a stellar end-game, engine, and combat system on voice actors.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Xugos

If a major part of the budget was spent on voice acting. I think it begs the question, Is it sustainable?

 

I don't see them being able to have voice overs on 95% of the quests as they do now. Which I think will be a let down to some people. But only time will tell.

What was the budget spent on?

 

 

You know all those quest convos you spammed your space bar through?

 

That.

 

 

 

This game is about the journey.....not the Destination.

 

 

 

After the bug fixes, much more content is to come. It's not bioware's fault you rushed through it all, so now your stuck with the empty and buggy as hell endgame.

 

 

FYI, I got a 50 warrior.......rank 30 something valor, does dailies every day and weeklies each week since he hit 50...........I'm still rolling alts, cause my guild hasn't caught up to me yet, so we can avoid having to pug with *******s...

 

 

They weren't kidding when they said enjoy the journey.

If a major part of the budget was spent on voice acting. I think it begs the question, Is it sustainable?

 

I don't see them being able to have voice overs on 95% of the quests as they do now. Which I think will be a let down to some people. But only time will tell.

 

That's exactly why Blizzard said they didn't want to voice act. It ISN'T SUSTAINABLE. It's a HUGE burden on your operational costs.

I like the voice acting, but i wouldn't mind if amateur people did the voice acting for cheap price (company people) and put allot of money in 3D artist/programmers to make some extra stuff (birds/rats/rabbits/pvp-world/better UI/no silly small bugs/etc...

Agree, and i personally (speaking only about my opinion) find voice acting totally unnessassery. Rather irritating in most cases. Side quests should have only text and no cutscenes. Main story however is really good and I find cutscenes there very nice. So that future posters know, this is my honest opinion. I am not referring whole community.

Funny. This game has enough quests to level to the cap three times over. It's one of the games with the most content at launch of the history of the genre.

Bioware's budget consisted of ~$278-$300 million USD. Seeing as how little content Bioware has in their over-all game, with people hitting max level cap in under a week, and with people clearing ALL content already, what was this colossal budget spent on?

 

 

 

- There's only 3 warzones.

 

- There's only 1 operation.

 

- There's only 1 end-game operation, and the rest are recycled from lower-levels.

 

- It took 1-2 months to reach level 60 at WoW's launch, but in SW:TOR, a game supposedly based on leveling, it takes ~50-60 hours to reach maximum level. Don't believe me? A guild mate of mine went to great lengths to ensure that his time spent logged in was spent questing so that he could see how long it took to reach max level. He did not spam space-bar, he ran everything at normal speed, and that's how long it took him. WoW is 7 years older and launched with a longer level path? Not to mention WoW also had a smaller budget.

 

- Some zones, such as Nar Shaddaa, are incredibly small.

 

 

From this, it can only be concluded that Bioware spent most of its money on VOICE ACTING.A/B-list voice actors cost a lot of money, and Bioware decided to use them for some reason. It appears as though they consumed most of Bioware's budget. I would not be surprised if $200 million alone was spent on voice acting.

 

 

It's saddening that Bioware would waste money that could've developed a stellar end-game, engine, and combat system on voice actors.

 

You're trolling right?

 

This game had a budget of about 80-100m, those 150-300m numbers are BS

 

There's 2 operations. You're saturated with quests from level 1 to 50, there is zero need to grind anything. There's 15 flashpoints and yes 3 Warzones, which is more than the battlegrounds WoW launched with and right on Par with the number of Warfronts Rift had.

 

This game has plenty of content considering it's brand new. In fact it has so much content that people are outleveling zones too quickly.

 

Each zone is every bit as big as multiple zones in a game like WoW. Narshadaa is medium sized, Hoth, Taris, Balmorra are HUGE. Even starter worlds like Korriban and Hutta are every bit as big as any WoW zone.

 

 

As for leveling I started on day one of Early game access. I play like a normal person I've So far I have 1 character to 50 and another to 15 that I just started right after hitting cap. So yes it took about 1 months for me to get a level 50 and I was actually pretty quick about it, I skipped most of Tattooine and Half of Nar Shaddaa.

 

World of Warcraft initially launched in a time period of MMOs where longer leveling times were expected. FFXI, Everquest, UO, Lineage, ect all took months to get to the cap. These days things are different people don't want to spend half of a year just to reach max level. WoW is no different. You can reach cap in WoW in less than 3 weeks now and that's playing like a normal person, not some psycho no-life with nothing to do but spend 20+hours a day playing.

Edited January 8, 2012 by HavenAE

- There's only 3 warzones.

 

- There's only 1 operation.

 

- There's only 1 end-game operation, and the rest are recycled from lower-levels.

 

- It took 1-2 months to reach level 60 at WoW's launch, but in SW:TOR, a game supposedly based on leveling, it takes ~50-60 hours to reach maximum level. Don't believe me? A guild mate of mine went to great lengths to ensure that his time spent logged in was spent questing so that he could see how long it took to reach max level. He did not spam space-bar, he ran everything at normal speed, and that's how long it took him. WoW is 7 years older and launched with a longer level path? Not to mention WoW also had a smaller budget.

 

- Some zones, such as Nar Shaddaa, are incredibly small. [/b]

 

Okay dokey Mr. Compare SWTOR to WoW guy, I see you're making your rounds here so let me point out to you that WoW released with 0 battlegrounds and 0 raids.

 

Technically you could call Upper Blackrock and Stratholme raids I suppose, but at the time they only dropped blue gear. It was several months until battlegrounds were introduced, there was no pvp gear, and Molten Core didn't come in until later.

 

Also the first level 50 in WoW was within a week. Plenty others who were into the hardcore grind did it in about two.

 

Just sayin, you might need a history lesson.

Funny. This game has enough quests to level to the cap three times over. It's one of the games with the most content at launch of the history of the genre.

 

Because after 150 hours of questing my first thought is to run back to Tatooine and help Dirt Farmer Bob slay a dozen womp rats since it will be voice acted!

 

This game has a lot of content, sure. A lot that doesn't work.

I think they are banking on people playing a number of classes, it will give them enough time to bring out more content. It was the same with wow really, while it was slower to level due to needing to grind, there wasn't a whole lot to do other than play different classes.

 

At least in this game the classes have a different story, however, I wish we could dodge the side quests more as they get a bit repetitive.

Didn't you post this last week?

Voice acting is a waste of time for me.

 

Space bar is my friend.

You're trolling right?

 

This game had a budget of about 80-100m, those 150-300m numbers are BS

 

There's 2 operations. You're saturated with quests from level 1 to 50, there is zero need to grind anything. There's 15 flashpoints and yes 3 Warzones, which is more than the battlegrounds WoW launched with and right on Par with the number of Warfronts Rift had.

 

This game has plenty of content considering it's brand new. In fact it has so much content that people are outleveling zones too quickly.

 

Each zone is every bit as big as multiple zones in a game like WoW. Narshadaa is medium sized, Hoth, Taris, Balmorra are HUGE. Even starter worlds like Korriban and Hutta are every bit as big as any WoW zone.

 

^Stole the words right out of my mouth...er, keyboard.

Okay dokey Mr. Compare SWTOR to WoW guy, I see you're making your rounds here so let me point out to you that WoW released with 0 battlegrounds and 0 raids.

 

Technically you could call Upper Blackrock and Stratholme raids I suppose, but at the time they only dropped blue gear. It was several months until battlegrounds were introduced, there was no pvp gear, and Molten Core didn't come in until later.

 

Also the first level 50 in WoW was within a week. Plenty others who were into the hardcore grind did it in about two.

 

Just sayin, you might need a history lesson.

 

Dude, this isn't 2004, **** and stop comparing it to crap that came out many years ago.

Don't forget how we can't use the search function and that we can't post during patches.

 

 

Dude, this isn't 2004, **** and stop comparing it to crap that came out many years ago.

 

What he's saying is that an older MMO had more content than SWTOR.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Syleal

Okay dokey Mr. Compare SWTOR to WoW guy, I see you're making your rounds here so let me point out to you that WoW released with 0 battlegrounds and 0 raids.

 

Technically you could call Upper Blackrock and Stratholme raids I suppose, but at the time they only dropped blue gear. It was several months until battlegrounds were introduced, there was no pvp gear, and Molten Core didn't come in until later.

 

Also the first level 50 in WoW was within a week. Plenty others who were into the hardcore grind did it in about two.

 

Just sayin, you might need a history lesson.

 

8 years ago is not the standard for MMO releases.

 

 

That's like comparing a 2012 Lexus to a 2004 Lexus and saying "hey, the 2004 lexus didn't have parallel-park sensors, rear-view camera, advanced-engine immobilization, great fuel economy, etc, so why should a 2012 Lexus have it?

Didn't you post this last week?

 

Nah, I don't repost posts.

Because after 150 hours of questing my first thought is to run back to Tatooine and help Dirt Farmer Bob slay a dozen womp rats since it will be voice acted!

 

This game has a lot of content, sure. A lot that doesn't work.

 

Aye, voice acting or not it's just the same old, same old. Kill the group of 4...... Back and forth. At least let's have something exciting.

Dude, this isn't 2004, **** and stop comparing it to crap that came out many years ago.

 

Good job on not reading the op post then

 

0/10

So what are we comparing this to? current wow? or wow at release?

 

When you compare it to wow at release (which had alot less content than swtor, hurray for actually grinding levels on mobs ><), wow fanbois goes nuts with their "THIS IS 2012!!!1"

 

Yet again, you just cannot compare 1 game to another, that has undergone so many years of tweaking and addons.

 

 

So, why don't you compare it to Rift? it's the only decent recently mmo that came out.

Okay dokey Mr. Compare SWTOR to WoW guy, I see you're making your rounds here so let me point out to you that WoW released with 0 battlegrounds and 0 raids.

 

Technically you could call Upper Blackrock and Stratholme raids I suppose, but at the time they only dropped blue gear. It was several months until battlegrounds were introduced, there was no pvp gear, and Molten Core didn't come in until later.

 

Also the first level 50 in WoW was within a week. Plenty others who were into the hardcore grind did it in about two.

 

Just sayin, you might need a history lesson.

 

Actually Mr. history Book, Both onyxia's lair and molton Core were in at Release. & years ago Wow released with 13 instances available to the players which is the same number of flashpoints available now. To be fair there were no battlegrounds at release. The first level 50 in wow didn't matter since the original level cap in that game was 60. Some of us were there, and can count. Counting is fun after all Sesame Street teaches you that.

8 years ago is not the standard for MMO releases.

 

 

That's like comparing a 2012 Lexus to a 2004 Lexus and saying "hey, the 2004 lexus didn't have parallel-park sensors, rear-view camera, advanced-engine immobilization, great fuel economy, etc, so why should a 2012 Lexus have it?

 

Perhaps it isn't but people still want to compare it when it so benefits them just like the OP huh?

 

Seems to me it's okay for SWTOR bashers to compare it to WoW at launch when they THINK it's to their benefit but not okay for anyone to say SWTOR is quite a few steps ahead from WoW at launch.

 

 

So which is it?

 

Maybe we just need to take WoW out of the equation entirely. Because it's equally not fair to ANY MMO to measure a brand new one against WoW now either, because OF COURSE WoW is going to have more features, OF COURSE WoW is going to have less bugs and glitches, OF COURSE WoW is going to have more content. It's been out for 7 years it sure as hell should have more. If it were reversed and SWTOR had been out for 7 years it would have more too.

 

Stupid comparisons make for stupid irrelevant arguments.

I like the voice acting, but i wouldn't mind if amateur people did the voice acting for cheap price (company people) and put allot of money in 3D artist/programmers to make some extra stuff (birds/rats/rabbits/pvp-world/better UI/no silly small bugs/etc...

New York Times has an article where the budget is estimated to be somwhere between $125 to $200 million.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/arts/video-games/star-wars-the-old-republic-vs-world-of-warcraft-online.html

 

They say:

That would make it the most expensive game ever. Fortunately for the makers, it shows.

I'll have to say I disagree about the last part.