Star Wars: TOR Beta

DArtagnan said:

Every demanding high-level activity should impact the world as a whole, and should stand out as something special.

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To be cynical and generally speaking (not to SW:TOR directly related), I would say that,

DArtagnan said:

Every demanding low-level activity should impact the world as a whole, and should stand out as something special.

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because low-level characters do have a right in "being meaningful", too !

Your argumentattion sounds to me as if only the highest parts of our real-world society should be allowed to have an impact upon this world, and all of these faceless, futureless masses of low-level ... err, lower parts of society sould just shut up because they shouldn't be allowed to change the orld "which they can't, anyway, because the highest parts of society are effectively hindering them to do so, because they believe that they themselves should be the only ones who should be allowed to turn the tide of the world.

Again : That's my cynical take on this.

I strongly believe that in an role-playing game, every single one should be able / allowed to hve the exprience to play "a meaningful role" within the game. Because otherwise . Why should I play it at all ? Only until my RPG's character reaches the ranks of the highest levels ? Because that would be a 1:1 mirror image of how our real-world society funcions now. That would be perhaps "The American Dream", to "level up" from a peasant to Mr. Rockefeller himself ... But should role-playing games really be as that ? Should they really be a mirror of real world's society ?

I think not.

But no-one chnges the formula, because originally, role-playing is about levelling up. "I level up, therefore I play a role" ?

I think the developers said that the game would be a success if they got 500,000 subcscribers which I'm almost positive that they will. I think Dart's subcriber predictions are probably accurate, I know in my WoW guild we usually lose a bunch of people to these types of game when they first come out, then they steadily trickle back as they get bored. Supposedly the operating cost of running a MMO is very high as well, between GMs, servers and development. Plus they probably have to give a significant cut to the Lucas industry. So not all of those subscription fees they make will be profit. But I suspect that they will do fine.

There have been AAA sandbox titles (Star Wars Galaxies, Eve Online) that have done well in the past in terms of number of subscribers, just not anywhere nearly as well as WoW. But then other theme park titles don't do anywhere nearly as well as WoW either, so I'm not sure if that's a good way to measure success of a genre.

It will rock World of Warcraft to its fundations. Atleast 4-6 months.