New efforts!

[Thunder Glove]

What would that even accomplish?

To be cynical... it would probably keep the fanbase from starting up another attempt to bring the game back, as long as we believed the previous attempt was still underway.

But I'm nowhere near that cynical. :)  I agree that it would be an extremely unlikely (at best) thing to do, and I can't imagine that there wouldn't be some way around it to let us know that purchase negotiations had failed.

[Stitchified]

I hate being a gamer.

Hey now, there's nothing wrong with being a gamer, it's more so that most, if not all, video game companies are in it for the money, some, like BioWare are in it for the money but are more... in tune with their fans. (Don't quote me on all this, it's all my opinion)
I have 2 reasons for my view on BioWare; Reason #1 is that BioWare has so far, delivered great games, the only one I'd criticize is DA2 and that wasn't even BW's fault due to EA rushing them, (people love to forget the fact that EA owns BW) and Reason #2 is that BioWare tries their best to appeal to their fans, just look at SWTOR, it had a rocky start at the beginning, but now, they redid alot of things that weren't so great back in Vanilla. Besides all that, What MMO can anyone list that has/had 8 individual & different storylines that weren't linear? (I say this because you can be a Light Side Sith or a Dark Jedi, or a Bounty Hunter who freezes instead killing his/her targets, or even lets them go, among other things.)

[psquared007]

There's really no plausible reason to believe that the negotiations failed.  It's possible there could be a post-failure clause in the NDA forbidding the negotiation team from speaking about it (for the next X period of time, or maybe ever), but I think it would be kind of bizarre and pointless to include specific language forbidding them from even acknowledging that the talks have concluded fruitlessly.  What would that even accomplish?

I've signed a few NDAs over the years and that type of clause would be very rare, especially in this situation.  I don't see why the folks (Nate, et. al.) trying to get the game going would request it and if NCSoft required it, the only thing it would accomplish is further alienate gamers.  That would not be smart business.  I'm not even sure it would be enforceable for all but the shortest period. 

[blacksly]

There are lots of tropes that deal with this, but only one where the teacher *must* die, and that's where the teacher becomes an impediment to the hero standing on his own.  They become overshadowing father figures.  But at that moment in A New Hope that isn't true for Obi Wan.  Obi Wan doesn't *have* to die narratively, because Obi Wan isn't going to jump into an X-Wing and blow up the Death Star.  You can only get that impression in retrospect.

Also, Star Wars doesn't just yank Obi Wan off the stage; to follow the trope it also yanks Han Solo, the other mentor/father figure Luke looks up to, which seems narratively predictable.  But it subverts that trope by having Han return at the end to help Luke, and doing so doesn't prevent Luke from becoming a hero in the story.

While it might make sense to some at the time, that's not the same thing as saying it is obvious and inevitable.  If it was so obvious that Obi Wan had to die to make way for Luke's development into the hero, the same argument could be made for Yoda in Empire, but Yoda doesn't die in Empire.  And that is because Empire is ultimately a different story.  But you couldn't possibly know that until the end of Empire.  And my point wasn't that Obi Wan's death seems odd at the time in 1977, I asserted it was odd at the literal moment of the character's death on-screen, and before the end of Star Wars reveals what the ultimate story in A New Hope was.

Obi-Wan's death wasn't inevitable, but I thought that having him get removed from the plot for the majority of the second half of the movie was pretty close to inevitable. At the point at which he fought Vader, Luke was clearly the main character/hero of the plot. Obi Wan had led him pretty much the whole way, not only teaching, but saving them from patrols, funding the expedition, providing much of the planning, etc. In order for Luke to grow into his heroic destiny, which seemed like the movie was based upon, Obi Wan had to stop leading him. Dying was not the only way... he could have been captured and held until the end of the movie (either by Vader, or captured and given to Vader for torture). That would have worked both to get him out of the way and to give Luke a revenge motive. He could have been trapped on the other side of some impassable obstacle, especially if his peril was obvious to Luke... again, getting him out of the way while giving Luke motivation. But he had to go, and when he started fighting Vader the odds that he would meet a sticky end went up by a lot.

And I thought this more because of the personalities than because there was only one way to go... Han and Leia both clearly had strong personalities, who could play off Obi Wan. Chewie and the droids were clearly follower characters, who might go off and be the hero of a small section but overall were not meant to lead the heroics. But Luke clearly looked to Obi Wan at all times to see what he would/should do. As long as Obi Wan would be around, Luke would not heroically lead anything.

[Abraxus]

It has long been a theory of mine that if the talks failed, that would be the one piece of information that they would have logical reason to keep secret, and we would likely know pretty quickly.  On the other hand, if they were already successful, we very likely not know until they mutually agree that it is time to do so, and we would still be in the dark...as we currently find ourselves.  So, I take my frustration over the long wait as a good(?) thing. 

[Arcana]

As long as Obi Wan would be around, Luke would not heroically lead anything.

That's a little bit tricky in my opinion, because even after Obi Wan dies Luke doesn't heroically lead anything.  Luke isn't the archetypal heroic leader.  When they escape the Death Star its inarguably Han that is the leader of that group until they make it to the rebel base, and then its Leah that is the leader.  Luke doesn't even lead the attack on the Death Star, he's just one pilot.

Luke's journey isn't the journey of a leader, its a more personal journey.  At almost no time in the entire trilogy is Luke leading anything or anyone else following him.  If anything, he's consistently the follower.  Sure, we all know he's the "hero" of the overall story, but he's never the leader of anything.  And because he's not the leader of anything, and not seen to be such by anyone else, its not true in my opinion that his journey requires other leaders to "die" for his journey to work.  Leah rescues Luke after Luke tries and fails to rescue them at Cloud City.  Luke joins "General" Solo on the assault on the shield generator, Luke doesn't lead that mission.  And Luke all but abandons that mission to confront Vader, which was ultimately what his true destiny was.  You could even argue that narratively speaking it is *impossible* for Luke to ever be the leader of anything, because it would make it difficult for him to pursue his true hero's journey.  Not being a leader allows him to go to Dagobah, away from the rest of the fleet and even away from his friends, and it ultimately allows him to confront the Emperor on the Death Star alone.

If I recall correctly, I believe Lucas himself indicated that the point of Luke's journey in ANH is not to blow up the Death Star, and its not to defeat Vader (in effect, Han does that not Luke).  It is to discover this "larger world" of the Force, to see the potential in himself.  That's partially why at the end even R2D2 has to "die" so Luke is ultimately alone.  But just as R2D2 comes back, and just as Han doesn't have to die for Luke to ultimately use the Force to blow up the Death Star, Obi Wan doesn't have to die either for Luke to make that achievement.  It is a different story if Obi Wan doesn't die I grant you, but it doesn't prevent Luke from achieving his destiny.  Which isn't to become the heroic leader, but to achieve his potential.  Which in later movies is expanded to become the quest to save his father, who failed the same journey he tries to pursue himself.

It is often the case that the father figure has to die, either figuratively or literally, in order for the protagonist to stand on his own.  But I think Luke's journey was never about exceeding the training of Obi Wan: it is not about being able to stand without Obi Wan.  Obi Wan hasn't been around long enough for that dependence to exist.  Allegorically speaking ANH is not about Luke becoming Arthur, King of the Britons, it is about Luke pulling the sword from the stone.  Merlin doesn't have to die for Arthur to do that, because that is narratively early in the story.  The end of ANH is equally early in that narrative.  Luke had to face the challenge at the Death Star "alone" but that didn't require any of the larger figures in his life to be dead.  Not Obi Wan and not Han Solo.  They just needed to not help him.

[darkgob]

It has long been a theory of mine that if the talks failed, that would be the one piece of information that they would have logical reason to keep secret

I can't think of any logical reason for them to do this.  Admittedly, humans don't always behave logically, but it wouldn't even be in their own self-interest to keep it a secret.

[Arcana]

I can't think of any logical reason for them to do this.  Admittedly, humans don't always behave logically, but it wouldn't even be in their own self-interest to keep it a secret.

When I read that, I think I detected a missing "no" between "have" and "logical."

[Twisted Toon]

When I read that, I think I detected a missing "no" between "have" and "logical."

in context with the rest of the statement, that was my thought as well.

[darkgob]

When I read that, I think I detected a missing "no" between "have" and "logical."

in context with the rest of the statement, that was my thought as well.

Same, but I'm at the point where presumption of intelligence is just consistently letting me down, so I'm not taking any chances.

[Ironwolf]

It has long been a theory of mine that if the talks failed, that would be the one piece of information that they would have logical reason to keep secret, and we would likely know pretty quickly.  On the other hand, if they were already successful, we very likely not know until they mutually agree that it is time to do so, and we would still be in the dark...as we currently find ourselves.  So, I take my frustration over the long wait as a good(?) thing.

If things failed all it would take is Nate or someone like him saying well, I guess we can move on to other things now. You would not have to say anything directly.

[ivanhedgehog]

If things failed all it would take is Nate or someone like him saying well, I guess we can move on to other things now. You would not have to say anything directly.

I know this, but I occasionally have times where I despair that it will ever come back. this is seriously cutting into my ITF schedule

[Noyjitat]

Reason #2 is that BioWare tries their best to appeal to their fans, just look at SWTOR, it had a rocky start at the beginning, but now, they redid alot of things that weren't so great back in Vanilla. Besides all that, What MMO can anyone list that has/had 8 individual & different storylines that weren't linear? (I say this because you can be a Light Side Sith or a Dark Jedi, or a Bounty Hunter who freezes instead killing his/her targets, or even lets them go, among other things.)

It's funny... I was biowares cheerleader at one time. Swtor had a brighter future back during it's release and the next few months that followed. That is until they did the first free update. (which utterly killed my guild over time) And then the first paid expansion (which was really short and ended up like this: swtor eight stories>xpac1 "Hutt Cartel" two stories>expac2 "Revan"two stories>current free xpac "fallen empire" one and one ONLY story. Not gonna mention all the flaws that end game got with it's first update and beyond... No sir the only reason that game still has a chance is because of the die hard fans that buy tons of lock boxes. The latest expansion is free because it has far less content than the previous 2 and boasts many chapters and the first 9 are not even 1/3 the length of a single chapter from the core game or any of it's previous expansions.

Don't get me wrong, the story is great but the replay isn't there with only 1 story. People that like to group and endgame don't have new content to look forward to. Lots recycled content (which is also being used to progress in the story) Bad sign there. And the current final chapter has areas where the player character isn't voiced (another bad sign) Previous companions haven't received new conversations since the core game or romance progression updates.

I still login but not as much. They over hyped the expansion with that huge number of chapters that turned out to be the shortest chapters ever in the games history. And all the remaining chapters will be given out once per month so about 30 minutes of new content per month for those of us that don't spacebar all the cutscenes. Unless we're lucky and those 1 chapter per month are actually longer chapters (but I'm having my doubts now) I don't know though... EA has there hands on the game and they pretty much turn everything into cancer eventually. Maybe the fools in charge of making the decisions will get fired and some of the original devs will return. Because they we're certainly making much better decisions back then. The budget can't be the problem because they're making more money now from die hard fans on the cartel store than they ever were from subscriptions. (actually that's the problem)

I keep hoping bioware will surprise me but that's just a fools wish at this point.

[Arcana]

It's funny... I was biowares cheerleader at one time. Swtor had a brighter future back during it's release and the next few months that followed.

That's an interesting perspective because I played SWTOR in the beta and through release and I believe I am the first person anywhere that publicly stated that SWTOR was the best massively single player RPG (I even called it that in the beta) and as far as I could tell, it had no future in that form.  I still consider that to be one of my best distilled critiques of a game, and while different people like games for different reasons I feel reasonably vindicated on that score.

I'm not saying everything they did since then was right, better, or even good.  Just saying that if they didn't radically change, there would be no SWTOR today.  For all that I liked some elements of it, the flaws were not a question of subjective preference but fundamental existential threats, no matter how many adherents supported them.

[Felderburg]

Luke is explicitly stated to be leading the "freedom fighters" on Hoth in the opening scroll of Empire Strikes Back.

As far as Vader kicking the robes... I was never clear on what he was doing. Was he just befuddled? Was he checking, and thinking 'oh crap, now he's a force ghost'? Was he verifying that Obi Wan was dead dead? I don't know.

Spoiler for Episode 7:

Regarding that death, I felt that it was a rather nice counterpoint to Luke's rejection of killing his father in episode 6.

[Victoria Victrix]

and there we have it, "NO" "that's a bad idea joshex, don't do it joshex".

so, we will not do that. even that was a bad idea. the part of that post of mine before that still stands though.

How many times do you have to be told that before you just stop saying stupid pancake?

[Noyjitat]

That's an interesting perspective because I played SWTOR in the beta and through release and I believe I am the first person anywhere that publicly stated that SWTOR was the best massively single player RPG (I even called it that in the beta) and as far as I could tell, it had no future in that form.

See... swtor was no different than wow in terms of the level up experience. Yeah it's mostly solo although it did have more group heroics and flashpoints (which are like low - high level dungeons in wow) and raids. It however only started with 2 raids. And like wow nobody groups while leveling to do quests except for guilds and friends because there really isn't much of a point to.

Traditional mmos don't really begin until endgame anyway for most people. coh and swg were just different there. Funny thing is with the couple years coh had to quickly add incarnate trials, we got more trials added in a much shorter time than most games get raids added. Including swtor which barely has more than coh got in terms of raids. And this is the first swtor expansion that only has 1 new flashpoint and no new raids or heroic missions. All previous expansions have added several new flashpoints, raids, and heroics.

I've invested too much money over the years to just completely walk away though. Perhaps I'd play more if I met a good group of people to play with again. I've basically gone full time with swg and started to make connections with people there again. Swg was my second mmo and my second favorite game after coh.

[Arcana]

Luke is explicitly stated to be leading the "freedom fighters" on Hoth in the opening scroll of Empire Strikes Back.

That's true, but that's a job description.  In the context of the discussion, Luke still doesn't heroically lead anything; within the narrative of the story Luke does not actually become the kind of leader that Obi Wan would overshadow.  Also, the crawl seems to all but contradicts the actual events in the movie, where Leah is seen giving orders and Luke is never (as far as I can recall) seen giving any orders to anyone to anywhere near the same degree.

[Arcana]

See... swtor was no different than wow in terms of the level up experience. Yeah it's mostly solo although it did have more group heroics and flashpoints (which are like low - high level dungeons in wow) and raids. It however only started with 2 raids. And like wow nobody groups while leveling to do quests except for guilds and friends because there really isn't much of a point to.

Traditional mmos don't really begin until endgame anyway for most people. coh and swg were just different there. Funny thing is with the couple years coh had to quickly add incarnate trials, we got more trials added in a much shorter time than most games get raids added. Including swtor which barely has more than coh got in terms of raids. And this is the first swtor expansion that only has 1 new flashpoint and no new raids or heroic missions. All previous expansions have added several new flashpoints, raids, and heroics.

I have to strongly disagree here.  First of all, I've never seen any evidence that most people don't team in the typical (western AAA) MMO.  Most players solo at least some times but most aren't religious soloers.  The problem with SWTOR is that it was *singularly* difficult to team, almost to the point of insanity.  No western MMO has ever had more impediments to teaming at all, except in a few very limited cases.  And even when you team, the way missions worked acted to make the story telling elements of the game frustrating for players because they slowed the action to a crawl, even when the players were replaying content.  And content replay was important because the leveling curve meant you couldn't just mission your way up the ladder without repeating content.  In other MMOs this can become a repetitive grind.  In SWTOR it was like being forced to watch the same television show repeatedly and not even being able to fast forward through the commercials.

And the notion that you don't have to team in SWTOR originally?  To channel Venture, poppycock.  For expert players, maybe.  If you hit the right combination of class and pet, maybe.  Otherwise, if you didn't group there were many missions or even just plain terrain that would be very problematic for you to play through without assistance.  The difficulty curve was wildly unbalanced relative to that.  Play a healer with a tankish pet and you could run through a lot.  Play offense with offensive pet and you'd be shredded in lots of content unless you outleveled it, which required playing other missions repetitively.

People team casually in WoW.  People used to literally log out in SWTOR rather than wait for team members to crawl their way to the mission.  And if you really wanted a dialog tree to go a certain way for some reason?  Good luck teaming that mission.  That's powerful in a single player game.  That's unnecessary friction in an MMO with grouping.  There are many MMOs where people say you don't have to team.  SWTOR was the first MMO I've ever heard of where the advice was you *shouldn't* team unless you were forced to.  Like your build made it impossible to cross a room to get to your mandatory content location without getting killed.

I can't believe you were playing at launch and didn't hear the constant never ending complaints about every aspect of teaming in SWTOR in chat, in group, on the forums, if people were playing it in your neighborhood you should have heard it out your window.  It was the universal complaint that 99% of players seemed to express, that expressed anything at all.  You can't get a large group of MMO players to agree on the color of the sky, but the teaming mechanics in SWTOR did the impossible and unified players in hating them.

[Hagoroth]

I have to strongly disagree here.  First of all, I've never seen any evidence that most people don't team in the typical (western AAA) MMO.  Most players solo at least some times but most aren't religious soloers.  The problem with SWTOR is that it was *singularly* difficult to team, almost to the point of insanity.  No western MMO has ever had more impediments to teaming at all, except in a few very limited cases. etc...

I would disagree with this. I played since Beta, and at launch I was easily able to make end game well before finishing even the last planet without teaming to quest, or repeating any content. With Space missions, Flashpoints, PvP, and regular non heroic quests I hit 50 before Correlia. Also I played and leveled completely as a Jedi Shadow Tank spec my first time around.

If anything, I was disappointed by being forced to group for certain quests(Belsavis for instance, one heroic needed 4 players, not because it was hard, but because you had to do Legend of Zelda style puzzles that required people to hold open force fields for each other.)

As for teaming in MMO's, I only ever team in Raids/PvP/ and dungeons, unless playing with a friend or relative. Most MMO's make it a pain in the "A" during gathering missions or kill missions, requiring each player to get their own total, instead of having both players count towards it. Only recently have MMO's made questing more group friendly.

And the only time I remember hearing grumbling about groups, was when the population took a huge hit before server merges. I played on a RP server, so it honestly felt like a ghost town. Outside of a 2 hour window, no PvP ques or Flashpoints would ever pop(And this was as a tank). Ever since this last patch,and the merges I never have that problem(though I still wish they would make PvP cross server ques like WoW).

It definitely had its flaws in the start, but I spent more time enjoying the game, than on the forums, so I guess I never heard the complaints. Maybe I am in the minority(and I probably am, after all this is an MMO), but outside of PvP and Dungeons/Raids, I prefer to play solo. At my own pace and with no one slowing me down or forcing me to go at theirs. The only times I have ever enjoyed grouping for quests, was in CoH, and Asheron's Call.