I must respectfully disagree with "And in fact, we had a backlash of some anti-retention from the current customers that we already had because they were enjoying the game they were playing and wanted more of that, or wanted that fixed more than they wanted to fly around space in the Star Wars universe." As a frequent user of SWG at the time of JTL's release who spoke with many fellow players, I never encountered this sort of attitude described in the above-quoted passage. The only person I ever encountered who was upset with JTL was a big fan of the X-wing vs. TIE Fighter series who was turned off by the flight controls of JTL which he saw as over simplistic.

The above quoted assessment also fails to take into account that JTL was released one month prior to World of Warcraft's release. Many of my guildmates were already sucked into WoW's open and closed beta tests and didn't even bother to play SWG vanilla, let alone the new expansion.

Although I agree that content should not be changed radically as it was when the NGE was implemented, I observed that JTL was better received by the remaining SWG subscribers than was recounted here.

i REALLY hope this means that they're going to be including space flight/combat/travel FROM THE START (as opposed to not including it at all).

Flying around in space, exploring, dogfights, landing in & taking off from spaceports, collecting ships & test driving them all. Even flying to some missions which were on moons or other spaceships/spacestations. I enjoyed that all immensely in SWG.

I enjoyed grouping w/ people on the ground also, but imho the game would have gotten boring if it wasn't for space. JTL made the game much more immersive/intersting to me. It was the CU/NGE that killed the fun for me.

I also tend to think that the people who liked the space flight weren't heard from because they had nothing to complain about; as opposed to the more hardcore RPGers who tend to be more vocal & persistent. The squeaky wheel gets the grease i guess. Again though, i REALLY hope this just means space flight from the beginning as opposed to just eliminating it.

I wouldn't be surprised if space and space combat would be implemented in the initial game. Now that he learned by having the ground game first and then ditch it to have space, it would be best to have both and improve it from whatever errors or flaws come by. Therefore, the game will be awesome all around without making any freak changes like WoW is doing. BioWare's intelligent minds from using quality games and management experience to enhance the game further and will provide a huge benefit to everyone from start to endgame without feeling left out.

From there, BioWare is spending a load of money and EA is loving every bit of BioWare's success. This game is going to be not only bigger than WoW, but will break a new generation of MMO gaming genre. See you in 2011.

<3 DH Team

-Macer

Wait a minute, you mean it wasn't JTL that saved SWG from being a total failure? JTL was the only part even half worth playing in my opinion.

I think Gordon was just using JtL as an example as to show how not to add content to an MMO post-release. Especially something as drastically different from the base game as it was.

It's hard to say whether this is any indication they will have space combat or not, although it has been alluded to on a couple occasions by the developers. On what level it will be still remains to be seen.

I would not rule out a space combat system that moved away from the 100% twitch style of combat. I still like the idea of guild-run capital ships with player-controlled turrets. That does make it sort of twitch based but is definitely limited.

That being said, we have to remember there is a ground game going on too. I'm afraid if they DO start loading a bunch of content into space, the ground part may suffer due to lack of focus. But who knows they might have given the hero engine to a different group of devs and said, "here, build a space game."

Sounds like a main goal is to get space combat into the base game before launch, and not to add it in later as an expansion or patch

Oh em gee......

It's pretty easy to interpret what he's saying in a few different ways(as evidenced by this comments thread).

I personally think he's saying that avatar combat and space combat will be very much alike... Rather than having space combat play out like X-wing vs. TIE Fighter, it will be more like STO. I'd actually be pretty happy with this, as I suck at flight sims.

I can actually interpret Walton's quote in a different way that other MMOs can compare to. He's basically saying when you release a new expansion, you stop development on the pre-expansion game. You have to shift your focus to the new stuff, which can alienate people. To put it in WoW terms, it's like how with each expansion, the previous expansion(and base game) is immediately turned moot. People only zip through the base game and BC to get to the WotLK content. That puts all the focus on the 71-80 game in Northrend. That pushes the mentality of "the game begins at 80", which in turn alienates any and all new players who are not in the latest thing. And soon, even WotLK/Northrend in all its glory will be demoted to "that place you go to level to get the Cataclysm stuff". Let's face it, for a newbie, seeing that WoW has 80(soon to be 85) levels is a VERY daunting task.

A good example of a game that defies that is FFXI. The level cap is 75, and has been since launch, through 4 or 5 expansions. Each new expansion added new leveling zones, and new end-game dungeons, but the end game is the same level(75) for someone who played through all the expansions, or someone who just plays the base game. I really like that system, because it never alienates the newbies. Their level cap is the same as that of someone who has been playing for 5 years. It's no more daunting for a newbie than it is for an experienced player(who only has advantage in knowing what the level range for every zone is).

I'd love to see TOR try a system like FFXI's. With TOR being story-focused, I can see that working very well. Say an expansion adds an epic storyline across 5 new worlds, there's no reason it can't be available for the base level cap. You add new storylines for lower level players(that higher levels can still do for story), plus a sweet epic storyline for level cap. You could still add tricky new raids with each expansion, but the focus would be more on going from Tier to Tier(like WoW's mid-expansion patches) instead of from level cap to tiers to new level cap to new tiers and so on. You don't alienate someone who just started with having a large amount of levels to gain that only gets bigger with each expansion. When you take away the emphasis on level cap, you can start re-emphasizing the story.

This quote was as blunt as you could be without actually saying it: there won't be a space simulator in TOR. There can be character combat aboard spaceships, owning your own ship, or planet travel similar to Mass Effect 2 or KoToR. But it's safe to say, you won't get to go pew pew lasers.