EA is nearing an agreement to move the ongoing development and operation of MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic from BioWare to third-party studio Broadsword Online Games, IGN has learned. The move is intended to allow BioWare to focus on Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
I agree, BioWare does not need to be devoting its resources to SW:TOR at this point. It’s been out for a good, long while and the fact is, MMORPGs are not big money-makers these days. There was a huge wave of them in the wake of WoW’s success but none of them were able to achieve the kind of market success, player base or staying power of WoW. That ship has sailed, and it’s only appropriate to let the BioWare devs get back to doing what they do best.
I don’t have high hopes for the next Dragon Age game, but would love to be pleasantly surprised. They’ve changed directions so many times during the development of that game, so I’m expecting the end result to be a mess. Mass Effect gives me slightly more hope as a possible return to form for BioWare though, if they learn from Andromeda’s missteps and focus on what made the original trilogy (particularly the first two games) great.
I really want to see where they go with Mass Effect and I do hope they’ve learned from their mistakes. I actually think ME3 was better than 2 in a few respects right up until that terrible ending. ME:A turned out okay once they fixed the issues but it wasn’t the Mass Effect I was hoping for.
What have we even heard about DA4 yet? From my knowledge there have been 2 teaser trailers and a weird behind the scenes video, and just dead silence beyond that. I hope they’re taking the time to just nail it. I’ve heard rumors that they think if they don’t nail it that’ll be it for Bioware and frankly… kind of yeah.
I haven’t seen anything solid, just the occasional story here and there about the changing vision of the game. It was originally intended to go hard on the multiplayer game-as-a-service model but EA backed down after Anthem and a couple of other failures. I think now, they’re back on board with making the focus single-player? I’m not sure though, as nothing official has come out yet. Maybe we’ll see something about it at Summer Games Fest in the near future.
I agree, BioWare does not need to be devoting its resources to SW:TOR at this point. It’s been out for a good, long while and the fact is, MMORPGs are not big money-makers these days. There was a huge wave of them in the wake of WoW’s success but none of them were able to achieve the kind of market success, player base or staying power of WoW. That ship has sailed, and it’s only appropriate to let the BioWare devs get back to doing what they do best.
I don’t have high hopes for the next Dragon Age game, but would love to be pleasantly surprised. They’ve changed directions so many times during the development of that game, so I’m expecting the end result to be a mess. Mass Effect gives me slightly more hope as a possible return to form for BioWare though, if they learn from Andromeda’s missteps and focus on what made the original trilogy (particularly the first two games) great.
I really want to see where they go with Mass Effect and I do hope they’ve learned from their mistakes. I actually think ME3 was better than 2 in a few respects right up until that terrible ending. ME:A turned out okay once they fixed the issues but it wasn’t the Mass Effect I was hoping for.
What have we even heard about DA4 yet? From my knowledge there have been 2 teaser trailers and a weird behind the scenes video, and just dead silence beyond that. I hope they’re taking the time to just nail it. I’ve heard rumors that they think if they don’t nail it that’ll be it for Bioware and frankly… kind of yeah.
I haven’t seen anything solid, just the occasional story here and there about the changing vision of the game. It was originally intended to go hard on the multiplayer game-as-a-service model but EA backed down after Anthem and a couple of other failures. I think now, they’re back on board with making the focus single-player? I’m not sure though, as nothing official has come out yet. Maybe we’ll see something about it at Summer Games Fest in the near future.
Yeah read the same, then silence since then. Cautiously optimistic for a great RPG… but trying not to get my hopes up either. I’ve been hurt before