RIP LucasArts

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RIP LucasArts

Post by Balsa »

Disney is closing down LucasArts game studio. Starwars 1313 is being cancelled. :(

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gami ... s/2050055/
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Pryde »

It's too bad this news didn't come two days earlier. ;)
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Cadden »

I had to wonder when I first saw it, but when I learned it was announced after the fact, it made me cry.
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Shaggy »

I hate to say it, but from what I have been reading and seeing, They were bleeding money.

Look at the amount of money they put into TOR and I remember when it first launched, there were massive amounts of servers and people playing. Many of the servers were full and even more were considered "heavy". I haven't logged on in a couple of months so I decided to and I couldn't believe how much the game has shrunk. I think I only saw 8 servers and none of them were above "low". Even with this new build coming "the hut cartel" there is no interest in it anymore and I will hate to say that this game will probably be gone by next year this time.

I think everyone agrees that their most popular games were KOTOR (1 and 2) and the Force Unleashed. After that, things just really went downhill (KOTOR 2 sucked). I think Disney took a look at what was happening and asked Lucas Arts "how are you still making money?"

It has been a sad couple of years for Lucas Arts.
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Pryde »

SWTOR picked up 2 million more players since going free to play, Shaggy. Also, those eight servers are megaservers capable of holding a lot more people than their previous servers. It may say the population is standard but I guarantee there's still more people on that server than when they used to say full.
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Shaggy »

What was the key thing that you said, "free to play"
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Pryde »

Free to play is becoming more popular these days. Even brand new MMOs are releasing as free to play and are succeeding. Maybe they're not WoW successful but they're still seeing dividends. Free to play doesn't mean the game is dying and will disappear, SWTOR will be around for awhile yet. The Devs still have big plans for it.
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Cadden »

There's nothing new with that, Shaggy. That's a pretty standard trend for MMOs.

To prove that TOR will be around for some time as a free to play model game, take a look at Pirates of the Burning Sea. It's had a free to play model for just under 2.5 years, and is still running fine.

Granted, not all MMOs go that way, but it is what typically happens to most, now. It's just how it is. It doesn't speak much for the health of the game itself, really, as nearly every single F2P game has content that can be purchased individually, which usually racks in more money than subscriptions, anyway. Several smaller purchases typically add up to more than one large purchase (several $2 purchases a month could easily trump out $15 a month, for example).

The only way to actually determine TOR's success/failure rate is to look at their $$$ numbers, and those alone.
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by ValynDyral »

Lucasarts didn't spend any money on SWTOR.

Bioware developed it, EA footed the bill and published it. Lucasarts was not affiliated with SWTOR. I suppose it's possible Lucasarts collected some licensing fees for the use of the Starwars IP, but as far as I know that was the extent of any involvement.

As for KOTOR - 1 was developed by Bioware, 2 was developed by Obsidian. As far as I know Lucasarts was merely the publisher for these projects, so by that point they weren't developing in-house anymore anyway.
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Shaggy »

then I stand corrected. My bad. Like I said it was just stuff that I was reading
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by coronhorn »

Lucas Arts was the main reason KOTOR2 sucked so bad, they forced an early christmas launch that resulted in the main questline being being a truncated mess that ruined an otherwise superior sequel...
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Shaggy »

that ending was so bad, after it finished I ejected the game never to play it again
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by ValynDyral »

There's a fan-made mod that fixes the ending. Apparently a good chunk of the proper ending that Obsidian was working on but couldn't finish, was included in the game files. Modders dug in and found this, and then finished it themselves and patched it into the game.

You should give it a try!
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Cadden »

Valyn is right. I've known about this for years. :)

However... it doesn't excuse what happened to the game.
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Archangel »

ValynDyral wrote:There's a fan-made mod that fixes the ending. Apparently a good chunk of the proper ending that Obsidian was working on but couldn't finish, was included in the game files. Modders dug in and found this, and then finished it themselves and patched it into the game.

You should give it a try!
I would, but I got the console version, and they brilliantly decided to remove the capacity to download content. I still can't understand why they regressed technologically in that regard only.
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by corsos »

I will miss XWing vs Tie fighter
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Cadden »

The X-Wing series games have been dead for ages, corsos. They're just a faded memory of what they once were, with a (couple?) small community(/ies) attempting to keep them alive - mostly in the form of X-Wing Alliance, from what I understand.
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Mir »

I had TIE Fighter. And X-Wing. And they were awesome. Never had X-Wing Alliance though. Played it once or twice.
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Re: RIP LucasArts

Post by Cadden »

X-Wing was meh.

I loved TIE Fighter. A modern remake of that would be awesome. It was the best story of them all.

XvT was awesome for its multiplayer, but that was pretty much it.

XWA... I loved the innovative gameplay (for the time) they threw into it. The story was fairly weak, from what I remember, though.
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