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  • BioWare Delays Mass Effect 3 to 2012

    Today on the BioWare Social Network, Community Manager Chris Priestly revealed that Mass Effect 3 will be released within the first three months of 2012. Executive Producer of the Mass Effect series Casey Hudson said, "The development team is laser focused on making sure Mass Effect 3 is the biggest, boldest and best game in the series, ensuring that it exceeds everyone's expectations."

    Mass Effect 3 was originally slated for release in this year's upcoming calendar 4Q. This announcement comes ahead of today's Electronic Arts latest earnings call after the US market close. Darth Hater will cover any Star Wars: The Old Republic mentions in a live blog at 2p PT / 5p ET.
    Tags: mass effect

  • Analyst Predicts Over 1M SWTOR Subscribers in First Year

    Gamasutra reports Janco analyst Mike Hickey noted Star Wars: The Old Republic could generate $161.9 million in total sales and $35 million in profits during its first 12 months of release, and investors are confident targets of 500K to 1M subscribers are achievable in the same time frame.

    Hickey said he expects initial sales figures for the game to "far exceed" the 500,000 to 1 million range, but "game development must be perfectly orchestrated" in order to sustain the subscriber base.

    Head over to Gamasutra for more.
    Tags: Analyst , Subscription , Retention , Revenue

  • Lore Update: Dantooine

    Although Dantooine has not been officially announced as a planet in Star Wars: The Old Republic, we repeatedly see it crop up in the marketing: namely within the Threat of Peace webcomic. With the recent influx of planet reveals, we thought it would be a good idea to reevaluate other locations we may see in future updates. Since BioWare is known to give hints to unreleased content, we feel it is in the community's best interest to take a closer look at one of the first known planets of the Star Wars universe.

    Tags: Threat of Peace , Planet , Revan , Rakata , Satele , Dar'nala , Dantooine , Angral , Baras , Khoonda

  • Retention as it Relates to Star Wars: The Old Republic

    We previously touched on our opinion regarding BioWare and LucasArts focusing on avoiding common MMO problems as a basis of our speculation articles. Many of the common problems relating to the retention success and failures were highlighted in BioWare Austin's Co-Studio Director Gordon Walton and consultant Scott Hartsman's GDC session, "MMO Retention -- Learning From The First 25 Years." During the talk, these industry veterans provided some insight into possible retention strategies in Star Wars: The Old Republic. We spent over a month listening to this presentation, debating all of its points, and dissecting it to find all the clues we believe are hidden within.
    Tags: LucasArts , BioWare , GDC , Development , Gordon Walton , Scott Hartsman

  • Lore Update: Naga Sadow

    Powerful Sith and practitioners of the dark side proliferate the history of the Star Wars Universe. Although most casual fans may only know Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader, anyone following the Expanded Universe knows there is a much deeper pool to draw examples from. For those that follow the extended fiction, few Sith names resonate like Naga Sadow. With BioWare and LucasArts crafting a new history for Star Wars: The Old Republic, we thought it might be a good time to look back at this powerful Sith Lord and speculate how he may effect what we will see in TOR.
    Tags: Sith , Lore , Planet , Naga Sadow , Dromund Kaas , Great Hyperspace War

  • Speculation: Getting to The Core of a Class

    Story has to drive choice, and choice has to drive action. - BioWare's Dallas Dickinson to Gamasutra


    In a previous article, we presented a chart showing the depth of customization players might expect after making the path choice in Star Wars: The Old Republic. BioWare's RPG signature usually includes foreshadowing an important decision with prior experiences and choices made during one's personal story, so the major decision of path choice shouldn't result in a surprise. Although we expressed our opinion of the depth and variety of customization that should exist after making this permanent decision, we didn't detail how we suspect you will initially acquire and progressively improve skills in what we call the "core class." Therefore, we here at Darth Hater decided to elaborate on our prior class combat speculations and delve deeper into what we feel "core class" really means.
    Tags: Dallas Dickinson , Class , Rich Vogel , Paths

  • The Guiding Principle of Darth Hater's SW:TOR Speculation

    After reviewing many of our recent speculation articles, we felt it was time to take a step back and reveal the core foundation of the logic that drives our conclusions. We strongly believe BioWare is approaching game design in a significantly different manner than what we see in other MMOs: instead of simply copying primary game elements and introducing a few new ideas, we believe the core principle at BioWare is to completely avoid significant MMO flaws through design innovation that wont negatively affect other areas of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Therefore, we believe these design innovations will compliment each other and integrate seamlessly throughout the game.

    When attempting to solve common MMO problems such as stale character progression, faction or class imbalances, BioWare must use the Star Wars universe itself to creatively consolidate their design innovations. We think BioWares fourth pillar of Story actually has to permeate even further into the other pillars of Combat, Progression, and Exploration and these pillars are intertwined in such a way that they seem to solve these issues from the outset.
    Tags: Story , Ray Muzyka , BioWare , Holonet , Brian Green

  • Charting a Path to Class Customization

    As the news coming out of Austin continues to pick up speed, mining information is becoming much more exciting. The response to our recent speculation articles inspired us to delve deeper into what we were previously told about Star Wars: The Old Republic with surprising results. We used our recently acquired knowledge to give context to older news items, and realized BioWare was giving us hard facts all along.

    Tags: Combat , Smuggler , Holonet , Class Tree , Healing , Morality , Progression , Paths , Gordon Walton

  • Speculation: Wearing A Path In The Holonet

    As we touched on in our previous article, we believe all the developers public statements solidified BioWare's direction of class design. We searched high and low looking for clues, kicked around hypotheses, made charts and graphs, followed several threads in the Character Class section of the Star Wars: The Old Republic official forums and we discovered that the answer to every class two paths were possibly outlined plain as day in the Holonet.
    Tags: Jake Neri , Sith Warrior , Holonet , Class Tree , Trooper

  • Speculating the Combat Paths of the Sith Inquisitor

    By: Emlaeh & Zenkei

    "Eight unique classes" is a statement BioWare often repeats in multiple interviews, as it illustrates the solid theme they are using to approach designing the combat of the classes of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

    This very clear statement is starting to get muddied when speculating upon how the various classes will specialize themselves and work together in a group.


    Tags: Jake Neri , Speculation , Role , James Ohlen , Sith Inquisitor , Paths
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