Mice of the Old Republic: If Disney Purchased EA

The bulk of our Stories From The Outer Rim talk from Episode 14 was about the possibility of EA being purchased by a larger group in 2010, with Star Wars The Old Republic acting as a top selling point. While we touched on a lot of details around this topic, we felt it best to put together a definitive post from the fan’s perspective.

Are We Crazy?
The cornerstone of the discussion behind EA’s purchase stemmed from the Christmas wrap-up and prediction episode of the 4 Guys 1 Up Podcast. John Davison’s first prediction was that one of the major four game publishers would be purchased by a larger media conglomerate sometime within the next year. His best guess? EA, primarily due to a number of its properties that dovetail with a large media company, especially a group like Disney. What we neglected to mention on the show was that this theory actually has some wings.

Martin Peers of The Wall Street Journal (coverage from Kotaku) actually brought forth the idea that Disney should purchase EA back in 2008. At the time, the company had taken a huge dive in its market value, with its stock dropping about $45 dollars per share from the previous Christmas season. The WSJ article is still true today, as its stock has failed to make any real recovery. Between the ability to tie in properties and the vastly lower purchase price, Disney could stand to make a huge profit by providing EA with the financial stability it needs to bounce back.

Continue reading to see how it would work out…

Jawa Thoughts: Editorial Content on Mos Eisley Radio

There was a period of time when Mos Eisley Radio was just starting out that, in addition to the podcast, we included a spattering of editorial content on the site as well. The goal was to interpret the official news from Bioware and LucasArts in a way that was both interesting and meaningful to the to the community. Unfortunately articles like the ones on the voiceover work in SWTOR, or how Bioware could implement player housing have gone by the wayside. We want to change that!

The developer team has a lot to show us about the game and its mechanics in the upcoming year (which we’re incredibly excited about), but we know they cannot release groundbreaking material every week. With that in mind, we want to bring back the editorial material on this site, hopefully leading to some great discussions, many of which will spill over into the podcast! Some of the ideas we’ve already got rolling around include looking at what features from Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 will be included in The Old Republic, how the vocal community is affecting the development process, and a few others that are still being fleshed out. Of course, we want to put out content that is interesting to all of you, so if there are any topics you would like to see us cover, be sure to leave us a message in the comments or send us an email.

We are really looking forward to bringing some new material to the site! Look for the new posts to start within the next week. Also, keep an eye out for an update on episode 14, which we plan on recording this weekend.

SWTOR To Be Released Late 2010?

Earlier this week a French site, Star Wars Universe (English translation here), reported that they had learned, via a reliable source within LucasArts, that SWTOR was on track to be released in October of 2010. Let’s go ahead and break this down and see, based on previous releases, how accurate this may be.

First, we’ve got to look at the MMO giant, World of Warcraft. Blizzard made it’s official announcement that the game was in the works on September 2, 2001. After much development and a rather significant open beta, WoW was released to the public on November 23, 2004…3 years after their initial press release. Another genre favorite, Guild Wars, took about two years to create its first incarnation with an announcement in April of 2003 and a release in September 2005. Keep in mind that the scale of SWTOR greatly outweighs both of these games, especially the latter.

With some kind of reference for the industry standard games, next we need to see where The Old Republic is at in its development cycle. Bioware Austin was formed in early 2006 with the sole purpose of creating SWTOR. The official announcment of the game came on October 7th, 2008. It is incredibly important to remember that at the time of this press release, the team at Bioware had a fully functioning game that employees were playing on a daily basis. If the folks over at Star Wars Universe really do have a reliable connection who believes release is October 2010, that’s a four and a half year development period. Pretty hefty, right? With the amount of content that is going into this game, and the team’s dedication and demand for perfection, I would say this rumor certainly holds some weight. In which case, I am super stoked!!

Do you think the rumor is accurate? If so, will we see a public beta as soon as Spring of next year? Vote in the poll and let us know what you think in the comments!

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Games Radar’s Hands-on Preview of SWTOR

Like most you, we here at MER are just drooling over the thought of getting our hands on some type of playable demo of The Old Republic. At the most recent E3 there was in fact a playable demo which created a lot of buzz amongst those that had the chance to play.  Games Radar recently wrote a very detailed description of their experience, including insights from Rich Vogel.

Vogel, Bioware Austin’s studio co-director, goes into detail to explain the cause-and-effect scenario that was something new to me in a MMO game. During a mission involving a captain that failed at his duties you are given the option to kill him and promote the first officer in his place, or forgive him and allow him to keep his post. Up until reading this article I had been a bit worried that the whole “Good vs Evil” gameplay was going to be nothing more than choosing to spare a life and taking, or helping, someone out and keeping recovered goods for yourself. Vogel explained that your choice on the captain’s fate actually would weigh in to how the story would progress. If you kill the captain the young inexperienced first officer makes several mistakes which makes your mission more difficult. On the flip side, if you spare the captain’s life than he was able to defeat a sizable portion of the enemy, his years of experience allow him to make tough decisions that save many lives. This excites me because for once I am making choices where my actions will have direct consequences on the outcome of a mission and the entire story as a whole.

There are a lot more details on ideas and storytelling methods BioWare is working on in the article.  I encourage you all to check it out.

Check out the Games Radar TOR preview.