1 - How is SWTOR a WoW clone? Are you basing this solely on the look of the graphics? :-/ 2 - There have been other MMO's that tried to copy World of Warcraft but did not perform as well. 3 - Every company wants its game to sell well. 'Mass appeal' isn't something bad, but how do you identify it in a RPG? How do you define it? There are a lot of RPG's that are very different from one another yet sell very well. The Witcher sold well too, so I take it that it *must* have 'mass appeal' too. Obviously since BioWare games get good ratings everywhere, there must be more to the game than simply 'mass appeal', right? Again how do you define what is 'mass appeal' in a RPG? For all we know, RPG's might not even *appeal* to most gamers. How do you know that most people who play RPG's don't prefer a unique story and interesting choices? Then by definiton, you *couldn't* do the same thing twice, since everyone would want an experience unlike the previous one. 4 - If only 'action' is sought after or is the key interest in RPG's, then why did Knights of the Old Republic or Dragon Age: Origins sell well? BioWare said it was only making the game more fast-paced ( read: *not* a hack & slash ), not ruining the tactical nature of the gameplay. SkyWard20
1. It has hardly to do with the visuals, and more to do with the core mechanics. Although then again, WoW was a clone of previous games namely EQ
2. They didnt, but, that does not stop others from wanting to challenge it.
3. Of course mass appeal isnt a bad ther per se. Anyway, to me an RPG has been strictly about Roleplaying (see my definition on Hack and Slash vs RPG). To me an RPG involves actually roleplaying your characters (Bioware games do this to a lesser extenct) and by roleplaying we should be able to solve each or most quests multiple ways. Rather than just killing everything in various dungeons and leave with all the loot and progress the story. There should be multiple branches as well (Both DAO and BG2 had this) and completing them should naturally result in different rewards and consequences. Your characters attributes should decide what quests you can complete and what quests you can't and how you can solve each quest. Oh and did I mention choices and consequences, they tend to have choices, but from what I have seen in their game there are no meaningful concequences with most of them being nothing more than an alignment change, I would love to be proven wrong though (there are some where where an NPC says something different but that is about it).
4. I shall not deny they didnt sell well, because those were some great sales numbers, but generally compared to several action games out there or action RPG's, it didnt sell quite as well. Judging by what I saw it will be hack and slash... on the console versions. However they already stated the PC version will be similar to the previous Dragon Age game. Therefore, console gamers get a game that seem to suit the console tastes better (and will probably be better as well as such gameplay will be more suited for consoles), while we PC gamers retain what is more suitable for us. As long as they stick to their promise, thank you bioware for not lazily make a PC version without even adapting to the strengths of the PC. I meant it is actiony on consoles, which is probably not a bad thing. Correct me if I am wrong, but action RPGs sell better on CONSOLES than Traditional RPGs.
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