Star Wars: The Old Republic to Use the HeroEngine; Might Be MicroTransaction Based
By Stephany on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 4:22 PM PST In Bioware, Computer, Electronic Arts, Gamer Life, Games Industry, LucasArts, Star Wars
Simutronics, which is a creator of online game development platforms has joined forces with BioWare, to bring you the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO using the HeroEngine. The HeroEngine, according to their website, is a developer kit which was specifically created for online games. This si not something built in house by the actual game developers, but is something anyone building an MMO can use and allows for development in real-time, enabling teams in different geographic locales to build the world and play the game live on the server simultaneously.
Most people who follow gaming are familiar with the HeroEngine, and have known for a while that BioWare would be using it on their MMO, but for the people that don’t– what the engine does is make instantaneous updates and changes to the game environment, which drops the need for nightly builds and code crunching, which supposedly cuts down on time spent on the development cycle.
Now that we got that little bit of “news” out of the way, how about EA’s CEO John Riccitiello saying during a conference call that Star Wars: The Old Republic will charge customers for micro-transactions rather than subscriptions?
Now, before anyone get completely bent out of shape over this, keep in mind that EA commented afterward to Shacknews that this was a total “misunderstanding” and that no one has said anything about what the business plan will be for the game. So what would make Riccitiello call The Old Republic a “mid-session”, “micro-transaction-based” game then? Is this just going to be another one of those free-to-play MMOs that charge you for clothing, pets, and cars? Good God I sure as hell hope not… like everyone else I am hoping for a honest to goodness MMO.
However, unless Riccitiello is on some sort of prescription that causes untold amounts of confusion and brain loss, his comments during the conference call should be taken seriously until we know for sure:
“We are continuing to stick to the plan relative to building out our direct-to-consumer models which include micro-transactions and subscriptions. The recent launch of Warhammer Online is a great example of that. Other initiatives we’ve announced, for example [the] Star Wars online MMO, are mid-session games which are micro-transaction-based. You’ll be hearing more about those in the February [conference] call.”
Keep your shirts on until February then folks, and hopefully all of the ulcers Riccitiello caused Star Wars fans today with this announcement will be cleared up then.
If they do a good micro-transaction system (like, for instance, unnecessary stuff, which in the Star Wars universe can be quite a bit), I’m not gonna complain.
Sigh… The more that comes out about this game less I want to play it…
Micro transactions are disgusting. EA doesn’t have the best record with “gamer rights” in the first place though so it wasn’t much of a surprise really, just sad. What ever happened to paying for a game and then owning it?
Well the industry was/is alight with Riccitiello’s comments.
Should be an interesting follow to see if it was a mere freudian slip, or if John just prematurely let the cat out of the bag and is now backtracking to cover it.
@erathoniel – agreed 100%. As long as the microtransactions don’t become a pay-to-pwn there shouldn’t be anything wrong with it.