I am actually pretty pumped about SWTOR, but this certainly doesn't sound like an amazingly new ambition (for complete voiceover at launch) compared to EQ2. I remember that was one of the things that EQ2 pumped a bunch at launch. Did you guys think that it played a big part in you continuing to play the game? I think it was a great addition, but I am not sure that it was worth the amount of resources invested in it (if it were up to me). It is interesting that Bioware is taking this up as a selling point, when I don't think it really worked for EQ2 for SOE. What do you guys think? Big deal? Immersion maker vs breaker?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FTYew4a2bU

Interesting, I have always noticed it, but was never anything that I thought other people would really think created immersion. I wonder what the level of resources needed to be put into it really is. I wonder if there are companies that they can just hire these parts to the game out to..

Same for me in that I really like speech in a game, while EQ2 has a lot of it early in the game it is one thing that I think they have missed out on as the game progresses, since they could highlight some of the key quests in areas with this.

Even just getting a default "Eh" type response when you hail/click on an NPC adds a little bit of immersion and some player feedback.

I know adding speech creates increases the size a fair amount, also the international concerns triple the effort too, I have a feeling here that one of SOE's mistakes on the voice acting is that they've been treating it like a movie with everything having to be done by a professional (check out EQ2's imdb listing).

While its great for the key characters to have a top actor playing them, a lot of the minor NPC's could have been filled in using various people who work in the company, WoW did that with success, and its the same for Stardock games with Sins of a solar Empire (for example the advent faction were all voiced by one of the developers).