9 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I live in central Florida and have several family members employed by Disney. I know of real reasons why Disney is far from the Happiest Place on Earth to be.

Don't recall saying it was, beyond the slogan.

I just find it interesting that Star Wars being a multimedia merchandising machine trading on recycled and familiar bits is the most heinous of crimes under Disney's ownership, while Star Wars being a multimedia merchandising machine trading on recycled and familiar bits was happily tolerated (if not outright celebrated) when LFL was an independent entity. Generally speaking, of course.

10 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

Don't recall saying it was, beyond the slogan.

I just find it interesting that Star Wars being a multimedia merchandising machine trading on recycled and familiar bits is the most heinous of crimes under Disney's ownership, while Star Wars being a multimedia merchandising machine trading on recycled and familiar bits was happily tolerated (if not outright celebrated) when LFL was an independent entity. Generally speaking, of course.

That might have more to do with the era than anything about the ownership. People just like to have their complaints aired publicly these days. I don't think they really complained any less before, but they didn't have the same reach.

4 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

That might have more to do with the era than anything about the ownership. People just like to have their complaints aired publicly these days. I don't think they really complained any less before, but they didn't have the same reach.

I must respectfully disagree.

Not only has there been a marked increase in complaining since the very day the Disney purchase of LFL was announced, a great many are couched in specific references to Disney.

10 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

That might have more to do with the era than anything about the ownership. People just like to have their complaints aired publicly these days. I don't think they really complained any less before, but they didn't have the same reach.

3 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

I must respectfully disagree.

Not only has there been a marked increase in complaining since the very day the Disney purchase of LFL was announced, a great many are couched in specific references to Disney.

I've gotta agree with @Nytwyng on this. On top of the anti Disney vitriol, I've seen a lot of the hate being directed at Kathleen Kennedy in particular. There are numerous Youtube personalities who go out of their way to bash anything and everything about the new movies, simply because they hate Disney and Kathleen Kennedy; who pushed for a boycott of Solo , all with the intent of wanting to see Kennedy fired, and the new movies stopped, as if that would "save" Star Wars.

2 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

The whole point of SWTOR is to play The Han Solo Fantasy or The Obi-Wan Fantasy, though. I'm critical of Force Awakens for having yet another murder ball, but I don't mind something like that in the game. They reuse elements for very different reasons and to different effect.

No they don't, they reuse the elements for the same reason everyone else does, to tie it back to the OT, for money. As to the whole point of the game to simply rehash those 2 stories (even though there's like 8+ classes that have nothing to do with either of those characters), seeing as I never played the game to relive either of those characters, and nobody that I've ever known who played it did either, I don't think that's terribly accurate. It's just further fanservice in the hopes that it makes people keep playing.

That all being said, I enjoy the game when I get the urge to play it, but when every corner I turn on any planet, has me saying in my head "oh look, another OT reference, what a crazy, random happenstance", it gets really old. And pulls me out of the enjoyment of the game. I don't want to rehash the same setting elements I've seen for decades. If I wanted to do that, I would just watch the OT. I'd like something actually new, that doesn't feel forced to constantly call back to the original, as if that is somehow a law, or makes it better. It's a big galaxy, it's perfectly fine to tell stories that are completely original, and it still be good.

1 hour ago, Nytwyng said:

I must respectfully disagree.

Not only has there been a marked increase in complaining since the very day the Disney purchase of LFL was announced, a great many are couched in specific references to Disney.

I remember a lot of hatred of KJA's Star Wars works in the 1990s. I recall the Great Complaints of the late 1990s when the Vong were first coming out. Then there were the strongly divided opinions on Karen Traviss that followed a few years after that. No, I don't think people complain more today; I just think that social media carries those complaints a lot further.

57 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I remember a lot of hatred of KJA's Star Wars works in the 1990s. I recall the Great Complaints of the late 1990s when the Vong were first coming out. Then there were the strongly divided opinions on Karen Traviss that followed a few years after that. No, I don't think people complain more today; I just think that social media carries those complaints a lot further.

Online interactions were quite healthy when NJO began. Social media was already ubiquitous when Traviss entered the picture. In none of the examples you cited do I recall the die-hard insistence that LFL was out to destroy the franchise and intentionally drive away the fan base the way those complaints are leveled at Disney today. Nor did we see such widespread outright attacks on the cast, crew, or other creators that we do today. I'll meet you far enough to say that social media has emboldened the toxic elements of the fandom. But, at the end of the day, the production and output of Star Wars remains the same business as usual before and after October 30, 2012. By and large, LFL got a free pass for going about making Star Wars content the same way they do under Disney's ownership, with Disney invoked as a great evil with sinister ulterior motives.

2 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

Online interactions were quite healthy when NJO began.

That's not how I remember it. The divide between those that thought the Vong were going to be the best hope for the future of Star Wars and those that thought they had no place in Star Wars was pretty vicious.

Just now, HappyDaze said:

That's not how I remember it. The divide between those that thought the Vong were going to be the best hope for the future of Star Wars and those that thought they had no place in Star Wars was pretty vicious.

I was referring to the existence and state of online discussion (the equivalent of social media at the time), not the content of those discussions.

That said, my recollections that, while passionate, the disagreements regarding NJO weren't as cutthroat and toxic as those today. Were any of the NJO authors badgered off of discussion boards the way Kelly Marie Tran and Daisy Ridley have been? Not that I recall.

Just now, Nytwyng said:

I was referring to the existence and state of online discussion (the equivalent of social media at the time), not the content of those discussions.

That said, my recollections that, while passionate, the disagreements regarding NJO weren't as cutthroat and toxic as those today. Were any of the NJO authors badgered off of discussion boards the way Kelly Marie Tran and Daisy Ridley have been? Not that I recall.

And I'm saying that is because of the evolution of people's use of social media, not because of Disney. If Lucas was still doing SW today, people would still be saying/doing bad things on social media towards SW stuff because that's the way people are today.

Just now, HappyDaze said:

And I'm saying that is because of the evolution of people's use of social media, not because of Disney. If Lucas was still doing SW today, people would still be saying/doing bad things on social media towards SW stuff because that's the way people are today.

As cliched as it is to say, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Even outside of Star Wars, Disney is often trotted out as having dastardly motives and intent to destroy franchises that they've paid serious money for. At most, it's a little from Column A, and a little from Column B.

1 minute ago, Nytwyng said:

As cliched as it is to say, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Even outside of Star Wars, Disney is often trotted out as having dastardly motives and intent to destroy franchises that they've paid serious money for. At most, it's a little from Column A, and a little from Column B.

Were they seen that way 15-20 years ago?

Just now, HappyDaze said:

Were they seen that way 15-20 years ago?

I recall similar reactions when they purchased the Muppets, ABC, and (more recently than the window you suggested) Marvel, so...yes.

7 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Oh please, the Star Wars franchise has been recycling the same stuff from very beginning. That is hardly a JJ Abrams specific thing. Just look at SWTOR for the most ridiculous example of it. Every dancer is a Twi'lek, every gangster is a Hutt, the Smuggler character gets a ship that is suspiciously Falcon-esque in design. He has a Wookiee copilot, has a little leather vest jacket and a hip blaster. He even has a "princess" love interest, in the form of the daughter of Crime Lord who was referred to as a King. Every cantina band is either the ones from Mos Eisly, or the ones from Jabba's Palace, the list goes on and on. The phrases "I've got a bad feeling about this" and "You're our/my only hope" pop up so much it's almost like a verbal tic.

So yeah, don't try and blame JJ, he's just the most recent in a LOOOONG line of people milking the same teat.

OK, that is a gross misrepresentation of the game and especially the Smuggler storyline. First off, not every dancer is a Twi'lek, some are human or mirialan. Every gangster isn't a Hutt, your example of Risha's father Nok is proof of this (along with Rogun the Butcher). Since you want to play semantic games the Smuggler's ship is closer to the Ebon Hawk than the Falcon . Bowdaar is NOT a copilot, he's a freed gladiator slave who tags along due to either gratitude-turned-loyalty or a life-debt (player's choice) who never gains any piloting experience. The little leather vest is cosmetic only and can be anything from a longcoat to full body armor to a fancy shirt with a cape for those Calrissian wannabes; the hip blaster is intentional seeing as they were making each class an archetype . Smuggler = Han, Bounty Hunter = Boba, with hints of Dengar and Bossk, Jedi Knight = Obi-Wan and Luke, Jedi Consular = Yoda, Sith Warrior = Vader, Sith Inquisitor = Palpatine or Maul depending on advanced class. As for that "princess" love interest (an interest which can be skipped entirely), Risha is nothing like Leia. She's heiress to a line of planetary royalty, sure, but it's a line that's been usurped for generations, and she's only driven to reclaim the throne because her father raised her to want it and trained her to be a ruthless, power-hungry schemer. Same idea, very different story. Furthermore, Nok was never referred to as King. I honestly don't understand how someone could gloss over so much nuance when 5 minutes research could tell them they've got it wrong.

As to the current discussion of the Disney hate train, I can kinda understand where the detractors are coming from. I'm in my 20s, so I grew up with the EU: the X-Wing series, Thrawn, NJO, and Clone Wars books were my bedtime stories. And those books pushed the universe ahead, while respecting the source. They recycled ideas, true, but they always put a twist on it; homaging the past while forging ahead. Disney's Sequel Trilogy has done nothing of the sort. In fact, the ST has so far been derivative of the OT. TFA was nearly a remake of ANH with a dash of ESB for the lightsaber scene. TLJ took arcs and scenes from ESB with a dash of RotJ for Snoke's death. There are changes, sure, but they don't expand or drive the universe forward. The Resistance is like the Rebellion but smaller, the First Order is like the Empire but with bigger toys. The darksiders rule the evil regime with a powerful sorcerer at the head and the dark knight as his enforcer while the Jedi are hermit masters and adventurous youths looking to train. Compare the fighters from the PT to the OT - there are similarities with the ARC-170 being close to the X-wing with a long nose and s-foils while the V-wing and the Eta-2 have wings reminiscent of TIE fighters (the eta-2 even has the same cockpit window), but they're superficial similarities at best. 30 years of technical development between the OT and the ST and we've got sleeker X-wings and identical A-wings against TIE fighters with a reversed color scheme. Meanwhile, the old EU gave us E-wings, K-wings, TIE Raptors/Hunters/Phantoms/etc. Disney's Star Wars is blatant in it's recycling and that's what I think most people hate about it.

Actually, there's also the stuff that's been blatantly changed. To use a personal peeve, look to the Force. To quote Yoda, being a Jedi requires "the deepest commitment and a most serious mind." This is reflected in the Jedi characters of the OT and PT. Luke is focused on his goal of redeeming his father, while the PT Jedi are dedicated to upholding the Republic. Kylo is dedicated to his goal of immersing himself in the Dark side and overthrowing Snoke to start anew. He's trained under two masters to reach that stage and has destroyed everything that sought to make him waver, his mind steady on the task before him. Rey, in contrast, has no motivation given for wanting to become a Jedi, abandons getting Luke back to the Resistance after a day, abandons getting Luke to train her as a Jedi after 1 lesson, a dip in the Dark Side pool, and a touchy-feely moment with Kylo, then abandons her attempt to redeem Kylo after 1 argument. Which of these two characters best fits Yoda's Jedi prerequisites? ON top of that there's now the idea that balancing the Force means equal amounts of lightsiders and darksiders with equal power levels - an idea that if you think about it for a minute is horrifying. Since the darksiders are always after power at the expense of others and the lightsiders are all about helping others the two sides will clash and it'll be eternal war, something I'd hardly call "balance". And the worst part is, all of this only came about because of Kennedy. She decided to throw out Lucas' ideas for a sequel trilogy in favor of a plan of 3 writer-directors for each film. Actually, she did that twice. When 8 got to the writing stage JJ gave Rian his rough draft so Rian would know where the mysteries in 7 were going, but Rian threw that away to do his own thing, which Kennedy signed off on. To the Disney detractors, this isn't like earlier fandom debates like whether the Vong had a place in Star Wars. To them, this is about whether the people in charge even care about Star Wars. And from Kennedy's actions, such as hiring a creative executive team with little executive experience ( from what their IMDB pages say ), maintaining an iron grip on who gets contracted to create Star Wars fiction (with said contractors calling for diversity quotas and saying critics are misogynistic racists ), and this PR stunt , I'd say the detractors have good evidence that not only do the higher-ups not care but the majority at LucasFilm don't.

1 hour ago, Nytwyng said:

I recall similar reactions when they purchased the Muppets, ABC, and (more recently than the window you suggested) Marvel, so...yes.

The ABC purchase was entirely different. The criticism was from politicians, businesses, and other organized groups that felt it was a problem based on the combination of a production company and a distribution company (something that was outlawed until just a few years prior to the buyout). Individual people didn't really get all that involved--certainly not the way they are chiming in on the Fox situation--because the means to do so didn't really exist. Does this mean the Fox deal is drawing up "more toxic" opinions? I don't think so, I think that the same would have been spewed in 1996 with the ABC situation if people would have had the social media access of today.

As for the Muppets, that was in the early/mid 2000s (roughly the era of Traviss) and was in the early days of social media. Marvel has been rather recent and the noise has been much higher, but again I say it is with the increased use of social media, not because it is Disney.

33 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

The ABC purchase was entirely different. The criticism was from politicians, businesses, and other organized groups that felt it was a problem based on the combination of a production company and a distribution company (something that was outlawed until just a few years prior to the buyout). Individual people didn't really get all that involved--certainly not the way they are chiming in on the Fox situation--because the means to do so didn't really exist. Does this mean the Fox deal is drawing up "more toxic" opinions? I don't think so, I think that the same would have been spewed in 1996 with the ABC situation if people would have had the social media access of today.

There were indeed those complaints. And those among the audience of the alleged inevitability of ABC's programming becoming overly sanitized and targeted at kids. So, much the same complaints being leveled at Disney in regards to Star Wars.

37 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

As for the Muppets, that was in the early/mid 2000s (roughly the era of Traviss) and was in the early days of social media. Marvel has been rather recent and the noise has been much higher, but again I say it is with the increased use of social media, not because it is Disney.

Disney bought the Muppets outright in 2004, and had been licensing them for some 14 years beforehand. Throughout that time, there was (and continues to be) outcry about how Disney has "ruined" the Muppets, conspiracy theories about Disney intentionally mishandling the property (apparently to undermine characters that could bee seen as having overshadowed "traditional" Disney characters?), and so forth. Again, much the same complaints being leveled at Disney in regards to Star Wars.

They bought Marvel in 2009, with comics readers going down a familiar path: inevitable sanitizing and kiddie-fying of the comics (which, arguably should have been their state anyway...but dwindling sales leading to comics publishers breaking the business model is a whole different conversation), as well as of the then-still-new MCU, plus that the comics and movies would be intentionally done a disservice.

With the impending Fox merger, we're hearing fears that properties like The Simpsons, Family Guy, etc. will - you guessed it - be sanitized, made more kid-focused, and intentionally undermined, with the fans intentionally alienated.

The commonalities in these and other misgivings across the years, at different stages of electronic discourse, would tend to contradict the notion that they have little or nothing to do with the Disney connection, and would, instead, tend to support the idea that Disney is perceived as a mustache-twirling, villainous organization, hades-bent on intentionally producing low quality material designed to alienate existing fan bases.

8 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

No they don't, they reuse the elements for the same reason everyone else does, to tie it back to the OT, for money.  

That's uselessly reductionist. ALL FOOD IS JUST CALORIES. ALL RESTAURANTS ARE THE SAME.

Quote

As to the whole point of the game to simply rehash those 2 stories (even though there's like 8+ classes that have nothing to do with either of those characters),

They're examples, dude.

Quote

seeing as I never played the game to relive either of those characters, and nobody that I've ever known who played it did either, I don't think that's terribly accurate.

Whereas playing for the reason I stated is something I heard time and again from players back when I played.

Quote

It's just further fanservice in the hopes that it makes people keep playing. 

"Fan service" - as if giving people what they want is bad.

12 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Oh please, the Star Wars franchise has been recycling the same stuff from very beginning. That is hardly a JJ Abrams specific thing. Just look at SWTOR for the most ridiculous example of it. Every dancer is a Twi'lek, every gangster is a Hutt, the Smuggler character gets a ship that is suspiciously Falcon-esque in design. He has a Wookiee copilot, has a little leather vest jacket and a hip blaster. He even has a "princess" love interest, in the form of the daughter of Crime Lord who was referred to as a King. Every cantina band is either the ones from Mos Eisly, or the ones from Jabba's Palace, the list goes on and on. The phrases "I've got a bad feeling about this" and "You're our/my only hope" pop up so much it's almost like a verbal tic.

If you played a drinking game where you take a shot each time there is a blatant bit of fanservice pandering in the game, you'd die before you left the starting planet due to alcohol poisoning.

And that's just one example of one bit of the metric ton of Star Wars merch out there that uses references to the original to try and sell it.

So yeah, don't try and blame JJ, he's just the most recent in a LOOOONG line of people milking the same teat.

I think people can legitimately expect different things from games and films though.

Is that one on the left a variation of the female pilots ship from the teaser?

12 minutes ago, copperbell said:

Is that one on the left a variation of the female pilots ship from the teaser?

The color schemes of the vehicles and the outfits line up.

The leftmost vessel mirrors the outfit of the black girl. The second one from the right mirrors those of the vaguely Asian-looking girl.

ok... so who's is the fifth ship?

On 8/21/2018 at 6:20 PM, Nytwyng said:

I was referring to the existence and state of online discussion (the equivalent of social media at the time), not the content of those discussions.

That said, my recollections that, while passionate, the disagreements regarding NJO weren't as cutthroat and toxic as those today. Were any of the NJO authors badgered off of discussion boards the way Kelly Marie Tran and Daisy Ridley have been? Not that I recall.

None of the Vong stories are in movies or any media besides print, they just didn't have as big as audience. Also politics in general is more toxic than it was in the 90's, and politics effects the fan base, like the fans who hate SJW's and who assume that Hollywood has a liberal agenda in general. So the Alex Jones fans are the ones who really hate on Kathleen Kennedy, and don't like female leads in the franchise.

57 minutes ago, Eoen said:

None of the Vong stories are in movies or any media besides print, they just didn't have as big as audience. Also politics in general is more toxic than it was in the 90's, and politics effects the fan base, like the fans who hate SJW's and who assume that Hollywood has a liberal agenda in general. So the Alex Jones fans are the ones who really hate on Kathleen Kennedy, and don't like female leads in the franchise.

Reasonable points.

2 hours ago, Demon4x4 said:

ok... so who's is the fifth ship?

You've found the flaw in my theory. I don't know!