LucasArts, Bioware Announce Star Wars MMO 346
LucasArts and Bioware held a press conference today to confirm what has been suspected for a long time: they're working on a Star Wars MMO. It will be called Star Wars: The Old Republic, and it will be a continuation of the Knights of the Old Republic franchise. Further coverage is available at Gamespot, and IGN has some of the concept art. An official website for the game was launched as well.
"According to the game's official announcement, Star Wars: The Old Republic is set thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader, with the galaxy divided by war between the Empire and the Sith. That's about 300 years after the events of KotOR, a time frame that, according to Zeschuk, 'is completely unexplored in the lore.' Players can take the role of either a Jedi, a Sith or other classic Star Wars characters -- and, as perhaps can be expected from BioWare, Muzyka says story will be a major component, underlying and driving all of the player's actions."
Noooooooooo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Noooooooooo (Score:5, Funny)
I'll see myself out...
Re:Noooooooooo (Score:5, Funny)
Wait... (Score:2, Informative)
Isn't there already a Star Wars MMO?...
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Informative)
In all fairness, though (Score:5, Interesting)
In all fairness, though, I don't think it was a general Sony problem. The SWG team was something different and let to play by its own rules. Stuff like repeatedly lying to customers, the Sith Lord approach to dealing with players and board posts, etc, were something I haven't experienced in other Sony games.
And while the NGE and its bad interface were bad, let's not kid ourselves: pre-NGE SWG was a one-trick pony. It had exactly _one_ saving grace that everyone remembers fondly: the flexible character development system. That's it.
It was launched as a largely-empty DIKU MUD with graphics, without Jedi _or_ vehicles _or_ spaceships. If that's what SW is about, I rest my case. It's been a scramble since then to figure out how to shoehorn Jedi in. And even the excuse "but SW doesn't have thousands of Jedi"... well, they made it even worse lore-wise.
I mean, basically the story of a typical Jedi in SWG was: You're a grizzled old veteran, you've seen wars and have been on the wrong side as often as on the right side. You learned that winning and getting out in one piece beat being right. You setted in somewhere and took a job as an entertainer in a cantina. You learned pretty quickly that the pretty semi-naked girl or the bishounen in gay outfits get all the tips, and nobody even notices the master musician. You got your pretty haircut and (if apropriate) your implants and strutted your anatomy for cash. You didn't end up a misanthrope, you ended up despising every sentient species in the galaxy. Then you decided to try your hand at crafting. You prospected every corner of every known planet, you've made backroom backstabbing and deals, and generally made Hutts look like Mother Theresa by comparison. And you rose to the top like the biggest shit floats to the top of the septic tank. Then for reasons you'd rather not talk about, you went into smuggling instead. The less talked about that period the better. Then you tried your hand as a bounty hunter, and it's been largely an exercise in being a paid assassin, and elliminating gamblers who didn't pay their debts and opponents of some of the biggest scum in the galaxy. You learned again that being paid beats being morally right.
And only after that, when you're a jaded, cynical, burnt-out shell of a former human, _of_ _course_ you're ready to be trained as a Jedi.
I mean, hello? Wasn't that why they took them as kids? So they _haven't_ learned all those bad reflexes and views yet?
But even that's reading too much into it, because it was basically one big empty sandbox, where players were supposed to create their own content... but without the tools or rights to do so. Smugglers _still_ can't actually smuggle, quests were generally a late addition and mostly an exercise in merchandising the SW key characters, etc. Even the holocron grind wasn't as much thought to be the little story I wrote above, it was just an unimaginative exercise in taking the old "remort" system of MUDs ten steps too far and turning it into an _unholy_ grind.
I'm sorry, but that's not a _Sony_ problem, that's a Raph Koster problem. That's his ideas you have at work there. I don't think, say, Sony's old Everquest was like that. It only became a Sony problem in as much as they let him tell them what to do in other games too, and for example in EQ2 they've been struggling to fix that bad touch ever since.
And even after that bad era, SWG still is a... weird exception even among Sony games. They didn't turn EQ2 into a FPS, for example. Or I don't remember such SWG-typical idiocies as for example having classes which don't even have a combat level and can't do the quests, in any other Sony game. Talk about a fundamentally broken balance. On the contrary, most of the rest evolved to have better balance, get more story, etc. Nor, again, lying to the customers instead of fixing the damned bug reports. Etc.
SWG also had their own rules on Sony's website. It's the only Sony game where unsubscribing took me to a page which basically said, "go away, we don't wa
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It IS a sony problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In all fairness, though (Score:4, Interesting)
As a SWG player off and on for a while, (I still couldn't smuggle last time I quit. I did enjoy the space combat though) I found the worst part being the schizto constant 'rewrites of the way things are' to be the biggest issue, and I'm afraid I know where it came from; Lucasarts
Sony made the game, but unlike all the rest of Sony's titles, apparently Lucasarts has a strong creative control on the content and mechinisms. Comments about this that and the other 'vetoed by Lucasarts'... the NGE was basically forced on the game by Lucasarts, who felt 'it's Star Wars, there should be 5 million players, not the measly 300k we've got' Stuff would show up in need of fixing, their would be posts about how a fix was in testing... then a 6 month wait for deployment, which is worse than any other game they ran. My suspicion was that the 6 months was getting Lucasarts to vet any change in the game, even fixes.
Example: The 'big' ships (basically, light freighters) have turrets manned by secondary players. Those players pretty much can't hit unless you basically fly straight and level; apparently in a galaxy far, far away they never invented gyroscopic motion compensation for turrets. If a ship tried to manuver, you couldn't track your targets worth a damn.
I remember when I was playing (It's been a couple of years now since I've been in) that the devs liked the idea, and had even mentioned putting it in place on their internal test server.
It finally got added with the last expansion, because one of the hooks were new multiplayer vessels (gunboats) which were non-flyers without it. Some comments I read around in the intervening time indicated that the whole motion compensation thing was blocked by, you guessed it, Lucasarts, because it 'didn't match the feel of the movies space combat'.
Mind you, Raph was an ass too. He gets a good part of the blame, but together He and Lucasarts can destroy a galaxy....
I still have to wonder, though (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I guess we'll never know exactly what went on in there, but I just have to wonder.
Did Lucas actually tell them how to code it? Get into the tiniest details of the interface? Surely nobody (sane or half-competent) drags the client into that kind of talks.
I don't doubt that _some_ details got vetoed by Lucas, but I doubt that the whole NGE fiasco can be blamed on them. How much of it is really to blame on Lucas, and how much just on incompetent design and implementation?
The reason I wonder is that Bioware seemed to have had a lot more free hand with their KOTOR. I don't doubt that they had a bunch of details vetoed by Lucas or forced upon them, but the result was still a thoroughly enjoyable game.
For example, on one hand Bioware was free to move their game completely out of the trilogy time and invent their own story and planets and characters... on the other hand, the NGE turned the whole f-ing storyline into nothing more than a merchandising exercise for key SW characters. (You know, same as printing Vader's head on a t-shirt.) Did Lucas demand that? Is Lucas as schizophrenic as to behave that fundamentally differently to the two teams? Or is the unimaginative story in the NGE really just to blame on the SWG team?
Did Lucas force them to make the NGE first person... and not even update the enemy AI or interface to actually be fit for FPS play? Well, they didn't demand that KOTOR be first person or anything. How much of it is really due to Lucas's demands, and how much of that fucked-up interface is just... design out of spite, for lack of a better word? The whole thing almost feels like something designed out of spite.
And if SWG ended up practically micro-managed by Lucasarts, how did it come to that? Not many end up managed that way, even by Lucas, so it's a valid question. Just to play the devil's advocate: Can it be that Sony and RK just couldn't manage that team and that franchise, and Lucasarts ended up having to do that job too, whether they actually want it or not?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Lucasarts fanboy or anything, and I'm sure they have their share of the blame. I'm just wondering how much of it, and how _did_ it come to that.
Ah well, as I was saying, we'll probably never know.
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I haven't played either of them, but how is this different from what you can do in Second Life? From reading about it, it seems to have a "player driven economy", and the fact that you can transfer in and out to physical currency seems good. If someone is good at the in-game economy, they can make real money.
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Yeah, like there is a Highlander 2.
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, like there is a Highlander 2.
"There can be only one."
There should have been only one!
Pew pew pew (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pew pew pew (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pew pew pew (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Pew pew pew (Score:5, Funny)
Bastard.
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God Dammit (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope this doesn't put off another Knight of the Old Republic game. I have no desire to pay a monthly fee to play in the Star Wars universe but on the other hand I loved the two KOTOR games that were made. ...and seriously, do we really need another MMO out there? I hope they at least do something original with this.
Re:God Dammit (Score:4, Informative)
For better or for worse, it looks like Bioware is making this game instead of a KOTOR sequel. Their reasoning seems to be that they have a ton of story ideas, and they can get them into games easier in an MMO than in multiple sequels.
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I think it's probably more like they think they can make more money making people pay monthly payments.
Re:God Dammit (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously? The only "MMO" I know of that really told much of a story was Guild Wars, and that was because the entire game was instanced gameplay. Honestly, I haven't experienced anything of a real story in MMOs before (although I hear Age of Conan does a fairly decent job for the first twenty levels).
In general, it seems MMOs are more about creating a themed sandbox environment for people to play in than creating a story. Nothing wrong with that - they're obviously fairly popular. But it seems sort of odd to hear people talking about stories in MMOs when it really hasn't been done.
As I have no real desire to play another pay-per-month grind-fest, so I guess I'll be missing this one. I'm sure plenty of people that haven't yet been burned out by this style of gameplay will enjoy it, though. I'd love to see a new Kotor, myself.
Re:God Dammit (Score:4, Insightful)
Give me a break. The reason is to get recurring revenue (monthly fees) for the game rather than a one shot deal. If you buy their 'reasoning' then you're very gullible.
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WoW had more story emphasis than Super Monkey Ball.
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Seconded, I was looking forward to another KOTOR game, but now it looks like this MMO game that i'll never play will take its place.
Re:God Dammit (Score:5, Informative)
Star Wars is all about the fantasy of being a hero. The problem is that playing minor characters in world where the heroes get all the action sucks. You don't get to be familiar. Hell in an MMO you don't even get to be special otherwise everyone is special just like you. What does that leave you with - unnamed wookies, droids, ewoks and storm troopers??? Yoda's dim witted 3rd cousin shlopwitt of the planet schnarf?
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The game designers are just dumb if they can't figure out how to make being the hero work in an MMO. You have the in-game characters talk about the feats of the great players. You build game story over time based on what the hero players do. You make it seem plausible that by devoting yourself to playing the game you could be one of those people. You make it fun even if you don't reach that level. This is not rocket science.
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You're missing the point. Being a hero is about being special, chosen, better than the common folk, more powerful, wiser etc. The more heroes you have in an MMO the less special each one is. It doesn't matter how many people and bots talk about what feats you performed if everyone is performing them.
Think about flying in Second Life. If you were the only one that could fly that'd be one heck of a special power to have. Since everyone can fly the novelty wears off in half a day.
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That's exactly my point (that you claim I'm missing) though. You need to design your game so that there CAN be exceptional achievements. Things that can only be done once. An evolving story line that remembers the actions of those rare players who achieve greatness. Actions and powers given out only to a tiny fraction of the players.
Then the challenge is to inspire hope in players that it could be them, and to make the game fun enough just to play to keep around those who never get such an achievement.
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As just a simple example, lets say th
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I think the bes
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Two words for you:
Leeeeeeeroy Jenkins!
Re:God Dammit (Score:5, Interesting)
People do get to be special in MMOs. Particularly in those with a strong PvP element like Ultima Online had, like Dark Age of Camelot had and so on. Those who rack up the most kills, those who are the best players are always more respected/hated than your average joe.
You make your own name in an MMO, sure you may not be playing Luke Skywalker but if you can defeat anyone else 1 vs 1 on a server then be sure that many will look up to you and many more will hate you.
It goes further than just PvP though, I've seen people who for example in Ultima Online had the most money, the most rare items and so forth and were themselves looked up to. I've seen blacksmiths who can churn out more perfect quality armour by having the mental (in?)capacity to sit their mindlessly crafting away and still be nice enough to charge reasonable prices. There's also raid leaders, people who may have led raids to kill the biggest monster in game however many times more than the next one down or who have led hundreds of allies through certain tough quests for example.
Every MMO server/side has it's heroes and that's what some people like about MMOs, you get to be a hero, someone special where you get real recognition from real players rather than simply NPCs telling you you're great in single player games.
It may sound a little sad, but the phenomena really does exist. You're only like everyone else in an MMO if you don't bring anything to the community, if you want to do well or simply if you have the time to do well and stand out you absolutely can. For some being not Luke Skywalker, but a character of their own creation who stands out as a leader to their team mates is good enough for them.
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Yes, you can be a "hero" in an MMO. The problem is it takes such a massive ongoing investment in time. When I played Dark Age of Camelot, I ended up as one of those people. The problem was, I spent countless hours in game spellcrafting, AND countless hours outside of the game working on the crafting calculator that was the source of most of my renown. I had fun, but I had to quit... I didn't want TWO jobs.
An offline RPG lets you be the hero on your own schedule.
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Star Wars is all about the fantasy of being a hero. The problem is that playing minor characters in world where the heroes get all the action sucks.
Exactly, and all the replies you have received so far completely miss the point. In an old school offline game, you are the exceptional hero and everything in the game centers on you. This is the fantasy that makes games so unique as entertainment. You are the hero, not just watching the hero.
Making it possible to become an exceptional and unique in an MMO is completely besides the point. I will never become that hero. I am not good enough and not devoted enough and neither are 95% of all the people playing
Re:God Dammit (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah but MMO players play their one or two games for years. Those of us who loath the genre and have no desire to pay monthly fees for a game we've already payed for generally play through our games in months or even weeks. While MMO players happily run about in Eve online those of us who don't play those types of games have to wait longer and longer periods of time for new games as more and more developers jump on the MMO bandwagon to milk those monthly payments. Shoot, we'd probably be patiently waiting for Starcraft 3 or 4 if it weren't for WOW.
Re:God Dammit (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry, it seems blizzard has found a solution to your problem. There will be 3 Starcraft2 games. This way, you too can pay the equivalent of a yearly subscription to play a game even though you hate MMO. The reason given is the abundance of stories to tell. Does it sound familiar?
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Seriously. Go read a book.
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I already said that it was a matter of personal perception. If you have the time to play MMOs and enjoy them then they are worth every penny to you. If you like Starcraft then the more games you can get the happier you are.
I don't understand what you mean? I did not demand that they release what I want. I did not try to persuade others to not buy what is offered. We were discussing the GP's dislike of MMOs and want of normal
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I think you are both a little too far on either side of this. Frankly, the amount of content they have to release *is* too much to charge a mere $45 or so for. I don't feel that the quantity of content quite makes up for a full price game, but that is only secondary to the point. I'd say they should charge maybe $30-35 (I don't know what their pre-markup prices are here, just going with a guess) for each. That is to say, I think they're charging roughly 50% more than they should on these games.
Enough of th
Re:God Dammit (Score:4, Interesting)
there are already plenty of sci-fi MMOs for the PC. its consoles that need some decent sci-fi MMOs.
Sony already said they're going to focus their future MMO efforts on consoles. perhaps other developers will follow suit.
personally, i'd like to see some decent sci-fi MMOs for the PSP. there are currently only 2 sci-fi RPGs for the platform: Alien Syndrome and Bounty Hounds. and Alien Syndrome sucks balls.
i don't know what the situation is with other consoles, but i think it'd make more sense for MMO developers to release their games on platforms that currently have a dearth of MMOs rather than try to compete in an already-saturated market. it's not like the ps3/360/psp/ds can't support MMOs.
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Two things....
a. MMO's all but demand a keyboard, if you've ever played one for any period of time, you know why you don't want to be forced to communicate via voice with 99% of the people in the game.
2. if you *EVER* buy/play another MMO run by Sony/SOE, you deserve what you get.
-J ...and yes, the a->2 was a joke.
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The reason there are no MMOs for the current crop of consoles is down to how the online games are hosted.
With PC MMOs, there is a massive server infrastructure that you as a client connect into, this infrastructure keeps the game going even if no-one plays it, and has to be maintained for as long as there is (enough) player demand, which could be several years.
Publishers view the console market as crash-and-burn with each new game typically expected to be played by more than 10% of players for only about 3
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Star Wars Galaxies (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't star wars galaxies still around? How does it compare?
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I'll let you know in a year or more when the game is actually made.
Re:Star Wars Galaxies (Score:5, Insightful)
Galaxies is not still around. What remains of Galaxies is a gravestone on how to not make an MMORPG.
Re:Star Wars Galaxies (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh. The problem isn't how they made it. The game they made was okay, and it developed a nice little niche following.
And then WoW blew up, and they decided to try and be WoW, even though the game had been pretty much designed to be NOT WoW, at which point the whole thing caught fire imploded and shit itself into a grotesque mockery of life.
Look at Eve...Same era, also sci-fi themed, similarly geared toward the hardcore contingent, but Eve stayed true to itself and is quietly prospering.
What Blizzard does well is figure out what they want to do, and make it into a good game. What Sony (and EA) does well is try to figure out what will make them the most money in the shortest time.
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I hope they do _this_ one right... (Score:5, Interesting)
I loved Galaxies when it first came out. Looking back with my rose-colored glasses what I remember loving the most was the roleplaying it brought out in me. I'm not normally a strong roleplayer, but I will roleplay back at other people. I tend to blend in with the crowd in that regard.
Galaxies compared to most MMO's I've played enabled some of the best roleplaying I've ever seen (I realize my limited experience of course, I'm sure a lot of hardcore roleplayers would laugh at me). A lot of what the game entailed was interacting with other players which, naturally, enabled a lot more roleplaying. Some examples are you would go out and grind like most MMO's but after a while you'd have wounds that you can't heal in the field. You'd need to head to town and visit the hospital where medic classes will grind their skills on you and heal you back up. Your mind would also get wounds (fatigued basically) that would need to be fixed up by entertainment, namely dancers and musicians. These two simple features allowed for a lot of fun roleplaying. Yes you could walk in and just sit there, but you could also really get into the roles... I actually made a very low IQ medic for my roleplaying. I made macros for healing people's wounds where my character would do random things such as tasting the medicine before giving it to patients. It was quite enjoyable. One of my favorite roleplayers stood at the shuttle bay and stood behind the otherwise empty ticket counter saying random airline things that made me crack up. Most were just classic airline jokes with star wars twist but it was very well done.
Games like WoW on the other hand are fun in their own right, but I find it a real challenge to roleplay and can't remember ever truly doing so in that game. Everything is setup for playing the game instead of ROLEplaying the game. I'm not asking for SWG back, but if they can make it easily roleplayable like SWG enabled, I'll be happy. Star Wars is still one of the best backdrops for a geek like me to get lost in.
Hear ye, hear ye! (Score:3, Insightful)
This game could become the first MMO that I will play, but only if there is a roleplaying server that I can join. The KOTOR games were immensely enjoyable, but to me at least, that was because of the atmosphere, the great characters, the backstory, the moral dilemma's and other roleplaying related things. The combat honestly wasn't particularly great.
If I can play a KOTOR MMO full of Kreia's and HK-47's, I'll be a very happy guy, but if it's going to be a world full of LrdKillMeister123's, then I don't even
Is a story-driven MMO really possible? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I really have a hard time seeing how story can meaningfully be integrated into an MMO. There's just too many people participating in the world in completely different ways. There's just practical matters, like what time zone do you put big events in? How do you evolve the story in a way that entertains the hardcore players on a day to day basis but also maintain consistency and meaningful interaction for more casual players who only put in a couple hours per week? What happens to your story when the players react in a way completely unexpected?
An real world example is EvE Online. Along side a mostly player driven universe, the devs have tried to run "storyline" events, and they hardly ever worked out. The players just didn't react as was hoped/expected (sometimes unwittingly, sometimes purposefully.) I remember one event where the devs tried to get a big bunch of casual players together to go fight a big scary ship that they'd never expect to be in combat with otherwise. But players of a large and powerful corporation accidently stumbled upon the target ship before the casual group could get there, and destroyed it first. When the casual group arrived and the ship was already dead, they turned against the dev characters' ships. And that's not even getting into the many cases where groups have purposely thwarted the devs' plans. Fortunately for EVE, these sorts of "story" events aren't a big part of the game, and not particularly important to its success.
If you're going to focus your game design on the story driven part, then you'd better find a way to let every single player be a part of it in a meaningful way. Otherwise a small group of hardcore players will dominate the storyline, and leave nothing for the rest
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Easy...just have larger squadrons: "We're a go, Red 37..."
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Reminds me of all my PNP days in highschool. Our crew hardly ever followed the storyline, so most of the game was adhock game mastering. It was fun riots though because our crew was very skilled at humor and some of the strangest events happened.
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I'm not saying it's impossible, but I really have a hard time seeing how story can meaningfully be integrated into an MMO.
Have a look at FF11 - it has a plot similar to single player FFs complete with long cutscenes and ominous dialogues (actually several plots - three in the original and one in each of the expansion packs). You don't need story events to include whole server, each group or an individual player can go through them without affecting the rest of the players.
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I remember one event where the devs tried to get a big bunch of casual players together to go fight a big scary ship that they'd never expect to be in combat with otherwise. But players of a large and powerful corporation accidently stumbled upon the target ship before the casual group could get there, and destroyed it first. When the casual group arrived and the ship was already dead, they turned against the dev characters' ships.
That, to me, is a sign of a good game.
In larger games like WoW, Final Fantasy, etc, the game's own "plot" is completely replayable, and applies directly to players and groups.
I've also seen this done in a smaller game (Nexus TK), in which major plot points do happen, but they are entirely GM-run -- just throw up a few barriers and make it physically impossible for players to interfere. And thus boring -- you may as well be watching a movie. Hell, the movie would probably be better written, and in the case o
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Re:Is a story-driven MMO really possible? (Score:4, Interesting)
Koster (Score:4, Funny)
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Raph Koster was not responsible for the changes to SWG that made it suck. Damian Schubert of Shadowbane is the lead designer of the Old Republic.
Just give me a Linux client... (Score:5, Insightful)
...make it Binary only for all I care... compiled for 32 and 64 bit.
Wow! (No, not WoW!) (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of sad and cynical posts so far, but I have to say I'm looking forward to. I loved KotOR, and I've been hanging out for this one for ages. I just hope they do it right. I played SWG for a while, if for no other reason than being an MMO in the Star Wars universe. Bioware did KotOR right, hope they can translate it to an MMO format successfully.
So on behalf of the Star Wars geeks, YAY!!!
Ow! (No, not NWN2!) (Score:2)
"Bioware did KotOR right, hope they can translate it to an MMO format successfully."
And yet they messed up their own property. Gives me hope.
The Old Republic (Score:2, Funny)
Oh boy! (Score:5, Funny)
I hope it brings back the fantastic Dancer class.
I can't wait to do me some dirty dancing, Wookie style!
BLARRRHHAHHDHDDDDDDDDD!
Canon Of Suck (Score:2, Funny)
ANH +3: Empire - Arguably the high point
ANH +0: A New Hope - Pretty good
ANH -19: Revenge Of The Sith - Bad
ANH -22: Clone Wars - Very bad.
ANH -32: Phantom Menace - Terrible
ANH -1000...?
If we extrapolate the level of suck achieved as the canon goes back in time, there is the potential for a vortex of such terrible suck to be created that it sucks us all in long before the LHC ever comes close.
Our only hope is that the existing KOTOR games weren't just flukes and estabished the timeline vs. suck rule only appl
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Revenge Of The Sith - Bad
Revenge of the Sith was the best in the series, fool!
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Here is some random crap to try and get the "no" past
Re:Canon Of Suck (Score:5, Funny)
Sifting through pig turds looking for grains wheat to eat, is not fun.
Another Game Idea..... (Score:3)
While they're at it, LucasArts should come out with a game called: "How To Beat A Horse To Death Like Nobody Else In History".
Induling the fanboy inside me (Score:5, Funny)
I am squeeing in fanboyish delight. Hopefully I can stop before I have to catch the train; this is probably a disturbing thing for a 30 year old software developer to be doing on public transport.
Re:Induling the fanboy inside me (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know, it's kind of comforting to see that not everyone has grown up into a boring person as most seem to do. At least you're excited and happy about something, right?
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Still have doubts? Go here and read: (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20760
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20757
Because it sound a lot like story is going to individualized as opposed to generalized. Every one is going to have a party of NPC's like the other two games. They have a lot of good things that makes me confident that this MMO might actually be worth paying a monthly fee for, and I have never done that before.
Empire vs. Sith? (Score:3, Interesting)
Star Wars: The Old Republic is set thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader, with the galaxy divided by war between the Empire and the Sith.
Shouldn't that be "between the Republic and the Sith"? Or was there an Empire before the Republic before the Empire we came to know and love? Thanks.
Re:Did Jews do 9/11? (Score:5, Funny)
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I dunno, I think killing him or her would be a better use of your time and would ultimately be what's best for society.
Re:Did Jews do 9/11? (Score:5, Funny)
Where do we sign up for your program?
Re:I knew it wouldn't be long.... (Score:5, Informative)
You may be more behind than you think!
Re:I knew it wouldn't be long.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The first Star Wars MMO came out 5 years ago. Star Wars Galaxies couldn't live up to the hype but it had some good ideas in it such as its crafting system. SOE essentially killed it by entirely revamping the combat system, not even the space expansion could save it. It also didn't help that the game really had no plot to speak of to begin with. This new MMO will undoubtedly be the final nail in the coffin for Star Wars Galaxies.
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Not really. I once thought as you do, but eventually I realized that the player base is generally incapable of a decent, or even coherent, storyline. It is necessary that the developers string their clientele along with a story. Personally, I prefer the way Microsoft let Turbine handle it in Asheron's Call, at least at its inception. The storyline was mostly non-existent, but there would be events that would craft a general large-scale story that the players could take part in and one person per server
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I was Mothmar Friedsquid. I made huge huge piles of ships. I loved the crafting system. However, LucasArts continually shoved things down the throat of SOE (not that SOE was doing all that well in the first place) and pushed the game downwards.
Even if I weren't an ex-gamer, I'd boycott this one.
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Its WoW with blasters.
Re:Been there, done that (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Jeeeez..... (Score:5, Informative)
"LucasArts has already shipped 4.3 million copies of the game, but it's proved so popular they've told the factory to make some extra copies. Looks like The Force Unleashed could be the most popular Star Wars game to date - unsurprising when you consider it's one of the least rubbish"
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=243312 [eurogamer.net]
what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Kotor was considered rubbish?
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I thought Force Unleashed was OK. I bought the Wii version and other than getting too energetic and hitting the TV and Furniture a couple of times, I had great fun with it.
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Eh ... the KotOR label was made precisely to escape canon. In the old Republic you have all the trappings from Star Wars plus no Jedi or Sith limit, and no messing with the original trilogy characters (or the games and prequel trilogy characters). It's not about a single storyline.
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And now they're just going to jump 300 years into the future, a time when most of the characters from the last two games are dead, and expect it to make sense?
I actually look at it from the other direction. Maybe they're putting this game 300 years afterward for the express reason that all the previous characters are dead. That way, when/if this MMO fails (and even if it doesn't--there are a lot of people with no interest in these online games), they can go ahead and release another standalone KotOR game
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I doubt it. EA (Bioware's parent company) and Sony are competitors.
Anyway, it is in EA's interest for you to grind a new character for a few months before starting the endgame.
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Turns out we're matter.
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Why would anyone flame for that? I never got to play pre-CU, but all I ever heard were good things. I got in to SWG pre-NGE and I loathe the NGE - I quit playing shortly after it was rolled out on the live servers.
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Why would you bother to SecurROM a game than can only be played online with a subscription? Assuming it follows normal MMO patterns.
Then again with EA you never know wtf they're going to do.
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LucasArts? None. Bioware on the other hand most likely will; it popped up in KoTOR and KoTOR II, iirc.
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I think that's called ERP.