Star Wars: The Old Republic

[LightningAce]

Hmmm. I'll probably end up playing all the way through several times with each of the different classes - minus the smuggler??.

It can't be more than several months left b4 this comes out.

[StrawHatRican]

Word on the EA/Bioware camp is POST July 2011.

So I'd plan accordingly... also here's friday's update:

http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20110415

Decent Q & A

[LightningAce]

A Revan novel has been announced titled "Revan"
http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20110422-0

I'm really lookin forward to this - finally get more info on what happenned to him after KOTR..

Also - i never realised just how huge this game actually was. The 1st chapter alone is like all of KOTR. The game overall would be like KOTR 3-10....
thats insanely awesome imo. Will get years of gameplay outta that for certain. Though it'll probably be bad for my health if its anything like how i was when playing KOTR, forgetting to eat most the day....

[StrawHatRican]

Not only that, but Revan has been confirmed to be IN SWTOR and might even be a boss character or somewhat of an important figure in your character's journey.

Same applies to HK xD

Oh and I don't know if this makes sense to you but the devs stated that EACH planet (and for those counting we have OVER a dozen already) is roughly the size of 4-5 World of Warcraft zones.

X.x

[LightningAce]

Not only that, but Revan has been confirmed to be IN SWTOR and might even be a boss character or somewhat of an important figure in your character's journey.

Same applies to HK xD

X.x

I doubt he'll be a boss character. We'll at the very least learn his final fate and what became of him - though i doubt the novel will cover that much.

Oh and I don't know if this makes sense to you but the devs stated that EACH planet (and for those counting we have OVER a dozen already) is roughly the size of 4-5 World of Warcraft zones.

I dunno how big a WoW zone is but i'm guessing that means its gonna be epically huge.....which is freaking awesome. The bigger the better - i'll be playing this game for years to come. :D

[StrawHatRican]

I dunno how big a WoW zone is but i'm guessing that means its gonna be epically huge.....which is freaking awesome. The bigger the better - i'll be playing this game for years to come. :D

If you're familiar with ANY of the games in this chart... you'll appreciate the scope.

[Cyborg009]

If you're familiar with ANY of the games in this chart... you'll appreciate the scope.

http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/j...gameworlds.jpg

my mouth just dropped through the floor after seeing this.

[StrawHatRican]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...300223#anchor2

Easily the best compendium of official info, with links to articles and videos.

Same with:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...arious-sources

Funny thing about this one is that it's the most viewed topic in a (pretty much) World of Warcraft centric website >:V

[LightningAce]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...300223#anchor2

Easily the best compendium of official info, with links to articles and videos.

Same with:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...arious-sources

Funny thing about this one is that it's the most viewed topic in a (pretty much) World of Warcraft centric website >:V

Crikey. That is huge and very complicated. Gonna take a long time to digest that info...especially some of the gameplay mechanics..

[StrawHatRican]

MMOs tend to be overly complicated in the long run... getting INTO them is easy.

Mastering them is a whole 'nother story.

[Zack]

So....its a Bioware game with basically 8 different stories for each class, and then that gets more detailed......I'm going to spend a lot of time on this as long as my computer can run it.

[StrawHatRican]

^ Basically yes, the fact that people can join in on your story makes everything even more complicated.

The best example of this is when 4 people are in a conversation that gives you the choice to either "Kill a Captain or Let him live."

Three people may want to save the guy, but if the system roll (1-100) from the ONE player that wants the captain dead happens to be the highest you get to experience the other side of the coin (which is kind of nice).

You also gain light or dark side points and you gain said points depending on your INDIVIDUAL choice, meaning that the jackass roll will have ZERO implications on your personal story.

So you can see things go sour, and still experience the game how YOU want it.

And that's without getting into the PvP implications...

[StrawHatRican]

Well hello there Sith Warrior.



Also, the embargo for the Fan Summit is over and TONS of into is readily available at www.darthhater.com

Here's also the current UI for the game:

Spoiler:

Get some!

http://www.swtor.com/guilds/76195/inglorious-banthas

[StrawHatRican]

[LightningAce]

http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/s...es/explode.gif

Oh yeah, thats hot.
I'm so conflicted...i dunno which i wanna go with. I either wanna be a Sith warrior, bounty hunter or Jedi Sentinal.....

Bounty hunter does seem to be a hell of alotta fun, especially since it starts off with something called "The great hunt" which sounds pretty awesome

[StrawHatRican]

If you decide to join the Sith Empire I'd click on my signature

Just Saying.

[LightningAce]

If you decide to join the Sith Empire I'd click on my signature

Just Saying.

http://cdn-www.swtor.com//sites/all/...ss_04_FULL.jpg

lol. Nice guild name. i'm undecided as to which side i'll play first I full intend to play it through many times with each character class. Its gonna be tough choosing though......though i'm leaning towards the Republic simply because i wanna see Coruscant in all its glory, which i can't do in the Empire.....

[StrawHatRican]

Yeah.

I'm rolling a Jedi Knight (due to my love for warriors and paladins) or a Trooper (dem guns) after my Sith Inquisitor is all done with his story and raiding/pvp for the same reason.

Coruscant is probably one of the biggest planets in the game due to multi layering O_o

[LightningAce]

I'm looking forward to seeing what Tython looks like. Looks likea lovely world to explore./ In the smuggler story, when you start out, there is a quest apparently - that your space ship gets stolen and you have to go hunt for the bastard that stole it. That sound spretty cool.

Also some more news on the "Revan" novel coming out soon:

Okay, with all that out of the way it’s time to talk about Revan – video game hero and literary protagonist. I know some people are concerned about the “power level” of Revan as a Jedi because of what they saw him accomplish in the video games. Other people are excited because they want to see Revan in a book smashing thousands of Sith with his uber-powers.

Let’s set the record straight right now: games and books are NOT the same thing. In a game, we have to constantly progress the power level of a character to keep things interesting. In a book, any character progression is slow and arduous – it often makes up the character arc, which is the whole point of the book. The two mediums are meant to convey different experiences and the two representations of the character cannot simply be laid overtop of each other.

To put it bluntly, Revan in the book will not be the uber-powered death machine you controlled at the end of the video game. You might have min-maxed your character to smack Darth Malak down in seconds without breaking a sweat, but in a book that battle would have been a brutal, hard fought affair spread over multiple pages. In a video game it’s fun to kill hundreds of Sith Masters, but in a book that would just be boring. It would suck out any drama or conflict or tension, and as an author I have no interest in writing that.

Now, I suspect some of you are already getting worked up about how I’m ruining SW canon by nerfing the Revan from the game. Well, tough. The game was a game – the powers and abilities you had in it were ways to make the game fun. They were representative of Revan’s power level versus enemies faced in the game, but they weren’t a blueprint of his abilities in the persistent fiction of the Star Wars universe.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore Revan’s accomplishments as detailed in the game. The high level events and history are canon. Revan did defeat Mandalore and Darth Malak. He was an incredibly powerful Jedi. But a powerful Jedi in story terms (films, TV, books) is very different from a powerful Jedi in game terms.

To keep characters compelling, there has to be some kind of balance. Witness the Jango Fett/Obi Wan battle from the films – they were pretty evenly matched. It was a close fight. However, in the KOTOR games Jedi classes were inherently stronger than other classes, making this result unlikely.

It’s interesting, because in the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO we decided to follow the movie blueprints – a bounty hunter (like Bobba Fett) or smuggler (like Han Solo) can match up evenly with a Jedi of similar level; the classes are balanced. That wasn’t the case in KOTOR, though, so some people may have the misconception that Revan will be able to break planet’s with his mind or something like that.

Trust me – that is not the case. The Force has very real limitations, and even those who do not consciously draw on the Force – like Jedi and Sith – can have a connection to it that makes them formidable opponents, even for a Jedi Master.

Given all this, some of you are probably wondering what “level” or “class” the Revan in the novels will end up being. STOP! Class and level are game mechanics, not character traits! Saying someone is a 20th level Sentinel in KOTOR is a shorthand way to define their skills and abilities within the confines of a game setting. But this has no relevance in a novel or film.

In a novel, I don’t want to shorthand the characteristics of my protagonist. I want to elaborate on them through the story. I don’t want to think about what “level” the hero is, then compare it to the villian’s level and know who would win and how tough the fight would be. That’s not what dramatic conflict is about; it’s an oversimplification.

I don’t want to be limited in what skills, abilities or actions my characters can take by labelling them with a specific class from a game. If I want Revan to pick and choose from Sentinel, Guardian and Consular abilities to make a better story, then I will… because those terms only have meaning inside the framework of the game they came from, and that meaning doesn’t extend into the larger narrative of the Expanded Universe.

Look, I understand why people want to label fictional characters with levels and classes. I understand why people have “versus” threads on the message boards. Competition is fun – that’s why I love sports. And in the absence of narratives depicting a battle between two interesting characters, people will make up their own narratives. Classes and levels impose some rules on this unofficial battle, helping people state their case when they choose one combatant over another.

It’s like arguing if Muhammad Ali could beat Mike Tyson if both were in their prime. Or if Jordan’s Bulls could have beat Russell’s Celtics. It’s fun to argue these things because there is no right answer. It’s the same thing with character versus threads – there is no right answer, because their “level” depends on the specific game (video, pen and paper, board, etc.) they are represented in.

Okay, I think I’ve belabored this point long enough. If you want more, check out my FAQ page for my opinion on who’s the strongest of Bane, Revan and Vader.

And don’t expect Revan in the novel to be the invincible bad-ass you played at the end of KOTOR. Because that would be boring and lame. Revan is still a bad-ass, but even bad-asses can get their asses kicked by other bad-asses. And the relative badness of a specific ass rises and falls based on numerous factors throughout the narrative arc, so that a wuss-ass at the beginning of the novel may become the ultimate bad-ass at the end.

Got it? Good. Later.

Drew

http://drewkarpyshyn.com/c/?p=239#more-239

Also, there is a topic on the official old republic forum that teaches you how to speak mandalorian. Thats pretty awesome, i'm gonna have to learn that sometime. Also speaking of Mandalorians, i'm disapointed the planet Mandalore isn't gonna be in this game - it woulda made sense seein as how big a part they seem to have in the story itself

[StrawHatRican]

Remember, as an MMO they can add content (in this case planets) down the line.

Take WoW for example, it took SIX years for them to implement the Kingdom if Gilneas (Worgen city) via their THIRD expansion.

So Mandalore WILL be in TOR provided the game lasts a long time, bet on it.