The Old Republic

Since I am a MMO player, and for all those who are interested, and I am preparing myself for the mocking of the fellow GFGG staff, I play WoW or World of Warcraft, that awfully addictive game... I’ve played EVE online, which I was doing ok with until I lost my ship, threw all my toys out of the pram and quit. And once upon a time I played that, now looking back bad, game, Runescape, over the interwebs. I did once try to play Star Wars Galaxies, and it was either all the bad things I heard about it, or a technical issue that stopped me from actually playing the game, but I never got round to it.

Now its LucasArt’s second attempt to breathe life into their bank accounts (Although, with all the merchandise LucasArt’s have made, I’m sure their bank accounts are lined and made from Gold), with Star Wars: The Old Republic. Now, for you lot in the know, you’ll know what series this is following on from. For all of you who don’t. Look back at other games LucasArts have made, say... in the RPG genre. Then say... look at games set BBY (Before Battle of Yavin.) Then say... look at the name and realise it shares a name with KOTOR, Knights of The Old Republic. Yes!! LucasArt’s have decided that the follow on to that brilliant game KOTOR 2, that they are going to make an MMO from it. Congratulations, Most of your fan base now hates you...

Still, With the Beta of the game already broken due to the influx of people trying to get it, I thought, since I will be attempting to play the Beta, to give reason why I, and you lot sitting on your computers, should either A) Play it, or B) Not come to my house to try and burn me for wasting your money on an MMO.

Since Galaxies, When they messed it up bad ways by making the Hero class (Jedi) easier to obtain by casual players, which caused all kinds of problems (If you having problems thinking why this is bad, imagine a group of intellectual people being given a button to destroy the world, but because they are intelligent they have no wish to destroy the world, now imagine, that button gets mass produced and given to monkies... And the button has a picture and smell of bananas...) Now, LucasArts thinking ahead, have released a (At the moment only Sith Warrior) Jedi ish class. This may sound mad. But wait! If they release them as a default class to pick, then they have the ability to be normalised around the rest of the default classes, making the game more balanced. This might make a lot of people since that will mean that the Sith and the Jedi won’t be super powered, but it’s all for the best.

This game has two basic ways it can go, in terms of combat. It can either go for a WoW interface of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... Then abilities linked to each of the buttons. Or it will follow a KOTOR style combat system of lining up attacks (to people who haven’t played KOTOR, I’m sorry if you don’t understand this, just image a menu of all your attacks that you cycle through) Either way, people will adapt to this way of play easily. So combat won’t be an issue. The only problem I see with the combat is that a soldier will have fewer abilities, than, say, a bounty hunter, who will have fewer abilities than Sith Warrior etc. So classes, unless they surprise me and give each people the same amount of abilities to balance it, will be unbalanced.

Dialogue will always be dialogue, and I don’t intend on hovering on the subject long, I just hope they implement a KOTOR 2 style dialogue system, where you can pick what you say, and you can influence relationships with people based on what you pick (So telling a quest giver they have a ugly haircut will make them not want to give you quests.)

Which leads me swiftly onto quests, as I assume that, since every other MMO does it, that this one will too, give Quests or Missions to level your character up faster, but, as previously mentioned, every MMO does something like that. I can’t see them getting around that, but I would like to see them try, make an Original MMO (sorry for swearing, “Original MMO”)

The planet selection is limited at the moment, but they always have chances to increase the amount of planets you can go to later on, out of the millions in the Star Wars universe. What will interest me to see, is how you get to other planets. You’d either have to pay to fly on a Transport full of other people (Which will get tedious), Transport will be free (Still tedious but better) or pay for your own ship (which is brilliant, but then raises questions.) I mean, for the latter, if you have your own ship, why don’t you sellotape a massive gun to the front and blow people to the moon of Endor and back.

Finally, and this is very, Very, early days to be thinking about this, and some people will hate me for this, but what on Coruscant (see what I did there, “What on Earth”, “What on Coruscant” Teehee) will they do for End Game. “Gather 40 people up and go blow up a early Star Destroyer... well... an early version of the early version of the Star Destroyer... it gets complicated” or “Go kill this badass Sith dude” in which case, the first one means that Space Warfare might be involved, (By the way, this is all hypothetically, off the top of my head stuff, don’t expect any of this in the actual game) which would be badass, but it means that ship to ship fighting would occur, which means space could be dominated, which causes a lot of issues. And the second option seems awful, Cause End Game means that you need to gather a lot of people, and it gives more rewarding stuff, but Kill a person? And that needs 40 of you? Seems unfair, and it kind of makes you disheartened that you can’t do it by yourself...

Anyway, I can only hope they sort out the website soon, so I can play it, and have no social life still. And I hope they don’t mess it up like Galaxies. Anyway, this is Craig signing off, sorry if this has gone back to Essay like form :(. And may the force be with you.