Hengist

I’ve been debating sitting down and starting a blog for weeks now but I kept coming up with random excuses. I wanted to make sure it was something I’d commit my time to on a regular basis, and that it would actually have something worth taking your time to come and read. Right now, we are a very Rift focused guild and I don’t want to take anything away from that, but it’s also a good time to start talking about what I think will be the next big thing in the MMO genre, and for Aureus Knights. Namely Star Wars: The Old Republic.


To me, Star Wars is something that nearly everyone has had some contact with. From my generation that fell in love with A New Hope and the rest of the original trilogy, to the slightly younger group who first found Star Wars thru the prequel trilogy, to a new generation that is finding Star Wars from The Clone Wars. I’m not saying that everyone has seen all the movies, but I don’t think there are too many streets in North America that you could walk on, and ask “Hey, have you ever heard of Star Wars?” and get a “no, what is that?” in response. I imagine that many folks across the world have at least had some contact, and know what Star Wars is.


The journalist Bill Moyers said that Joseph Campbell claimed that George Lucas was his best student, even though he never actually taught him. For those who don’t know who Campbell is, he was a professor for 38 years at Sarah Lawrence College, and one of his passions was myth. He coined the word monomyth which more traditionally became known as “The Hero’s Journey”. This basic concept refers to a basic pattern that appears in most myths. I wont go in depth here, I’d just recommend reading The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, or The Power of Myth by Bill Moyers which is a synopsis of interviews he did with Campbell for PBS in the 80’s. The point that I’m gradually getting to, is that George Lucas created more than just an intellectual property, he created a modern mythology that rivals (for our time) ancient Greek, and Roman myths. I think the heart of this created myth is why interest in the topic is starting to rise.

So what does all this have to do with Star Wars: The Old Republic? I think a few things. This is one of the most polarizing games in the MMO genre in many years. There are people who are so firmly on one side of the fence, or the other side of the fence and for a variety of reasons. That being said, there might not be a single other IP in the world that has a potentially deeper fan base, right from the start. This is the game that comes will all sorts of expectations, and with the ability to appeal to an extremely broad audience.

Maybe this is a good place to start, because every place I go, folks who are casually interested, or are just starting to delve into the game for the first times are overwhelmed. There are many strong voices, and quite often I see people speaking passionately about something, and quite often they are taking a position that really doesn’t have much in the way of foundation. Instead of waxing in a poetic fashion about The Old Republic, I thought I’d approach this by taking some of the most common questions, and concerns I’ve seen, and trying to answer them.

Q. So who is doing this game, and what have they done?

A. Bioware is building the game, and you probably know them for games like Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect 1 & 2, Dragon Age 1 & 2, Knights of the Old Republic, and Jade Empire. They’ve built their reputation as one of the best single player RPG studio’s around. Their games though are generally more linear, and less open world than games like Oblivion and Fallout.

Electronic Arts owns Bioware, but they aren’t the ones doing the creating, they own, and are publishing the game.

Lucas Arts of course remains involved simply because they own the Star Wars IP.

As a side note, Electronic Arts also owns Mythic, who was responsible for games like Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online, and several of those folks have been shifted to work on the PvP aspect of The Old Republic.


Q. So what is the big hook with this game?

A. Listen to a developer interview, and start doing shots every single time you hear them say either “story” or “heroic.”. Bioware has made no secret that they wanted to add a story pillar to an MMO, they feel that past MMO’s have left out the RPG, and they think that it will be You’ll be out of commission in about 3 minutes. Story has been the biggest hype feature to date, and it makes sense. Its what Bioware does best, and it is what is different about this game than other games.

The other thing that comes up quite often is the fact the game is fully voiced over. Not only your character, but every NPC in the game has voice over, which has been a tremendous amount of work.

The presentation of quests is going to draw you in with dialog, instead of a text box. It opens up all sorts of layers, and how quests progress especially since this isn’t a single player game, and paths can change based on group choices.



Q. So a single player game really trying to hide itself as an MMO?

A. No, Bioware has been pretty adamant that the instancing is limited. It is mostly used while you are involved in your class quest, but can be seen for the space mini-game, and in Flashpoints. You’ve got crafting, raiding, dungeons, and open world. The planet Alderaan, is about the size of 7-8 World of Warcraft zones, essentially about the same size as Northrend. (The Wrath of the Litch King expansion zone), and to date there have been 17 planets announced. Not all are as big, but there is definitely a large world.

It has all the other trappings of an MMO that you would expect as well, PvP, Raiding, and a player driven economy.


Q. What is the deal with this whole companion thing?


A. Well, Bioware has pretty much always used NPC “companions” to help them tell a story. Each class will gather between 6-10 companions over the course of their experience. Each companion will have their own story which you can choose to follow or not. Your actions will impact how your companions see you, they can grow to like you, dislike you, leave you, romance you, or even romance you and then cheat on you.

They are also used to do menial tasks, they’ll sell off “grey” items, they will offline gather crafting matierals, or craft. In Star Wars Galaxies terms, they are going to act as your harvesters and factories.


Q. The game looks pretty cartoony and behind the times, no?


A. To each his own. The Old Republic looked at what has worked, and they made a choice to go with what they call, stylized realism. If you look at World of Warcraft, they have never been really called a “graphical game”, but part of the genius was that people across all kinds of systems can run their game, plus it has aged far better than games like Everquest 2, which today looks very dated when you compare it to games like Aion and Age of Conan.

There are few videos out there that really demonstrate how far the game has come, and how it compares to current heavyweights.

Animations are a whole ‘nother story, and are something that The Old Republic has really made an effort to focus on.


Q. So really, can I be a light side Sith?

A. There is a great Daniel Erickson story (you'll need to go to the Q&A segment about 69:30 in to the presentation, TOR as a whole starts about 15:20 in) here. He tells of a time where Bioware had people in testing a Sith Warrior, and at the end of a 15-20 minute quest you are approached by a “pathetic” student at the Academy who says he could not get the shards that you were looking for. You have a few choices, one of which was to give him your shards. Several good hearted souls took that path, and then were surprised that their quest re-set to "collect all the shards in tomb three", and showed that they did not have any shards, and had to go back and re-do that particular quest. Like Erickson said, “being a light side Sith is hard.”. You can go that route, but don’t expect it to be easy.



In the future, I’ll get into some of the detail, but I just wanted today to begin to give a broad overview of what we can expect with Star Wars: The Old Republic. With 1.5 million beta sign-up’s to date, and a release that should be 5-7 months away, The Old Republic is just starting to heat up. Fans and haters are popping up out of the woodwork. While I’m not sure that any game is ever going to challenge the throne that World of Warcraft has sat on for years, this game looks to be the ne plus ultra of the current generation of MMO’s, with just enough innovation to get people excited. I’d like to think that this likely will be the next big thing to hit the genre.

I fully expect The Old Republic to become a flagship game for Aureus Knights.



Last comment. Deceived in all of its 3:52 of goodness, was possibly the best addition to the Star Wars universe since The Empire Strikes Back.