Star Wars Galaxies Takes Jump To Lightspeed

Thanks to 1UP for its article discussing the recent announcement of Star Wars Galaxies' space combat expansion, Jump To Lightspeed, which takes the PC MMO into the heavens, and "focuses primarily on [space-based] vehicles for both combat and transportation, promising at least 15 new modes of travel." There are screenshots and an official FAQ over at the Star Wars Galaxies site, explaining "you can expect to pilot X-wings, Y-wings, TIE fighters, TIE interceptors, and many other recognizable starfighters", and, dodging some sarcastic online reaction, an interview with producer Haden Blackman over at IGN PC argues: "In many ways, we're looking at Jump to Lightspeed as 'X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter' online - much of our focus is on that dogfighting experience."

Comments

This is what I dislike about MMORPGs

[DAldredge]

I really, really dislike having to pay 30-50 per add on on top of the monthly fees. Why can't more games do what Lineage II is doing? All expansions will be at no extra charge.

Re:This is what I dislike about MMORPGs

[Quarters]

Because those expansions a)aren't necessary to play the game you bought and b)cost a lot of money to design, develop, market, and distribute.

It'll be interesting to see if Lineage II expanions are of equal quality to DAoC and/or EQ expansions or if they are more like the old monthly updates for Asheron's Call.

Re:This is what I dislike about MMORPGs

[MMaestro]

Because American gamers don't have access to a cybercafe with a sweet broadband connection, or still use dial-up, to download a 300+ meg file update. Not to mention the bandwidth costs, and the omnipresent threat of the users bum rushing your servers to download the file 15 seconds after its put up.

With Lineage II, got a major update coming? Send a couple special CDs to some of the hottest cybercafes to install onto their computers, thus lessing the stress on the servers. A huge majority of players are on broadband there so the time they'll be download is minimal. Worse comes to worse, the company has the enough support to tell its consumers to quit bitching and have to deal with an extra hour of downtime so everyone can download and install the updates before people actually start reentering the game.

Here in the USA? A game doesn't have a feature shipped with it? Complain and flame about holding back. You're favorite class/race/job not the best? Complain and flame about 'balance' issues. Servers crash when hackers break into it? Complain and flame about lack of pre-setup security. Company bans someone for violating the Terms of Service? Post on Slashdot, and watch the fireshow.

Re:This is what I dislike about MMORPGs

[DAldredge]

Like the AoS expantions isn't necessary to play Ultima Online? With out it you are locked out of using any of the new items causing you to fall behind in the areas you can still access.

Re:This thing is boring..

[dancingmad]

I can't speak for you, but X-wing/TIE Fighter/Alliance were some of the best PC games I've ever played, instead of crappy RTSes and stuff, I'd much rather see additions to that series of games. LucasArts has pretty much crapped up any game with the Star Wars licence since Alliance came out several years ago. I'd much rather see those resources poured into a great flight sim like X-Wing again.

Re:point-five past lightspeed

[tc]

According to relativity, how long it would take depends on who is doing the measuring.

For someone travelling close to light speed, the subjective time from their point of view to cross the galaxy could be very small (and approaches zero as their speed approaches light speed).

From the point of view of an observer stationary relative to the galaxy, the fast moving traveller would take thousands of years to cross the galaxy, even at the speed of light.

Of course, differences in perceived time intervals, and hence radically different aging of characters when accelerated to large relative velocities, tends to screw up (soft) sci-fi plots, and so it just gets ignored for the sake of a comprehensible plotline. (Although there are some good 'hard' sci-fi novels in which this is a key plot device.)

As for what the perception of time would be like for something travelling at 1.5 times the speed of light, my relativity is a little rusty, but IIRC time would appear to run backwards for such a traveller, and someone observing such a traveller would observe them arrive at their destination before they left their point of origin. There are obviously big problems for causality in such a scenario, which is why relativity is usually interpreted as prohibiting things travelling faster than light.

Re:New players beware...

[Phil the Canuck]

I'm not so sure. The same thing happened with mounts and then vehicles, with sky-high prices for a few days after launch followed by a sharp drop-off as the creature handlers/artisans reaslised they had sold all they were going to sell to the rich folk. While the economies in SWG are inflated right now, it's not to the point where the average player can't afford to get things done. There's always someone undercutting the competition if you just take the time to look more than five feet away from the Coronet starport, or settle for the second-best weapon or armour.

You're wrong about missions though. Once you've prgressed beyond newbie skills, it's very easy to pull 8K solo missions. If you group with some other people and run solo missions, you can be making 20-40K per mission. At that rate, you can make a lot of money very quickly even as a casual gamer. Plus, faction ships will be purchased with faction points which will be at a set rate determined by the dev team.