BioWare Targeting Spring 2011 For Star Wars: The Old Republic Launch

MTV's Multiplayer blog reports on comments from BioWare employee Sean Dahlberg, which indicate that they are aiming to release the game in spring 2011. He said, "While we have not announced a specific date, we can confirm that we are targeting a spring 2011 release for Star Wars: The Old Republic. We've got a lot of exciting updates and reveals planned throughout 2010, including the first-ever hands-on testing for the game. ... We can't wait to share more about the game with you as we progress through the year, so make sure you stay tuned to the official website for details." Recent posts to the game's developer blog provide details on the Imperial Agent and the Jedi Knight. They also released a video which gives insight into their design process for the Dark Side.

Comments

Why an MMO?

[captjc]

As great as KotOR and Mass Effect was, why can't they just do KotOR 3? Why does everything always have to be an MMO these days?

BTW, that was a rhetorical question. I am well aware why game producers love MMO's.

But I want an MMO

[Sycraft-fu]

I agree, it's too bad they didn't do more single player with it, but I'd like a cool Sci-Fi MMO too. Hopefully this will end up being it. MMOs are fun in a different way than single player RPGs. Neither is better or worse, just different and I like both. Well, there's been some good single player Sci-Fi RPGs, but no good SCi-Fi MMOs.

Also it isn't as though everything has to be an MMO. Note that since they've announced this Bioware has released Dragon Age and is going to release Mass Effect 2, both single player RPGs. It isn't as though Bioware has said "Fuck all other markets, we are MMO only!" No, they just want to get in on the MMO action. Personally, I'm very hopeful their offering will be a lot of fun.

The choice of KOTOR for the MMO also makes sense. It was done quite some time ago (they've been working on this since long before it was publicly announced) and they didn't have the Mass Effect universe to use. Plus people love Star Wars, having a popular universe helps. Lucasarts was also looking for someone to do a new Starwars MMO. They'd given the original one to Sony thinking that Sony would do a good job since at the time they had one of the few successful long running MMOs out there (Everquest). However Sony is retarded and they ran it in to the ground.

At any rate, I'm excited to see it. I like the Starwars universe and I could go form some Sci-Fi in my MMOs. I've gotten a little tired of WoW and nothing else has held my interest.

Re:But I want an MMO

[cbhacking]

It requires a pretty hardcore mentality (death can *really* hurt) but EVE Online is easily the best Sci-Fi MMO I've seen (not coincidentally, it's also the most successful of mainstream sci-fi MMO games). It's not based on any existing world, which I consider a plus in most cases. The in-game economy and player-created content are serious components of the game, and while high-tier PvE content (requiring either some of the best ships in the game or a fleet of friends) does exist, most players I've met prefer the player-created content (either becoming an economic tycoon or building an empire in uncontrolled space - usually by taking it away from somebody else first).

Note that it's a bit short on story, so if that's what you're looking for it might disappoint. They've added more role-play elements in the last year or so (there are two major content expansions, always free, per year) but the game is really more centered on the player-generated content. On the other hand, in a way that provides a platform for much truer role-play: if you want to be a pirate, you don't choose a "pirate" class (there are no classes, really) and take "pirate" missions (you can take missions and build standing with NPC pirate organizations, but it's not true piracy as EVE sees it). Instead, you buy a ship, put some guns on it, and go find some nice industrial ship full of valuable loot and hit it. Maybe you blow it up and take what survives the explosion, maybe you simply disable its warp drive until they pay you a ransom, maybe you ransom it and then blow it up anyhow - the decision is yours. You can find other like-minded folks and build up a fleet so you can hit bigger or more protected targets. You can take over a star system by camping its stargates, you can roam through low-security space looking for careless travelers, or you can make suicide ganks in high security space (the police ships are guaranteed to kill you, but if you kill the target first and scoop it's loot before somebody else does, you can make a lot of money). Note that piracy is far from the only option, and in fact represents a fairly small portion of the population. You're also not locked into any path - you can be the CEO of your own industrial corporation, building ships and researching blueprints at your private starbase, and every now and then jump in a PvP ship and go looking for a fight. Or you can do any number of other things.

Although its player base is nowhere near that of WoW, the entire game runs on one server cluster. Everybody is connected to that cluster - there's no instancing, and your position is simply a set of coordinates - if two people go looking for a hidden NPC pirate base in the same system, they will find the same one and probably come out of warp within a few kilometers - easy combat range (compare with most MMOs, where they would end up in separate instances). The largest "fleet" structure is 255 (10 pilots per squad including a squad commander, 5 squads per wing plus one wing commander, 5 wings all under one fleet commander) and the biggest battles in EVE these days involve multiple such fleets per side.

Re:IMPERIAL Agent & Old REPUBLIC

[Shihar]

The Knights of the Old Republic setting is set WAY WAY before all of the movies. This was done because Lucas is a moron and they want to stay as far away from that shit as possible. The Star Wars setting is hardly the most awesome setting out there. It has massive gaping planet sized holes in it in terms of coherency. That said, whatever it lacks in terms of being good is made up for the fact that it is extremely recognizable with a large following, and it is a pretty "fun" universe. Who needs consistent technology when you have freaking laser swords and magic?

Personally, I great this MMORPG with a yawn. I am filled to the brim with skepticism that any major production MMORPG is going to be more than a grindfest with gameplay directly ripped off from Everquest 1 and Diku MUDs before that. Woo, killing shit to gain levels to kill more shit. Thanks guys, I'll stick to real drugs. At least those are fun and not so damaging to your social life.

I think at some point someone is going to grow a pair and come up with some innovative MMORPG game play in a major MMORPG production. Star Wars Galaxies was actually pretty close originally in terms trying something different. It failed to be sure, but a few failures are what it will likely take to get out of this mind numbingly dull funk that MMORPGs are in right now where they are all glorified Everquest clones. Yes, I include WoW has a glorified Everquest clone. Don't get me wrong, they do it better than Everquest, but they do it in the same way that Quake did FPS better than Doom. Different cosmetics and refinement of the formula, but they are essentially the same beast. There are other things you can do when you have a few thousand people logged into the world besides grind and do some mini games.