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Star Wars: The Old Republic Launch Date Announced

Posted by Soulskill on from the fully-operational dept.

BioWare announced today that their upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, will launch on December 20 in North America, and December 22 in Europe. They've released a new trailer for the game, and reiterated that they'll be throttling logins early on to prevent server instability. Gamasutra recently spoke with SW:TOR project lead James Ohlen about finishing up the game and preparing it for launch. He said, "We're also focused on game balance for combat, for itemization, for the social systems. We've been running a lot of tests, we're getting a lot of feedback on the game. And when we get that feedback, we use it to make tweaks and changes. We're not making major changes now, we're just making changes that we can."

2 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Meh. by taxman_10m · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Would have rathered KOTR III.

    I'm curious as to how big a game this will be. Is it fair to compare it with WOW or Star Trek Online?

  2. Re:It's like WoW... in SPAAAAAAAACE. by Rinnon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For the most part you are correct, but from what I played in the Beta, story plays a MUCH larger part in the game than in WoW. Every quest has voiced dialogue that is specific to your class, along with dialogue options, etc. The Dialogue wheel from Mass Effect shows up when you can select a dialogue. Sometimes you'll say things that get you Darkside or Lightside points. Will this matter hugely? No, not really, though apparently your LS / DS points will change some skills you can use.. Does the dialogue let you change the quests you'll be doing? No. Does it make accepting quests more fun? Absolutely. Skipping quest dialogue in this game isn't like skipping it in WoW, it would be like skipping it in Mass Effect. For me, this is a big enough difference to make TOR worth playing. Plus, they really took the dialogue seriously, which makes me take it seriously too. I found myself being on vent and saying "Okay, AFK, taking a quest." and muting vent, so I would be able to pay attention to what was going on. Of course, if when you play Mass Effect you just blast through the dialogue so you can get on with it, none of this will make any difference.