James Ohlen, lead designer in Bioware, talked to IncGamers and gave us some food for speculation (I swear, they have fed our speculations so much I will miss it once the game goes live) concerning endgame content. The full interview is expected later on this week but it is interesting to read what he had to say on the subject:
I know some people are worried, for example, about the elder game [and are asking] ‘what happens in the elder game, what happens when you get to the highest level?’ We do have a plan for that and we will be revealing it in the future.
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Don’t worry, it’s not like we’re ignoring that. We have a lot of hardcore MMO players who have like five level 80 WoW characters, so it’s not like we don’t have the knowledge of what we need to do in terms of the elder game and other aspects of our game.
Sean Dahlberg just reported that Star Wars: The Old Republic was voted the best Role Playing Game of this year’s E3 show. It is an award given by 31 voting publications. Sean had this to say:
This is definitely an honor and a privilege for us to be on the list and to win the award for Best Role Playing Game is amazing!
It is interesting that “Rage”, game from id Software (makers of Doom series), won the most awards, three. The concept should be similar to Borderlands with id Software amazing graphics. Looking forward to this one.
As part of their regular Friday update swtor.com released a video of the gameplay showcasing a group of 4 facing some early level group content. All 4 Republic classes are
present and we can see different roles they have within a group. It is not too far off the MMORPG standard. I like how the tank is actually ranged (Trooper carries a massive laser cannon thing) while smuggler’s ability to help just a bit with healing stands out from a “rogue” like role.
Another thing to notice would certainly be how the quest is fully voiced and the group respond mechanics. It seems that when a group initiates a voiced quest each of them picks a response an than the game does a silent roll and picks one of the responses. Social points everyone’s been mentioning and that none seem to know what they are for probably have some role in this whole matter.
Mythic Entertainment is a developer and publisher of a well publicized, but somewhat lackluster MMO based on a well loved and known world of Warhammer (no pun intended – I know the chicken and egg story in this one and I am allowed to make fun of it!). They were lately mentioned in the news since they took over the European operation of Warhammer Online from an outsourced company GOA. They are also owned by EA (used to be EA Mythic at one point). What does this have to do wih SWTOR?
Bioware, developer of SWTOR is also part of EA and they seem to have “NOM NOM”-ed Mythic so it is from now on known as Bioware Mythic (notice whose name is first here!). There was some talk a while back about the two studios becoming a part of the same MMO/RPG department within EA, but this was never confirmed. I guess that now they are not separate entities anymore. I hope swtor benefits from all the experience Mythic is bringing to the table and also that they leave all the bad stuff in some dusty corner in the old office.
So I am going through some tweets from a bunch of TOR related people. I come across this tweet by one of the SWTOR Community Managers. Apparently, there is a poll on the official forums asking who would win in a fight: Darth Malgus or Sean Dahlberg. For those of you that are not good connecting names to actual characters … Sean Dahlberg is the main community manager for the game and Darth Malgus is our main bad guy in the game, Sith Warrior of great power and malice and a star of both cinematic trailers released so far. Sooooooo … who wins – Sean or Malgus? Cast your vote here (if you have the official forum account, and if you don’t you should!).
In an interview with CVG, Bioware lead designer and story writer, Daniel Erickson has said that the well publicized, fully voiced, conversation system in The Old Republic is “totally inked from Mass Effect”.
I must say that I enjoyed Mass Effect back in the day and I am really curious to see how it all works out in the MMO type game. I’ll also be revisiting Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age to try and figure what we can expect in SWTOR, but more about that later.
The interview was conducted during this year’s E3 (the ultimate source of news for all swtor sites for months to come!) and you can read some excerpts in the CVG article. Here’s the most interesting bit for me:
Mass Effect changed the world because you became the hero. You actually became the most interesting thing on screen -you got all the best lines, and to be super cool. We had to go back and rewrite everything. The story telling system is totally inked from Mass Effect.
All the major MMO sites are reporting about a rumor saying that ~200 SWTOR closed beta invites have been sent out this morning to lucky winners. The image above allegedly show one such invitation (and if the person that made it is not really good at photoshop I must say it looks genuine). All of this was started by a thread on the official forums that was continued in thread no. 2. The most interesting piece of information divulged by Sean Dahlberg (Swtor community manager) is the following:
The Game Testing Agreement that was agreed upon (when signing up for game testing) states:
PERMITTED DISCLOSURES
1. The fact that there is a Game Program.
2. The fact that you are a member of the Game Program.
Outside of that, it is a violation of the agreement to do anything more such as posting images or screen captures of anything related to Game Testing that is private and confidential and not already publicly revealed by The Old Republic team.
The discussion on the official forums expanded onto the third version of the original thread located here. This makes something like 500 pages of posts.
Prior to this year’s E3 a new SW:TOR cinematic trailer called “Hope” got leaked to the internetz. Let me tell you, it makes fanboys and fangirlshave to change their undies. In my personal opinion it is not as epic as the “Deceived” trailer, but it is very epic in its own right. Enjoy it in its full HD greatness below and we’ll go into detail in the days to come.
Dear visitors I am very pleased and proud to welcome you to our latest endeavor, Swtor Life, fansite 200% dedicated to the upcoming MMO game Star Wars: The Old Republic, developed by Bioware. There are very few things in entertainment one waits and hopes for months in advance. In my case it was the Star Wars: Episode I (bummer eh?) and Lord of the Rings movies, World of Warcraft beta, next Lost episode (Season one and perhaps two only though). More than a year ago it was announced that Bioware is working on their first MMORPG title set in the Star Wars universe. That is when my wait for the game started. I even attempted to start a blog early on at swtor.mmorpg-life.com, but due to lack of time I was not very active in keeping it fresh (I will copy the content here just for reference). I feel the time has come to take out my camping equipment and sit in front of the proverbial theater waiting for the show to start.
As some of you may or may not know we also did Lotro Life and Aion Life fansites. The theme is recurring and sums up to wanting to gather as much information as possible and share it with the community as soon as possible. We do up to date news, guides, item and quest databases, comics and everything we think the game’s community might appreciate. With this site we plan on doing all of that, putting in everything we got and a bit more on top. We are fans of the games and we do it for the game fans.
Like that young man standing on a desert planet, watching its two suns set, we eagerly await the future and hope to overcome all the obstacle it brings, however dark (or Darth) they might be. We hope you will embark on this journey along with us through the Star Wars: The Old Republic universe.
The latest developer dispatch has been released. It’s the fifth in the series and showcases the Sith Inquisitor and Sith Warrior, the last two classes of the dark side. The video is of great quality and in HD and we can see a few people actually playing the game, among other things. You can see the interface and “spellcasting” (is the proper term forcecasting?) and how all that works at around 3:50. There seems to be a possibility of adding extra action bars. The bottom of the screen seems to be reserved for all your game info, from character and target HP and MP bars to basic action bar and buffs. Even the radar is placed in the bottom right. I bet there will be many changes to this setup by the time game actually makes an appearance (or we can customize our little hearths out of it … hopefully). Anyways, enjoy the video:
