Remembering back to how I felt when Star Wars Galaxies was first announced and how I felt all the way through to launch, I have to reign in my excitement over Star Wars The Old Republic and keep in mind the initial failures of the aforementioned SWG. One of the biggest initial downfalls of the original SWG that could be shared with it’s predecessor, SWTOR is the lack of space content.
With SWG, we had the promise of eventual space content but not at launch. They essentially took the stars out of Star Wars. With the lack of any solid information out there, we are just guessing at the moment but Bioware has danced around the question of whether or not there will be anything happening in space. Basically, their answer is that you will have a way to travel between planets but they don’t want to say what that will be. Could it be player owned star ships? Or will it be the SWG answer of community shuttles? That latter of which was nothing more than a portal to another world, you didn’t even have to board the shuttle for crying out loud – much less take a ride through space to your destination. Just a non-fancy loading screen to enjoy, yay.
My biggest concern, and probably one that will affect a lot of SWG veteran’s, is that we have high expectations for SWTOR to be everything that SWG wasn’t, yet somehow incorporate the great things that did exist in SWG. Crafting for example, SWG is probably the best MMO out there when it comes to crafting. There were multiple non-combat professions in SWG that were solely dedicated to mining and crafting. There will be crafting in SWTOR but as of now we have no idea if it’s going to be SWG style, where player made goods are the best items in the game or if it’s going to follow the more traditional MMORPG style of crafting, allowing players to be primarily combat classes with some crafting abilities thrown in.
Even the over-all mechanics of how the game will work has me wondering if our sandbox style of play that SWG veterans loved so much will be possible in such a story-driven design that SWTOR is going to be. Will the game be a sandbox that allows players to really build their own reputation and shape their own destiny or is it going to be a theme-park ride, the story taking you from one location to the next?
In a sandbox style game, the game world generally suffers a little bit in terms of beauty and content in every corner – the players are left to make some of the content themselves in the forms of player cities, housing and so on. In a theme park style MMO, there really isn’t room for player’s to own a piece of the game world real estate. Every inch of the game world is thoroughly gone through and tweaked to lend a helping hand to building the story.
There are so many possibilities with a game like this that it breaks my heart to know most of them will not come to pass. I love the idea of the player companions in the game, companions on SWG were nothing more than pets with no perceived will of their own. I like that in SWTOR they will be influenced by you and not directly controlled by you. They could be great assets to a player, especially if we are allowed to own our own ships – can you say built in crew?
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3 comments so far
Does anyone know when this game will be launched?
January 13th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Way to early in development to even venture a guess. This game is still in the alpha phase of development and has been in the works for a couple of years already. I’m guessing they may enter some form of closed beta sometime near the end of 2009? But we’ll have to wait and see, this game is being developed using a fast paced design engine (HeroEngine) so it may speed up development time a bit.
Short answer – ‘Who knows’
January 13th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
I too am worried that the crafting won’t be as good as in SWG. Combat is fun and all, but just about all of my game play consisted of setting up mining equipment, using factories to mass-manufacture stuff, and develop buildings and other things. Architect, Artisan, Chef, Doctor (meds and such) were all highly dependent on the, as you said, best crafting system ever developed for a MMORPG.
I am really hoping they keep this aspect in the game. If so, I will be the first to buy. Otherwise, I think I am going to pass.
September 28th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
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