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Archives: June 2009

June 23, 2009

WAR Becomes the Land of the Dead

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Warhammer Online — Tags: , , , — 2 Comments
Warhammer Online: Land of the Dead PTS
Image by Evan Sims via Flickr

Today, Warhammer Online‘s 1.3 patch becomes fully live with the introduction of Land of the Dead, a zone based upon Warhammer’s Tomb Kings with an Egyptian slant.

If you don’t know the skinny, here’s the bullet point play-by-play:

-Constantly Flipping Control: The zone has a mechanism wherein control is determined by resource allocation. Each side gathers resources by participating in WAR’s normal RvR gameplay. When one side gets the resources needed, they control Land of the Dead unfettered for 30 minutes. Then the resource allocation begins again, with the “losing” realm picking up where they left off and the “winning” realm starting at zero.

-Invaded Instances: The aforementioned control determines a couple things – first, whether or not you respawn in the zone, and second, whether you can invade instances currently occupied by the opposing realm. If you contorl the zone, you can do both, which means if zone control flips away from you while you are in the Tomb of the Vulture Lord dungeon, you’d better be prepared to deal with enemy players.

-Dynamic PQ’s and Encounters: Action RPG is what Encounters Strike Team lead Gabe Amatangelo says was the inspiration for Land of the Dead. From dodging mist and locusts, to traps that require a bit of good timing to get past, to the ability to redirect invading players to trash and hazards, there’s a bit of an Indiana Jones element to the whole zone that makes the experience active.

Overall, Land of the Dead will no doubt be a worthy addition to WAR. No MMO doesn’t add content, so with this being WAR’s first major content addition since the release of the game, all eyes are on it to make sure that it does the job it’s supposed to do, which is revitalize the game for current players and attract former players back. Personally, I’ve played the zone and the dungeon, and both are really fun and engaging. While many people are weary of what WAR has been struggling with since release, I encourage people to give this patch and new content a try. The control mechanics and new quests are different than anything they’ve had before, and focus on smaller groups means less of the zerginess that has plagued WAR’s signature version of PvP.

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June 22, 2009

“Case of the Mondays” Cure – Hope for New Developers

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: — 1 Comment
Toaster Wall
Image by Voxphoto via Flickr

Today’s entry is going to be short, given the time I’ve got.

But if you’re feeling down in the dumps after a long weekend of Father’s Day plans and errand-running, here’s some new hope for you – games can be made about anything – even toasters (via Destructoid):

Eduardo the Samurai Toaster Review

How can you not smile knowing a game like this made it into production?

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June 21, 2009

Your Story in SW:TOR – He is Your Father, and More

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Star Wars: The Old Republic — Tags: , — 1 Comment
The costume of the science fiction character D...
Image via Wikipedia

Thanks to Syp from Bio Break, I managed to devour a long-ass article from MMOGamer interviewing James Ohlen and Daniel Erickson about story in Star Wars: The Old Republic. If you haven’t read it, you definitely should.

There’s a particular quote from there regarding how they’ll be telling the story that made me think:

“We can’t go into how it all works, but we didn’t want to separate the player base. We definitely are not a… there have been some MMOs that are basically instanced games with common areas. We didn’t want to go there.

What we wanted to do was be able to separate out people just long enough for the parts that were important for it. If you’re going to go have a discussion with your dad Darth Vader, you probably want to go do that by yourself.”

Elements of the interview go into more detail about how they’ve crafted stories with multiple forks for each of the classes, and how making a choice one way has impact on how the quest or story turns out, both on an immediate and long-term level. Now, it may have been me just trying to shoehorn in a mildly related Father’s Day post, considering the day, but the “discussion with your dad” part caught my eye. There was a lot of talk about how when you’re in the game you make choices with impact, but nothing about history.

What if you could craft your entire history as an option when creating your character? You could refer to a colored past living on the streets, scrounging for cash as a backstory to a Smuggler. You could highlight a childhood in which you moved constantly as a military brat due to your family’s army life for a Trooper. Or you could create an interesting story centering around a harsh father figure that violently abused you for a Bounty Hunter. Say all of these elements are like pieces of a puzzle you assembly yourself during character creation, so you could pick and choose, mix and match. Then, what if Bioware‘s game could then take the elements and create specific questlines that you could pursue based upon what you’ve picked? This would mean that if you chose “harsh father figure”, that at some point during your leveling journey, you’d be railroaded into a “save the dad” quest, where your father falls into some bad company and you choose what to do.

It’s not like this isn’t somewhat possible. Bioware’s Mass Effect had the ability for you to create your past from a variety of different options. Based upon what you chose, the interactions with the characters, while somewhat linear in general, would differ – so if you chose the fact that you were the sole survivor of a disastrous mission, characters would refer to that in their conversations. If this mechanic was transferred and evolved in Star Wars: The Old Republic, it’d be a great and unique feature that, even after people wrote guides for every possible history quest, would be something players would want to experience for themselves.

The more I read about how they are treating story in SW:TOR, the more positive I am about it. Sure, considering me and this blog, that’s not unusual, but think about all the elements and piece we are finding out. Think about how an MMO that focuses on lore and story might draw in characters, and for roleplayers especially, allow them to give their fellow players a character to follow and experience through historical quests. Even the quests they’ve confirmed are in the game are intriguing elements that will force players to not just do quests for experience but also read the text, check the dialogue, and have a self-contained experience in the game. We’ll see how it turns out, but if this is the way they are approaching things, I have a great story in mind for my dad in that game.

Happy Father’s Day!

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June 20, 2009

The Player in Multiplayer

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Social Geekery — Tags: — Leave a comment
World of Warcraft: The Board Game
Image via Wikipedia

Lately I’ve been jawing with many folks who despair for the game they’re currently playing. Whether it’s an MMO or a multiplayer online frag ffest, it just seems that lately people are in a bit of a malaise regarding what they want to play.

A lot of the time I’ll ask these pouty folks if they’ve figured out if they find playing with others makes the experience better. In many cases I get one of two answers – “I’m not sure, I mostly play alone” or “it was fun, but then my friends quit/left me behind/kicked my virtual puppy”.

Either of these two answers proves to me that multiplayer games and gaming is really at its best when you are in a good groove with other people, not just yourself. It might seem horribly obvious that multiplayer games are meant to be played by many players besides yourself, but you’d be surprised how many people seek a solo experience in a multiplayer world. Whether it’s because they have a hermit-like tendency to hate the crazy world of internet personalities, or a real desire to deal with the niceties of online etiquette, or they’re straight up anti-social, people who play solo in multiplayer games are really missing out on the enjoyment factor.

People keep you going when you’re having trouble in a multiplayer game. Having trouble with that quest or that one boss that keeps killing you? Call in some friends. Feeling a bit down because you just can’t seem to get over the hump and play better? See what someone else has to say. How about those of you who are less skilled at a game than those who spend time on it 24/7? Nothing hides a lack of skill than a little shared responsibility between a group of people who play together.

MMOs are perhaps the biggest places in which people can and should provide the biggest impact regarding whether you enjoy a game or not. For a few years, for example, World of Warcraft was my game of choice. But it quickly became apparent that the nuances of the game, for me, were slowly beginning to stress me out. As a raid leader, and a guild officer, anyone out there who’s had the same experiences I have knows that at times, the game seems to have it in for you. Constantly wiping on a boss, not getting the right loot, or potentially debilitating bugs threatened to cancel my subscription many times. The guildmates who I’d come to know and play with, however, pulled me from the brink. They made me feel at ease, created jokes and humor to keep things light-hearted, and always had a screwed-up tale of real life hilarity or in-game messups to take my mind off of things. It’s pretty safe to say that I was bored of WoW after a year, but the people kept me around for a couple more.

While developers need to encourage this kind of group play and interaction, at the end of the day, players decide for themselves whether they want to play or not. So it’s not surprising when you don’t feel the will to play when you don’t have someone to fall back on, regular players to interact with, and the “misery loves company” dynamic of the bugs of online games. If you find that you’re just down on a game that you used to enjoy, try seeking out a group, talk in team or group chat, hook up with a crew that fits your crazy personality. You’d be surprised at how in-game pain is soothed by companionship.

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June 19, 2009

The Trinity of The Old Republic

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Star Wars: The Old Republic — Tags: , , — 2 Comments
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back S...
Image via Wikipedia

Lately the hot topic of the Star Wars: The Old Republic forums has been, not surprisingly, class balance. There’s specifically been a lot of talk about the “Trinity” system of MMOs and whether or not SW:TOR will follow the same trend or try to do something different.

For those who aren’t aware of the terminology, the “Trinity” system, or known by its more common name, “rock-paper-scissors“, is the class system of Tanks-DPS-Healers that has popularized itself in just about every MMO out there. Very rarely do you see an MMO that isn’t armed with a system of this nature to any degree. With all the little details coming out about mechanics in SW:TOR, there’s a lot of speculation about whether it’ll be used in the game and we’ll be looking at a lot of “been there, done that” or if they’ll choose to go in a completely different direction.

Quotes from Bioware have been understandably vague on the issue. James Ohlen from the studio says:

“We just want to take the MMO combat and make it much more fast-paced, and make it feel much more action-packed.

And it’s really simple decisions, like fighting more than one guy, having a lot more animations in combat, having things like combat music being a big part of it.

There’s all these subtle things that as you layer on to combat it becomes what you saw in the demo in there.

It’s not revolutionary, it’s just a whole bunch of evolutions that have brought us to that point”

and also this tidbit:

“MMOs are very slow-paced, it’s you versus one enemy, and you hit him fifteen times until he dies. That’s something we’ve consciously moved away from in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

You’re fighting against multiple enemies, the action is fast-paced, there’s a lot more animations going on.

We’ve gone out of our way, we hired a combat designer who had a huge amount of experience with fighting games, who really knows the secrets of making your combat abilities really feel powerful.”

That’s something I think has really been missing from the MMO genre: Combat has always felt like an MMO, not like other games.”

Now the MMO community that’s been following the game has obviously cut loose with a slew of positive and negative postings considering what could possibly be making up the class system in the game. Some, already experiencing the post-release angst of “zomg that class is OP”, are quick to decry having to go through the same pain that they have gone through in countless MMOs. Others are idealistic and hopeful that the system will be innovative and fresh, “because this time, it’ll be different!”.

Honestly, guys and gals, I don’t think we should be too concerned about what system exists for classes in this upcoming MMO, and it’s not worth all the bellyaching and butterflies people are getting. When you see a class like the Smuggler and the immediate reaction of some people is sweaty-faced nightmares of being DPS’d from 100 to 0 in WoW, you know you’ve got people who are in need of a bit of a relaxation session (or a session playing with a rogue, take your pick). Not to mention there’s already rampant talk about which class fits in what archetype in the Trinity system (or not), with a whole metric ton of how the various classes are going to interact with one another. As is the custom with forums, discussion and debate turned into heated jabs which has turned into outright chest-puffing and e-peening.

What people should learn is to not sweat all the small stuff about whether Star Wars: The Old Republic will have a Trinity, a rock-paper-scissors, a Parallelogram, or whatever other clever analogy people can come up with. At the end of the day, the fun you have in an MMO is not necessarily attached to what class or archetype or box you fit in, but how that toon plays for you. Gameplay trumps archetypes and roles, every time. It’s why you have different flavors of DPS (ranged and melee), or you have games like Warhammer Online that try to blend traditional roles (as with the Warrior Priest and Disciple, melee healers).

A Trinity or a non-Trinity system – either way, if the gameplay doesn’t jive, the controls feel wonky, the class has you taking a constant dirt nap, and the mechanics were written by monkeys, you’re not going to enjoy it. Variety, specialization, and filling a role honestly should come second to answering the age old question “is it fun?” or “is it engaging?”. Even if Bioware decides to include a traditional system, it will be the feel, the play, the nuts and bolts, that will make the classes fun, not whether they choose to innovate on an entire class system. 

So relax, class balance debaters – put down those Trinity or non-Trinity banners and pick up some popcorn instead. There are 5 more classes yet to be revealed, and the combat mechanics are the real meat and potatoes of things, not whether you will ultimately play the role blamed for “not holding aggro”, “not doing enough dps”, or “zomg healz are sucking”. There’s plenty of time for that for beta, you know.

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June 18, 2009

Overly Positive Thoughts – RL Lost in Translation

by Frank — Categories: Internet, Social Geekery — Tags: — Leave a comment
Roman Theater Mask
Image by eliotc via Flickr

One thing I’ve noticed on the Internet is that there is a distinct lack of proper translation. Whether people read “I wouldn’t normally bother with this..” as “DOOD U SUK” or see “I will bomb your house” as “I got trolled successfully”, there’s just something about text being typed or things being posted that screams for clarification.

I’d say, however, that an “RL” translator is an even bigger need. If only you could see who the person was behind that post that says your mom was terrible last night in bed, things would be much easier to deal with.

Why do I say this? Well, lately there appears to be a curious case of mistaken identity on the intarwebz, starting with the case of Ferraro, a supposedly attractive female paladin blogger for WoW who has turned out to be an unknown entity who stole another blogger’s pics. Random players are bad enough, but the blog entry of a developer, Brad McQuaid (he of the doomed Vanguard project), that was at first thought of not to be him means something has to be done.

Clearly, to avoid entire internet populations from broken hearts, shattered dreams of cute comments with faux-female smilies, and general paranoia, we need that RL translator. Imagine, if you will, if you could run the utility on the desktop, shoving any link to a post into it to glean the real life information of the person within:

Original: “I like WoW, EQ, DAoC a whole lot! ^_^ I’m just a girl looking  for a good time and some lootz! Anyone?”

RL Translation: ”I like games. But I’m a dude. It’s also possible that I want to be a girl IRL, but more than likely, I just need free loot so I’ll claim my vent mic is broken.”

Original: ”You know, I know you can make your toon with huge boobs and a tiny ass, but I really think people shouldn’t. ”

RL Translation: “I’m a girl. But the sliders I used to create the character are reversed when it comes to what I really look like.”

Original: “dood you are terrible u should go back to school since ur typing skills suck lolol”

RL Translation: “I’m a 35 year old basement-dweller.”

Original: “I honestly think that the game could have been so much better if they paid more attention to the core design and character development. I still enjoyed it for what it was and look forward to their games in the future.”

RL Translation: “I’m an 18 year old teenager.”

See? The benefits could be endless for clearly identifying the people behind the monitors, and preventing lots of people from being embarrassed that they thought they were hitting on a 22 year old female when they were really putting the moves on a 37 year old male with crossdressing tendencies. 

Someone needs to get on this, right now.

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June 17, 2009

inFamous Choices – an Overly Positive Review

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: — 1 Comment
Promotional screenshot from the PlayStation 3 ...
Image via Wikipedia

There’s a reason why I hated GTAIV.

Yes, I said it. I bought it, and I didn’t like it. In fact, after playing it and not being able to get past a certain point without wanting to gouge my eyes out with a fork, I was pretty turned off to the whole “sandbox” genre. Don’t get me wrong – all these people who like GTAIV, along with whatever sales it managed to pry from gamer’s wallets make it a success in and of itself. It’s well-design, it has a good story, it has choices. It’s just that those choices could use a little help from the game – like a checkpoint when you die, or a way not to get repetitive about missions.

So I was pretty damn skeptical when I decided I was going to trade in a few games that were gathering dust (geez, I’d forgotten I’d even had that many Dynasty Warriors games) and purchase inFamous. Now usually, I don’t really bother with hype. I like getting excited about it, but I’m always cautiously optimistic about it. So that being said, it wasn’t the open sandbox, the blah blah morality choice, the such-and-such graphics. No, it was something much simpler.

It was the ability to shoot lightning – and make what I’d like to call are very “binary” choices at any given time regarding said lightning. Do I shock the hell out of that random citizen who looked me the wrong way, or not? Do I throw a lightning-based grenade at those thugs assaulting the police station, or do I whistle as I throw it at the cops protecting it?

These were the kinds of things that compelled me to purchase the game. Funny how super powers can do something like that.

Playing the game, however, is much more than just launching lightning bolts at people and draining electricity from cars, lightpoles, and the nearest sick person. For one thing, the story, told in a comic-book-esque style and unraveling depending on whether you choose to be good or evil, is a nice visual touch. The game doesn’t waste time after the requisite tutorial for the basics – it tosses you right into the action and lets you play. Most of all, it knows, in the course of being a giant lightning-throwing badass, that you might die a couple times. When that happens, it’s cool, it’s fine, it’s all good baby, because the game remembers points right before you decided taking an electric bath was a good idea, and puts you there. No frustration, no facepalming over getting to the last part of the mission, just back into the fray with your lightning fast hands.

Yes, I went there. Groan away.

Anyway, speaking of the lightning, probably another cool thing about inFamous is evolving your ability to use it. The game has a neat way of giving you more powers through a combination of missions and an experience-based system designed to give you new toys and then make them better. You’ll learn to drop onto the ground with destructive force, slide on electric cable, zap enemies sniper-style, and more. Experience in the game is never overbearing or excruciating, and enhancements to powers are noticeable, such as taking less damage or charging up faster. Better yet, the set of powers available to you is different depending on whether you’ve become a hero or a villain.

This brings us to the moral choice system. Unlike in some games, in which being “good” or “evil” comes down to single, significant events, you will have a buttload of opportunity in inFamous to make choices one way or the other. The best part about this is twofold – A)The results you see are immediate, and B)The results stick with you through the game. Not saving that police station, getting poison tar on yourself instead of the people, choosing how you should look to people – all of these have impact on how the world of inFamous reacts to you – either to praise you, or to try to stone you to death.

inFamous pretty much guarantees a double playthrough due to the choices you have to make during the game. But the immersive story, the non-frustrating game mechanics, the clear character development, and best of all, the ability to deliver shock therapy in increasingly bigger and better doses make this a tolerable, even fun, game experience. Buy it. It’s worth it.

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June 16, 2009

Podcast Pingback – Podtoid

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Internet, Social Geekery — Tags: , , , — 1 Comment
The Destructoid
Image by extraface via Flickr

In great contrast to the lack of rant on a minimally visited site such as Overly Positive, Destructoid is a site filled with edgier writing, controversial op-ed pieces, and ranting galore. Once a smallish little blog, Destructoid has grown into the harsh, direct, yet intelligent voice of the gaming community. There are rules in the Destructoid community – ones that you would expect you would have on a gaming site – but the fast and loose moderation based on tenets such as “Thou shalt not suck” has been Destructoid’s trademark. The result is a community not afraid to speak their mind but who tends to think before they speak, lest the wrath of the community fall upon them. For Destructoid, this works to great effect.

Destructoid has several podcasts, but the flagship is called Podtoid – an hour or two of games discussion, banter about the hot topics of the gaming world, and responses to frequent listener questions. Of perhaps all the podcasts that currently sit on my iPod, Podtoid probably has the most diverse and opinionated set of individuals. There are wry and at times acerbic deliveries from Jim Sterling, whose English accent only serves to increase the novelty of his rather sharp criticisms. There’s Samit Sarkar, the podcast’s requisite punching bag, whose love of sports games and his tendancy to ramble are objects of great humor. Topher Cantler is an old school gamer who boils down his preferences to a few, simple concepts, most of which are in retro games. Aaron Linde, the show’s longest member, is a hardened veteran with equally well-traveled accomplishments – not the least of which includes the unintended contribution to a blatantly pornographic game which was supposed to be a joke. Finally, Anthony Burch rounds out the cast as the navigator and resident prison guard to this set of loveable inmates.

Podtoid’s charm doesn’t really lie in being controversial, raunchy, and raw for its own sake, but simply in the fact that these guys are gamers who feel the sort of things that gamers feel – ultimately, it’s greatest strength is its ability to connect with gamers on many levels. While Destructoid has exploded into a popular site visited by thousands under the watchful and savvy eye of its owner and founder, Niero, you never get the feeling that the site has lost where its roots were – as a gaming blog that had an unabashed, unfiltered opinion about anything and everything video games. Gamers you’ve run into at the store, at friends’ houses, at social gatherings, and in malls fall into at least one or more of the niches that Destructoid fills with its podcast. This means you get a podcast that is not just hilariously funny or dangerously rantish, but also full of content from hosts that feel passionate about their hobby.

So while Destructoid’s acidic opinions seems to run counter to my own sort of “c’est la vie” philosophy about geek topics, they’re more than worthy of a listen – if for nothing else, to hear that even they don’t take themselves seriously. Don’t believe me? Try checking out Podtoid 94, which is an MST3k-ish take on the awful Jean Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia movie Street Fighter. Or what about episode 88, in which Jim Sterling talks about the ultimate in game design being the inclusion of, and interaction with, toucan birds? The latest episode, episode 102, jaws about the Prototype vs. inFamous fanboy gang war. No matter what your slant, Podtoid has something for you – just as long as you’re willing to leave that snooty standard of “professionalism” and “industry insider” at home.

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June 16, 2009

Roleplayers’ Role in Your MMO

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Internet, Social Geekery — Tags: , — 3 Comments
D20
Image by Kaptain Kobold via Flickr

Today Girl Unplugged opines about the experience of picking back up a pen and paper RPG and getting back to the basics, including the idea of playing a role, creating a dialog with others, and generally immersing oneself into a character.

To be honest, I’m not that into paper and pen stuff, not to mention live roleplaying, but I gotta say, especially when it comes to online games, the RPG in MMORPG is typically left out, sometimes even ridiculed. Roleplayers in MMO‘s are sometimes maligned as the “serious business” people of the massively multiplayer world, choosing to craft character profiles and backstories that lots of players don’t find necessary. RP’ers are viewed as everything from less skilled, to the object of derision, to basement dwellers. Though some people retreat to the sanctuary of RP servers in an attempt to look for more “mature” players, even this is a bit of an assumption – especially when everyone else rolls on one with no intention of roleplaying.

C’mon guys and gals – roleplayers are MMO players too. To be honest, when we step into the skin of a character on the screen in an MMO, we’re all “roleplayers” to a certain degree. We’re controlling an avatar that is not actually us but which is perceived to be “us” from another player’s perspective. We use emotes and interact with NPCs, we chat with other people, and we otherwise create communications using our character within the parameters of the game’s limits. If that isn’t playing a role, I don’t know what is.

Roleplayers and non-roleplayers alike have more in common than you might think. In an MMO, and on the Internet in general, we’re all faceless and anonymous, identified only by the text on the screen, the occasional voice conversation, or our handles, gamertags, and usernames. To others, we’re “the hardcore rogue player” or “the nicest healer I’ve ever met”, or “some asshole who stole my kill”. These are all roles, played not just in MMOs but in other places online, and we’re doing it unconsciously.

Non-roleplayers who choose to point and make fun of roleplayers in RPGs and MMOs need only look at the Twitter or Facebook or Myspace or blogs they might have sitting around to realize they’re making fun of themselves.  These are all places where we mirror ourselves to others, where we open dialogs with people, where we are, in part, who we are when we are talking to someone face to face. In some cases, that isn’t true – but that’s another positive post for another day.

Overly Positive is a bit of an over-the-top example, but this blog, read by tens of people a day (hopefully not the same 2 people visiting from different places) is such a reflection. I’m generally a positive, optimistic person. I don’t sweat the small stuff and if things are grey or stormy, I can usually push through and find some idealistic anchor to hold onto. The optimist is indeed a role difficult to find and to play on the intarwebz, but it’s one I am happy to play nonetheless, even if no one is reading.

So the next time you’re tempted to look at an RP’er and try to stuff them into the proverbial locker because they like to be an arrogant Elf, give them a /hug instead and a /wave of encouragement. After all, you’re kindred spirits.

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June 16, 2009

Racial Tension in Star Wars: The Old Republic

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Star Wars: The Old Republic — Tags: , , , — Leave a comment
The original soundtrack album
Image via Wikipedia

Recently, Syp of Bio Break did a funny post about races that should be in SW: TOR. I personally think that Ewok Jedi would be hilarious and amazing, and would totally implement them despite the rage that fans would feel. I guess that’s probably why I’m not involved with Star Wars: The Old Republic, right?

Anyway, it got me thinking about the presence of races in the game in general. Bioware did a pretty good job of not doing what I would make Episodes 1 – 3 guilty of, and that is shoehorning in the presences of races and elements. There’s a difference between creating a world that naturally you would expect to see various things like racial diversity, and one in which it is forced.

I’d have to say that Bioware was probably, strangely enough, more successful than the prequels because in Knights of the Old Republic, it never brought or pushed a race to the forefront, just to point to it and say “LOOKIE A JAWA”. In short, they made other races mostly background, occurring only when it was natural for the player to interact with them.

Bioware’s got to be careful about this when it comes to MMOs. Players, in general, love that racial diversity, but it’s pretty different in  Star Wars, where I think races honestly are more of a way to present a universe of aliens to the viewers. Racial diversity is more of background than it is center stage. Let’s not forget that mechanical beings also occupy this stage as well. The droids, from R2 to C3PO and beyond, are put up front because despite some thought, they are still, in essence utilities and tools for the human characters to employ.

We haven’t seen many prominent videos or articles about different races in SW: TOR. The folks at Bioware have been content to tease with pictures of human characters doing the things you expect the human characters in Star Wars to do. When they do introduce a character that is a different race, though, we’ll see if the community will respond positively. Frankly, I think that in every MMO, there are always people who will want to play something different – that is why even though you may see thousands of Jedi in SW: TOR that you’ll always see someone playing another role to be different, unique, or because it’s their preference. But if Bioware sticks to what they’ve been doing, expect them to focus in on the character’s story, and not what color they are or whether or not they have fur.

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