Overly Positive

Those of you who’ve been following the latest about Star Wars: The Old Republic are well aware that last Friday was the official reveal of the Sith Warrior – the brutal, aggressive, ass-kicking lightsaber wielder with a penchant for violence. The 20 minute gameplay video saw plenty of the Sith Warrior in action, as he impaled, choked, and generally destroyed his way through challenges in his way. For those who’ve had a bit of an inkling towards the Dark Side, and find goody-goody Jedis boring, this is probably at least one of the classes you’d be considering.

There’s been a lot of speculation about where the Sith Warrior fits in the whole archetype system that MMOs tend to follow. Some people want to say that there are two Force-wielding classes per side, and that the Warrior is a precursor to introducing a more Force-focused character class. Some people disagree, saying that Jedi and Sith lightsaber vs. Force use was more of a personal choice rather than affinity towards one or the other.

To be honest, Bioware is, to me, on the cusp of possibly making something of a class system that doesn’t fall into traditional archetypes or any kind of “trinity” system. This could be wildly successful or be terribly inefffective, but either way, to no surprise of anyone reading, I’m excited and happy about the possibility. Fueling my thought is the latest descriptions of the Sith Warrior, which basically call it a heavily armored class that beats opponents into submission with powerful attacks. Such a description, putting aside the marketware, doesn’t seem to fit into any one archetype. When people think about “warrior” in the traditional MMO sense, typically they are referring to a tank class, known to be more defensive and less of an attacker. But the Sith Warrior appears to be able to do damage as well as take a beating. You could say that this is “too good to be true”, but I actually wonder if Bioware is trying to break a mold here and do something different.

Part of the appeal of the Bioware system of character advancement, especially in KOTOR, was that by using more traditional pen-and-paper methods of distributing stats and talents, you could be whatever character you wanted yourself to be. While there were broad, simple archetypes, the amount of customization you could do to your character in the course of his or her journey was simply nothing short of amazing. These sorts of things aren’t big visual elements, but more of an under-the-hood kind of tuning that made things appealing. You wonder if Bioware is doing the same thing with these classes, creating character classes based on iconic figures but allowing the player to shape the character how they want. In an MMO, it’s a potential recipe for disaster, but for those looking to fulfill unique roles not known or expected in your typical MMO party, it might actually end up being interesting. Really, one can only wait and see what the latter half of the classes will bring us (as now 4 of the 8 classes have been revealed), but if they’re anything like the Sith Warrior reveal, the class discussion is going to get a lot more interesting and exciting the next few months.

So one thing that I missed yesterday while having teeth ripped out of my mouth was Bioware shaking up their forums a little bit. Apparently, according to Darth Hater and others, the guild forums are going to be phased out on the TOR official forums, to be replaced with sticky threads for recruitment and discussion. It seems that Bioware’s getting a taste of what might be in for them in managing an MMO community, as the backlash has been a bit tough. There are a lot of people who are dissatisfied with the outcome.

Honestly though, this isn’t that bad of a change. Guild recruitment, for example has a tendency to go on for months, sometimes years before a game comes out, and while there are a ton of people eager to become a part of a group right before the beginning, the game’s details haven’t been released as of yet. In addition to that, there is a distinct segment of people who aren’t even visiting the forums right now. These folks will show up after the game is closer to being released, and there will be plenty of time for recruitment in due time.

The changes to the guild forums also make it so that recruitment can happen for small and large guild alike without there being any issues with threads being bumped off of the front page. This way, a guild that is more casual can be observed almost as easy as the larger, juggernaut guilds. Not to mention that off-topic posting is less likely to happen in the guild recruitment threads, leaving them to be clean and formatted for the information that’s needed to be presented.

Really, this boils down to the idea that guilds will get members recruited to their banner more for what they do in the game then they do before the game is released. While some guilds will extend themselves to getting a sort of reputation prior to any MMOs release, actions definitely speak louder than words. So don’t fret too much, TOR fans – hopefully a system willbe put into place to better allow for guild recruitment, but until then, take a load off – recruitment should hardly be what’s on your mind when it comes to TOR.

So as if it wasn’t tantalizing enough that Bioware was releasing information about The Old Republic in small chunks and bits, now it appears that they have more than likely started a viral marketing campaign.

If you want the links and info, you can head on over to Moon Over Endor, as Ayane has a full breakdown of the mystery so far regarding “The Great Holocron” and what the ominous date of August 24th, 2009 is talking about. To summarize, it appears a bunch of mysterious transmissions, sent by a Jedi in possession of The Great Holocron, have surfaced. Apparently the object in question is so interesting there’s a reward out for it.

Ultimately, if this is indeed engineered by Bioware as a way to market the game (through a series of social networking meta-games), this is a nice little side diversion to keep fans busy while more info and details are being cooked up for TOR. There’s been a slew of speculation about what the date means, from the opening of public closed beta to the release of more class information or even a release date. I personally think considering the forums are asking for a declaration of allegience and the like that we’ll see something along the same lines as WAR’s pre-release version of Realm War, where Order and Destruction participated in a little side game.

Viral marketing has always been about generating buzz rather than releasing core details, so the people looking for some meat and potatoes with regards to the details surrounding TOR will probably not find it in the hunt for The Great Holocron. But for those looking for a bit more flavor and understanding, and who use the various social networking tools out there, this will be quite interesting, indeed.

That is, assuming this isn’t just a great ruse by normal users – in which case, the mission of popping up more talk regarding TOR is still accomplished.