[Christian IV]

LucasArts is shipping 250 game press from Europe and all over to a press conference in San Fran tomorrow Tuesday the 21st to announce their new MMO set in the Star Wars universe, informed sources are guessing in the Knights of the Old Republic portion of the time line. Biowar will be making the game and i expect they will do a fantastic job as usual.

here is the announement from the Admin of LucasForums.....

Quote:
New LucasArts/Bioware Announcement due 21st Oct

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Massive announcement - Embargo lifts at 2pm PST tomorrow, all news live

That’s right, pop stars. We still can’t tell you what we’re in San Francisco to see - on pain of death - but tomorrow at 2.00pm PST point your browsers at starwarsmmo.net for an internet-snapping announcement.

What we can tell you is that you’re going to get screenshots, artwork and full details on a brand new game. That’s your lot.

As well as publishing the announcement assets, we’ll be live-blogging what promises to be a US press conference on an unprecedented scale. The publisher in question has shipped in more than 250 American press, as well as journalists from Europe, to see… “it”.

The conference will last one hour.

so point browsers at:

http://www.starwarsmmo.net/

2:00 PM PST

[Crunchy in milk]

If I choose to play as a wookie can I make my home planet Endor?

I never really felt Kotor was distinct enough from episodes 1 through 3. I kind of hope they do something drastically different (visually) but its infinitesimally likely since it is an mmo.

I would consider playing this if just *maybe* droids where a playable 'race', so I could make a fembot named Carthsbitch01.

[Lucien21]

I'd rather have a new single player Kotor 3.

Don't give a hoot about a MMO.

[insane_cobra]

MMO = not interested at all.

[UPtimist]

I always wondered why they hadn't done it. Have to agree though, much rather a new single player Kotor. The MMO thing is getting a bit too big...

[D.C.]

I've never been a huge fan of MMO games, but it sounds like BioWare has an interesting take on the concept. I'm going to wait and see just like The Secret World. I would've liked to see a KotOR single player sequel too...

[samIamsad]

Originally Posted by D.C.

I've never been a huge fan of MMO games, but it sounds like BioWare has an interesting take on the concept.

Originally Posted by Official press release

Set 300 years after the events in Knights of the Old Republic (and featuring some familiar faces), Star Wars: The Old Republic will put players on either side of a massive war between the Republic and the Empire. "It's not a day-in-the-life of Star Wars," Ray emphasizes; "It's about being a hero."

Whoah, that's like, fresh!

I'd haphazard the guess that it's not the MMO aspect that makes people shrug whenever they hear about another announcement of similar kinds and thereabouts these days. Billions of people being able to connect with each other and play some game - there's a lot one could do with that. Imagine a sports game where each individual player of each team is controlled by an actual person. Imagine a virtual world that's occupied by real peop.. oh well, Second Life exists already. Imagine the Monkey Island MMO that could have been - I would have spitten the shits out of you in the virtual Spitting Contest held every Saturday afternoon that apparently was not meant to be, honest.

It's not Ultima Online's fault that this thing has taken the shape of formalism, with each new release being a derivative of the same basic idea in some way or other. There's only so many monster grind farms one can play before greeting what looks like another one of 'em with a shrug of the shoulders.

[D.C.]

The thing that has me reasonably interested is the fact there will be party members and they've made the story a priority.

[Christian IV]

MMO's are part of the future of game development and with good story and good design, can approximate the qualities of real life: life is personal and lived through our own life...and we have contact with others who help and share but are NOT us, i.e our choices affect us most directly and others beyond that. SWMMO seems headed in that direction.

Biowar is a superb game maker and one of the best to try to bring SW to some kind of full life, SW Galaxies flopped as have other games that were wonderful but very very restricted, KOTOR I and II are lovely in many ways but rigid. SW MMO looks very promising. IF anyone can do it, Biowar can.

here is more info,

From Bioware's own site:
http://www.swtor.com
and http://www.swtor.com/info

Live blogging feed from 1Up: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3170784

Joystiq Coverage

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/21/jo...ss-conference/

MMORGP Site:
http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm/r...-Official.html


IGN SWTOR First Details http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/922/922115p1.html


SW MMO Vid Gamespot

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/starw.../video/6199708

SW MMO Article Gamespot

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/starw...lic/news.html?

[Lucien21]

Originally Posted by samIamsad

Imagine a sports game where each individual player of each team is controlled by an actual person.

http://footballsuperstars.com/ Like this one.

[Lucien21]

Originally Posted by Christian IV

MMO's are part of the future of game development and with good story and good design, can approximate the qualities of real life: life is personal and lived through our own life...and we have contact with others who help and share but are NOT us, i.e our choices affect us most directly and others beyond that. SWMMO seems headed in that direction.

Actually most people play games to escape from real life.

Plus most online games are populated by idiots.

[Sotha]

Ah, well ... KotOR 3 will come later. As for this, I'm sure it will be okay. Still, I do hope they try something new, and by new I don't mean the standard formula with SOME innovations. I think Bioware can afford to go with something else than the usual stuff, especially since this is supposed to be more story-focused, and Star Wars, Old Republic and Bioware are already big names. I don't think this will be the case, though. I'm sure we will see plenty of those tired go-kill-10-monsters/collect-5-mushrooms type of quests. Ahrr ..

[Christian IV]

The lead writer who is in the audio interview in the link above swears that there will be no grinding and no idiotic 'weave a shirt" or random resource questing. They seem determined to lift the genre up from the Grand Central Station of idiots in a huge world" type of play to something that is personal and filled with true content, not cookie cutter over and over the same.

we will see, i am cautiously optomistic, because Biowar has indeed already some some amazing things with a number of their games and they really do have a great in house ethic and a great team of writers....

And Lucas has had the chance to learn from the mistakes of Galaxies, which is a dud in most ways...and hopefully that can help raise the level all around.

[Lucien21]

The problem with MMO's is that everyone wants to be the hero.

They all want to be jedi's get the girl and save the galaxy, nobody wants to be the stormtrooper or the guy who runs the bar, or the maintenance man on the death star.

This imbalance detracts from the "reality" of the world. In a world where everyone is special.. nobody is.

[Sotha]

Man, I wish they would look back at the original Star Wars Galaxies game. That game had a lot of fresh ideas going on, you were never limited to playing as a combat character. I could spend my time on something entirely different. All these different professions such as musician, creature-tamer, pilot, architect, doctor and so on. I mean, when you create a character in a role-playing game you shouldn't be limited to creating a combat character.

[Christian IV]

Agreed and agreed, it is hard to see a thousand Jedi's and one Stormy. Ah well, i hope they will think creatively about that, from some of the more detailed comments i was just reading from the pre release sharing that Bio did before the public release, it looks like they are really working hard to crack the problems. I will post more as i can.

Steve Butts from IGN has posted some great info on it all:

http://boards.ign.com/star_wars_knig.../172565472/p1/