Star Wars: The Old Republic

Let me start with a couple of quick thoughts about MMOs in general. I've not played very many over the years for two reasons. The main reason has always been the cost. As someone with an irregular income it can be tricky sometimes to meet monthly payments and of course if you try to play more than one at a time it can get expensive. The second reason is the amount of time you need to invest to fully experience the game. The first one I really played seriously was Anarchy Online once they introduced their free to play system. I spent a lot on time on there and enjoyed it lot. I still log on now and then but not a lot recently. Then a couple of years ago I finally tried Eve Online which had been tempting for a long time. I was hooked pretty quickly and still play regularly. Unlike any MMO I've played before I'm going to be a member of The Old Republic from day one.


The first choice will be what class to play. There are eight classes to choose from split across the two factions, Republic & Sith. The Republic have the options of Trooper, Smuggler, Jedi Knight & Jedi Consular. While the Site have the choice of Bounty Hunter, Sith Warrior, Imperial Agent & Sith Inquisitor. In the old KOTOR games I've always preferred the light side so I guess that means I'll be siding with the Republic, at least for my main character. Now all the classes have interesting differences and I'm sure they will all be balanced and fun to play. However the Star Wars geek in me finds it hard to resist the draw of a light saber so I'll probably be one of the Jedi options, currently I'm thinking Consular.


They've got lots of interesting planets and locations planned for us visit, both from the films and the previous games. Curuscant, Alderaan, Tatooine and Hoth are the obivous ones from the films. In KOTOR I always enjoyed being on Taris so I'm glad to see that back even though it was virtually destroyed. Looking though some of the available information it seems that as a Jedi Consular the planet Tython would be my home base. I've not heard of that one before but it looks good. It seems that is where the Jedi relocated their temple to after the sacking of Coruscant (as seen in the 'Deceived' trailer).


The biggest worry for this game is that after all the hype it's been getting that it will fail to deliver and that a lot of people will be disappointed. The Star Wars and Bioware communities are both very vocal on the internet so if something is wrong it could die a pretty horrible death. I have faith that Bioware can pull it off, they've pretty much got golden touch when it comes to role-playing games and I've enjoyed everything they've released. However this is there first MMO which mean there's a lot more to think about other than the story, such as server capacity. A lot of MMOs have failed because of too much downtime and a lack of capacity at launch meaning no-one could actually play the game. I hope Bioware and Lucasart properly anticipate the demand for this game.


Finally I'll link again to the two simply spectacular cinematic trailers, check them out if you haven't already:
Deceived
&
Hope

I think now I need to play some more of the Knights of the Old Republic game I started a while back.