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Blue Milk & Cereal: How Many Operations Should TOR Have At Launch?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

One of the most important parts of an MMO is the end-game. It’s that time period after your character reaches the level cap (in the case of TOR, level 50) and the normal leveling, questing and storyline are over – or at least on hold until a contnet patch or expansion. The quality and quantity of this end-game content is what holds a large majority of subscribers and becomes the climax of the MMO experience. As we recently learned on the new Operations page, BioWare is not going to let us down in this department. One particular quote stands out:

Please note, that even though the Eternity Vault is featured prominently here, it is not the only high-level Operation for you to experience in Star Wars: The Old Republic. More will be revealed…

Clearly, we’re going to see more than the Eternity Vault, and if you look at the picture on that page that follows this quote – we can see that it hints at an Operation linked to the Hutts. This is great news for those who were a bit worried that there wouldn’t be enought raid content to start. As a compariosn, inudstry leader World of Warcraft had just two true raids when it launched (Molten Core and Onyxia.)

Personally, I think having 2 or 3 full-size Operations at launch is ideal. It would provide enough variety for those players who make it to end-game ahead of others, and give BioWare enough time to ease into their content patch cycle. It is going to be very interesting to see what BioWare has in store for us. Luckily, we don’t have to wait much longer!

 

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Blue Milk & Cereal: Will You Play Mini-Games In TOR?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

Massively  multi-player online role-playing games are complex beasts that cater to many play styles.  The more diverse and MMO is, the more diverse its players will be. Some people like to craft for a large portion of their game time, whereas others will constantly push ahead with end-game progression. But almost every MMO player wants to take a little break from their regular activity and perhaps dabble in something new to them. That’s where the mini-games come into play.

Since TOR was announced, many immediately assumed we’d see various Star Wars themed mini-games, especially given BioWare’s past with KoTOR and its mini-games like Pazaak and Swoop Racing.

The first mini-game announce for TOR was Space Combat. Some players were quite happy about that, while others still hope that SWG-style space combat will eventually come into TOR. There aren’t even any social or multi-player aspects to Space Combat – it appears to be a simple, solo rail shooter as of right now.

However, that’s all we’ve heard about mini-games so far. While most will agree that TOR could benefit from more mini-games, very few of us expect them added for launch. But it isn’t unreasonable to expect some additions within the first few months after release.

Will you participate in these mini-games? Is there a particular number of such mini-games that would satisfy you? Do you think its a good idea to develop and implement a large number of things that players can do in their downtime? Let us know below!

 

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Posted by ReDDoT | 20 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Should We Have Access To The Auction House From Anywhere?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

We already know that we will be able to do most, if not all of our crafting onboard our ship. And we currently know that items craft from, and drop to your inventory, not your ship’s cargo hold. So, should you be able to sell these items from your ship also?

First of course, there is the convenience argument. Quickly log in, check all of your bids and sales from the comfort of your starship and move on. Then of course, even though Star Wars takes place a long, long time ago, its still the future. Shouldn’t we be able to communicate and conduct commerce anywhere with any kind of a network link? And you would think wi-fi would be pretty robust in the Star Wars galaxy ;)

On the other hand, having players come to a central place to access the terminal will generate more player interactions (critical for an MMO) and maybe even more live sales. For those of you who played Star Wars Galaxies, think outside Coronet Starport. It also gives a nice feeling of a “busy street” and allows hardcore crafters to advertise in-person – and give a reason for players to travel across the galaxy.

We don’t yet know which way BioWare is going with this, but in my opinion, access to the auction house should be available only in the central cities and major social hubs, not on our ships.

So let us know! Should we have access to the auction house from anywhere? Leave a comment as well!

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Posted by ReDDoT | 37 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Should Beta Characters Be Allowed To Transfer At Launch?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

Now, before you hit the “no” button on the poll, hear me out!

I’m not talking about transferring beta character levels or gear. There’s no question that most players would be against allowing that sort of thing. But rather, be allowed to carry over the settings from the character creator – eyes, hair, species – all of the things that make your character unique.

We’re roughly two and a half months away from the launch, and we’re seeing a lot of yellow posts talking about expanded beta testing. It seems that a good chunk of the registered community will have a shot at participating in at least a weekend of testing The Old Republic. Assuming everything goes as planned, any potential beta perks would be available to a solid majority of the community.

There have been threads on the official forums before, asking if BioWare would release a character creator for TOR ahead of time, as they had done for Dragon Age. Alas, they stated there weren’t any plans for doing that. Perhaps using the beta character data, they could meet players in the middle.

What do you think? Should BioWare allow testers to transfer their characters to live servers at launch? Let us know below!

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Blue Milk & Cereal: Do You Have An Internet Usage Cap?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

Internet speeds, bandwidth and general access varies from continent to continent and from country to country. For some people, downloading a huge game client like TOR, patching it and playing the game is only a question of mere time, without any worries. For others, it’s a little bit tougher. They have to keep an eye on their monthly usage limit and make sure to not go over it. Why? Some internet providers now charge additional money for transfer overages,  in addition to throttling the internet speed itself.

As BioWare Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid said in this forum post, he understands that some will find it hard to download the 27GB client for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Moreover, European Community Manager Chris Collins came out in an earlier forum post stating that if people were  invited in the current beta, they would have to re-download the whole game client again, upon the arrival of the latest build. That’s a potential of nearly 60GB of data!

So the question for today is the following – do you have an internet usage cap? Will the cap limit your ability to download TOR? Let us know below!

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