Posted by ReDDoT | 21 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: How Long Should Early Game Access Last?

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!

What a weekend! A release date announcement on Saturday – something we are all extremely surprised and happy to hear. With the new week, as we slowly get over the pleasant shock from this announcement – we start to analyze the date even further and perhaps the biggest thing that concerns most of the fans who pre-ordered TOR, or those who are on the verge of pre-ordering it – how long will the early access last?

As of today, we know the following information from the official TOR pre-order FAQ:

When does Early Game Access end?

Early Game Access will end on the day that Star Wars: The Old Republic is officially released. For North America, this will be December 20, 2011 while it will be December 22, 2011 for European Launch Territories.

When does Early Game Access begin?

Early Game Access will begin prior to the official release of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Precise dates will be revealed at a later time.

Early access should give BioWare the much-needed gradual population growth and spread out the strain on the servers and customer service, with waves of players, as opposed to the whole number crushing them on one single date, rendering the game unplayable as we saw with many MMO previous launches. Early access is also a token of appreciation thrown towards the fans who support TOR & BioWare the most, so it will reward the players who want to be able to advance the fastest.

But at the same time – early access shouldn’t be very long, as it would create a split in the community based on level, skill and create some in-game economy imbalance. It is going to be very interesting to see how BioWare works around these potential issues.

So while we wait for the official word from BioWare – let’s hear what you think about the duration of the early access. Should it last a week? A few days? A much longer term? Let us know by answering the poll below!

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Posted by ReDDoT | 19 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: How Fast Should Player Vehicles Be?

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!

Generally, mounts serve as a certain milestone for the player and enables faster traveling for getting around the world. It’s also fairly standard that mounts, just like most other items, get better and faster the further into the game you progress. Naturally, the speed of these mounts can’t increase continually over the life of the game – or can they? Or, going the other route, perhaps they never really increase in speed at all, and vehicles just become a point of customization.

Of course, it’s up to BioWare to decide on how fast we’re going to be allowed to traverse the surface of the planets,but what about the community? Do you feel like the immersion will be broken if the mounts will be going too slow? Or it does not matter to you, as long as some improvement will be gained? Let us know below!

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Posted by ReDDoT | 8 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Will You Make Your Morality Choices?

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!

It’s no secret that Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to have a lot of dialogue (fully voiced, of course) with a generous helping of choices you can make along the way. Based on some of the more critical dialogue choices a player makes, he or she gains Light or Dark side points, eventually enabling the player access to some alignment-specific gear and potentially other perks.

For seasoned RPG players, they may follow their traditional approach, making choices organically and following how they feel their character would react in a given situation. Then there are players who will strictly pick the Dark or Light side choices, regardless of how they actually feel and will try to maximize that. The variety of approaches is diverse, which is one of the big draws of the game.

There is an ongoing thread on the official forums that asks the TOR community a similar question where many players state they will make their choices based on what their character would do. Personally, I feel like as long as the players aren’t forced to pick a certain option in order to obtain the “best gear” – then it leaves room to actually playing the game the way you want it and that’s very important for a game that banks on the story element so much.

What about you? Will you follow a certain pre-determined path? Or will you merely go with the flow and enjoy the story as it develops in front of you? Let us know below!

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Posted by ReDDoT | 27 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Will Your Main Character Be Male Or Female?

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!

Today’s question is rather simple. As most of you know, part of the character creation process in TOR will be gender selection. To some folks, this selection is rather simple. “If I’m a guy in real life, I’ll play a guy in game“. Some guys state their opinion in an opposite way – “If I am going to be looking at one character for hours from behind, it would better if its a female“. Other people will try to follow a certain character from the lore and make a prototype of Han Solo or simply create a character for role-playing needs.

Some statistics report that men are 3-5 times more likely than females to make a character of an opposite gender. There are many more reasons for this so-called “gender-bending”, including the rumored benefits that players receive if they are perceived as females.  However, there are a few publications that have begun to appear where females tend to be more “hardcore”  when it comes to MMO games, yet at the same time they “under-report their playing habits“. So the whole issue may be more balanced than it would appear.

So let’s contribute to some of these statistics by answering the two questions below!

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Posted by ReDDoT | 21 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Should TOR Have A Damage Meter?

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!

So far, we know that TOR isn’t going to allow for player-created add-ons, at least at launch. That means we’re all going to be relying on the default user interface for whatever we do.

While tanks and healers hold their collective breaths and pray that BioWare addressed some of their more specific UI needs, the damage dealers are also wondering if there will be tools to help them evaluate their performance, and improve. Number 1 on this list of needs is a damage meter.

You could argue tanking and healing are the most important group role, but without damage dealers, the fight would never end. It’s just as critical that these players be able to adjust and optimize their play, and a damage meter is an important part of that.

However, there are detractors to this theory. They feel that having a damage meter in place does more harm than good, claiming that instead of being a measuring tool used for improvement, it creates competition where there should be none. Too much effort is put on beating each other “on the meters”, instead of teamwork to beat the encounter. Of course you could argue if everyone is trying to out-damage everyone else, the problem will solve itself naturally.

Personally, I think that a damage-tracking feature should be in TOR. BioWare should try to implement it in a way where supportive actions are also encouraged and are tracked to avoid the potential negative issues listed above. If you want to participate in a discussion and let BioWare know, head over to this thread on the official forums.

So what do you think? Yay or nay to damage meters?

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