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Blue Milk & Cereal: Are You A Fan Of Machinima?

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!

Over the years, the concept of “machinima” has become quite popular with MMO fans. If you are unsure of what exactly machinima is, take a look at this fine example from World of Warcraft.

Essentially, players produce short “films” using in-game tools, locations and characters to tell a story of their own inside of the game word. Many times, special effects or custom music will be added during the editing process for a truly polished and finished look.

This kind of thing is a boon for role-players and for guilds looking to recruit members. But beyond that, it’s truly becoming an art form in this day and age of online worlds and social spaces.

The Star Wars galaxy is ripe for this sort of thing, with so many fan creations of all kinds over the years. Even back in Star Wars Galaxies, many players including BioWare’s own Brian Arndt as Balgosa Windspire  created some entertaining pieces.

I can only assume that machinima will be taken to a whole new level in Star Wars: The Old Republic. We haven’t heard if BioWare plans to help support this by inclusion of special tools that might assist in the production, but we can hope!

So we want to hear – are you a fan of machinima? Have you created any in the past? Will you in SW:TOR? Post links to any cool examples in the comments below!

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Posted by ReDDoT | 21 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: How Long Should Inter-planetary Travel Take?

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!

As most of you know, each character upon reaching a certain level will earn a personal starship.  This starship will serve as your character’s home-base, as well as the place where your companions will live and craft things via Crew Skills. Not to mention participate in space combat.  But perhaps the most obvious use of these starships is for traversing the galaxy.

To that end, once you board your starship with a destination in mind, how long should inter-planetary travel take?  Perhaps the most critical factor in this system is the amount of real-life time it takes to go from one location to another. If you just need to drop off a small quest on a nearby planet and quickly go back – you should not want to spend 10 minutes watching the same cinematics. At least that’s what I think.

On the other hand, this could be a pretty big deal for some players’ immersion. Maybe you want to get on the ship, sit in the pilot’s chair, plot the course and watch as your ship takes off, and spend time watching the galaxy whiz by. Or perhaps you wish to be able to travel instantly, say by using a terminal at a starport and simply teleporting to the new location?

Let us know what you think is a reasonable amount of time to travel from planet to planet!

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Posted by ReDDoT | 32 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Should TOR Have Flying Vehicles/Mounts?

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!

Every MMO player knows that one of the exciting things about progressing through the game is getting access to other forms of travel – be it special spells, vehicles, mounts or other means of transporting oneself.

Player vehicles or mounts generally allow players to move at a faster speed and sometimes offer other perks – such as giving your friend a lift, the ability to reach areas otherwise unreachable on-foot and even  advantages in PvP.

Some games even allow flying mounts, enabling players to freely control their transportation in virtually any direction they wish to go. In fact, just recently (and completely out of the blue), Star Wars Galaxies announced atmospheric flight, which is especially odd since that game is shutting down in December.

But, flying vehicles can also create a few problems of its own, such as bypassing content or not doing/going to the places where the developers planned the content. Of course you could attribute that to poor design on developers part – but adding an entire extra axis to the game world doesn’t exactly make game design any easier!

We already know that TOR is going to have quite a variety of ground-based player vehicles, but it seems that we won’t be getting any player-controlled flying mounts, at least not at launch. It makes some sense when you understand that BioWare is very focused on story and delivering a great experience to the player. There are a couple of threads on the official forums on this topic, here and here. It seems to depend on the perspective which way the player-base votes.

Personally, I hope to see flying vehicles in a future expansion, if not sooner. Perhaps the same exapsnion that brings multiplayer space combat to the game. Let it be a PvP region or simple co-op – both would greatly enhance the game we all cannot wait to get our hands on.

So what do you think? Should TOR have atmospheric travel / flying mounts? Let us know below!

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Posted by ReDDoT | 26 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Will You Play Your Main Class In Testing?

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!

As most of our readers already know – the “expanded closed beta” of Star Wars: The Old Republic will begin September 2, which is this upcoming weekend. BioWare is telling us that a lot of people will have a shot at playing the game during the month of September and beyond, at least on the weekends. Needless to say, players are excited. In fact, according to various forums threads, many players are planning to use the beta to try out various classes and perhaps reaffirm their initial class choice. Still others are dead set on playing their main class, so they can start gaining knowledge about it, and get a “leg up” on the competition.

That’s not the whole picture though. Some players have decided to not play the beta at all, even if they get the invite, so they don’t risk spoiling any of the story for themselves. Another portion, perhaps the largest one, will play the opposite faction – to avoid spoiling any of the class and faction story arcs for the real deal.

Personally, I’m with the last group. I am not going to touch the Jedi Consular class and will instead roll an Empire character for the beta, if I’m lucky enough to get in. That’s not going to stop me from having fun and it will also give me a perspective on the opposite faction. However, things may change as the temptation to fall for the dark side is rather strong (also considering most of my friends are aiming for the Sith Empire)!

So the question is – if you get into Game Testing either for the weekends or otherwise, will you play your favorite class?

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Posted by ReDDoT | 15 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Do You Think Huttball Should Bring eSports To 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!

What a crazy weekend PAX was! After watching some of the overwhelming mass of gameplay videos I couldn’t help but focus my attention on Huttball. The part I was focused on was particularly how the crowd cheered when a certain team scored and how either the person recording the video or one of the BioWare members was actively commentating the game. It is fairly obvious that Huttball is a very interesting encounter not only to play, but also to spectate. In case you haven’t seen some of the madness – here is an exclusive PAX gameplay footage with Stephen reid, as well as the official Hutball trailer.

And if a certain part of the game is really awesome to watch, as well as it has a very active competitive component – then it would make perfect sense to let this part of the game grow and attract the ever-expanding field of eSports. I really think that BioWare hit the nail on the head when they introduced Huttball to TOR and if everything is done right on the developer’s side – the player base will respond with great teams with very creative strategies and tactics. Unfortunately, it seems that the current group queue size is limited to 4 people, leaving out the fully premade 8-man teams. There is an ongoing thread on the official forums that wants an increase in group size to be able to have “Huttball Leagues”. Really cool idea.

Either way, let us know what you think. Do you think Huttball should bring eSports to TOR? Should the queue limit be increased to 8 from 4? Or do you have some other comment? Write it down below!

 

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