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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Posted by ReDDoT | 32 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Should TOR Have A “Dungeon Finder” Tool?

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!

This topic has been been discussed for years (literally), and has heated up once again with the recent Q&A sessions from PAX where it was reiterated that TOR would not ship with this feature, but BioWare is “looking into it”. Here’s an interview with Gabe Amatangelo that expands on the reasoning for the decision.

But what is a “dungeon finder” you ask? In its most simple definition, it assists a player in fidning other players who are interested in participating in specific (or random) instanced group content. Once players are matched up, they are all transported to the instance to begin their assault. In some games, those other players might even come from other servers, greatly reducing your wait time.

In theory, this sounds like a good idea – a real time saver that will get you into the action that much quicker. But let the players who already experienced the effects of a similar dungeon finder tool in World of Warcraft, tell you their experiences.

Shortly after the addition of this feature, a large number of players agreed that its addition severely impacted the game, and not in a good way either. Before, players had to travel to the location of the instance, generating some traffic and actual presence in the world. After all, MMO games are partly about the community and making new friends. The dungeon finder tool, while speeding up the queue times, completely removed any social interaction prior to making the party, and left the game world feeling empty as players just loitered in the cities waiting for their group to be formed.

So now that you know, how do you roll? Do you think this kind of grouping assistant feature is a good one for TOR? Discuss!

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Posted by ReDDoT | 12 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Do You View Advanced Classes As Full Classes?

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 longest-running discussions within the TOR community has been the difference between classes, advanced classes and specializations. Most “outsiders” are unaware that TOR’s advanced classes aren’t mere talent specs or minor cosmetic differences. Even during the show floor presentations yesterday at PAX, Lead End-game Designer Gabe Amatangelo described them very clearly: “advanced classes ARE the classes” he said. After introducing this concept to players new to the community,  typically they agree that the advanced classes essentially are separate classes sharing primarily a story, and beyond that just a few basic mechanics.

Still, there are holdouts that can’t seem to accept this idea. In all fairness, it’s not their fault either. BioWare dug a bit of its own whole here by labeling your character choice as a “class” during character creation, not to mention their wavering on the topic of wether or not you’d be able to “switch” your advanced class after you pick it at around level 10 in the game. Last we knew, you will be able to.

Personally, I view the advanced classes as truly separate classes. For example, let’s take the Jedi Consular class and examine the two potential options – Shadow and Sage. In terms of gameplay, Sage could be played as dedicated healer whereas Shadow could be played like a traditional rogue in other MMOs. The same versatility goes for other classes on both the Empire and the Republic sides. As you might expect from BioWare, they’ve defined their classes by their story. And it’s the advanced class system where the combat class really comes into focus.

So we want to know what do you think. Does TOR have 16 or 8 classes in total? What are you factoring into your decision? Let us know below!

 

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Posted by ReDDoT | 27 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Do You Want To See Add-Ons 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!

It’s hard to believe we haven’t done a Blue Milk & Cereal on this yet, but I checked… we haven’t! So let’s do it – one of the most hotly contested MMO topics OF ALL TIME!

For anyone who’s played an MMO or two all the way through to end game, it’s not a secret that part of the success lies in having a well organized, coordinated and informed group of people. But some would say there’s more to it than that – you need “add-ons”. In fact, many of the user interface features that are now taken as the “standard” in the MMO genre were originally player-created and player-driven modifications to their favorite MMO game. Perhaps the most successful example of player-created add-ons would come from the World of Warcraft community. The modding platform became so diverse and popular that a whole client with auto-updates and many options was created (CurseGaming).

As of today, BioWare’s stance on mod and add-on implementation is as described by Georg Zoeller in an interview with TORWars:

“What we’ve said is, regarding the question ‘Will there be addons at launch’ is “no, not at launch”.

This statement indicates nothing more than that there will not be addons at launch. Nothing more, nothing less.”

There is also a constantly restarted thread on the official forums that focuses on this topic, looking at the various replies in the thread, many would like to see add-on expandability in TOR. My personal opinion is that we will see some degree of modification shortly after launch of the game.

What about you? Do you want to see add-ons for TOR? Do you think TOR will be viable if it continues to live on without any player-made mods? Let us know below!

 

 

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