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 Lethality | 14 Comments

PAX 2011: Open World PvP Announced

Today during the big Star Wars: The Old Republic PAX panel, the big reveal was the announcement of open world PvP systems and objectives. While we all knew that some way, some how there would be open world PvP, this was the first time it was addressed by BioWare officially.

You’ll see Gabe talk about Ilum as one of the planets that has world PvP objectives and we get to see a few of them in action. Not only is the environment impressive, the combat looks great!

There are no more words I can say that this video doesn’t show better! Enjoy!

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Posted by Lethality | 6 Comments

PAX 2011: Hands-On Huttball!

One of the big reveals of out of gamescom last week was the announcement of Hutball, a brand new Warzone in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Hutball is a little different in that it’s the only Warzone (so far) where you can have same faction vs. same faction matches.

BioWare has been quoted as saying the reason beyond that was to avoid population imbalance problems between factions. Writing Director Daniel Erickson wrote a story to wrap around Hutball so that fighting your own faction would have context. Now, not everyone were pleased about this decision, including our own Professor, but, Huttball appears here to stay.

So this morning, I was excited to learn that my first hands-on gameplay with TOR at PAX Prime 2011 would in fact be a Huttball match! I could now see first-hand if this “elastic-ization” of the lore was worth the tradeoff.

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Posted by ReDDoT | 10 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Would You Like Guild Vs. Guild Encounters 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!

Imagine this – a cutscene of your personal starship, complete with a custom paint job, docking with your guild’s capital ship. Just then, an attack by a rival guild! Desperate to defend your ship, you and 10 of your guild mates take out your companions and split up in two groups of 5 players. One defending the bridge, the other covering the generator room. The enemy guild ship engages in a firefight, while the opposing guild’s players invade your ship via special pods and the real battle begins. From here on, only strategy, teamwork and communication will secure victory!

If reading the paragraph above didn’t trigger a sudden urge to participate in a guild versus guild encounter, then perhaps this whole PvP thing is just not for you. But for those who do enjoy a good challenge and a worthy opponent, as well as to have a nability to directly challenge rival guilds (going beyond the generic PvP Warzones) – these encounters would be ideal.

Some folks have already compiled a very interesting list and a description of a speculated guild capital ship system, with some lists growing to be a lot more sophisticated and organized. Clearly, a very large chunk of a community wants this to be in-game.

In our interview with James Ohlen at PAX East, he confirmed that guild capital ships are high on the priority list will eventually be implemented in-game:

Ask A Jedi: At gamescom last year, you dropped a little hint about the possibility of guild capital ships. Is there any update you can give us on that?

James Ohlen: That’s definitely on the wish list! Every single one of my senior designers loves that idea. All the way back in 2006 that was brought up in design. I was the mean design manager who was like “we have to finish a game here, we can’t have ridiculous features like guild capital ships for launch!” and they would say “we can get it in!”

The community can know that almost every one of my senior designers is on the side of doing it. I’m pretty sure its eventually going to get in the game, because they’ll beat me up until I promote it to the next feature. If it’s not in for ship, it will definitely be a patch down the road.

Personally, I really hope that this idea will make it into TOR in some way… it would be innovative, as well as make the PvP experience more personal.

What about you? Would you like to see these and other guild vs. guild encounters in TOR? Do you think it would help the longevity of the game? Let us know below!

 

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Posted by ReDDoT | 7 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: How Many Warzones 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!

For a massively multiplayer online game, diversity and variety are what can differentiate just another MMO from a great MMO. When talking about the Player vs Player system, the variety of game modes, maps, sizes – all of these can contribute to the fun factor, and keep players coming back for more.

With regards to Star Wars: The Old Republic, we have instanced battleground maps called Warzones. Up until gamescom, we knew of two Warzones in TOR: Alderaan Civil War  and The Voidstar. Now, we know of a third: Hutball. Each are extremely different in their goals and approaches to how the two teams interact and compete for victory.

The question that comes next is this -how many Warzones (not including the open-world PvP) will there be in TOR? On the upside, more variety would always be a good thing. But having more Warzone maps could also potentially spread out the player-based, making it take longer to get into a PvP match. In my personal opinion – BioWare should launch TOR with at least 3-5 Warzones that will bring  just enough diversity and fun gameplay for PvP fans.

What about you? How many Warzones do you think TOR should have at launch? Does it matter to you? As usual, let us know below!

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