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Wild Space: Fan Site Summit Post-Mortem

It’s a big galaxy our there, and Wild Space can be a dangerous place. Worry not, explorer – each week we’ll navigate you safely through the lost hyperspace routes of the Deep Core and track down the great articles and entertainment from around the SW:TOR fan community, all in less than 12 parsecs, of course!

With the Second Fan Site Summit having come to a close, I thought I would take this opportunity to point out some information that you can check out about what the fansites who attended saw and learned.

First up, TORWars posted two great photo galleries of the summit. Not so much information about the game, but you get a cool glimpse inside the BioWare studios and into the office where the magic happens! Developers, office decor, concept art, workstation setups, and fan site personnel are all on display.  Check out the photo galleries here and here.

TORWars was also able to score the first un-boxing video of the SW:TOR Collector’s Edition! Check that video out here.

Over on Darth Hater, they managed to transcribe the Q&A session that Gabe Amatangelo, Lead End-Game Designer, gave to the assembled multitudes regarding PvP, Flashpoints, and Operations. Some of the more interesting tidbits were:

Q: How long would it take to maybe go through one Operation if you have a successful run?
A: Three hours.

Q: As far as Ilum [the open-world PvP zone] goes, did you say it was going to be persistent like constant?
A: It’s constant. It’s not a timer. It’s always going on. The timer is when you destroy the other vehicles, and your vehicles are able to fly in, it’s five minutes before your vehicles are vulnerable to attack, that’s the only timer. But other than that, if you want to wake up at 3 AM and take it from the Empire, who seems to be dominating it, and you’re Republic, by all means you can do that.

Check out the full Q&A transcript on Darth Hater.

The ladies of Corellian Run Radio posted a nice summary of the Q&A with Game Director James Ohlen. Of note:

• Guild banks are the first feature to be added for guilds post-launch.
• The designers intend for light/dark conversation choice to be mostly about RP concerns and don’t want you to be concerned about your stats when making those decisions.
• Not many people are skipping through the fully-voiced dialog.
  Most gear is modifiable. For example, you could take your starting lightsaber all the way to level 50 just by changing the mods to keep up with the stat increases.
• There are no abilities that only work inside or outside; all abilities work everywhere(!).

Lastly, Mr. Ohlen was asked why he thinks other MMOs fail? He said that a terrible launch, security issues, and a tendency to go too far either to the MMO side or to the single player side all contribute to why MMOs fail. Rest assured that BioWare is working hard to avoid all of these pitfalls. For the full summary of the Q&A check out Corellian Run Radio.

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Posted by Lethality | 3 Comments

Fan Site Summit: TORWars Un-Podcast With Corellian Run, Fragworld and Ask A Jedi!

As you know, Ask A Jedi currently doesn’t have any sort of podcast. But if they’re always as fun as this one was, we’re really missing out!

The guys over at TORWars invited Kathy and Carla from Corellian Run Radio, Jaro from Fragworld and us to sit down and discuss the events of Fan Site Summit day 1, and what a discussion it was! It was a pretty solid re-cap of the various events including details on Ilum and The Voidstar Warzone, as well as some other odds and ends.

It should be noted that we were fresh off of a victory in a game of Laser Tag against some very formidable 6th grade students from a nearby elementary school. It was close, but the Star Wars team prevailed in the end (otherwise we would never live it down!)

Anyway, give a listen to the cast over on TORWars. It’s only about 30 minutes long, highly entertaining, and you’ll learn what the ladies can do to contribute to the launch effort instead of growing a launch beard. Listen here.

 

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Posted by Lethality | 5 Comments

Gamer Magazine Previews SW:TOR; Directive 7 Flashpoint Mention

The non-stop sleuthing of the guys and gals over at TORWars have turned up yet another gem in the most unexpected of places: Best Buy.

The latest issue of Gamer Magazine, which is available free at Best Buy, features Star Wars: The Old Republic on the cover, and provides a very nicely done spread on the game inside. It covers classes, worlds, Warzones and more. For the most part, most hardcore fans won’t get much new info out of it, but there is a little tidbit about the Directive 7 Flashpoint…

Up until now, very little has been said about Directive 7 other than what is on the official Game Systems page for Flashpoints. There, it’s described as an end-game Flashpoint playable by both factions.

Luckily, you don’t even have to leave your chair to read it. It’s available as a downloadable PDF from Gamer right here!

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Posted by Lethality | 2 Comments

Dialog Choices: What Do They Mean And What If You Didn’t Mean It?

Over at TOWars, one of my favorite fan sites, author Mark Douville has once again penned an interested read.

This time around, he opines on the implications of dialog choices in a piece entitled Path To The Calm Side: The Paraphrasing of The Shrew. He takes the opportunity to not only dissect the dialog system, and touches on the potential concern of a morality system based on a short representation of what your character will actually say, leading to potential “miscues”:

First let’s look at the paraphrasing of text. Anyone who has ever played Dragon Age II or the Mass Effect series will be familiar with this. Let’s say one of your options would be to respond to an idea with, “There has to be a better way. After all, the Gungans would not be willing receivers in a Dirty Kick marathon.” This might be paraphrased for the dialog choice as, “I don’t like that idea” or “The Gungans wouldn’t participate.”

All in all, it’s a well-thought out piece that takes a neutral stance on an otherwise polarizing issue. Not to mention the image captions, as always, are a feature in and of themselves. Head over to TORWars to check it out!

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Posted by Cormeister | 7 Comments

Wild Space: Questing, Beta Testing, and Mobile Apps

It’s a big galaxy our there, and Wild Space can be a dangerous place. Worry not, explorer – each week we’ll navigate you safely through the lost hyperspace routes of the Deep Core and track down the great articles and entertainment from around the SW:TOR fan community, all in less than 12 parsecs, of course!

First up this week, is great article from Force Junkies about the not-so-heroic quests that all “theme park” MMOs have players partake in. Author Laura H. does a really good job of explaining that this is all going to be different in SW:TOR because in this game, you actually care about what you are doing. As Ms. H explains, you aren’t just killing 10 wolves to get some experience and a minor reward, you’re killing 10 wolves in order to save a village from the persistent, feral attacks by the wolves and in return, the leader of the village pledges his support to your cause.

Making a player care about what they are doing from a story perspective certainly makes doing it much more fun. It’s the motivation for doing the quest (i.e. story context) and the presentation of it (i.e. interactive voice acting) that makes these “mundane” quests not so mundane anymore. Be sure to check out the full article over at Force Junkies.

Amid all of the Warzone update information that came out as part of the Friday Update this week, EA released their Fiscal Year 2012, Quarter 2 Earnings call. These calls are snooze-fests for the majority of the time, but every once in a while we get a pertinent bit of information out of them. Some poor soul over at Darth Hater (author Jaspor, I assume) had the dubious honor of listening to the Earnings call for that bit of information. What he found was even further confirmation (from EA Chief Operating Office Peter Moore, nonetheless) that the SW:TOR beta is going to eventually get downright massive:

“…the Old Republic is in Beta right now and players are blown away by the immersive story, dynamic combat and authentic Star Wars feel. In the coming weeks we’ll invite hundreds of thousands of players into our biggest Beta test to date.”

So if you haven’t gotten into the beta by now, you’re going to have a pretty good chance in the future. Keep tuned to www.swtor.com/tester to see if you’ve been selected for beta testing and head over to Darth Hater for the full article which links out to the official EA remarks and webcast.

What do you all think of one or more SW:TOR mobile apps? Marshall Carr from TORWars think that it’s a pretty good idea and has some suggestions for BioWare about what he wants to see in a mobile app. One idea that quickly jumped to his mind was a crew skills app. Since your crew can be working on Crew Skills while you are offline, an app to modify your Crew Skill queue and send companions out of missions would be extremely convenient. Other apps for in-game communication would also be really handy and I could see even becoming a necessity.

Another thought that I just had is something that the successful MMO Eve Online is already doing: build API tools and let the community create their own mobile apps. With access to an API, the amount and variety of apps created would only be limited by the community’s creativity, skill level, and commitment (and I think that the SW:TOR community can summon up droves of all three).

However, Mr. Carr is quick to point out that there is a concern with creating mobile apps and that some players could have a significant gameplay advantage over others just because they have a better phone. Still, smartphone ownership is on the rise and BioWare is surely thinking about how to approach mobile app development very carefully. Check out the full article over at TORWars and let us know what you think about SW:TOR mobile apps in the comments.

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