Star Wars: The Old Republic

Yes, the big game is coming to town after Santa Claus. There is no “official” release date as of yet, but there are rumors. The ETA is in 2011, but most say it will either be in Spring or Fall, unlikely to be released in the Summer (These are rumors as far as I know and may need citation).

Basic background on TOR;

It’s set in a time-frame long before the rise of Darth Vader, or the Empire. The story line takes place over 3,500 years before the rise of Lord Vader; and over 300 years after the first KOTOR.

The setting is (And many of you would know this if you played KOTOR I & II) that Revan, the Jedi who defeated his former-apprentice Darth Malak, had traveled into deep space in order to fight the “True Sith”. Revan never returned, as legend goes, but the Sith did. He had gone where he believed, a mysterious Emperor managed an ever-growing Empire.

However, the Sith were the seemingly-victorious over Revan, because 300 years later, they came. It sparked a war with the Republic, and lasted for decades. And despite the uneasy truth created by the Treaty of Coruscant, the tension among the divided star systems is threatening to once again tear the galaxy apart.

Nobody knows what became of Revan, where exactly he went, where the Jedi (Seen in KOTOR II) went that followed him, and even where the Sith came from. All we do know is that the Sith struck again, and the mysterious Emperor that originally turned Revan and Malak to the dark side, still lives.

Gameplay;

In truth, many people will think this is once again a knock-off of World of Warcraft. People, please understand that although Warcraft was the “first of its kind”, they came up with a new system of gaming. Making a new game using that system is no different than making Soul Calibur IV and Castlevania. One may be better, by opinion, but they’re not really knock-offs of each other. Yes, Blizzard did brilliantly invent a new system (Or at least, the first one of its kind that was popular) but that doesn’t mean that every other game similar to it is a fail knock-off. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

Anyway, the game is said to be the same Genre as LOTR or WoW, just with Jedi. Many have high expectancies for this game, and why not? It’s Star Wars after all. It’s supposed to fit within the storyline time frame, and have quests and skills and everything just like the other games. According to site activity and average community count, it looks like it will be a fairly large hit on arrival. They already have quite a fan base, for obvious reasons, and an intricate system for different classes and Force Affiliations (I.E Dark Side/Light Side). Maybe the most interesting and least predictable of these will be the Mercenary class, who although may seem fairly predictable, could have a much larger array of equipment, and a larger arsenal of weapons. Contrary to Jedi or Sith, who only use lightsabers of different crystals, the armor and blaster specs are sure to be of a wider variety.

I’m looking forward to the Bounty Hunters, Sith and Jedi, who should all have very many skills and powers. Many ideas pop into my head that they could’ve put into the game just thinking about it. I’m also hoping, like some games, they have specific costumes (I.E Mandalorian, Darth XXX Outfits, etc.) that are recognizable to any die-hard Star Wars fan.

World:

Unlike any other game of this genre that I know of, Star Wars: The Old Republic is more a galaxy-based game. As in, more than one planet. This is an interesting idea to implement into an already huge universe of possibilities, which may assume some things. Such as, planets having less content individually, or only one planet to play on in the beta (Possibly more to come), or a conquest-sort of game, where in others you travel from major city to major city, this would be planet to planet (More like KOTOR, which would also imply planets having less content individually). There are several other ways that this could occur too, but this is all conjecture. I look forward to seeing how the Star Wars Leet Geeks set up this neat MMO.

All hopes to the new game, it should be very exciting to play!

May the Force be with them as they try to implement a vast-universe of planets and stars into a PC game