The Battle of Alderaan

One of the most recent updates by the developers of SWTOR at Bioware was that bringing to players’ attention the Battle of Alderaan.

This is currently set up as a group mission, for parties of four players at a time, to perform something of a political intervention to dethrone the king of the usually peaceful planet. Although he currently holds the rank of king, it appears that this ex-soldier is little more than a greedy renegade, ready to take advantage of his people to further his own ends.

Players get to assault his castle and will need to fight off various waves of guards and bosses as they make their way to the throne room.

To extend this mission, I will tell you that as players draw close to the throne a large forcefield is erected around the planet’s leader in order to postpone his execution further, and players will have to make their way back through the level to deactivate the power supply for this otherwise impassable barrier.

All in all it looks like Bioware is going in a good direction with these missions. As we have known for some time, SWTOR will not entirely be a MMORPG like others such as World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies. Rather, it will focus more on solo play, and working together in pairs or teams of four. This can be seen from the footage of instances released so far, as almost all seem to be completed by a group of four, encompassing one of each class on their respective sides.

Hopefully as the game nears completion Bioware will release more PvE content aimed at large groups, which would surely be popular with many players. Doing so would not only allow more cooperation, but it would mean you could take along less experienced pals, to train them up in the ways of the game (and force!).