Posts Tagged ‘republic’

SWTOR Off to Flying Start

So only ten days after release, the initial numbers are in for the current standing of the game.

 

And so far, the result is GREAT!

With more than a Million accounts being used since the early opening of the game, SWTOR has instantly rocketed to second place in the MMO world, behind the ever present World of Warcraft.

 

New sales records have been set right around the globe, after the most rapid subscriber increase the Industry has ever seen taking place just after Christmas.
This has been helped by the overwhelmingly positive ratings the game has received, with few if any giving any less than 9/10. With reviewers so quick to find the faults of just about any hyped product in the online market, after magnificent let-downs such as Age of Conan, SWTOR has held up amazingly well under fire.

 

However, some of these have raised suspicions, such as the game being awarded the 2010 Game Critics award for best PC game. Funny, seeing as not even testing had begun until 2011.

 

We are currently seeing the first large batch of players reach max level, which will put the second major test to the Developers, that being is there enough content to sustain a continued interest like we see in other Major MMORPGs. This has often been the failing point of other games, where players reach the maximum development of their character they realise there is nothing left to do. Usually this is countered by PvP Systems, which are thankfully present, but other end-game features such as trading and exploring found in the previous Star Wars game Galaxies are no where in sight.

 

In fact, without these added time-sinks, and companion characters doing simple tasks that occupy players in other games, we may find the gaming elite becoming positively bored in short order.

Hearing The Old Republic

Computer games only really rely on two senses for interaction, seeing and hearing.

While seeing is clearly the more important of these, to neglect sound would be a fatal mistake for any gaming company, now ten years ago, or even ten years into the future.

Some time ago we did an article on The Soundtrack of SWTOR, but only now has Bioware released any details on the combat and other external special effects that will be found in the game.

The new article goes through just how developers are choosing sounds, in order to make them fit well with the different classes and abilities these classes have.

Revealed is how each class is given its own persona, then has sounds tailored around this in order to fit as well as possible with the game. For example, unsurprisingly Jedi is a cool and calm class, so its sound effects for the various abilities are all about soothing and gradual build ups.

This contrasts well with classes like Inquisitor, who have very sharp and abrupt sounds. There are no slow build ups in volume, but rather when an inquisitor unleashes a storm of force lightning all players around him will know it from the wall of sound that hits them all at once.

Many players do not actively notice sound during a game, but this is generally because they are focused on the visuals. One way to test what sound adds to your game is to turn the volume off during play and see just how different things are.

Us at SWTOR Republic certainly know how big a deal it is, and we hope Bioware keeps up their great musical feats, such as those found in the game’s precursors, KOTOR I and II.

Taris

Taris in the time of The Old Republic is a world sought by for the Republic, for nothing more than a symbolic victory. With their forces stretched thin across the galaxy it is surprising that such a costly endeavour was undertaken, but evidently re-colonising yet another world is worth the many Jedi and technicians working on the job.

Three hundred years before the events of SWTOR, Taris was laid waste to by the Sith, and they conducted genetic experiments on the planets wild life.

This is where we find Taris today. There are mutant critters running around, which are still highly contagious. This has meant the demise of many jedi, and will surely continue to do so in The Old Republic. Republic bases and military outposts account for all of the civilised life on the planet, although if the planet has its way this will change quickly.

There are rumoured to be deadly viruses, which in the past were contained in the lower levels of the surface’s run down metropolis. However, with recent rebuilding and discovery efforts there have been occasional outbreaks, and the ever present threat of the virus escaping in a transport ship off planet is always in the back of the settlers’ minds.

Taris will be a predominantly Republic controlled adventure world. Players will have a chance to gleam some experience against the diverse yet deadly wild life. Perhaps Taris was only added due to its featuring role in the KOTOR games, which explains the lack of content on its surface. Regardless, we expect so see many references to the older games, and perhaps opportunities to visit many sites players will remember.

Fate of the Galaxy

Just today the developers at The Old Republic released a new trailer, Fate of the Galaxy, for SWTOR. It highlights the incredibly high tensions in galactic politics, which have been threatening to tear the whole galaxy apart and create full scale war.

The trailer has been made using in game footage, so it shows just how far the developers have come with the animations of the game. In the early days many players disliked the cartoonified graphics, and felt that they would ruin the game. Thankfully the developers took this constructive criticism to heart, and we now have a game which looks as good as it is sure to play.

Although the content of the trailer is not noteworthy, the way it was made shows us that players will have a great degree of freedom in TOR. Many players enjoy making films in their games of choice, as it is an easy way to make a computer generated animation without actually knowing how to animate.

This genre of content is often refereed to as Machinima, and has grown exponentially in popularity along with the MMORPG industry over the past decade. It now captures the imagination of many players, and there are tens, if not hundreds, of thousand fan made videos floating around internet video sites such as youtube.

These films are generally made using screen recording software, such as Fraps. Fraps is a paid-for software suite that records everything happening on the screen, so players can have a video of their play time with virtually identical quality to actually playing the game. Usually to make Machinima players will have one player film, whilst the others will act out what ever scene is being worked on.

This is a tried and true technique, which has produced many popular videos, many of which have viewer numbers well into the millions. We hope that many of the features demonstrated in the Fate of the Galaxy video will be available to players in SWTOR, as this will make the community of budding film makers very happy.

Forum Guilding on TOR

Just earlier this week the developers of The Old Republic released a new forum tool allowing players to join guilds with their accounts, and have this recognised officially once the game begins.

In the morning an Email went out to all subscribers detailing this system, and within twenty four hours there were more than sixteen thousand guilds. This a huge number, especially when many already have between ten and twenty members. In previous estimates we had the number of unofficially guilded members sitting at around six thousand, but with this update it appears we were very much clearly mistaken.

Although many of these guilds may have been made by spammers, or people just messing around, they still go to show just how fast news spreads on the internet when so many are interested. This lesson was learned the hard way by Bioware today, as the servers which they believed adequate were easily overloaded by the huge influx of traffic.

So far when creating guilds on the forums players can choose the faction of the guild, as well as one focus out of Rp, PvP and PvE. They can also set certain requirements such as voice chat, forum participation or community play, however most guilds are friendly enough to not discriminate against possible candidates in this way. Players also choose the location of their guild, US East, West or Europe. According to Bioware based on this choice their guild name will be reserved on an appropriate server when the game goes live, making sure that dedicated members of the community are not beaten at the gun by those with super fast internet or line-cutting skills at TOR retailers.

One thing which disappointed some players was the maximum length of guild names. This made it impossible for one of the game’s biggest guilds, The Grand Army of The Republic, to have their chosen name. Rather, they had to settle for Republic Grand Army.

As the number of guilds continues to sky rocket Bioware will have to find some way to change the sign up process to make it less exploitable. Perhaps making a minimum number of members would fix this, otherwise they may find their servers again overwhelmed by floods of data in the future.

Corellia

Corellia has always been one of the galactic centres of commerce, trade and humanity. It was one of the founders of The Galactic Republic, and continues to play a major part in galactic affairs during the events of SWTOR.

Many Corellians have gone on to achieve galactic fame during The Old Republic, as well as in later eras such as the Galactic Civil War where the Corellian Han Solo played a major role.

The capital of Corellia is Coronet City, which is one of the few galactic centres able to rival the grandeur of the Coruscant skyline. Additionally, it is a more refined and organised city, with park lands and public spaces in space of the rotting sub levels and basements which make up the Coruscant underworld.

Although Corellia is supposed to have unswerving loyalty to the Republic, during SWTOR it appears that something has happened to cut off a majority of it’s communications with the outside galaxy. Prior to the communications blank many unsubstantiated rumours circulated detailing increasing Imperial presence on the planet, as well as the possibility of corrupt Sith influence in the highest levels of government.

Recently Holo-vids from the planet’s surface have shown violent riots and skirmishes across the capital Coronet. Although they are not obviously caused by Imperial forces, terrorism is rather the apparent protagonist, the sly hand of the Sith is suspected to be pulling many of the strings.

As Corellia is a major player in intergalactic politics, the Republic will stop at nothing to protect its interest there, and we can expect an impending occupation by their forces.

In SWTOR Corellia will present an interesting battleground between Republic and Imperial forces, as well as whatever terrorist organisations may be present. It is a world famous for its disregard for the law, so we will undoubtedly see the Han Solos of the old republic plying their trade there.