Hello again, I’ve been neglecting this site for too long so I thought I would do my first “real” post, which is going to be on Star Wars: The Old Republic or SW:TOR. I’ll give a brief description of it for those who don’t know about it. Its a video game exclusively for the PC and is a massive multiplayer online role playing game or mmorpg for short. As you might have guessed it takes place in the Star Wars universe, however, its during a period of time many might be unfamiliar with unless you’ve played the Knights of the Old Republic games. The KOTOR games and SWTOR take place a couple thousand years before the events of the Star Wars movies. SWTOR is being developed by Bioware, a video game company responsible for some of the best and most popular rpgs over the last couple years such as the Mass Effect series and the Dragon Age series.
When the game was first announced I was pretty excited for it. I played World of Warcraft off and on since it launched and have played other mmorpgs too, such as Rift, EVE, and Star Wars Galaxies. Along with my excitement came some hesitation and cautious optimism. As much admiration and faith i have in Bioware’s ability to produce great games I also knew how hit and miss mmorpgs can be. Also, Bioware had set some pretty lofty goals and were planning on doing some things never seen in an mmo before. Some of the innovations they planned were full voice acting for most if not all NPCs. They also wanted to revolutionize how storytelling is implemented in mmo’s. Modern day rpgs are known for fantastic stories and giving the player the ability to make choices and shape the storyline. Mmorpgs, however, are known for just the opposite, unorignal stories and no choice given to the player. These things had really piqued my interest in the game and made me hopeful that they would be able to accomplish everything they had set out to do. I even went ahead and applied to get into the beta test, which is when the developer lets selected people to play an early version for free before it is released so that they can get feedback on how to make the final product better. Well, it took awhile but when the last round of beta testing started the weekend after thanksgiving I got my invite.
Anyways, I’m getting pretty tired so I’ll call it a night and tomorrow I’ll discuss my personal experience with the beta.
