Will everyone be a Jedi?

That is the ultimate question that seems to be on everyone's mind. There are plenty of choices available outside of the "Jedi class" as far as I can see: Manalorian and Wookie might be two examples where non-Jedi classes could be based. I, as well as many others, would love to play as a bounty hunter. The one main problem with these other classes is balance. As I said in a previous article, Force users are meant to be uber and godlike, so how can a regular joe compete with that? Jango and Boba fet put up a fair fight against the Jedi in the films and off the top of my head manage to kill at least one Jedi without breaking into a sweat. They are meant to be the most elite bounty hunters in the galaxy though. Do we really want to boost up all other classes to match a Jedi? I think we definitely do NOT want to do this. That would take away from being a Jedi. Some classes would be close and others would be further away.

If we look at the previous KOTOR games, everyone played as a Jedi. From this point alone it would make sense for everyone to play as a Jedi. Would this give enough variety though? There are plenty of skills available for Jedi to train in that includes blasters, weapon skill/damage, defense, force powers etc. Even Sith were known to heal their own wounds and raise others from the dead (healer archetype?). So there might be enough variety if everyone was a Jedi, but would everyone want to be a Jedi? Like I said before, to be the next Jango Fett with his rocket pack and batman utility belt is enough to get people's mouth watering.

Force users during the KOTOR timeline seemed to be in ample supply. And that's a good thing. I remember just starting out in KOTOR I, killing mobs on my merry way. Then you have to fight the first dark Jedi and the stakes were suddenly raised. Then later on in the game you might be faced with 2 or 3 Jedi at the same time; that was great! Playing as a dark Jedi was great fun to choke hold one while I beat the other down with my light sabre. There would definitely be no problem lore wise to have a million force users running around if the time line was set up well enough.

If we look at Star Wars Galaxies (before the combat upgrade), very few players had the chance to play as a Jedi. I know this changed a lot through the course of SWG's life but I really only wanted to mention that Jedi were unlocked. They had to complete an unknown set of criteria in order to unlock the Jedi which meant you were either very lucky or you did everything you could in the hopes you would unlock these unknown requirements. As far as I know, they did it this way to fit in with the lore. They set it between episodes IV and V where there were very few Jedi in existence.

And the last game I want to have a look at for ideas is Jedi Knight II. In one of the multiplayer modes, most people started off as normal soldiers using a variety of blasters, rifles and rocket launchers. Then occasionally you were selected to become the Jedi. You had access to all of your force abilities and your light saber and you tried to hunt down the lowly soldiers. You were more powerful when you became a Jedi but there were enough soldiers to back you up if you were against the Jedi. So what if, during the MMO, there were Jedi who were purposely overpowered but if you rolled a non-Jedi, you had a million NPC characters backing you up. This might work well in large scale PvP and especially so if you didn’t have character names over your heads. That way you would be indistinguishable from the other soldiers so any Jedi would have to cleave through random NPCs in order to work out which one you were.

As far as I know, no MMO has tried anything like my last suggestion so it is untried and tested. At the end of the day though, a KOTOR game would not be a KOTOR game if it didn’t have Jedi/Sith involved. Good luck Bioware with whatever you decide.

Why I am interested in KOTOR MMORPG

Let me be honest here. If I had to chose between Fantasy and Sci-Fi, I'd chose Fantasy. I don’t really like turn based games like the final fantasy series or Baldurs Gate. I don’t know much about the in-depth Star Wars lore. Wow, I sound like I love the KOTOR series!

OK, so I feel like I need to explain these 3 points to you...

I like sci-fi in certain circumstances. I feel like due to the massive amount of sci-fi television programs that have been made, they all end up the same cheesyness. If done correctly, sci-fi can be very good indeed. I think warhammer 40K did a very good job of making a believable space reality and so did star wars. What was it exactly about these? I don’t know, but something just works.

Turn based games drive me crazy. I hate having to wait for the opponent to react to my last attack and hate waiting for my next attack to be ready. Fortunately, KOTOR had the timing just about right for it not to feel too much like a chore every fight I got in. And there was always the ability to not stop combat if you preferred. With 3 crew members always fighting and moving around, it felt more like a real battle: frantic and unpredictable. I’m guessing that the MMO will not be turn based. It’ll be interesting to see.

I'm not one of these die-hard star wars fans that dressed up as obi-wan and camped outside the cinema when the films were released. Saying that, I love all of the films (yes, even episode 1). I've played plenty of the star wars games and enjoyed those too. Despite this, I haven’t done any novel reading to really get in the depth of the lore. I'm starting to do my background reading using Wookiepedia. I love the star wars universe for many reasons: One of which is the idea of jedi and sith. These elite individuals can be so god like and uber and have such different goals. And to make it even better, in a society that relies on long range weapons, they use hand to hand weapons! In KOTOR you had the opportunity to become one of these individuals, starting off as a regular Joe.

What struck me most about the KOTOR games was that every action you took led you down a different path. It's quite unique. I'm sure there are other games out there that have done similar things but I haven’t played them. I loved that I could be a b***ard during my conversations and that it contributed to my path. I specifically remember a quest to "help" a dark jedi. You were meant to try to woe them back to the light side but if you were so inclined, you just destroy them and your excuse was that you saw them as a threat. Love it! It was also a neat feature that eventually people started to notice that my face was messed up because I had been warped by my evil nature.

Simply put, the KOTOR way of thinking is just perfect for an MMO and I cant wait to see what they make of it. I have extremely high expectations and I hope that the game meets them.

What’s the best way to announce a game?

My guess is not to have your CEO confirm it and then for the community manager to deny that it ever happened! Well that’s what BioWare has done. In my first blog I linked the Portfolio.com interview with Electronic Arts chief executive John Riccitiello where he gives a definite yes to the question: “Does Riccitiello mean the oft rumored Knights of the Old Republic Online?” Now, if you go to the BioWare official forums you will see 30 pages worth of comments regarding the “announcement” where Chris Priestly, the Community Communications Coordinator states:

“There have recently been rumors about the BioWare MMO. Once again, these are just rumors and we do not comment on rumors.”

Interesting. What the heck is going on?

Now as it happens I know someone from a forum I frequent who says that he served the CEO of an independent gaming company at the restaurant he works at and they got talking about games. During the conversation he mentioned that he knew that KOTOR MMO was being worked on. Now this was back in November and I suppose the same sort of thing happened with Portfolio.com, the only difference being the interviewer from Portfolio.com is an interviewer from Portfolio.com!

If I was working on KOTOR MMO, I’d love to tell everyone what I was working on, especially the long time fans. Unfortunately, games companies usually have to do things by the book in the form of official announcements and Non Disclosure Agreements (NDA).

So where do BioWare go from here. Well they definitely need to do some crowd control. Speculation and distrust is going to keep going up when people on the forums specifically ask if the Chief Executive was a liar and the community coordinator says no comment over and over again. How can they not release an official statement?

Anyway, I'm going to keep blogging as though it still is official, even if it is denied. The game is too perfect not to be made into a MMO.

Hello and Welcome...

...to my Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (KOTORMMO) Blog.

I have no idea how many people will read this as the game has only just been revealed and there doesn’t seem to be any other KOTOR MMO blogs about (does this mean nobody is interested in it? I’ll assume not and continue anyway). So for the time being, I’ll just be rambling about my thoughts on the game. If you stumbled across this whilst looking for The Cathedral of St. Tryphon, then I apologize and you’ll find what you were looking for here: http://www.matf.bg.ac.yu/konferencije/kotor/

I also realize that within this first post, there doesn’t seem to be a lot about KOTOR – this is me warming up my typing fingers and trying out this Blogging business. It’ll get better I promise.

In order to make it slightly more StarWarsy and to prove I’m not lying about the reveal, here’s a link to the announcement:

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/the-tech-observer/2008/07/17/ea-to-play-in-knights-of-the-old-republic

Be safe and have fun!