Before we actually get to the question for episode 25, I want to let you all know that we’re hard at work on the new show, as well as bringing some new segments to MER to keep things lively after the con season. And keep in mind there’s a suggestion thread stickied on the forums, and we would love to hear ideas from everyone on how we can continue to improve the show to be exactly what the community is looking for.
Now, the past couple of weeks have given us some fantastic updates: Corellia has been announced as the 15th playable planet, looks at the Jedi classes with the “Designing the Light Side” developer video, and especially the EPIC Smuggler video posted by Machinima.com. We recommend every check these out, as well as the detailed break-downs from Darth Hater and others, before the next show. We’re incredibly excited to discuss what these will mean for the TOR community. However, for this week’s community discussion topic, we want to tackle a subject that we have been sitting on for a while now: Racial benefits, also known as Racials.
Bioware has previously approached this topic from, no surprise, a story-based standpoint in the form of player backgrounds. In Mass Effect, you could have been the sole survivor of a battle or a ruthless soldier, and overall these had little impact on your game. In Dragon Age, your origin story played a much stronger role in your progression as a Warden. However, rarely has Bioware ever incorporated these backgrounds into specific in-game abilities. There are a number of MMOs who have used racials as a way to differentiate between the races or species beyond cosmetics. For example, in LOTRO, each race has an ability to quickly to return to their race’s home city. In WoW, humans have a special ability to escape all movement impairment effects. So our question to you is, how should The Old Republic implement racials? Would you like Bioware to build upon the biography model as a way to incorporate special abilities, or should they include the systems already in place in other MMOs?
We want you guys to be as detailed as you want on this one: everything from general ideas to which racial abilities a Chiss should have and why. As always, we want you to send us your thoughts either through the forums, email, or in the form of an mp3. When it comes time to record the episode, we will pull some of your comments and use them as a basis for discussion on the show. Like I said, get detailed guys. This is also a great time to check out the forums if you haven’t already…there are some seriously great discussions going on over there, and I would invite everyone to check them out.