MER Episode 21 Community Discussion: Did Bioware deliver at E3?

You’re probably asking yourself, “It’s been two weeks, where is the new show??”. Well, with con season in full swing, the news cycle from Bioware starts to slow down and instead of putting out a show where we only discuss a few topics, we feel it’s better to let the news pile up a bit and then really tackle it with some great, in-depth discussion.

Speaking of discussion, we want to bring back the polls we did for a while in the form of community discussions. So here’s how it’s going to work: The week before each episode we will put up a short audio clip detailing the new topic. This could range anywhere from a piece of news released from Bioware or some ridiculous rumor we heard floating around the web. We then want you to send us your thoughts either through email or, preferably, on the forums. 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. Simple enough, right? Here’s the question for this week…

The overall reaction from Bioware’s showing at E3 has been mixed. Some people, like us, were incredibly excited by the Hope trailer, player ships, and the small bits we saw of warzones. On the other hand, a lot of folks were disappointed with the conference. We want to know what your impressions were. Did Bioware do a good job showing off their work or could they have done much more. We’re also curious to know what you are looking forward to hearing at conferences like Comic-Con, GamesCom, and PAX in a couple of months.
Discuss this topic on the forums!

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Player Housing in SWTOR

With GamesCom over, and the drool from the developer walkthrough video finally being mopped up, a number of news sites and fans have started to break down every last detail of what was mentioned during the conference. While a many frame-by-frame breakdowns of the video have sprung up, a number of folks have latched on to a particular statement made about “typical MMO features”. More specifically, amongst the vague talk about PvP, auction houses, and crafting…housing was VERY briefly mentioned.

Housing has been a topic of great discussion ever since the game had been announced. Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) players had it, Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) players had it, World of Warcraft players YEARNED for it, but how would it be implemented, if at all? It is no doubt that if the developers over at Bioware Austin are going to give players a place to hang their trophies, they’re going to look at how the other games have solved the problem of placing thousands, if not hundreds-of-thousands, of houses.

There are two basic approaches to player housing: open world and instanced, each of which can be seen in SWG and LOTRO, respectively. One would think that an open-world solution like that in SWG is simple: buy a house, find a lot, and boom your character has a place to live, right? Wrong. Between player-based cities, taxes, house-type planet limitations, utilities (yeah, you pay utilities hourly), and voting for mayor every three weeks, the system in SWG is incredibly complicated. But it’s hard to argue that this amount of detail provides a certain level of immersion that could not be captured any other way. I invite you to check out the SWG Wiki for all the gritty details.

LOTRO, on the other hand, uses an instanced neighborhood system. Similar to player cities, there are four racially styled homesteads (Men, Hobbit, Dwarven, and Elven) which appear in the open world, with 250 instanced neighborhoods per homestead. Each neighborhood has 30 homes, 4 kinship houses, 10 deluxe personal houses, and 16 standard personal houses, which can then be customized upon purchase. The result? A highly organized, pre-planned place for players or groups of players to hang their wares. (All information about LOTRO homes was found HERE)

So which of these methods will we see in SWTOR? The speculation and hopes from the player-base have been far and wide. This forum thread covers just about every possibility from open-world, to instanced, to ships acting as homes (similar to the Ebon Hawk in KOTOR). As with every other detail of the game, the developers are waiting for a finished product before confirming anything, but there’s no doubt that they are keeping a close eye on the community.

What do you think of player housing in SWTOR? Vote in the poll and give us the details the comments!

[poll id="4"]

MER Episode 04 – Basterds of the Old Republic

The past two weeks have served up a heaping helping of news and rumors. We break down everything from the developer walkthrough to some interesting community creations. Details are in the notes below…give it a listen and let us know what you think!

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News From the Galactic Republic
GamesCom Developer Walkthrough
- Bounty Hunter
- Smuggler
- Korriban / Sith Warrior
- Flashpoint: “Highly customized story and gameplay experience”
- Detailed breakdown at Darth Hater

SWTOR Localized to French and German
- French and German versions of the website AND game
- Includes forums, Holonet, timeline videos, etc
- Very important to building a global community

Stories From the Outer Rim
SWTOR Release Rumor
- How we’re going to treat these rumors
- French site reports reliable source says October of 2010
- Poll Results

Community Highlight
Heroes of the Old Republic
- Old-style radio drama created by community member DeaconX
- Prelude tells the story of the Deception trailer from the perspective of
- Episode I picks up with a swoop race on Ord Mantell, follows the story of young Falco Danner

Twitter Questions
@COMMUNISTROBOT – Should gear color schemes auto-adjust/change depending on your environment. i.e. snow cammo, jungle cammo, etc. /discuss

@gem1138 – My hype has definitely raised after watching the walkthrough! The kick to the nuts followed by the headshot was fantastic!

@sirdesmond – In the multiplayer dialogue cutscenes, could playing with people u dont know screw stuff up if they say something u wouldnt? (DIALOG CLIP – Daniel Erickson, Lead Writer)

SWTOR Demo Video Now On IGN

The Twitter world was going nuts yesterday wondering when the game play demo would be released for Star Wars: The Old Republic, and yesterday afternoon it finally happened. Over on IGN’s website you can find a four part video series that combined is over 20 minutes long. The demo is full of action-packed SWTOR combat footage, voice dialog chats, and beautiful planet landscapes in the upcoming game.  Mostly what we see is nothing more than the things we already know in finally being played out.  Although watching it answered a lot of questions it also raised a fresh new batch as well. We should be recording episode 4 in the next few days so stayed tuned to get our full opinions on this exciting new video. 

What are your thoughts after watching these videos? Are you more excited or could you care less now?