Side-Quest: The Old Republic Wishlist

Article by Travis Meacham.

The sheet covering Star Wars: The Old Republic has been pulled back to offer the faintest glimpse of what the game might have in store. In this week's Side-Quest we look at what elements of "Star Wars" need to find their way into the game.

http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2008/1 [...] drepublic/

Wish for me is to have some real KOTOR RPGs come out instead of just this crap. Most of the comments I've read from people about the announcement have been negative because people want a KOTOR 3. Think of all of the best things about a KOTOR game and then imagine it all actually working well within an MMO environment. I don't think it can, because like you pointed out, you're not the hero. And most people want to be as jedis and it will be lame running around with a bunch of jedis. I bet it will just be tedious and generic just like every other MMO.

The only way I could see it slightly working is if they had a system like Guild Wars where players gather in towns and stuff and put their parties together but once they venture outside, they're in their own world with their party and it plays out like a co-op single-player game. If it were something like Neverwinter Nights in the KOTOR setting, then that would be cool. I think they're looking at that WoW pot of gold though and I think they're going to use the same tedious gameplay to attract the lowest common denominator.

That was PRECISELY what I was thinking. And it fits the "companion character" model as well. Its the only MMO I've played that did a pretty darn good job of making you feel like the main protagonist on an epic story line. It wasn't perfect but for the purpose of story telling and making you feel central its a very good place to start.

I have to think if there are LARGE interactive zones that are much like traditional ones in MMOs (cities, warfeilds, places you would logically expect to encounter a ton of players for either story or practical reasons), zones that are limited to x number of players before splitting off as a seperate instance (aka on the outskirts of some city on a common roadway to a common outpost you'd expet to run into other people so perhaps that instance supports about 20ish players, if more are present it spawns a new instance for those to be in. Other places are considered "remote" and its pretty much just you and/or your group/companion in terms of player characters present. There may be whole planets that are considered for the most part to be "remote" giving a serious KOTOR feel. Other bustling parts of the galaxy may be loaded with other PCs and wars and races and space battles. Were I designing the game I would give lead ins to both aspects regularly but ultimately leave it up to the player to decide how heavily they wanted to interact with others vs. playing things more as a KOTOR game.

I would probably also introduce gambling and betting systems for combat even in simple duals and organized arenas. Ditto for racing making it possible to build better racers with ways to build/steal/buy/quest for parts and have official races on a schedule with rankings that are kept track of so that they are reasonably competitive.

Lastly it would be great to have multiple ways to aquire a ship. Outright buy one, steal one, gamble for one, build one, quest for one, earn one that is essentially "donated" to you as you fight for a given side in a fleet and rise in rank etc.

I think if they hit that kind of mix, it would be a pretty great experience.