BioWare’s strategy for SWTOR (or simply TOR) is to reach as many gamers as they possibly can. “Star Wars is beloved in the US as well as many other parts of the world,” said Producer Rich Vogel, citing the low system specs required for the game, “and that said, we want to make sure that the game is accessible to as many people as possible.”

The game will look as good as it possibly can, but the voice-acting will make the most impact. It is costly, but effective and used mostly in other MMOs as for special flavor perhaps, for important quests. One of the questions often asked of BioWare is how difficult the voice-acting and files was to manage, but for a company that’s used to the process, the voice-acting, we are told, is the simplest part of the game. It is scripted first in text of course, but with games like Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect and Dragon Age behind them, piece of cake!

Gamers who enjoy the Star Wars movies and world but aren’t necessarily avid fans need not fear that their lack of knowledge of all things Star Wars will hinder them in the game. TOR is set about 3,000 years before the movies or Clone Wars. It’s not that the Sith Empire is based on the movies, Palpatine’s empire was based on the ancient Sith Empire! “Just watching the trailers will get you up to speed,” said Lead Designer James Ohlen, “But there will be Easter eggs for fans of KOTOR (Knights of the Old Republic) to find in the game.”

So far it seems like they have only been testing in small amounts ( 100 players ) and that will most likely not be the case with the release.

When swtor goes live and servers are awaiting the first players to walk in it ,there is always a risk to be the first day

1. crash fest
2. Queue fest
3. Synchonize problems Fest
4. Exploit / dupe / Hack Fest attacks and of cource
5. Lag Fest

because Tor has not been tested in mass amounts of variety combinations of [gamers - "gamers"] / [clients -workstations hardware setups] / [clients - workstations software setups ] / [clients - workstations network situation ].Ι ΒΕΤ 50000 credits that the forums in the first days will be hammered with to many problems that will be the community manager's nightmare. A recent mmo game I have been seeing executing open test it fairly correctly was Rift. the headstart gave pre-ordered players the ability to play days before the launch. Failure myths within the normal release has already hammered some mmorpg releases in the past. i don't want right now referrer any of these mmos, but many of us we know what happend in the past. I'm not saying Bioware or better EA should start inviting thousands of players right now, but it would be a good choise the hard test and be better preparation for the worst case scenarios within the last month before launch. An other option is pre-sell and pre-launch a week before normal start, but the time to investigate and solve the problems is limited.

You've all watched Star Wars (well I hope you did..) I read a few developers posts about the cross-faction talk and the said that it's only enabled in the beta, and its highly likely that it will not be in the finished game.

When I heard about that it struck me, being that I'm a heavy PvPer ,i am also and a heavy socialize gamer that use the chat a lot . Maybe if it can be reconsidered being that Bioware/Lucasarts said they want to make this feel like a REAL star wars experience *, Cross-faction talk in swtor should be enabled. It would really add a sense of reality in the game, especially in PvP atmosphere inside the game.

It's used in everquest , and works wonderfully, and it is not used in Aion and that was a reason that pvp in aion sucks a lot ,because you can see that the enemy speaks but you can not read what he writes

Always ,in pvp games ,a bit of QQ chat is like the alas of pvp and many times the qq after pvp is the reason for the mmo gamers to try more to be better in pvp strategy (swtor = startegy ) , armor - weapons and levels

Although I know there are people who don't PVP at all, wouldn't it be easy to just have an option where cross-faction talk can be disabled in Tor due to various reasons of BAD LANGUAGE in cross-faction talk ?

*In every battle with lightsabers in star wras there was a QQ chat between star wars characters !!!!!!!

Discuss it.

I have often played any and all Star Wars games - with hopes to submerge myself in the much loved universe of my youth.

Most times I walk away satisfied but still feeling something was missing. KOTOR and Jedi Academy were among my all time favs.

Galaxies just does'nt feel right and for me the game play was lacking. I (like most) play Warcraft wayyyyy too much and would like nothing more than a Star Wars game that gave me that ease of control with all the binding and macro options so my character can have that smooth motion while still pwning.

There has only been a couple of games i've played that was close to that feeling and I really hope TOR comes through for me. That other Star (4 letter word) MMO was not it.

I am really exited about this one though and will give it a go for as long as I can. If it does not live up to my expectations there will be no QQ. After all I still pull out the Xbox from time to time and play my old KOTOR , II and yes even lego. [Swtor.com Community]

Combo Attacks - Greetings everyone....

In speaking with some friends the other day, about some of the things we hope will be included in TOR, one thing that came to mind, and I'm surprised it took me this long to think of it, is combination attacks. Combo attacks add so much depth/fun to multiplayer combat, and it surprises me that more MMOs don't have combo attacks in them.

If anyone has played Final Fantasy 11, that is a good starting point. Although the game had many flaws, I think the combo attacks were pretty darn cool. Now, I haven't played every MMO, but a friend told me that the Lord of the Rings MMO has that as well. Yet, of all the MMO games I've played, including WoW, most of them don't have this feature.

It could really add a fun challenge to combat as well - such as making the combos harder and harder to execute.

For instance....

Player A initiates a combo - and then has to hit a keyboard combination
Player B then has to hit their keyboard combination correctly, in a certain amount of time, or the combo fails.

Keyboard combinations can get harder, and combos involving more than two players can be discovered as well, down the line.

TOR is not going to fail - Bioware won't allow it. - Well some of that article may be true or "close" to truth. After all it takes as many hours to produce Voice Overs for so many thousands of lines of text. And there are examples of the games with huge budgets that eventually failed because companies valued their investments more than the team working on the actual game. The good example of such a failure was "Tabula Rasa" and "Auto Assault". Company spent so much money (based on that time terms) for developing the game and so much time that eventually they decided to pull the plug because a lot of people who actually worked on the game were laid off.

TOR may not inherit the same fate, but its all up to us players really. We will need to show the devs and especially EA that we love the game by playing it and spending money on our subscriptions. If for some reason subs won't reach a specific number and judging by the amount of money spent on development it has to be millions of subs to allow EA make that money back that they have invested into creating this game. If this number is not reached EA won't invest any more money into game's future development.

BEYOND STORY - The End Game , What will keep you here 18 months after launch ? -

All stories come to an end.

The developers continually make the comment, "Go back and play another class after you get done with the one your playing."

This to me is very worrying, I mean, What !?! You mean you want me to start over !?!

What if I don't want to play another class ?

After dumping X number of months or years into a Class, going through the grind, and finally getting my character to where I want him. You want me to start over and play some other class from day 1 ? Hanging out with newbies, because all my friends in the class I just left are too high level to group with is not my idea of fun.

Sorry, but No ! Where is the END GAME ?

I want to continue the story of my character and only get better and live out new adventures ! Not quit and start over.

This is the major problem with Theme Park MMOs, at some point the content ends.

What Do You Think Raids Should Be Like In TOR? -

Like These:
http://swtor.com/media/wallpapers/space-combat

http://swtor.com/media/concepts/space-combat
http://swtor.com/media/concepts/space-combat-0
http://republicdefenders.webs.com/sw...nstoppable.jpg

[Swtor.com Community]
swtor

Exploring alternative gameplay as DLC - DLC is so common nowdays that it seems a near given we will see some form of it in TOR, offering side content or some kind of alternative gaming experience which does not interfere with the main game.

In many ways this sounds like it would have been the ideal vehicle for the tunnel space combat system. Short, isolated missions, which have little effect on the rest of the game and are just meant as a diversion (and have caused a rather large division in public opinion). While that is just an academic discussion since tunnels are what we are getting as our space content at release, the topic got me thinking about what further additions to the game could be considered as DLC (vs what would be better saved as expansions).

It would seem that anything that offered particularly quirky gameplay, or offering too different a gaming experience, is not something modern companies want to add post release in a patch or expansion for fear of fracturing the community (as past MMOs have taught us). In these such areas, making the love-it-or-hate-it items DLC instead would seem to make more sense.

What's your FAVORITE aspect of TOR? - Ok, it's time for a positive thread amidst the sea of cries that Bioware ruined this game for everyone...

What is your single most favorite aspect of TOR? Try to be a little more specific than, "It's Star Wars!". Like is it that you get to play a certain class you've always wanted to play? Or that you love the way combat looks? Or is it because you love all the planets you get to visit in the SW universe?

If you had to choose one part of this game that just makes you all giddy inside, what would that be? [Swtor.com Community]