It’s what we’ve all been waiting for at NYCC- the Star Wars panel! What kind of fun, exciting info is coming out of there today? Fans are hungry for info and NYCC attempts to give us anything new they can at Friday’s panel. Newsarama has been giving us the best coverage to come out of NYCC and has this to say about the Star Wars Panel:
BioWare Austin’s Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid led the panel, joined by Game Director James Ohlen, Writing Director Daniel Erickson, and Cory Butler, Live Producer.
They went on to provide an overview of the game (in case anyone in attendance actually did not know already) and Reid explained the backstory a bit.
“But we’re making an MMO, not a movie, and gameplay is very important to us as well,” said Reid.
Those of us following SWTOR already know all too well how important story and gameplay are to the MMO. Reid explained how the entire studio is working on just this game to ensure it gets every resource they have to offer for the best game possible and to make sure the servers stay up and running 24/7. It’s a massive effort for what hopes to be one of the most massive game launches in history.
Reid went on to talk about some of the things that we will see in SWTOR on launch such as the 15 Flashpoints planned for ship, the warzones, PvP battle zones, Huttball and more. There will be social zones to keep the MMO aspects in and separate VIP section for players who purchased the collector’s edition of the game and more.
At the end of the presentation was an interesting Q&A that also included Drew Karpyshyn, lead writer of Revan and Knights of the Old Republic. There was also the reveal of a new game trailer that showed off new weapons, vehicles and more.
And some of the biggest news, they have now officially changed the release launch to a global December 20, 2011 so fans in Europe do not have to wait the two extra days.
What we learned:
- Global Release Date now December 20th
- A characters alignment will affect their appearance
- 15 Flashpoints available at launch
- No dungeon finder at launch
- No minigames at launch
- 3 PVP Warzones off the bat, including Voidstar an objective based assault style map with four objective points
- No player bounties
- Starship fleets are launch points for flashpoints. Also contain the best vendors, and auctions. Special order VIP vendor will be located there.
- New Unnamed operation involving the Hutts
- Big moments from KOTOR will make an appearance in the game.
- Mods in place to keep aesthetically pleasing items longer. Wide variety of item mods.
- Dual Speccing being looked at for post-launch.
- Large team dedicated to thwarting gold farmers.
- No light side appearance changes, only change is when falling to the dark side.
- Actions during class story line affect the outcome.
- No guild levelling at launch. Most likely soon after.
- Racial abilities at launch, not likely to affect choice.
- Not a sandbox game.
- Limited UI customization at launch, more planned.
- No plans for Mac version, promise to make sure it runs well with bootcamp.
