Let's skip the preamble. I'm in a theater at LucasArts' San Francisco headquarters. Developers from BioWare like Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk are on the giant screen talking about how great it was working with the Star Wars license on the original Knights of the Old Republic. Now LucasArts president Darrell Rodriguez is in front of the crowd talking about wanting to get back to the franchise, and...
OK, yeah, KOTOR MMO. It's called Star Wars: The Old Republic.
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The BioWare doctors are taking the stage to talk about the game.
Keep refreshing this page, because it gives us traffic. Oh, and because I'll keep typing in what these guys are saying!
- Dr. Ray's talking about the "fourth pillar" they're adding to other important elements like character development and combat. The fourth pillar is storyline. They want to embed lots of plot lines into the online experience.
- Dr. Greg: "It's going great. The game is playable" right now. They want it to be "pick up and play" accessible. Been peeking at the WOW playbook, apparently.
- Now they're showing an actual trailer of this business.
- "A tenuous truce exists between the Republic and the Sith Empire." Sounds like the two factions in the game, perhaps? That was followed up with "Which side will you choose?" So yeah, sounds like the factions. That trailer was all CG, no gameplay or anything.
- Lead designer James Ohlen is up now. They're really harping on storyline here. He says TOR is the first truly story-driven MMO, "allows players to carve out their own epic stories."
- This is set 300 years after the first two KOTOR games. There's a new Sith Empire hassling the Republic.
- Yeah, Republic and Sith Empire are the two factions. Multiple classes within each faction, of course. Ohlen says each class has its own storyline associated with it. He's talking about Luke, Han and Leia's personal stories in the original trilogy. He wants TOR players' stories to come together and resonate with each other in the same way.
- He's talking about player choice dictating your tendency toward the light and dark side--doesn't sound like that alignment is tied into your choice of faction.
- Art director Jeff Dobson hits the stage to talk about the game's visual style.
- He points out this is 3,000 years before Darth Vader, so they want to make it look familiar but still pretty unique. The shots of builings and landscapes they're showing so far look similar to scenes from the other KOTOR games.
- "Like concept art come to life" is the quality and style they're going for.
- He's talking about wanting the quality of their graphics to come through regardless of the hardware you're running on. More shades of WOW.
- Gameplay trailer showed...a lot of Jedi running around with lightsabers fighting each other and some monsters. Scene of a lady standing on a balcony on Coruscant. A Jedi fighting one of the green monsters from the arena at the end of Attack of the Clones. The combat looks pretty back-and-forth, MMO-style.
- Quick Q&A starting. Footage shown a minute ago is pre-alpha.
- What platforms? "Only talking about PC today."
- No details being given on subscription models or release dates. Rodriguez says "much more focused on delivering a quality game." Dr. Greg follows up with "sometime in the future."
- "What about the future of Star Wars Galaxies?" No response to that one. An open beta may happen at some point, though.
Looks like the general presentation is over; now we're breaking up into roundtable Q&As with these guys. If you guys have any specific questions, post 'em in the comments and I'll try to ask them when my turn comes.