Over a year ago, I was drinking an ice-cold lemonade in EA’s Gamescom business suite. Across from me sat Jeff Hickman, VP for Live Services and head of Star Wars: The Old Republic. BioWare had just announced the switch to a hybrid free-to-play approach, and was planning an aggressive update schedule. During the interview, we…
Category: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Building a Character: Bay Stuggs
I’m a strange breed of MMO player. Even though I love raiding, questing and the occasional spot of PVP, I have been known to dabble in the mysterious arts of roleplaying. It’s a habbit – creating a character in a fictional universe who’s more than just an extension of myself. They become their own thing, take on…
SWTOR Endgame: Fixed!
I’ve been talking with a couple of people about the state of endgame in Star Wars: The Old Republic and we pretty much all agree the same thing – it’s good when you can get into it. The lack of an LFD tool and low number of raiding guilds mean that a lot of players…
Replacing the Superficial Intelligence
I have an opinion on Non-Player Characters. It emerged in the days of the first escort quest I attempted, when the computer-controlled NPC I’d be chaperoning would sprint ahead to certain death at the hands of hungry skeletons. If they weren’t sprinting ahead they’d probably stopped to admire a particularly intricate pebble and forgotten all…
LFD: No Simple Answers
Looking around the blogsphere today reminds me of battle re-enactment. I can see the same people pulling on the same uniform and dusting off the same weapons to have the same good-natured scrap over something. The sheep-skin drums are beating, the blue and red overcoats are being pulled on. The beer tent is filling up…
How SWTOR Will Make A Profit
There’s been a lot of talk recently about how Star Wars: The Old Republic was going to be BioWare’s most expensive mistake, ending up consigned in the footnotes of history as a video gaming failure. It’s easy to see where this comes from – at a $200 million price tag this is one of the…
SWTOR: The Retention Rate Question
Earlier today I was listening to Talk of the Galaxy over on Galactic Public Radio, when they reminded me that the month of game time bundled with the full version of the game was about to expire and that subscriptions were just about to kick in. There was a little bit of debate about how…
SWTOR: So Now What?
Last weekend I finally managed to hit the level cap on my Sith Smuggler (edit: Sorcerer) in SWTOR and complete the class quest chain. Darth Gazimoff is now pottering around Illum and doing the occasional bit of space combat, but I’m realising it’s not enough to keep me interested for more than a few weeks. Once the…
That 6AM Moment
Have you ever had that moment when you’ve been playing an MMO for so long that you lose track of time completely? Where the darkness outside slowly gives way to grey sunlight? Where you mistake the dawn chorus for someone playing Angry Birds nearby? When I started playing Star Wars: The Old Republic with my…
To The Future!
What a year it’s been! There’s been a couple of major launches with both RIFT and Star Wars: The Old Republic attracting a lot of attention and enjoying success. There’s been a whole series of subscription MMOs switching to a free-to-play model and doing really well with it. And regrettably there’s also been a few…