14 DAY TRIAL // There are people who have seen Star Wars: The Old Republic, the MMO from developer BioWare and publisher Electronic Arts, at the E3 trade show for the last 3 years and a lot of gamers hope that the game will finally be launched in the last half of this year.
But the new features that BioWare has shown at the 2011 E3 are truly impressive and the game seems to be close to the developer’s aim of remaking the MMO genre from the ground up.
The big reveal for E3 2011 are the Operations, which are end game raids that will require a lot of gamers to work together in order to take out tough enemies and get the chance to pick up significant rewards.
The BioWare team also showed the planet of Alderaan, a favorite of Star Wars fans, for the first time, using it to show what the game engine can do when confronted with both exterior and interior space.
BioWare insists that they are changing the MMO space because of the importance they place on the story elements, again demoing how the conversation is driven and how various choices can branch out.
The developers repeated the fact that the 8 classes that will be included in The Old Republic will not have any shared core content, meaning that a player can get through the game eight times before he comes close to seeing all it has to offer.
The hands on, which features the planet of Tattoine, is a good way of seeing how close to launch the game seems to be, with a redefined interface and a clever way of making the map always visible in order to make sure that players move to their objective.
The classes seem to be balanced, although a lot of play time is needed to be sure of this, and everyone has something that feels important to do during combat and even supposed support classes are able to get into the fray and have fun.
It’s true that many of the concepts of Star Wars: The Old Republic are linked to those pioneered by World of Warcraft but the license and the improvements could mean that the game is really a game changer once released.