That comic con video, I know its an hour, but it's
really good info.
Fun fact - the game is enormous. They're saying its bigger than every other Bioware game ever made put together. Put all their previous games together, and it still wouldn't be as big as The Old Republic ;D
Enough dialogue to fill 60 standard size Star Wars novels.
There's 8 classes (archetypes), and each class branches into 2 further "advanced" classes. Then each of those 2 "advanced" classes have several talent trees. Each archetype has it's own, unique story that is "several hundred hours long".
Get this. If you play the game as a Jedi Knight all the way through those several hundred hours, then make say, a Bounty hunter, you will not see a single duplicate mission. The story and quests will be completely unique to that class.
Epic.
There's the wider, over-arching story of the Galactic War between the Empire and the Republic, but then there's your class story. And then there's the decisions, the
choices, like in every Bioware game. And they're going to tailor it to you, make it personal to you and not like every other Bounty Hunter's story.
They show an example in the presentation. Skip to about 8 minutes and watch for a couple of minutes - basically there's a quest a Jedi Knight is on, he's beaten a Sith and the Sith guy says "kill me" - you can now choose to either kill him, or spare him.
Now, they show you both outcomes and the repercussions;
- Kill him, and he's gone out of the game, the galaxy is better off to the tune of one Sith Warrior and you're a bit more dark side.
- Spare him, and he turns from the dark side to the light, becomes a Jedi and appears later in the game to help you.
Put it into context - there are no choices in any other MMO. All quests are linear and the same for all players. These will not be, especially your personal class story.
They're saying these choices occur all the time so there's literally hundreds of thousands of "markers" attached to your character giving you this unique experience in an MMO.
Factions aren't light or dark side. The Republic isn't "light" and the Empire "dark". You can be a dark side "evil" Republic Jedi Knight or a light side "good" Imperial Agent who's trying to make the Empire a better place. Or vice versa. It's those choices again.
Also; over 900 actors/actresses recording hundreds of thousands of lines of dialogue, a lot of the script was written in 2006 and it's taken over 2 years so far to record all the dialogue - best not turn your sound on though, eh si?
Lots of end game content too - raids, small group instances, PvP warzones, an
entire planet dedicated to solo end game content, and they hinted at, but wouldn't fully reveal, a system for rerolling - my guess is your lvl50 character can somehow benefit your new noob character.
They are having
huge beta test weekends in September, where they've said they're going to invite
lots of players to try the game. Now, you need to make sure your account is setup for beta testing - here's Stu's handy guide, because I care...
So first, go to
www.swtor.com or
this tester link.
Next you need to login. I don't think you need to sign up because it's just your normal EA login, the one you use for Battlefield.
Then you need to click "My Account".
Finally, you need to scroll down to the bottom and click that you wish to be considered for testing. You'll also need to upload your system specs and complete the contact details.
When these are done, you're all set. His words at Comic Con were, and I'm paraphrasing, that if you've got this setup there's a
very good chance you'll get invited to the big beta weekends in September.
Overall, that was a really good video of the Comic Con presentation, worth a watch, very informative in gameplay mechanics and the real game changer of this game - the Story and personalisation elements of the game.
You don't want to write this off, just cause you don't like Star Wars. They're saying it essentially plays like every single player Bioware RPG you've ever played, in a story sense, but rather than run around with AI companions, you've got real people.
I'd recommend taking an hour and watching it.