Star Wars: The Old Republic

It’s official, there’s a new Star Wars MMO coming and it’s called Star Wars: The Old Republic. It’s being developed by Bioware, the company behind Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR). KOTOR is one of the most popular Star Wars games of all time. Star Wars: The Old Republic will be set in a time period 3,500 years before the Star Wars films. It’s a time where Jedi and Sith are abundant and the Republic is at the peak of its power. In short it’s the perfect setting for a Star Wars MMO made by a company that really gets the Star Wars license.

We don’t have many details at this point, in fact the details are so few I almost didn’t post this. However there are a couple of things I wanted to talk about which are promising. First of all it sounds like this is going to be a role playing game first. There’s talk about an emphasis on the personal story, in fact it sounds like it will have a strong solo aspect, since they talked about companion characters which are customizable. It sounds to me like this may be a very non-traditional MMO. Other than that all we really know is the only in game footage they showed was a pre-alpha build. That means we’re probably looking at a couple of years before release.

I’m worried that letting this cat out of the bag so long before release could be a problem. A long wait like that often sets players up for disappointment. Also any details they do release are subject to change and over reaching is common in MMOs. Still it’s too early to worry about any of that really. Hopefully we’ll see some screenshots soon, it sounds like the game will have a striking visual style, concept art come to life was one of the terms used.

Anyway, I followed Star Wars Galaxies for 3 years, I’ll definitely be keeping up with SW:TOR.

Tags: Gaming, News and Updates

MMO Licensing Part 3: New Kids On The Block

No no no, not the band. I’m talking about the newest licensed MMO’s to hit the shelves. Namely Age of Conan (AoC) and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR). These two games have been highly anticipated. Age of Conan came out a couple of months ago and made a big, but short, splash. Warhammer just came out and has a lot of potential to make a lasting splash. › Continue reading

Spore DRM, Taking it Down a Notch

OK, EA isn’t stupid. They’re taking some steps to loosen up the DRM of Spore. The first thing they’re addressing is install limit, it’s being increased to 5. By itself that’s useless really, but that’s not all their doing. They’re taking steps to allow deauthorization without calling EA tech support. So that helps that issue and will make it acceptable to many people (probably not Jeff though ). They other issue they’re taking care of is the number of accounts. Instead of the previous one per copy of the game they’re upping it to 5, one for each install. This should be more than enough for most families so I’d say that one is a win. Still, is this enough?

Well I think the changes are enough for those people in the general populous who weren’t buying the game, but it won’t be enough for the geeks who are already taking a stand against the game. They’re not going to change their minds for anything short of dropping the DRM. The thing is, it may already be too late to fix the good will they lost. › Continue reading

Maximum Geek Vol. 2 Ep. 26

Alright, here it is, over a week after we recorded it. I’m really sorry but I fell into a depression the last part of last week and I was busy the first part. I’m maybe hopefully starting to pull out of it and maybe we’ll get a show up this week. Anyway, here’s what we cover.

• Google Chrome
• New CTIA devices
• New LOTRO stuffage
• SPORE, HUH, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

The Spore portion of the show is a bit heated. Take a listen and as always feel free to tell us what you think. Of course if you’re wrong we’ll be more than willing to explain why ; )

 

 Maximum Geek Vol. 2 Ep. 26 [50:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1286)

Google, Game On?

So, the latest rumor on the interwebtubes is that Google will be purchasing Valve. For those of you who don’t know, Valve is the game design company behind the Half Life series of games. Now Valve did mention recently that they would be interested in talking acquisition. Does this rumor make any sense? Is there any reason for Google to do it? What could this mean for Half Life? Did John McCain invent the Blackberry? Is Jimmy Hoffa buried in Larry Page’s backyard?

Does this rumor even make any sense? I mean what could Google want with a game company? Especially a 3D first person shooter (FPS) game company. Googles traditional roles in the industry have been about information and advertising. This would be the first time they got into a strictly for profit software venture. I mean advertising is for profit, but that’s not what I mean. This would be the first time Google would straight up charge for their product. Unless of course they go free, which with a license like Half Life, sorry, it just isn’t happening. I mean I can see a 2D webbased game company being bought by Google to release totally free ad supported games. But with an FPS game, there’s too much overhead for that. So why?

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Spore, huh, what is it good for?

So it’s no big secret that Spore released on Sunday (a strange day for a video game release, it’s usually Tuesdays) to great controversy. I’m for the most part not going to address the DRM, it is more draconian than I initially thought and will certainly keep people from buying it, there are no small number of comments on the Amazon page for the game.

DRM

Jeff is writing an article about the DRM. Jeff and agree for the most part, the DRM is crappy. We don’t agree on what should have been done and while it’s a deal breaker for Jeff it’s not for me. However, to be fair, I should say that I wasn’t fully aware of the DRM limitations when I bought the game. I would have made the same decision either way. Anyway, I disagree with Jeff on what they should have done with Spore. I think the creature creator is all the demo they need and they just need to drop some of the more draconian issues in the DRM. The one benefit of the DRM is no disk required to play. You could actually play on up to 3 systems. But many people would rather play from the DVD than be limited on number of installs and have the game check in every time an update comes out. In the end it’s not much of a benefit, especially since beyond the 3 you have to call EA to install, that includes reinstalls. That particular piece of the DRM definitely needs to go. Despite all the outrage Spore is selling like mad. So let’s get to a proper review of the gameplay shall we?

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