Star Wars Galaxies Infojam

I read over at VE about this one. The official boards for the MMORPG that’s going to be converting a lot of players when it comes out, Star Wars Galaxies, were graced with many a question answered yesterday in one long post by Holocron. As I would guess at least 3/4 of the board junkies are former or current EQ devotees (I was once one of them myself so it isn’t very hard to recognize), expect a lot of the normal EQ-type board commentary following the post up. A particle:

Q: “How deep will the game mechanics go on PvP?” – Baron
Q: “If there is, will it be controlled using ‘hard limits’ or ‘soft limits’? How will you determine which to use?” – noitaluspacne

A: We hope to make it fairly deep. We thought long and hard about whether to inculde it at all, and then had to think about HOW to include it once we decided to. You can’t overestimate how many people are repelled by PvP–I know it is popular here on this board, but if nonconsensual PvP is rampant, it WILL chase away almost half your players. This is a fact that is hard to accept for the diehard PvP crowd. At the same time, PvP can provide an exciting and involving game for those who are into it, and also adds great resonance to roleplay and politics. This is something that is hard to accept for the pacifists. In fact, the twain probably shall never meet. And I’ll state it bluntly: we intend to make this game enjoyable for both types of player. Obviously, that means that the PvP model has to intriguing and deep. It also means that people have to be able to avoid it if they so choose. So the answer to the latter question is “yes.”