Star Wars: The Old Republic Preview

A small amount of new information about LucasArts and BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic can be extracted from MMORPG.com’s PAX preview.

Bioware’s game design philosophy is to find the fun early. Get the prototypes going so they can play and iterate on it. “We play it, gather the feedback, iterate, get outside play focus groups in, play, gather the feedback, iterate,” said Neri. Rinse and repeat. For the classes, they plan to deliver on Fan expectation. For example, the Sith Warrior is based on the archetype from the movies. They use a force choke and they are more of a heavy melee character, based particularly on Darth Vader. The Bounty Hunter on Bobba Fett, and the Smuggler on Han Solo.

“Do you think the game will end up heavy in Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors?” I asked.

“We are very aware and challenged by the issue,” Neri replied. “Our challenge is to make each one of our classes unique, to make each one fun to play, and to make them balanced against each other.”