As perhaps the biggest MMORPG to hit since World of Warcraft gaming developer BioWare's newly-released game Star Wars: The Old Republic is certainly swallowed in loads of hype. An expansion of the company's 2003 venture, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, SWTOR takes place thousands of years before the movies and invites users to step into the roles they've come to know and love from the franchise.
At its core, SWTOR is about a struggle between good and evil. The game not only divvies up between the followers of the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire, but invites the player to make their own morality choices. Do you want to be a Jedi with a burgeoning Dark Side, a la Anakin Skywalker? Or would you rather be a bounty hunter with a heart of gold? In SWTOR, every moral action counts, and can shift actions later on down the road. Unlike a traditional MMORPG, the game contains a very rich main questline that varies by class and promises to branch off based on decisions along the way.
Mashable sat down with BioWare cofounders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka to get the skinny on the newest (and biggest) chapter in the Star Wars saga. Pick up the game (PC only), which includes a free 30-day trial, for $60.
Q&A with Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka, Co-Founders of BioWare
People are saying that SWTOR is the biggest MMO since World of Warcraft. What do you think were your primary objectives in creating the SWTOR world?
Ray Muzyka: Basically we're bringing the Star Wars universe to life. Like, really create a social experience where you get to take on iconic roles, archetypes from the movies. It's inspired by the movies and it's set thousands of years before the movies, in time of epic galactic conflagration…You get to go to worlds you don't get to explore in the movies and other materials. You get to go to Alderaan and see the bickering and political intrigue and understand where that planet came from. You go to Tatooine thousands of years before Luke Skywalker set foot on the sand. It's really about bringing Star Wars to life in a social space, and capturing the magic to create your own personal Star Wars saga online.
Greg Zeschuk: I think another dimension to it as well is as game creators, we're not really interested in doing easy, small things. We like to take ambitious steps, do challenging projects, and do things that are really hard and really interesting. So I think this is, without a doubt the biggest things we've ever worked on and one of the biggest games ever made. It's certainly one of the most complex in terms of all the pieces that had to be put together. It's really rewarding to be at the end and everything hasn't blown up, which is great!
Muzyka: The feedback we've gotten from our players in beta test and online is that it's subtle how the way the innovations are woven to the fabric of the game
Zeschuk: Yeah, it takes some time to sink in.
Muzyka: But the best way to see it is to go back to other MMOs and try to play them after you've played The Old Republic. I've heard a lot of people who've said, "I can't go back." I think that's a testament to the team's effort in really trying to build some innovations in. I think we've succeeded, and our commitment is certainly not ending now. The adventure together with our players is just beginning for many many years to come. Committing to new content and new features and listening to player feedback and seeing what they're doing through telemetry and we're always striving to deliver higher and higher levels of service. That's what we're committed to.
What are the challenges in expanding the Star Wars universe, especially with parameters set from [2003 RPG release] Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic?
Zeschuk: Probably the biggest thing we had to do was the tonality perspective. The actual writing and storytelling and the characters we created had to be consistent with the Star Wars ethos. And that was actually one of the places we collaborated quite a bit with LucasArts, really, just getting the character tone right… I think it was kind of touching on not only taking what you saw from the movies, but taking it as inspiration and really extending it in the direction they thought it should go in and we thought it should go in. When those things all aligned we thought, "Yeah, this is really Star Wars." I think from an overall product perspective on a long-term basis, that's one of the biggest things that The Old Republic has going for it : it really feels like Star Wars. There's the reason that it's the biggest IP [intellectual property] in the world, and it's amazing to have what could be one of the largest pieces of content and lifetime spent around Star Wars, and to have just launched it.
This MMO has a defined questline that branches and intersects depending on the user's character class. What are the challenges in making such defined borders?
Muzyka: There were a few dimensions. One was, "How do we make a multiplayer conversation work? How do you make it work in either a single player or a multiplayer situation?" And that's actually a lot harder than it sounds on the surface, because you have to have an outcome that's appropriate to the class that's on the main story arc. Depending on whether it's a world quest or a main character class quest, they both have to weave together and feel equally emotionally compelling. We also have to figure out how to enable those story arcs to all be at equal level of fidelity. So, they have to capture the archetypes inspired by the movies and they all have to be different enough so that they can appeal to different audiences and different kinds of players. They all have to fit together and be balanced at the same time in terms of the abilities and progression levels as you play through the game. So it's a balancing act to enable all of those things to flow together.
You have a dialogue system that has threads based on moral decisions and actions. How do you think that enriches the Jedi/Sith struggle?
Zeschuk: I think it's interesting because one of the things it does do, because the way the dialogue unfolds, it actually provides context if there's light or dark choices. The thing I've always found interesting is that…the way you normally write it, just linearly, you'd play it straight, like, pure light and pure dark. But because we allow the player to customize it, it's really neat, I find myself making a choice on either side, whatever seems contextually appropriate. I think it's written almost a very grey kind of way. Some of the decisions are obviously really extreme, but some you can go with either one. What it tends to do is it provides dimension to characters that would otherwise be unidimensional…This way you can create a very personalized version of your character. What we've found as well, which is interesting, is that people get very attached to their character. The traditional MMO attachment comes from your loot and your achievements, but what really works for us is those things, because we have all that stuff, but also your personality…That's one of the key philosophies for us, is that people get very attached to the character, and that's what pulls them along as a long-term customer.
Muzyka: It's really interesting playing different sides, different classes…A lot of cases, in the movies, the Sith might appear pretty unidimensional. They're the bad guys, they have red lightsabers and are running towards you, trying to kill you. And they're all evil or mean. But actually, they have motivations and beliefs and they think they're doing the right thing. They actually believe that. They believe that force and power are the way to progress and to set the universe straight. You kind of learn that when you see the story through the lens of the protagonist, going through this hero's journey (or anti-hero's journey)…The Republic also doesn't always do the good thing. They do things that are challenging, too. Everything is interesting, and there's always personally impactful consequences…and that makes it all come to life.
Unlike most MMOs, SWTOR is sectioned off into different playing areas that are level-dependent. How does that change the game play?
GZ: We don't restrict you. When you get your spaceship, you can go wherever you want.
RM: You can land on a planet that's way too high of a level for you and you can get your ass handed to you…We recommend a level range, but if you have a higher-level player and a lower-level player, they can partner together too. That's why it's a social experience: you can have your friends help you through the more challenging things if you're a bit lower level, and you're going to find it really satisfying because you feel like it's an epic challenge you get to take on.
Does the social aspect of the game open it up for veteran players to help newbies?
GZ: We have a really robust guild system, where people on the website could create their own guilds. There are tens of thousands of guilds made and hundred of thousands of people in them. And then what we did is we took those and we said, "Okay, we'll place you on a server and recommend which server you go on." So the guild program at the outset is really successful. And then one of the main things you want to cultivate in the game is a buddy system where people are actually willing to help out the new people…You try and create social situations where they cross paths. That's one trick we use, is that we have these starting worlds. Everyone spends up to 10 levels on the starting world, but then we actually bring some people around the 30th level so you can see these other players…Once people start getting into it, you're continually crossing paths and helping them out. We have a lot of social stuff we're working on. Some of it is the usual chat stuff, but there's some advanced stuff in terms of grouping. Over time, we're going to expand that and have good reasons for people to get together. At a real high level too, a real world friend has a character in the game that knows the game really well, they can certainly get a friend and hold their hand. It's very learnable and very accessible.
So what's next in the pipeline for the game?
GZ: For Star Wars, we're doing fairly early content for people that we're going to give. And then the next phase is kind of watch what people are doing and prepare the new stuff based on what they're actually going to want. Longer term, of course, if things go to plan, we'll be looking at things like expansions and the usual stuff in that regard.
Wonderful! Looking forward to it.
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