Star Wars Galaxies

Provided that the KotOR MMO follows the pattern established by its predecessors, I have no doubt that its player base will be ruled by a strong group of Jedi and Sith. While some people cringe at this likelyhood, I applaud it loudly for two big reasons:

1) It's lore-correct

KotOR (conveniently) takes place during a brief era in the SW history where Jedi and Sith were relatively commonplace. Full-on battles between Sith and Jedi were far from unheard of, and the question of who would emerge to dominate the next 5,000 years was hardly a certainty for quite a while. People with bad memories of SWG's Jedi surge probably get sick thinking about it, but I have no problem at all with the idea; because it's true to the lore.

2) More importantly, it's what you want (even if you don't know it)

Yeah, that's right - everyone who wants this game to succeed should welcome the everpresence of Jedi.

Why? Well, it's my belief that the holocron BS was actually the massive, critical flub that marked the beginning of the end for SWG. You might remember that, since release, people had been looking for the 'mythical' way to unlock the FS slot. Many predicted that if they visited some of the strange ruins that dotted the surface of several planets, that the secret of the Jedi would eventually reveal itself to them. I myself can remember discovering a Sith altar in the far NW corner of Corellia and thinking I'd stumbled onto something big.

When the holocron bunk was announced, I (and many other people) were pissed about the elementary nature of the move, and instantly lost a lot of respect for SOE's design team.

But here's the real issue: SOE decided to design the Jedi all wrong. They spoke constantly about godlike class limited by permadeath and a fear of discovery. What they should have done (since Jedi were eventually made a normal class, acknowledging what should have been obvious) was to recognize that:

1) Everyone who loves SW loves either Jedi or Sith (or both).

2) Most people playing a SW game with Jedi are going to want a Jedi character.

3) Making such a character a 'god' is a sure way to make certain that people will want one even more.

4) Star Wars sans Jedi is pretty much not Star Wars.

5) People who play MMOs want to regard themselves as the 'hero' of the story, even if they aren't. The Jedi are (basically) the heroes of Star Wars, with a few notable exceptions

When you cobble all those facts together, you get this terrible recipe for disaster.

Jedi should have been treated like Mages and Paladins in WoW: 'Hero' classes from Warcraft III that were made equal to other classes who have no lore history. Therefore, Jedi should have been some starting class with burst DPS, some minor healing, but also some form of inherent weakness.

It's also worth mentioning that 'average' Jedi aren't gods. The Jedi and Sith seen in the movies are the best Jedi of their era. Obi-Wan and Anakin and Luke and Sidious weren't just Joe Shmoes with no future: they were the Michael Jordans or Babe Ruths of their religions. Look at the battle on Geonosis as an example: like 100 Jedi get flattened by robots. Granted, there are lot of robots, but that hardly seems godlike to me. It's no big shocker that Anakin, Obi-Wan and Mace all pull through without a scratch.

So what SOE did was to build a system (at least initially) where every friggin' 'normal' Jedi was as powerful as Vader on steroids. It demonstrated both just how out of touch they were with the lore of their own product and, of equal importance, just how poor they were regarding the design and operation of MMOs, long before more devastating missteps revealed this pattern to most of the gaming world's population.

So, if KotOR Online has Jedis in spades, and if it's taken as a granted fact that they are balanced against other classes, I welcome the news with big smiles. Make a Jedi killable by a smuggler or a bounty hunter or whatever. That's perfectly fine with me. If it's done right, Bioware will avoid the devastation of SOE's initial (and crucial) false step.

http://www.massively.com/2008/07/19/the-digital-continuum-five-kotor-mmo-jedi-counter-measures/

This article has some good points.

I really hope that the game will be a skill and not a class system. Where one can dvelve deep into complex crafting, bounty hunting, rifles and pistols or many other things and not just force sensitivity and jedis.

I also hope the game will be multi factional so one can be both jedi, sith, mandolarion or a criminal faction..

I don't have a problem with Jedi or Sith characters being more accessible, but it should require a lot more effort, and yes WORK, to become one. It is also true to lore that they required years of training.

They should not be available classes from the start.

Originally posted by RedwoodSap

I don't have a problem with Jedi or Sith characters being more accesible, but it should require a lot more effort, and yes WORK, to become one. It is also true to lore that they required years of training.

They should not be available classes from the start.

Best way to handle it is a skill system where you work with your force sensitivity to become one.

However it is important to make it equally interesting not to be a jedi.

Also alpha classes = fail. And we don't need any holo (or other) grinds, because that removes people from the game and kills community.

Originally posted by RedwoodSap

I don't have a problem with Jedi or Sith characters being more accessible, but it should require a lot more effort, and yes WORK, to become one. It is also true to lore that they required years of training.

They should not be available classes from the start.

Why?  Jedi start their training from childhood, same as everyone else.  And just because you're Jedi doesn't mean you're on god-mode.  Keep in mind the ones you see in the movies are suppose to be the most powerful Jedi that ever lived almost.  The average Joe-blow Jedi isn't going to effortlessly cut a path of death through hordes of enemies.  What's this obsession with working to earn anything at all in a freakin' video game.

And as far as classes are concerned, that's almost a given.  From what BioWare has said about their MMO it definitely sounds class and level based.  However it sounds like they're spending lots of time developing an alignment system of sorts where your actions determine how NPCs react to you.  So I would wager that if you were a Jedi but going around doing non-Jedi like things, after a time the NPC Jedi will treat you as one who fell to the darkside. 

But who's to say?  Very little is known but what we do know, it ain't going to be SWG2.  Think WoW in space with more bells and whistles.  So put that dream to bed right now because you'll only find dissapointment with it.

Bah i dont care about the jedis and the siths. I happy as long as I can put my mando armour on and earn glory and fame for my clan. And if that means killing jedis and siths all the better.

Meh, another new age glowbat fanatic trying to make it look like the Star Wars fans are all glowbat suckers.

How come the old movies with barely jedi in it is STILL more popular and more cherished than the new ones, that had glowbats outta the whazoo?

How come the only real organized fan group of Star Wars is a Stormtrooper fangroup, and not a Jedi fangroup?

How come Jedi fan effects barely exists and barely sells in any amount, when Blasters, Stormtrooper armor and Stormtrooper certificates and Stormtrooper paintings and R2D2 miniatures and Millenium Falcon tv remote controls sells in huge amounts and for prices way above any "jedi relic"?

Just because you are blinded by the glowbat, and so are every other Jar Jar lubber, doesn't mean that Star Wars fans love the glowbat.... Heck, from some Star Wars fan forums I've been on, the average feel is: "Stop stuffing glowbats in our face, we're sick and tired of it, because Star Wars is so much more than glowbats!"

I would be so excited it it wasn't level based but of course no one ( designers) has any imagination anymore