Any speculations on the size of the universe we should expect in The Old Republic? I just got done reading the Bounty Hunter class overview and the outer rim was mentioned a few times. It's obvious that there will be multiple worlds, but how will the travel system work then? Now that the 16 planets are announced will we have the freedom to own vehicles and travel freely between worlds with no NPC assistance? 

Can we expect space travel in sandbox form much like in SWG? Will that be the main form of travel from world to world or will we have instanced portals much like in WoW?

Are they keeping any of the sandbox elements as initially intended? After reading about the BH, I got really intrigued with the possibility open to us, but if the game is taking the direction towards a WoW clone, im curious how the class will play out.

~Tomas

 I imagine it will be a lot like KotOR.  You go to the dock, enter the one ship docked there, load the instance of your ship, and then select where to go next.

Speculate is about all we can do at this point, yet I would say In terms of how much hype this game is generating. It's gunna be quite big... I would think.

Originally posted by Ragana

Are they keeping any of the sandbox elements as initially intended?

Intially intended?   I thought I was following the interviews fairly closely and I don't remember Bioware ever saying that the game was going to have sandbox mechanics.    Do you have the link to that, I'd be interested if I missed an interview that said that.

I might have missed this info but to me Bioware isn't missing any of their intially intended game mechanics.   They've been doing what they said they would from the start - making a great Star Wars game.

Each planet will be about 12000 KM

Originally posted by demalus

 I imagine it will be a lot like KotOR.  You go to the dock, enter the one ship docked there, load the instance of your ship, and then select where to go next.

This is how I imagined it as well.  Of course I'd much rather have the sandbox style of travel, but I don't see that happening.  In terms of size, I feel the game will be very big, but they will definately save some space for expansions. 

Originally posted by Alienovrlord

Originally posted by Ragana

Are they keeping any of the sandbox elements as initially intended?

 

Intially intended?   I thought I was following the interviews fairly closely and I don't remember Bioware ever saying that the game was going to have sandbox mechanics.    Do you have the link to that, I'd be interested if I missed an interview that said that.

I might have missed this info but to me Bioware isn't missing any of their intially intended game mechanics.   They've been doing what they said they would from the start - making a great Star Wars game.

Agreed.. I missed the part of the game being a sadbox..  I do recall Bioware talking about storyline alot and character progression, which to me infers "linear" approach..  I believe TOR will be much closer to Kotor, then a sandbox.. 

Its true that it will be more than likely instance based like the poster above said.

But never know, there will always be expansions and so on in the future (providing it goes well) and maybe have something like SWG had, outta space flying etc.

Meh we don't know.

Heck they might even surprise us and say, yes you can fly your ship into space where you then have the chance to fly into one of these jumpgates and takes you to the new system and planet where you then dock into the planet.

That will then hopefully leave room for more improvement for expansion through space.

We'll see :)

PS: with each planet being 12000KM...in what way haha, its hard to say 12000km, its more about how long it will take you to travel those 12000km. Because i could say, oh a massive 50k km planet and it will take you 5 mins to travel across it etc.

I dont know, all comes down to how much content is there within the 12000k, i dont want it to be dead, and just desert. Well maybe some parts but not all.

     Recently I started playing LoTR and I have to tell ya.. I really like the way they allow questing, with a storyline too..  Most of the quest are common soloable ones, but I do like how they have a seperate "epic" category questing that will be instanced.. When I heard Bioware say that they'll have seperate class questlines that gives a player choices, etc etc.. First thing that went thru my mind was the "epic" questline in LoTR with a possible a blend of WoW.. The only thing that really scares me is one flaw that WoW did in their recent expansion.. Do not make the game to where people are in different realities..  What I mean here is that in WoW, once you get to the end game zones, those zones are unlocked and quested thru to open them up..  This means that people in the game will all be at different realities because a person who has advanced thru the zone see's an entire different zone then someone just starting it..   This makes it difficult to group up and help friends.. :(  

     Sorry.. back on topic.. As for the size.. I assume you are talking land coverage.. It's all relative.. I want the zones to be big enough to allow many to quest and adventure thru without stumbling over each other.. Yet I also don't want the zones so big it takes forever to travel them and you hardly ever see a soul.. Much depends on size of servers and how many quest are in the game.. 

Originally posted by tillamook

Each planet will be about 12000 KM

Exactly how big -is- that? I keep seeing that number tossed around, but I have no idea what that means for a game world... Kalimdor? A Zone in WAR? Albion? Cyrodil?

Originally posted by star.buck

Originally posted by tillamook

Each planet will be about 12000 KM

Exactly how big -is- that? I keep seeing that number tossed around, but I have no idea what that means for a game world... Kalimdor? A Zone in WAR? Albion? Cyrodil?

Well, if that is square kilometres that would be 120 km X 100 km for instance. Which is pretty huge for mmorpgs. Kalimdor is around 25 km x 12 km max by my rough estimate (I counted each square in this map as 3km x 3km and added a little more). So it is waaaay larger than a big WOW continent.

But keep in mind that world design and travel speeds have a big influence on perceived size. WOW continents are filled with content and have all kinds of twisting roads and geographic obstacles which makes it a lot 'larger' than it actually is. Imagine a desert planet with mainly wide open sand plains to allow travel in straight lines + traveling with landspeeders and that 120km X 100km would feel a lot smaller than it really is.

edit: here you see Darkfall's map with Kalimdor on top. That would be about the size of a SWTOR world if that 12000 square km's is true.

Originally posted by star.buck

Originally posted by tillamook

Each planet will be about 12000 KM

Exactly how big -is- that? I keep seeing that number tossed around, but I have no idea what that means for a game world... Kalimdor? A Zone in WAR? Albion? Cyrodil?

That's a good question.  I don't know the answer to that, but in real world terms the U.S. is nearly 4,000 miles in length from coast to coast.  12,000 KMs is about 7,400 miles or so.

However, they can claim any number that they want.  The number may mean nothing depending on the amount of instancing that is used; something that I know nothing about.  If each area is instanced and you reach each area via loading screen (aka, "taking a ship to the next area", similar in practice to Guild Wars) then it's going to feel very small regardless.

If it's not so heavily instanced then ease of travel will nonetheless affect the perception of size, and I'm sure that travel will be very easy.  Being a Star Wars setting, "travel" from one side of the world to the other will probably be as simple as approaching the correct ship and looking at a loading screen.  It makes sense given the setting, and it certainly makes it easier to meet up with friends, but it'll erase the illusion of size.

I have no idea how open ended the game is going to be or not be.  However, just because they claim 12,000 KMs doesn't mean that it's going to be 12K KMs in practice.  The same holds true with any number.

Fast travel is a great feature that I'll make regular use of, but I'm an explorer at heart and would really enjoy the ability to see the world.  On the other thand, that requires actually populating an area larger than the U.S.....

Maybe we can expect worlds like KOTOR+Mass Effect

Originally posted by Darkor_hXc

Maybe we can expect worlds like KOTOR+Mass Effect

If you take a look at the engine they licensed for the game, you'll see that it's based around creating massive open worlds/zones. I highly doubt we'll see worlds like KOTOR and ME.

And many thanks for the responses to my question :]

Originally posted by Darkor_hXc

Maybe we can expect worlds like KOTOR+Mass Effect

I hope not... I did not like the Mass Effect worlds. Very bland, and I always ran into the edges too fast