STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC
New information surfaced this month about the class system in Star Wars. Apparently when a player chooses his class he is stuck with it forever which is obvious but after you hit a certain level (maybe half way through) you will be able to branch off and choose between two classes.
Basically you have become so expert in your way that you now get to decide where you further your abilities.
In addition to your Class-specific Skills and Abilities, your chosen Advanced Class will grant you access to role-defining Abilities that represent additional areas of expertise and some may even grant new weapon and armor types. Additionally, each Advanced Class will also have three sets of Skills available to further customize your character.
GUILD WARS 2
To fit in with the character customization thing news released last week talks about how your character is going to be more personal than just changing around their appearances.
When you first build a character in the world you will choose your race and class like in all MMO’s. Guild Wars 2 takes character creation a step beyond. It offers the player an opportunity to go deeper, with another roster of questions designed to develop a character’s personality. These comprise a character’s ‘Biography,’ and cover relevant parts of the character’s history as well as their hopes for the future and the story they will experience.
As the character advances, different stories will become available. As the game progresses, biography choices and decisions made in the game will shape your character’s future. Every character experiences an interactive, distinct tale.
You are offered a chance to answer several detailed questions about your character’s personality, history, and background. The race you choose will spark the questionnaire. Depending on your race all the questions will be different so if you choose an Asuran you will be asked what college they attended, or if you are human you will be asked what type of lifestyle did you grow up in?
You will also be able to choose if your character is more friendly or intimidating and other personality questions which will make the NPC’s act differently towards every persons character.
A player’s biography choices immediately tailor physical parts of the game to their character. Each character is given a home instance, personalized to their biography choices, located in their racial capital. Within this home area, things are more personalized to your character. Your home instance never stops updating; as your character becomes more involved in their story, it will alter accordingly.
STAR TREK ONLINE
In an effort to increase membership Atari and Cryptic Studios just started running a membership drive. They have released a demo which you can try out HERE and people already playing can refer friends to join and be rewarded with special items, cryptic points, and more.
To top all of that though they are rewarding players who have been playing. Giving them veteran status and rewarding them with free full respecs, exclusive costume pieces, and free additional character slots. For a full list click HERE
THE SECRET WORLD
Funcom has also released a second set of community questions last week and here are some of the highlights:
-There will be crafting.
-Players from different societies can still play together.
-Clothing has no stats, there are plenty of other things that do – including occult weapons, magic rings and necklaces, ‘passive’ powers and mystical tattoos.
This update managed to go a little Guild Wars 2 heavy but I assure you I cut out a lot. It is currently dishing out more info than any MMO right now and a lot of it is about features that are new to MMOs. I do wish Star Wars would start handing out more information (wink Bioware wink) but until then I hope this information is at least interesting to the masses.
