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Hyperspace Beacon: Maybe SWTOR's treadmill ain't so bad
Sometimes we need to see certain things from different perspectives in order to understand the whole truth. If detectives listened to only one eyewitness, then the totality of the crime would be missing. They could head in the wrong direction, thereby letting a criminal go free and possibly detaining an innocent person. Although game design isn't exactly like busting a criminal, it is a lot like other parts of detective work. Designers attempt to determine why certain aspects of a game work or don't work. They gather data and design a balanced system, but the totality of success isn't seen until they gather eyewitness accounts from a number of different perspectives. This is why today I want to look at the positive side of the gear treadmill. Star Wars: The Old Republic launches a new game update today -- Update 1.6: Ancient Hypergate. Along with new warzone and space combat areas, this update adds a new set of top-level PvP gear, gets rid of a PvP gear set, and makes the PvE gear progression shorter by giving level 50s a set of Tionese gear. This update pretty much defines power creep, and normally, I would say that this kind of thing should absolutely be avoided in MMOs. However, this week, I'd like to take the opposite approach and examine why this is a good thing.
SWTOR Game Update 1.6: Ancient Hypergate goes live December 11th
Ready your PvP gear and strap on your lightsaber because Star Wars: The Old Republic pushes its sixth update to live servers on Tuesday, December 11th. Update 1.6: Ancient Hypergate focuses on the PvP warzone of the same name but also offers a few other changes to PvP. The latest warzone is advertised as an answer to the fans looking for death-match PvP. Combatants will score points by defeating members of the opposing team and causing a slowly creeping explosion to draw all players to the center of the map. Players can also look forward to earning new Elite War Hero PvP gear to show that they are still the best at PvP. And as our latest Hyperspace Beacon argues, this gear is a step toward slowing down the infamous power creep. The servers go offline at 1:00 a.m. EST and will return six hours later at 7:00 a.m. EST. Let us know what you think when the update goes live!
