georg-zoeller
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Hyperspace Beacon: Rule of many
It feels a bit meta to respond to my own column, but my last article caused quite a stir. I would be vainglorious to believe that my point of view is the only one or that it is the best one. Given the 68 responses to my article in the comments section here and over 17 pages on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forum -- at least half of which completely disagreed with me -- I would be ignorant to believe that there is room for only one approach to the subject. On top of that, Principal Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller offered a compelling argument that counters my stance in a completely unrelated thread. In this issue of the Hyperspace Beacon, I'm going to give voice to the opposition. I would hope that everyone who responded to the last article wants SWTOR to succeed as much as I do. (I realize that what I said previously could be construed as not wanting this game to be great, but that's untrue. I want the game to be the best it can be.) Many of the comments I received can be categorized together, so following the break, I will summarize the other positions. Let's see how SWTOR is keeping the MMO in the MMORPG.
R-E-S-P-E-C: Find out what it means to Star Wars: The Old Republic
We all know that it's a terrible pain to pick skills on the fly as you're leveling up your character. What if you choose a useless skill or maybe one that doesn't fit your playstyle? Or worse: What if you completely choose the wrong Advanced Class? This has been a major concern for many Star Wars: The Old Republic fans, especially given the vast differences in the Advanced Classes. Yesterday, in a post on the official forums, SWTOR Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller answered this burning question. He confirmed that we will be able to respec our stats within an Advanced Class. However, he had this to say about switching to a different Advanced Class: "You may be able to spec to another Advanced Class, but that is something we haven't entirely made up our mind about as there are plenty of arguments that can be made - pro and con - and future class developments could influence this." It may be possible to change from a Jedi Wizard Sage to a Jedi Shadow, but you definitely will not be able to go from a Jedi Consular to a Jedi Knight because of story restrictions. For more information, visit the official forums and stay tuned here for the latest from The Old Republic.
Exploring advanced class concepts with SWTOR lead systems designer
One of the great things about MMOs is their ability to cater to a lot of different preferences. Each player likes to be able to build a character that is her own unique design. This includes the character's look, clothing, armor, and especially combat role. Star Wars: The Old Republic has a unique challenge of building a BioWare-level of story for each character class and at the same time allowing the player to have enough variety in combat builds to satisfy different play styles. In a developer blog just released on the official website, Principal Lead Systems Designer Georg Zoeller discussed the process around designing the advanced classes for SWTOR. "[W]e wanted to ensure that we had the flexibility to support several play-styles within each of these eight classes. So we built Advanced Classes into the game from the ground up to provide us with the ability to create and support different gameplay and roles inside each class," he explained in the blog. Although you will be forced to choose one of two advanced for each primary class, each advanced class has two possible pools of skill-sets to pull from as well as a shared pool between the advanced classes (illustrated in the header). Zoeller said this will allow for very unique combinations of skills. He gave the example of a stealthy healer for the smuggler scoundrel class. For the full story, be sure to check out the full blog on the official website.
