Star Wars Online...

Paladin

Bout time too I rekon. I just wish we could all get ping 5 to play x-wing Vs Tie-fighter online. Or perhaps that zero-ping idea they have for UT. Client side deciding whether a shot hit.
Neway tnx H.

Hobbes

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/review/games/cgg155.htm

'Star Wars Online' expands frontier

By Mike Snider, USA TODAY
Star Wars fans can soon become an inhabitant of George Lucas' faraway galaxy by making the jump into cyberspace.

To create its first online role-playing game, Star Wars Online, LucasArts has some heavyweight help. Online PC game developer Verant, which created the massively popular multiplayer game EverQuest, will develop the PC-based game, and Sony Online will exclusively host the Net play on The Station (www.station.sony.com). The game, due in 2001, will be sold at retail (no price set); monthly subscriptions will be about $10.

As with EverQuest, Star Wars Online will be a first-person role-playing game that lets gamers choose from several roles to portray in a huge fantasy world. (EverQuest has more than 200,000 paying subscribers, 120,000 who play daily.) Players' characters perform tasks, tackle quests and do battle. And unlike single-layer games, everything that happens affects the entire fantasy world.

In this case, the fantasy world starts with Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine, about the same time the original film began. "The Empire is in control of the universe at that time," says Dan Connors, a LucasArts game creator.

Players won't be able to choose already-established characters such as Luke Skywalker, Han Solo or Princess Leia. Instead, they can choose from roles such as rebel soldier, bounty hunter and mercenary. Characters can travel throughout the planet to the spaceport of Mos Eisley and other cities. Bounty hunters might scour the cantinas for wanted criminals, and rebel soldiers might be sent off-planet.

Developers plan to have other planets to travel to when the game launches, and environments can be added over time. "The scope of the game is going to be huge," says Haden Blackman, a LucasArts content specialist. "We are looking to have two planets with each having 50 adventure zones. Each of those zones in and of itself is massive and populated by characters and creatures."

During the action, the characters created by players will encounter computer-controlled non-player characters and some familiar ones from the Star Wars movies, books and games. "You'll definitely run into familiar (names)," Blackman says.

LucasArts chose not to allow players to choose the roles of Han, Luke, Leia and other familiar Star Wars denizens, he says. "That preserves the quality of the character already known in the Star Wars universe. Still, you might run into Boba Fett."

In the past, online role-playing games have been the territory of the technically inclined. But today's newer game interfaces have become easier to use, a necessity with a property such as Star Wars that could attract a mass-market crowd, says Sony Online Entertainment president Lisa Simpson.

"Never before have people been able to go into a graphically intense environment without really having to pay that much attention to the technology," she says. "In the past, you had to be a computer genius. ... We're trying to make it an experience not of technology, but of entertainment."

Venom

It sounds like it could be a cool game but since its being made by the ppl who did Everquest I can see spawn camping of jawa's and huge ebay sales of stromtrooper rifles.

Hobbes

yea also there will be no Jedi's in it and only two planets. So no space combat either.

2040

Flying from planet to planet etc would be class.Pity there wont be any jedis