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Star Wars: The Old Republic: New Planet: Voss Announced!
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
The planet roster expands yet again with the reveal of the 12th planet to be featured in Star Wars: The Old Republic: Voss! Voss? Never heard of it before? That's alright, your Star Wars nerd cred remains intact as Voss is an entirely original planet created by the folks BioWare.
(Click the image above to view a short clip of Voss.)
Read below for a brief description of Voss:
Voss is a planet of more questions than answers. Discovered by accident shortly after the Treaty of Coruscant, its rocky plateaus, unspoiled peaks and verdant forests were at first thought to be inhabited only by Gormak, a tech-savvy but pre-space flight species of extremely hostile natives. When the second, much less populous species on Voss made itself known, however, the galaxy was thrown into turmoil and the war almost restarted.
Primarily isolated on one tall peak and outnumbered by millions of their enemies, the non-Gormak natives use the same name for themselves as for their world: Voss. Locked in a losing war with an implacable enemy that sees them as a violation of the natural order, the hard-pressed Voss have survived centuries of Gormak assaults through the disciplined training of their Commandos, the placement and fortifications of their mountain city and the infallible guidance of the Voss Mystics.
The Voss Mystics are Force users of incredible power. Both the Sith and Jedi agree on this one point. The Voss do not. Voss know nothing of the Force and are uninterested in outsider opinions. Mystics have visions that are never wrong. The Voss follow these visions and survive. When the Sith Empire schemed to conquer Voss, the Republic sought to defend the planet--but the Mystics foresaw both plots and in the end a fleet disappeared, an Empire was humbled and two mighty powers came to Voss peacefully to win favor.
A short clip of Voss is also available, watch it here. Also, be sure to check out new screenshots of Voss in our Star Wars: The Old Republic gallery.
Comments
There is already a ton of planets going to br in at launch, the question is how are we going to travel from planet to planet ? Hmmm interesting! Can't wait to play.
I find the travel question about the least interesting. Perhaps you meant a different question?
The more planets are announced, the more I feel like Bioware will be spreading the content thin and we'll end up with smaller/fewer openly explorable, non-instanced areas.
I remember from a book series in the EU a race of lizard like creatures that were either strong in the Force or made it so that Force users - jedi and sith alike, had difficulty using the Force in their presence or against them. This seems familiar. Anyway, another cool addition.
OR...
The more planets that are in may mean MORE content and MORE places to explore.
Your lack of faith is...Disturbing.
This is cool.
So far, all of my initial concearns about this game have been adressed, and the more I find out about it, the more I'm thinking this game's REALLY going to change MMORPG gaming forever....in the best possible way.
Yeah, I know...I was one of the most vocal critics initially, and for white a while.....but Bioware has put my mind at ease, and I simply can't wait to play.
I disagree. Tha 's kind of like saying "the more zones WoW has the smaller/fewer openly explorable, non-instanced areas there will be." But WoW's zones are large, contiguous, and non-instanced.
Quite frankly, we simply don't know what the size and scope for each planet is right now. I think it could go either way. It would also make sense to have lots of large planets if SWTOR was intended to be a single server deal like EVE.
Quote, take it for what it's worth.
Quote From Daniel Erickson: "One of the real things we wanted to show at GDC this year is that our worlds are huge, actually. They are giant, you can explore. They are massive. You can just wander off one direction and go forever." - Darth Hater GDC
Are you referring to Ysalamiri? They do indeed inhibit Force use.
Exactly. This, and recent comments about crafting, and catering to diverse styles of game play, have re-assured me that this game will be a quality product, not just another WOW clone, or instance-fest.
Maybe even......and dare I hope??.......a perfect balance between sandbox and themepark gameplay with well-integrated story-driven content. But this of course would be my idea of the perfect game, and I don't dare to hope that this will be the case.
Yes thank you! I was going to look through my older novels later. You saved me some leg work haha.
I don't honestly expect them to nail it at first, there will be problems. Some things will appear to be lackluster. But I'm fairly sure BioWare is competent enough to find a balance between the two in time.
And to the people questioning content.
Quote: We want to make sure that when people play ToR they feel like they never run out of content... that it's an epic story - CVG March 2010
This wont be easy. They're gonna have to pump out content quickly or fill the game with it from the beginning. We will see.
I have yet to experience a game that strikes a balance between themepark and sandbox, but perhaps Bioware will be the first, We all anticipate the 'new car smell', but until we drive it, we wont really know. I would be encouraged too if I had the strong sense that a player-centric ecosystem of player-driven crafting and merchandising we're to be expected, but haven't seen that feedback yet. I shall look. I've grown tired of player-centric game-play elements being undermined by npc's and overly gifting quest rewards.
Although I am disappointed by the character design and animation, I've got to say I'm quite pleased with the world design and execution. All of the environments that I've seen out of SW:TOR have looked incredible. And, seeing as there will be a dozen+ planets at launch, with each planet just immensely HUGE (wasn't it mentioned once a SW:TOR planet is on average a continent in WoW?), this game should have tons of content.
It will be very interesting to see how they implement their server model, and how many people can simultaneously be inhabiting these vast game worlds. I believe HeroEngine is quite capable of dynamic and virtual load balancing.
Love the models, can't wait to see more of it in-game.
Dont get your hopes up on that, simply not possible. Simply put, this game will have a far larger population than EvE(atleast initially, even if it flops which i doubt), which is already running on the absolute topend hardware currently possible. The problem isnt the average spread of players(<100 per system), the problem is what happens if players choose to congregate(>200 in one place), what they always do(we are serious herd animals).
Dont misunderstand, i would love a large single open world server, but if you bother to read the devblogs of EvE where the devs explain their problems, and the kind of hardware they had to throw at them, with just a "mere" 50k concurrent users ... I think that approach would create alot more problems than its worth. And given the heavy criticism STO got for its heavy instancing even of social areas i doubt they go that way either.
P.S.: With all due respect to BioWare, they are known for their great story, gameplay and RPGs. Not for their experience with network superclusters or supercomputers. I dont see any company besides CCP daring to go close to a single server structure without instancing on a AAA title, and even with them it might be argued that their game is shaped to fit the server architecture, not the other way around(i.e. it wouldnt work with a more classical mmo with dungeons, worldbosses, raids and stuff).
Hey, you (or anyone) wouldnt happen to have a link where they talk about crafting?
I'll have to say Ive been (and I still am) very sceptical about the game. Im a big Star Wars fan. But I am (was) worried about this playing more as a solo-rpg-bioware-style game than a true MMO.
The comment I read where someone said the worlds were huge and explorable, and that it may have actual crafting, and not just coloring your lightsabre a different color has me reevaluating my opinion.
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."
Quote: "Going to have crafting and harvesting, going to have guilds and social activities" - MMOGamer - Blaine Christine
Quote:" “Hey, if I’m really into more the crafting, harvesting, auction house type of gameplay, are you going to support that?” "Absolutely" - MMOGamer - Blaine Christine
Quote: We’ve spent quite a bit of time discussing how to ensure that crafters – true dedicated crafters – can make a name for themselves and be important in their community. - Dev Blog Damion Schubert
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=33345
This sounds like an awesome planet! I like the screenshots. Very cool autumn theme.
OMG! Why do all the planets have to look so freakin awesome?!
It's gonna take me forever to get through all of them!
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Guys! I'm hopelessly lost in a mountain of mole hills! Them damn moles!
Not gonna happen with the single server. When someone found the website for the login portal for testing, if you logged in, it took you to a server selection screen, which of course was empty of servers, but the screen even listed servers by timezone.
I expect SWTOR will gain a far larger population than EVE, and I'm thinking that maybe they'll have huge mega-servers that can fit the average population of EVE on each instead of the tiny bite sized servers WoW seems to use (where they n eed 50 billion servers to hold the entire game population.) So, if they get 2 million subscribers, they'll have 4 huge servers instead of the 25 WoW would need.
That's my hope anyway.
Frankly, I don't care about the number of servers. On WoW's "tiny bite sized servers," I still meet plenty of people to play and interact with. I'd rather have 25 bite-sized servers than 4 huge ones if that means that lag is kept low. But, if BioWare can have 4 servers without compromising performance, then I'm all for it.
I guess I can understand why one server is appealing, but beyond that, it doesn't really matter how many you have so long as there are enough people in them. If you have a small game world, you can have less people per server. TOR looks to be much bigger than WoW, so 4 servers may be the only option to make sure every location is reasonably populated. We'll see. I think they'll have plenty more than 4, but maybe each server will hold more than 5,000 (I think that's WoW's number per server).
We aren't. They have been so busy designing planets they forgot to put in any space ships.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Except that if the game worlds are as massive as they say, then they need the population to fill them. On one side you have a smaller game world that requires lots of little servers to prevent too large a population, that's why Blizz split servers like crazy when WoW launched, and on the other side if you have too big a game world and not enough people to populate it, then the population will be spread far too thin and you would never be able to get a group.
That's why I think Bioware will go the huge server route. That is if the game worlds are as massive as they say.
Hey not to be negative...but just three...thats 3 quotes about crafting. Not even a discussion on what they've discussed.
From what youve posted Im back to being very skeptical again. I guess time will tell.
Either way, Im pretty patient. Just not as interested. *shrug*
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."