Last week there was a great disturbance in the Force. It was as if millions... or perhaps thousands of voices suddenly cried out in guarded anticipation and have yet to be silenced. Star Wars: The Old Republic, a new "Star Wars" MMO from LucasArts and BioWare, was officially announced and fan reaction was reservedly optimistic. Perhaps some of the gamer population threw themselves on the altar of TOR -- The Old Republic; what's an MMO without an acronym? -- showering in vague details and ambitious promises, but I think a good percentage of us watched the announcement with the wary eye of a beaten dog being called back to its master. There was a time when I thought the confluence of "Star Wars" and an MMO model would trap me in a perpetual game state from which I might never return. I even told people as much in the summer of 2003 when the launch of the first "Star Wars" MMO, Star Wars Galaxies, was near. As it turns out, Star Wars Galaxies was not the droids we were looking for.

While details about TOR are scant, a few nuggets of information have been verified by the developers. The game takes place 3,500 years before the movies and 300 years after the events of the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games. There will be two factions: The Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic. Jedi and Sith are confirmed as classes with more classes to come. Players will visit multiple planets. There will be PvP and crafting. But the two most important pieces of info that were dropped were that all characters will have an NPC companion (a person; not a pet) and that the goal of TOR is to be extremely story driven. The details of how the companions will work have not been announced but from the sound of it, two players could very easily run a party of four fulfilling several roles. It's strange to say, but if BioWare can make an MMO where I'm not reliant on the others, I'm in.

Since there's so little to know about TOR, now's a great opportunity to talk about what we'd like to see in the game. Casting aside the usual complaints about MMOs in general (uninspired combat, collect-x-of-y quests, no impact on the world, etc.), let's focus on just a few of the "Star Wars" elements that need to survive the transition. One of the points that Tom's Games Managing Editor Rob Wright (a staunch practitioner of MMO avoidance) brought up in a brief discussion about TOR was "good 'Star Wars' music." It was something that didn't occur to me when faced with the possibility of a fancy new "Star Wars" MMO, but it's a great point. How much of that "Star Wars" feeling comes from the music? I would argue a great deal. All "Star Wars" games have "Star Wars" music to some extent but rather than just cycling tracks as background music why not use the music the same way it's used in the films: to enhance drama, action and tension. If TOR is going to focus on story as much as the developers claim, the music needs to be a large part of that equation.

A Sith warrior force-chokes an opponent in this early screenshot from Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Another "Star Wars" mainstay is the space combat. This has come up already -- both in discussions with the developers and on the forums -- but no official word on it has been released. All they have said is that it definitely is not being ruled out. In the past, LucasArts dominated the space combat simulation scene for the PC with games like X-Wing, TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance. And space combat was introduced to Star Wars Galaxies through the Jump to Lightspeed expansion. We want it and they know we want it. I'll be surprised if this doesn't make it into the game. If there's space combat, might there also be technological raid bosses, a Deathstar-type battle as a raid zone? That sounds good.

Space combat is one thing, but I'd also like to see terrestrial chases incorporated into areas of the game. Chases may fall more in line with an action game or a shooter but there's no reason the clever folks at BioWare can't figure out a way to mesh them with their MMO model. Pod races, speeder bikes chases and even flying through the superstructure of an unfinished space station make for great action set pieces, which any MMO could certainly use. Every Star Wars movie has a high-speed, vehicular chase (although sometimes they are in space) and bringing that element to TOR could provide a nice break from the combat. They could be incorporated into the quest structure as scripted events so that they aren't just racing mini-games.

Another element from the movies that I'd like to see transitioned into this new MMO are the small-scale gunfights. In most MMOs, much of your time is spent fighting one-on-one with enemies. As a player who predominantly plays MMOs without grouping, I'd like to be able to get into some six-on-six or even 10-on-10 fights as part of the story. I'm not talking about PvP or group dungeons, I'm talking about a quest I can solo that will culminate in a battle about the size of the fight near the shield generator on Endor in "Return of the Jedi." It doesn't have to be big like the Battle of the Pelenor Fields from "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" or even the Clone Wars battle in "Attack of the Clones." But the fight inside the arena between all the Jedi and the Battle Droids from "Attack of the Clones" is about the right size. It should be big, but small enough for one person -- me -- to make a difference in it.

That's probably my biggest complaint about MMOs: I'm not the hero. No one has figured out how to structure a game where thousands of people are playing all at the same time and every single one of them is the hero. It's a difficult problem and one that all MMOs face. BioWare and LucasArts claim that Star Wars: The Old Republic "represents a new approach to online entertainment, featuring immersive storytelling, dynamic combat and groundbreaking companion characters." I want to believe that BioWare can do it. They have a terrific track record for storytelling in games, but right now it's far too easy to tell. If they can pull off a game that allows me to play as a Star Wars hero in a persistent, online world with lots of action and fantastic gameplay where my friends can join in, I may once again face that swirling black hole of gaming that threatens to consume me.

Previous Columns:

• The Videogame Movie Conundrum
• Is Gaming Immune to Attack?
• Aren't We Done With WWII?
• What Causes MMO Tribalism?
• Too Many New Games
• The Retro-Gaming Surge
• DRM and Piracy: The Vicious Circle
• Who Is to Blame for the State of Game Scores?
• Expectations and Predictions for E3 2008
• The Legacy of Diablo
• Parrying Premature Attacks on Indy 4
• Why Movie Tie-In Games Suck
• A Perfect Score: Is Any Game Worthy?
• Massively Multiplayer: Fantasy vs. Sci-Fi

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