For the Wookiee fans of Star Wars: The Old Republic, today was a day of soaring expectation and celebration…followed quickly by the devastation of reality crashing their dreams for a Wookiee-inclusive MMO experience.
It all started out as a simple April Fool’s Day joke. BioWare posted what looked like a developer blog on a new exciting feature of the game – a fully-voiced option in Shyriiwook, the native language of Wookiees. The “update” described how Shyriiwook will be incorporated into the VO and conversation wheels. It even included several in-game videos with the new language dubbed in.
Wookiees everywhere expressed their approval. One young Wookiee responded, “A game fully-voiced in Shyriiwook? Are you kidding me? It would be a dream come true. We love BioWare, but frankly, with all that talking and all those cut scenes, we never really knew what was going on half the time.”
But that dream was destined to become a nightmare. As the comments rolled in – “I LOL’d TEH WHOLE WAY THRU” “Good one, BioWare. Your April Fool’s Day prank wins the prize.” – realization slowly dawned on the Wookiee community. There would be no Shyriiwook VO. There would be no Shyriiwook servers. It was all a sham in the name of having a few laughs at the expense of a small but faithful segment of the SWTOR fan base.
“I can’t believe BioWare would play such a cruel joke on us,” said Growssbaak, spokescreature for Wookiees for Gaming Equality. “Our organization has been campaigning for this feature since they first announced they were making the game. Now we find out not only did they have no intention of including us, but here they’re actually making fun of the idea. I always thought BioWare stood for tolerance. I hate to play the race card, but I’m just sayin’….”
When asked for comment, Community Manager Stephen Reid said simply, “Wyaaaghh ma Garrrhh ghh wa-gwah!”