Discuss this episode on the forums here.
It’s been three long weeks since our last podcast – great to be back! Anything from more than a week ago gets the Quick Mentions treatment so we can dig into the meaty stuff like debating digital downloads and what we expect from raids. We’re trying a new sound editing set up which, unfortunately, resulted in some static. A thousand apologies plus a thousand promises to fix that before our next ‘cast.
FACT OR FICTION: Can you pick out the confirmed fact from the tall tales? This week’s host challenge involves macros, vehicles, and stealth.
FROM THE NEWSNET & BEYOND: Roundup of the most important announcements and news.
- Friday Update 5/20: Fan Site Summit Video. Fan Sites loved watching themselves. We wonder if anyone else cared, but we give it a thumbs up!
- Fri Update 5/20: Fan Friday, Fan Site Spotlight on SWTOR Life, Community Q& A, Studio Insider on Combat Audio.
- Fri Update 5/20: SWTOR announces bunches of cons they will attend through the end of the year. Stephen Reid cautions that one should not draw conclusions based on their convention schedule.
- Fri Update 5/27: Trooper Armor Progression video gets people excited about big guns and knocking girls off their feet.
- Fri Update 6/3: The Lost Suns Issue #1 on sale June 8th.
- Fri Update 6/3: EA Games starts digital download service, Origin. Stephen Reid explains here and here. Should we be upset that SWTOR won’t be available on Steam?
- Fri Update 6/3: Advanced Classes and their Skill Tree Names. Kathy and Roxanne are nearly overwhelmed with the info, Carla was expecting more.
- MMORPG interview with Georg Zoeller on Advanced Classes. Information overload! Game mechanics mavens rejoice. Kathy didn’t even want to read it. Stances sound curiously Asian.
- Friday Update 6/3: Fantastic preview trailer sets the stage for E3 reveals.
- IGN’s Live Show schedule.
- Live EA Press Conference Monday June 6th 12:30 pm Pacific. You can watch it at Gamespot.
- Stephen Reid’s train track metaphor.
- Gamespot video interview with Daniel Erickson, print interview with Gabe Amatangelo, and Damion Schubert. Daniel agrees with Roxanne that you can’t get away with story. Damion emphasizes the importance of crafting.
- SWTOUR winners! Congrats to kkaywork, Daelda, James Dye, Shaun Quinn, Michele Mummert, and JediElkatt. Thanks to everyone for entering.
Quick Mentions
- Gamasutra interview with The Doctors, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk.
- Star Tours opened in Walt Disney World and Disneyland. G4 video interview w/ Tom Fitzgerald and George Lucas.
- The Health Museum in Houston, TX will feature a Star Wars exhibit, “Where Science Meets the Imagination” June 18- Sept 18.
- Patron Saints of Star Wars, corporate logos go Star Wars
- The People vs. George Lucas trailer
- TORWars interview with David Bass
- Damion Schubert explains why skipping story is bad.
SITH OR JEDI? We find out which path we walk in real life with The Test of the Mis-Delivered Mail. Thanks to voleo for sending this suggestion.
COMMUNITY BUZZ
Raiding Expectations.
- Poll: Raid length, reset time
- Poll: Who likes Recount?
- Dev Tracker: No macros, the community debates here, here, and here.
Knowing the Game Before Release
- BioWare’s “Idiocy.” OP is really upset we don’t know naming conventions and other nitpicky details.
- Poll: Are you happy with rate of information release?
- Stephen Reid has a suggestion for those who are actually upset about not knowing everything.
Thanks from Corellian Run Radio
- Tav raney and Danielle Phillips for leaving us positive reviews on iTunes.
- Jason from notalotofnews newshour for lending us his radio announcer voice for this week’s sponsorship spot.
Contribute to CRR
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- Send your ideas for future Sith or Jedi tests to corellianrun@gmail.com
Discuss this episode on the forums here.
Actually I assumed origin was gonna be like more like Blizzards battle.net. You cant get blizzards games on steam, you can only get digital download from battle,net. Though Origin’s browser looks an awful lot like steam’s when its launched. It will be interesting if EA decides in the future to only release it line up digitally through origin. I believe they have large enough and strong enough line up of games that it might be possible.
Does battle.net have all the achievement-oriented, social stuff too? I can’t remember.
I think EA probably does intend to keep their new releases exclusive to Origin. At least at first to see how it goes.
Awesome show! About crafting,i dont see reason why make that crafters cant make the best gear just because theres no point for raids then..raids shouldnt be all about getting loot(WoW is mainly about that because it doesnt have story like TOR),but about teamwork,achivement of doing it and story. Cant wait to see story being in the raids. Ofc there should be loot droping but main point of raids should be continuing the story. Whats the point of beating the raid and then get best gear..to just stand in your capital city and look good? Best gear should be avaible to get before the raids so it can be a little easier to beat the raid.
This was a real gem of an episode. It’s a damn shame that it is going to be overshadowed by all the E3 coverage, this was one of the best episodes from any podcast that I’ve listened to in a long while.
First off, that was a really great Sith or Jedi challenge, that gave me a good chuckle.
Next up, Roxanne, don’t back down on your initial impression of macros so quickly because you have valid concerns about them in many ways. Not all games incorporate macros into the very fabric of their game to the extent that WoW does, and I believe I share your distaste that macros do take out an element of skill from the game, one that very few can truly claim to be extremely proficient at anymore.. This truly is an issue that has good points on both sides of the argument, and individual opinions on the matter will largely vary on where players derive their enjoyment from the game.
Finally, great debate on whether or not we get too much info on this game and whether or not we are ruining it for ourselves to a certain extent. Personally, this is the only game I have ever followed pre launch before, and I do feel that certain things about the game have been tarnished for me that I won’t be able to get back, story spoilers just to name an obvious one. A certain excitement of discovery is removed with increasing knowledge of the game, and that is one of the many reasons why I don’t look at leaked footage, and I will not sign up for beta.
There’s no better feeling than discovering a new world, especially a fully developed Bioware world, and it would truly be a shame if I ruined that sense of exploration and wonder before the game even launched.
Oh yes, I didn’t know that you enjoyed musicals so much Kathy. Very cool, so do I.
Warning! Huge geek incoming!
The trooper did pull out a big knife in the trooper video. Its the same color as his armor, but it’s also as long as the troopers fore arm. It’s pretty fast though, I didn’t see it the first either, but after Darth Hater pointed it out in the dissection I noticed it.
The origins for the names of the all the Light Saber forms actually comes from the Prequel Trilogy. The man responsible for choreographing all the Jedi and Sith Lightsaber stances did so based on a combination of Kendo, Fencing, and good old Swashbuckling.
The fight choreographer was the one who came up with the names for the light saber forms, and he named them to be similar to the Japanese forms that we’re more similar to. Each form is basically meant to do different things. Soresu is a form that is used by the Jedi Knight and Sith Warrior Tanking trees. It’s also the form that Obi-wan uses in the movies. It’s a defensively minded form that’s meant for fending off attacks from multiple locations. In the Revenge of the Sith Novel the rational for Obi-wan being the one chosen to take down Grievious was because he had mastered that form to a level that no one else order had, and that Obi-wan might very well have been the only Jedi able to beat Grievous because of it.
@Sasbas It would be fantastical if people could get as excited about the story in a raid as they are about the loot! I don’t even know how this would be possible, esp after multiple runs through the same raid, but even just knowing the context of the story should improve the experience.
I really thing good gear should come from multiple sources: crafting, raids, quests, PvP. That way every part of the game is important.
@Cornbread Yes, Roxanne and I are both really into musicals! She and her sister Kerry both did their time in the youth theater company I’ve been playing for since the world was young. They’ve both aged out now, but somehow I’m still there. Recently, Rox and I saw Book of Mormon in NYC, which I highly recommend if you’re not the type to be offended by highly irreverent humor, esp as regards religion.
As for the macros debate, I would really like to hear what the devs are thinking on the subject. If they’re philosophically opposed, then I’d be interested to hear their reasons, and that’s one thing. But if they’re going to put them in anyway, I don’t know why they wouldn’t just put them in at launch…except perhaps that they ran out of time? Way more than swimming, this seems like a fundamental stumble. And I don’t even really use macros all that much haha.
Oh oh, I know, this is all part of an evil conspiracy to force people to buy the new SWTOR Razor programmable mouse. Without macros, certain players will HAVE to get one! 😀
@Clint Haha yes, several people have pointed out that it was indeed a knife that the Trooper uses. Thanks for the explanation of the lightsaber forms. Love the background stuff.
Cool, I’ll have to look that musical up! I hadn’t heard any reviews on it, and it sounds pretty interesting.
To the macro thing, I really don’t have a problem with them as long as the developers make them very accessible to their entire player base such as WoW does I guess. Some games though, creating macros can require almost programming knowledge to put them into the game, and that’s where I don’t think its cool because now it’s a “feature” of the game that really has nothing to do with playing the game, it’s coding instead. If the developer gives players the tools to create macros so that they can benefit even the people who don’t think coding commands are cool or fun past /dance, that’s ok to me because at least they are making them accessible to the entire community.
I hope that makes sense. If it doesn’t, it’s just because my opinion on the matter would take a lot longer to fully explain, and I simply don’t want to get into that deeply unless someone seriously has a problem or doesn’t understand my viewpoint.
Book of Mormon got nominated for 14 Tonys. If you watch the Tonys this Sunday night, you’ll get a chance to see them perform a song. Which might be hard since so many of the songs would be wildly inappropriate for prime time (what else can you expect from the writers of Avenue Q and South Park?).