Players in Star Wars MMO Hold Tributes to Carrie Fisher

Yesterday on December 27, Carrie Fisher, the actress whom played the role of Princess Leia in "Star Wars," passed away after having suffered a heart attack. Facebook and Twitter were full of messages of condolences. But there were also other places online people expressed their sadness. In the multiplayer online game "Star Wars: The Old Republic," players have been gathering to hold vigils in honor of her at the planet Alderaan. This includes Castle Organa.


(click here if the video fails to play)

"We stood together, Imperial and Republic alike, despite the champion NPCs present and attacking when one of us got too close, as you'll see in the video. A friend told me that earlier people had come in large groups and stood there for a long time then broke away. Moments such as these should forever stand as testament to our respect and adoration of Carrie Fisher,"

First hitting the theaters in 1977, "Star Wars" has had an appeal that has remained strong for almost 40 years, crossing generations, nationalities and political ideologies alike. As this actress of a key role in the story has passed on, the fans are remembering her.

Sources: Imgur,

Bixyl Shuftan

Reader Submitted: Game Review - Star Wars The Old Republic - Free vs Paid Accounts

Nydia Tungsten is back with another reader submitted article. Having played the Multiplayer Online Game "Star Wars The Old Republic," she wrote a review about the game. The game is noted for Jedi characters having two choices to go: Light Side and Dark Side. But to Nydia, that wasn't the division that truly separated players.

Read Nydia's article in Extra.

More Troubles for "Star Wars the Old Republic," Future of "Pay to Play" MMOs Questioned

A few days ago, "Star Wars the Old Republic" was given six nominations for the Annual Game Developers Choice Online Awards. But this seems to be the only good news for the once up and coming online game, which lately has had problems keeping up it's numbers of customers.

Earlier this summer, it was reported after initial success, "Star Wars the Old Republic" began dropping in subscribers. More recently has come another unfortunate development: SWTOR's executive producer Rich Vogel is reportedly leaving the company, in addition of talk of further layoffs from the game's developer Bioware.

Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitello made the most interesting comment about the games recent troubles, "Our conclusion was we had a great product in Star Wars, but that the subscription model in the world of free-to-play was challenging." Indeed, there are reports that BioWare is considering going beyond the free trials to play the game to making it free to play. Riccitiello stated that EA was looking at "different models to bring in more users into the game," but would not confirm that a free-to-play one was in the works. The companies would only say, "In the weeks ahead, we will announce plans for growing The Old Republic with new content, new players, and new ways to play."

Hamlet Au commented that these troubles were a sure sign that the "pay to play" model for Massive Multiplayer Online Games was coming to a close, "if Vogel, one of the best MMO developers in the business, can't sustain a subscription-based MMO associated with the most well-known sci-fi fantasy franchise in the world, no one can." In my own opinion, I wouldn't say this means "pay to play" is over, but that "World of Warcraft" has pretty much cornered the market as it remains strong with millions of paying customers.

It should be noted that in recent months, World of Warcraft has been losing subscribers as well. The latest expansion, "The Mists of Pandaria" should help in the short term. The long term will require Blizzard being more successful at retaining customers than it currently is.

As for "Star Wars," I never could play it on my computer as no Mac version was ever developed.

Sources: Massively, Gamasutra, Brokentoys, Gamespot, New World Notes, Image from "Sneak Peek."

Bixyl Shuftan

"Star Wars The Old Republic" Dropping in Numbers

It wasn't that long ago in which the "Star Wars: The Old Republic" Massive Multiplayer Online Game was making the news. Developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts and LucasArts, the game was released in December 2011, and quickly gained a huge following. Within a week, it was believed to have hosted about a million players. By March, their numbers were at 1.7 million. While not really as much as World of Warcraft, it did look like the game had given new life to the Multiplayer Online Games genre.

But this level of success was not to last. By May, numbers were down to 1.3 million subscribers. The result was that there were layoffs in the game's development team, even though the company officially expressed confidence their numbers would rebound. One analyst commented that after SWTOR's plateauing and fall, "No one is buying MMOs … there is just no demand for game assets right now."

SWTOR did set one interesting record, "At over 200,000 lines of recorded dialogue, the game has scored a record for having the largest amount of voice acting not only for a video game, but for any entertainment project." Also in what seems like a nod to the noted incident in WoW in which a plague struck the game, SWTOR had it's own "Rakghoul Plauge" outbreak.

The "Old Republic" hasn't emerged as a "WoW killer." Still, thanks to numbers of Star Wars fans, it won't be going away anytime soon.

Source: Massively

Bixyl Shuftan