Computer Free Games for Children, Adult, Teens

Star Wars: The Old Republic was announced by LucasArts and BioWare whichwas confirmed by many of the suspected for quite a while: that the long-time Star Wars rpg maker had plans to enter the MMORPG market and LucasArts was desperate to retry an entry into the market and needed a prestigious game company such as BioWare to make gamers listen. Well, LucasArts was right, and to prove it, the blogosphere is full of a relatively positive spin on the new game, despite the major failings of LucasArt's prior MMORPG partnership with Sony dubbed "Star Wars: Galaxies".

For starters, it's made from scratch by BioWare, a company that has excelled at making games involving the space saga and RPGs. BioWare merely has to succesfully make the leap to making a stellar massive multiplayer RPG, and BioWare would have a formula that may dethrone the famed World of Warcraft as the top dog in the multi-billion dollar MMO market. In fact, the US market alone is nearing a $2 billion area, while the Asian MMO market is fielding almost $3 billion. Due to the international appeal of the Star Wars brand name, this could truly be monumental. The Star Wars appeal truly outdoes Warcraft's in many regards: while Warcraft is well-known by gamers internationally, the sci fi is known by almost everyone in the world, gamer or not. Such an appeal could lure in new first-time massive multiplayer gamers, even in international markets.

Yet, due to the failings of this game to net such a positive reaction, how can it be any different for BioWare's attempt? First, "Galaxies" attempted to pull a fast one on gamers to make a quick buck. LucasArts was not heavily involved in the game-making process, and merely handed off a license to Sony to make the game. Sony then proceeded with the horrible idea of taking a medieval MMORPG engine, that of Everquest, and quite literally in some senses, repainting over the medieval settings to look like it was Star Wars. The more humorous aspect of Galaxies was in that, despite being a "Star Wars" game, at launch there was no space battle possible, and the possibility of being a jedi was negligible, and to top it off the combat involved little skill as it mostly involved auto-attacking, what many gamers call "sandwich combat", in that you can click, set a target, begin attacking them, and then walk off to eat a sandwich while your character fights the enemy.

As we all know, Stars Wars: the old republic wants to avoid this kind of problems, hope that the Bioware will differentiate this from other galaxies...