A couple of awesome tidbits about Bioware’s massively popular Massive Multiplayer Online game Star Wars: The Old Republic.
First, for all of us Mac people, Bioware is thinking about us and how they can get us addicted … er playing their new game. In an interview Bioware head honchos Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk told the Joystiq blog over at Massively,
“We know there’s a big Mac audience of BioWare fans … we know that’s an important and large audience. And we want to serve that audience.
I’d say ‘not yet… We’ve done a lot of Mac ports before of our games. We haven’t announced any details yet for The Old Republic, but we know that’s an important and large audience.
[It’s] definitely one of the things we’re looking at next. We want to get this launch under our belt and everything stabilized and happy, and then we’ll look at other platforms, and that’s obviously one of the first ones.”
I’d say they’ve got the launch going pretty well, with new research showing approximately 350,000 concurrent peak users. So, not to jump the gun, but maybe that means a Mac version later this year? Bioware was so inscrutable with their release dates, (they famously made their big announcement at Comic-Con this year of an incredibly vague release date of “Holiday 2011”) so I can see why they’d keep this under their hats. In any case, VERY encouraging.
Second, Youtube user IAmPeaceCraft has discovered/propagated a video showing a weakness/cheat in the game, showing how if you start dancing (the command is /getdown) you are immune to damage.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vun5geNHA5M&feature=player_embedded
Pretty funny, but I guess BioWare is not only aware of the weakness and working on a patch to fix it, they’re using the ban hammer on anyone who dares boogie while in combat. (I know– since when did John Lithgow go to work for BioWare? And for the kids who don’t get that reference, see, in the 1980’s there was a movie called Footloose. . .)
So dance while you can, preferably away from any admins…. or snitches. And don’t be an ass and use it in PvP, ok? Actually, my preference is for Bioware to keep the bug, and rather than ban dancing like some tyrannical despot, instead just punish cheaters by awarding light side/dark side points in opposite of your current alignment for whenever you do it. Because if you’re light side and you’re taking the quick and easy route, that’s totally a dark side move. And if you’re dark side and you’re dancing in front of your enemies, that’s kind of lame– light side points for you!
How lame is it? Well, take two iconic badasses like David Bowie and Mick Jagger and it does this to them:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G4jnaznUoQ
True story: it took until 2011 to fully redeem Mick Jagger from this mess, both with the Family Guy reference to this and that Moves Like Jagger song.