Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Star Wars Galaxies Takes Jump To Lightspeed 79

Posted by simoniker from the hup-hup-and-haway dept.
Thanks to 1UP for its article discussing the recent announcement of Star Wars Galaxies' space combat expansion, Jump To Lightspeed, which takes the PC MMO into the heavens, and "focuses primarily on [space-based] vehicles for both combat and transportation, promising at least 15 new modes of travel." There are screenshots and an official FAQ over at the Star Wars Galaxies site, explaining "you can expect to pilot X-wings, Y-wings, TIE fighters, TIE interceptors, and many other recognizable starfighters", and, dodging some sarcastic online reaction, an interview with producer Haden Blackman over at IGN PC argues: "In many ways, we're looking at Jump to Lightspeed as 'X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter' online - much of our focus is on that dogfighting experience."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Star Wars Galaxies Takes Jump To Lightspeed More

Star Wars Galaxies Takes Jump To Lightspeed

Comments Filter:

  • Excuse me? Hyperspace, not light speed. (Score:4, Funny)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Thursday April 22, 2004 @11:30PM (#8946417) Homepage Journal
    Maybe I'm just an old fart and correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Star Wars faster-than-light travel called Hyperspace? Where'd this light speed shit come from?

    • Re:Excuse me? Hyperspace, not light speed. (Score:4, Informative)

      by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @11:40PM (#8946486) Journal
      Han solo was the first to mention it:

      "She'll make point-five past lightspeed."

      What this has to do with Hyperspace however is completely subjective, because just about all the physics of the Star Wars universe is about as cohesive as the continuity in Star Trek.
      • The line "She'll make point five past lightspeed" always got me. I assume it means that the ship can travel at 1.5 times the speed of light in a vaccum, but in the movies trips between star systems appear to take only a few hours, maybe a day or two at the most. Assuming that the Star Wars galaxy is similar to our own, it would take light years to travel between stars, and at 1.5 times the speed of light the trip would still take years.
        • According to relativity, how long it would take depends on who is doing the measuring.

          For someone travelling close to light speed, the subjective time from their point of view to cross the galaxy could be very small (and approaches zero as their speed approaches light speed).

          From the point of view of an observer stationary relative to the galaxy, the fast moving traveller would take thousands of years to cross the galaxy, even at the speed of light.

          Of course, differences in perceived time intervals, and
          • Here's what I find the most funny. When Han is talking about the Millenium Falcon he says "This ship did the Kestle Run (or whatever it is called) in 12 Parsecs. Well, a Parsec is an astronomical until of length, so that is ridiculous, that would be like saying..."Whoa, that guy is so fast, he ran a Marathon in 4 miles."
            • Actually if you read some of the books, the Kessel run is the path out of Kessel past a large number of black holes. Han was bragging about how short of a run he made. Kind of off road experience in space. The books say that the path Han took was plotted as unsafe by the computers, and the slower ships that were following him were sucked in by the black holes.
            • Actually, it's not that far off. "Light-year" is a unit of space-time, and so is "light-parsec." So you can use it to measure length against a set unit of time, or time against a set unit of length.

              But yeah, Lucas probably just stumbled onto that one by accident.
            • Here's the handwaving from the SW RPG, in a nutshell. The Kessel run is through very dangerous space, with lots of gravity wells and the like that make hyperspace travel very tricky. Most pilots have to plot a course way around the nastiest parts or risk tearing their ship apart on a black hole or whatnot. Han Solo bragging about only 12 parsecs means that he plotted a course right through some of the worst regions, shaving a respectable distance off the trip.

              Or you can just assume that Lucas didn't know s
              • I am going to assume it was a mistake, based soley on Jar Jar Binks.Had Jar Jar not been in the prequels, I would have given Lucas the benefit of the doubt. But thanks for all of the useful info. I am a Star Wars Fan to the core, but I have not read the books, just seen the movies a few hundred times. It is nice to know I can always count on fellow Slashdoters to fill in the gaps for me!
            • The Kessel Run has been the topic of much speculation given Solo's confusing boast of completing the Kessel Run in "less than 12 parsecs." Given that a parsec is a unit of measurement and not of time, it hardly seemed like a speed record.

              The Star Wars Technical Journal came up with a workable explanation that saw a Kessel Runner have to deposit smuggled spice shipments in between freighters traveling at a fixed speed, so that the shorter distance covered by said freighters during a Run was worth bragging
        • Actually, no, it makes no sense at all. Lower numbers hyperdrive ratings are actually faster. Basically all of them are rated 3 or lower. 3's are crappy civillian ships, mostly, and 1's are top-grade military ships.

          Star Wars doesn't even pretend to make sense.

          Um...I don't know this. Really...uh...I just made it up.

      • Re:Excuse me? Hyperspace, not light speed. (Score:4, Funny)

        by blancolioni ( 147353 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @08:28AM (#8948380) Homepage
        Han solo was the first to mention it:

        Greedo mentioned it first.
    • That's a pretty fine nit to pick considering that "Star Wars" was released without any kind of flight at all.
    • Hyperspace is the area through wich you travel by means of a hyperdrive along a route calculated by a shipboard computer or an android like an R2 unit at speeds greater then the speed of light.

      Hyperspace travel is a case of pointing in the right direction and hitting your engine. You will then leave this universe and enter hyperspace where time and distance are different but gravity is not. The trick is therefore to make sure there is nothing in your way. Hitting a gravity well while in hyperspace is rumor

  • This is what I dislike about MMORPGs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DAldredge ( 2353 ) <SlashdotEmail@GMail.Com> on Thursday April 22, 2004 @11:33PM (#8946441) Journal
    I really, really dislike having to pay 30-50 per add on on top of the monthly fees. Why can't more games do what Lineage II is doing? All expansions will be at no extra charge.
    • Because those expansions a)aren't necessary to play the game you bought and b)cost a lot of money to design, develop, market, and distribute.

      It'll be interesting to see if Lineage II expanions are of equal quality to DAoC and/or EQ expansions or if they are more like the old monthly updates for Asheron's Call.

    • Because American gamers don't have access to a cybercafe with a sweet broadband connection, or still use dial-up, to download a 300+ meg file update. Not to mention the bandwidth costs, and the omnipresent threat of the users bum rushing your servers to download the file 15 seconds after its put up.

      With Lineage II, got a major update coming? Send a couple special CDs to some of the hottest cybercafes to install onto their computers, thus lessing the stress on the servers. A huge majority of players are on b

      • This is where a MMO game could really benefit from a BitTorrent style system for distributing large updates. Just write a similar engine into the game's software. Have anyone who is playing automatically help share the file, and make the transfer engine only use spare bandwidth, or turn off if the computer is on a low bandwidth connection.

        If it's well done, the strain on the download servers could be nearly negligible after some seed time to get the first few copies of the update out the door.
        • Check out Guild Wars. their proposed system has you downloading content as needed in the backgound while you play. Should be transparent. Dunno how well it'll work in practice, but it's a good idea at least.

          Oh, and NO monthly fees will be nice too.
      • Does anyone play Galaxies on dial up? Somehow I bet the number is miniscule. Release the update bit torrent style and everything should be just fine. No reason to charge your happy customers more money to get more content.
      • You're favorite class/race/job not the best? Complain and flame about 'balance' issues.

        You know a game is balanced when every class is screaming that every other class should be nerfed.
    • Lineage 2 is still in beta. When they have a lower than expected subscriber base and need an infusion of cash to continue operating, then we'll see what expansions will cost.
    • " I really, really dislike having to pay 30-50 per add on on top of the monthly fees. Why can't more games do what Lineage II is doing? All expansions will be at no extra charge."

      Because in America, people here are willing to pay that much. Maybe not you nor I, but the masses certainly will. These are the same kids who plop down $400 every time nVidia or Radeon takes a shit, so blame them. Personally, I think having to pay that much for the initial game is ridiculous with the new $15/month fees people a

    • It is a totally different game then Starwars galaxies. Hell it is totally different from most western games. It is to western games what doom is to half-life.

      Korean type games like Lineage, Ragnarok and Priston tales are extremely limited bash-em-ups. Rigid class structure, limited weapons, limited moves. Lineage 2 even stand aparts from the other 2 for allowing, shock and horror, you to CHOOSE your sex, rather then have a sex forced on you based on your class.

      Of course Koreans play the games in a totally

  • Word has it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <ieshan@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Thursday April 22, 2004 @11:47PM (#8946528) Homepage Journal
    Word has it, by the time the expansion gets released, there will be THREE WHOLE JEDI!

    //lame
  • This is exactly the kind of stuff I was expecting to see in the game when I originally bought it. After playing for a while I decided to cancel my subscription because it wasn't what I was really looking for. But I want to renew my subscription after seeing this. Too bad I've already been sucked into Lineage2.
    • Hehe...the exact same thing happened to me, but I was sucked into FFXI instead.
    • Well I let my money do the talking for me - I cancelled a long time ago for a bunch of different reasons. And now if I had been playing I'd be even more pissed if I had to shell out more $$$ for this expansion.

      Now here is the 100 million dollar question, can I go out and just buy the expansion and play that without having bought the original?

      If the answer is no, then fuck them. $70 for the original.. 6 months of play for over $15 a month (or whatever it was), now another 50-70 for an *EXPANSION* and two
  • Worst.. title.. ever.
  • I enjoyed X-Wings, TIE Fighters, X-Wing Alliance, and all the addons. I would love to see another game based on this. This MMO game addon isn't for me since I am not into monthly subscription game since I don't play often per week and I am cheap. :)

  • New players beware... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NivenMK1 ( 755271 ) on Friday April 23, 2004 @05:48AM (#8947804)
    This new expansion is going to drive economic inflation to new heights, as the people with several hundred million will pay it for a starship or components and the crafters know this. Therefore, said crafters won't be selling to the people who haven't bought money or been in the game since Beta and have an established income. I think the space expansion will lead to more people entering the game, but less people actually sticking with it. This rule will generally apply untill there are enough starship products and services in the market to force the prices down to more human levels.

    For those of you that are not in the game but are considering it, your average mission payout for a solo mission is about 1200 or so credits. If a starship costs you half a million, it's going to take a LOT of mission running to get there, either that or grouping on the "adventure planets". The payouts are better with missions on these planets, but unless your Guild/Player Association is out there with you, you'll likely have a group of complete fools that will get you killed more often then they will make you money.

    On and upward note, Sony has removed the necessity for having a membership to read the SWG forums. If you're interested in getting in and not burning-out before you get your X-wing, I'd be patient and poke around over here [starwarsgalaxies.com] [until things settle to a dull roar following release.

    Given Sony's history of buggy releases and expansions, being patient but informed may prove to be a much more agreeable path.
    • I'm not so sure. The same thing happened with mounts and then vehicles, with sky-high prices for a few days after launch followed by a sharp drop-off as the creature handlers/artisans reaslised they had sold all they were going to sell to the rich folk. While the economies in SWG are inflated right now, it's not to the point where the average player can't afford to get things done. There's always someone undercutting the competition if you just take the time to look more than five feet away from the Coro
    • or those of you that are not in the game but are considering it, your average mission payout for a solo mission is about 1200 or so credits. If a starship costs you half a million, it's going to take a LOT of mission running to get there, either that or grouping on the "adventure planets".

      Hmm, maybe they will give you some kind of bo-bo/newbie ship to start with? Since they are saying space combat will be twich based, maybe it won't be so unfriendly to newbies with some x-wing/FPS skills. I'd rather
  • SWG is going to get a huge hit in the arm from this. Last year when Raph was saying the space expasion was "going to be like the ground combat, in space" I figured the game was doomed. The ground combat is ... not fun. But now that they've seen the light and are going twitch, I have hope.

    This *might* make me re-up my subscription.

    The key here is that they're going to have to use the grace period allowed by the influx of dogfighters at the end of the year to fix the game before anyone notices that everyt

  • So they release an expansion and CHARGE 20 - 30 dollars for it?

    Um, isn't this what the monthly fee is suppose to be for? You buy the game and pay the fee. Shouldn't it be up to sony to continue to inovate and add enhancements *at no additional charge*?

    After all, you're already paying for it.

Slashdot Top Deals

Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes. -- Mickey Mouse

Close