Lucasarts posted the video from E3 for download, plus a little extra. Don't let the "extra" excite you though. I'm on a pretty damn fast cable modem connection, but I resent that half of the 13 MB download is adverts for star wars legos. Hopefully there won't be any toy commercials in the actual game.

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/media/media.jsp

Brad Grenz

Man, if this game plays half as good as it looks, I think we'll have a really great game on our hands.

Dont bet on it, Verant will fool you, they will deceive you to believe it!

Kidding, but as much as im burnt out on mmrpgs, i really hope its at least half of what they advertise. Personally i wish they devoted time on EQ 2 than Star Wars.

I still beleive Star Wars is a hokey FANTASY not SCI FI universe, imo of course.

etc

My thinking:

EQ 2 wouldn't draw in many people that aren't currently playing EQ.

With Galaxies, they can open up to a whole new audience.

Personally, I've got my eye on this one. EQ holds very little appeal to me, but this one...I may very well pay money for this one.

Surely I'm not alone.

Yeah, Star Wars is obviously the bigger name. I'm sure if the game played EXACTLY like EQ it would still do well.

But then again we now have Worlds of Warcraft coming! Will this topple SWG? probably not... Star Wars is wayyyyy too big. ButI'd choose EQ2 or WoW over SWG only because i like fantasy themed worlds.

etc

And remember, it's LEGO(r) Star Wars, folks! The LEGO company actually has a whole page of guidelines on how to refer to their products and trademarks. It's rather funny, in an odd sort of way.

With Verant's push to modernize Everquest in its current form graphically, I don't think you'll see something called Everquest 2 for a long, long time.

--Dave

The video looked nice, but was extremely short and contained no gameplay whatsoever. Granted, it's early in development, but I can't see what people were getting so excited about (recall that almost every game news site was going nuts over this video). It could turn out to be a steaming pile, for all we know -- there's just not enough in the video to make any sort of evaluation, positive or negative.

The difference between seeing a video at home on a PC and at an lovefest press conference is remarkable.

Either that or the Force has power of the weak minded.

A little from column A and a little from column B.

-Andrew

"The difference between seeing a video at home on a PC and at an lovefest press conference is remarkable."

So are the differences between writing while fully awake and half asleep.

Ugh.
-Andrew

There's a misconception that this "E3 video" is what was shown at E3. It's not... What was shown at E3 wasn't a video, it was a couple of clients hooked up to a server sitting there in the room, wandering around in the settings you saw in the video. And it was around fifteen minutes worth, I guess... this video is just around 30 secs worth of footage taken from that demo, which at this point is months old.

For those of you who enjoyed, glad you did. We promise no Lego ads in the game itself. ;)

-Raph

Hey Raph, when are we gonna see some gameplay, and some of the interface? What has been shown, even at E3, was pretty much a bare-bones engine, but the "stuff you do" wasn't there yet, just talked about.

To be fair, what was shown at E3 was as much as is shown of any game that is 18 months away from release: engine, some art, and talk of all the plans for gameplay.

I wouldn't care if I didn't hear anything about the game until three months before it's due out. What's the point of even thinking about it now?

Ya know, for a reviewer, Mark, you sure are out of touch with the gaming community!! ;-)

The more we know, the sooner we can form clans! And the sooner we can form clans, the better aquainted with and attuned to our clansmates we will be when the game actually ship. With any luck we'll be able to steal a Star Destroyer launch day...

Brad Grenz

Well with long development times for pc games, especially mmrpgs... it is in a way useless to hear about games being so far from release. i mean, look what happened to UO2!!! Its like imagning going on a date with that hot chick when you were in high school to prom... it never amounts to anything but... uhm... this is a stupid analogy.

As i was saying, I agree with Mark, what IS the point of thinking about game a year or more from release? It's a tease... imo

etc

Nah, you guys are right, of course. But that'll never stop people from drooling all over their keyboards over videos of games that are still two years from release. It's just our nature, I think -- especially if it's something we're interested in.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go wipe the drool off my keyboard...

We held a dev chat last night, and there we said that we hope to have another movie out before the end of the year. That one should have some gameplay in it. We're doing interface work right now, in fact...

As far as why talk so early--frankly, because of how the MMO public seems to act. They pick a game in advance, and grow fiercely loyal to it, and stick thru thick and thin with it until launch. If you don't have your name out there, they are going to pick a different game and be "reserved" by it, reducing your audience. Most people can only play one of these beasts, after all, and we'd rather they pass up some other game while waiting for ours, than get hooked over there and skip us when we come out.

-Raph

Skip Star Wars? With all due respect, you might be over-thinking this problem Raph.

-Andrew

Cool, thanks for stoping by and sharing, Raph.

Or are you another lurker like some of the PR and developer folks out there, probably reading this RIGHT NOW, that never post here but just like to peek at what we're all thinking? =)

You're right about the MMO public's behavior, y'know. Or other hardcore gamers, for that matter. They pick a game, like say "Max Payne" or "Red Faction," and decide it's going to rule long before it comes out. Then when it does, no matter how good it's NOT, they're convinced it rules.

And then they don't buy NOLF. It makes no sense.

But I agree with Bub that Star Wars tends to make a whole lot of the rules non-applicable. =)

Yeah, I understand. I have no problem with game companies trying to promote their games. For me, I just have trouble being interested in something so far off. I think I've seen too many games I was keenly interested in never get published, so I just try to avoid thinking about them in detail too early.

Unless I have to write about them, of course.

Personally, I won't believe they can do anything with SWG until I see it far closer to launch. No offense Raph but I haven't been excited by this title at all. Just too many ways to screw it up. Maybe you guys will figure all of them out but I am guessing it will be EQ with Star Wars characters and a weak space combat engine that I will almost guarantee will be delivered later than promised.

Sorry for the pessimisim but that is what I think.

-- Xaroc

No worries, Xaroc. The proof is in the pudding, after all. :) We're definitely not shooting just for EQ in space, though; we got that as a mandate from both Verant and LucasArts. The game really has to be more if it is going to succeed to the extent that it could.

Bub, Jason, we're actually seeing a lot of inherent skepticism precisely BECAUSE it is Star Wars, at least among the MMO crowd. It's very interesting to see the difference between the community on our boards versus the take elsewhere (say, among Lummies, lovable cynics that they are. ;). And we don't have one of those uncritical types of communities, either...

Jason, I've been lurking here since the site opened, but didn't realize there were boards until last week. :P Of course, Mark and I have been jousting on various forums for, uh, six years or so now... ;)

-Raph