I've put a few hours into Bioware's mammoth Star Wars RPG and it's safe to say that I am really enjoying it. I've taken my first virtual steps into an impressive and immersive world and I can conclusively say that this is definitely an MMO. For those of you out there who were hoping that this would break the Warcraft mold of collection quests, grinding and combat that burns down to hitting numbers on your keypad, prepare to be disappointed. Though it makes strides away from this formula in the areas of storytelling, and it's writing is far superior to anything you would see in Warcraft, this is one traditional feeling MMO. All in all, in gameplay terms it feels a little World of Starcraft... Wait that doesn't work at all... World of Warscraft? That's even worse, seems the Star and the War have already been taken by blizzard, I guess we will have to stick to the far less catchy World of StarWarscraft; though to be honest it's more like Galaxy of StarWarscraft due to it being...In a galaxy, but one you can allegedly explore.

All this being said I still think this game is awesome so far, WoW is a great MMO and this takes things that I enjoy about MMOs and has enough interesting stuff mixed in with the traditional to make it worthy of giving your life to. So even though I've had to complete such delightfully MMOey quests as 'kill X of X' and 'collect X of X', this is still fun enough and there is enough cool Star Wars stuff to make my little Star Wars fanboy heart ever so excited.

So now that stuff is out of the way, time to talk about my own personal experience, let us commence Stephenage's tale.

This is Stephenage:

He's not much to look at yet, but this emotionless Chiss contract killer will soon be the greatest Bounty Hunter ever. So yes, I went for bounty hunter, why? Let me explain. I've been following this game for a long time now, and my dream was to make a Nautolan Jedi, because Kit Fisto is super cool and I think Nautolan's look awesome. Alas, this wasn't possible, cue first complaint with the game. The choice of races is kind of disappointing, they are all the more humanoid shaped races and a lot of the cool stuff that players will want to be isn't there. It seems like they are saving this for expansions because there are several other races in the world (I even saw a Nautolan) so it's a shame the options are so limited. The character creation itself is fine, not hugely deep but not overly shallow, and the character models really look nice. In fact the game really looks nice, even with my PC being forced to play it on horrendously low settings. After being forbidden from my Nautolan dreams I felt dissatisfied with the Republic and felt the need to rebel! I joined the Empire, as a form of strange ineffective protest. I looked through the ****s and thought bounty hunter looked pretty badass (I can now whole heartedly say it's a great ****) so I chose that.

Once again I was a tad disappointed, no Mandelorian option? Really? Maybe I should have done a bit more of research into the races, seems my coverage of this game was too focused on pretty CG trailers and them talking about story and voice acting. Incidentally all that stuff seems awesome, the CG trailers have even made their way in as opening cutscenes. Now I didn't want to be a lame human, because humans are lame, so I went for Chiss. Purely because I recognise Thrawn as being super awesome and they look pretty cool and intimidating. So thus the role playing begins!

Before I was ready to play I had to think about my character and what he would stand for, this is a game of choices after all, and I was determined to make a consistent character. So Stephenage (the bounty hunter, not the GS user who is a true paragon of virtue) is a pretty cold emotionless dude, it's not that he is evil, it's that he only cares about what job can get him the most money. He won't go out of his way to just kill people, but if that is the quickest way to big cash, he will willingly take it with no regrets. This mercenary attitude was showcased in quests where he chose to betray the original quest giver when a target would offer him more money, Stephenage just wants the cash. He doesn't care about others, he likes to work alone and he likes to get a full reward for his services. If there are monetary benefits to working with another then he will do that... You get the point, dude likes his cash.

However dude also likes a bit of relaxation, as you can see from this picture where I visited a cantina and had a little dance on stage with the band:

That was a lot of fun, great MMO moment. So, so far I have quested a bit and have set myself what kind of guy I'm going to be in this ancient Republic. At the moment I'm in the bounty hunter starting area on Hutta and am eventually going to win the great hunt and get a lot of cash. You know, because I'm the protagonist and that is what story protagonists do. So prepare for more info in the future!