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How big is a planet??
Miklosan
Member Posts: 176
Ofcourse nobody here knows how big the planets will be in SWTOR but perhaps some of you might have an idea of how big a planet will be...?
I have never played any star Wars game before, not SWG nor kotor l&ll. But this game, swtor looks very interresting.
How big were the planets in those games, (I asume there were planets in those games) compare to.... lets say: the worlds, continents and zones in WoW, AoC, Lotro, Warhammer for example?
And as a follow up question: How many planets you think it'll be in then?
Feel free to speculate;)
Comments
By comparison to WoW, I'd say a typical planet in KotOR wasn't much bigger than Tirisfal Glades — from the Scarlet Monastery to Death Knell. SWG's planets were comparably much, much bigger; on average, maybe four to six times as large as The Barrens.
That said though, bear in mind KotOR was (relatively speaking) chockfull of content. There weren't many occasions where you were just wandering around aimlessly. Think big meal, small plate.
SWG on the other hand was the complete opposite. The maps were large, but pretty much devoid of content. You could walk for hours, but more often than not, there wouldn't be a darned thing to see or do, and there'd be little to distinguish one end of the map from the other. Think light snack (at best), ridiculously HUGE plate.
I'd rather have smaller 'planets' that are well-developed than large ones filled with empty space just in an attempt to make them seem big. There's no way any MMORPG can attempt the size of a real planet, so why pretend to try?
The nice thing about the Star Wars IP is that planets are usually mono-climates. No one goes to Tatoonie looking for snowy mountains or to Endor looking for desert, even though one might think those planets would have different climate areas. I think Bioware could make each planet have the equivalent of 1-3 zones that you see in other games and get the feel of the world down nicely,
No idea how many worlds we'll actually see in the game, but if the have 2-3 zones then we wouldn't likely seem more than 8 or so.
Don't forget we might not just be exploring planets. There could spacestations or large bases on uninhabitable moons that might also serve as their own 'zones'.
I agree
I believe they will be fairly large and with much content. Then you zone out into the "open world" where you do your quests, similar to how KOTOR was designed. If you want to get a feel for KOTOR, I would suggest picking it up. You can probably get it off ebay or amazon for a few bucks, or maybe find it in the bargain bin at gamestop. The reason I say that is because I think that the areas will be very similar, just quite a bit bigger to accomidate large numbers of players and many more quest/storyline NPCs.
However, theres some things pointing to massive planets, such as the battle of coruscant concept art, which shows roughly 100 sith vs 100 jedi. So I wouldnt make any rash decisions juuust yet.
Ex-SWG Correspondent
Currently playing: FFXI, SWTOR
Awaiting: FFXIV 2.0
Aslong as they're all seamless with no load times I'll be happy because I want a WoW like world and not an AoC one with a loading screen every 30 seconds.
Also SWG's planets were so big because of player housing and cities. Though they had adventure planets that were huge too and that made no sense to me why they were so big. I woulda much prefered a Yavin 4 to be laid out like Mustafar was.
I hope it isn't like Kotor cause all them loading screens were annoying. More like WoW and less like single player RPG's please!
It is my suspicion that travelling from planet to planet will work via a point-and-click map that jumps you there. Being obviously not a spaceflight simulator by any means, I don't expect that we'll see any more control over the navigation of our spacecraft than the single-player KotOR series offered.
Upon reaching a planet, I imagine a 3D planetary map displaying landing locations. Newbies will perhaps only have the planet's primary spaceport available to them, while throughout the game the player gains knowledge of, and access to, other locations, opening new cities/towns/dungeons/what-have-you.
This makes it very easy for BioWare to add many additional locations to planets via patches or expansions, while SWG's single-zoned planets would make it not only difficult for the developers to integrate for many reasons but also jarring for the players to have entire plots of land suddenly change. Better to have previously unavailable expanses become available.
It's the only design that makes sense to me given TOR's already apparent design and BioWare's historically demonstrated priorities, but of course I'm still only guessing.
Personally I hope they are really vast, like they used to be in SWG. Sure, you cant fill it all with quests, but it was excatly this much "pointless space" which made the planets feel like real planets and not mere "theme park" tunnels, like the WAR regions. I'd hate it if TOR had such small, streamlined planets only. Its that open roaming around and not being cramped to small quest line spaces which make a place feel real for me.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Totally agree, if you want small planets, dont buy the game. Mmo's are made to free roam around for hours, not to run around like a geek destroying things every 2 seconds.