If you spend any time on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forums, you are sure to have seen his passion and prose regarding all things Jedi. You know him as Professor Walsh. Each week (or thereabouts,) Professor Walsh will answer a few reader-submitted questions in order to enlighten us all with the ways of Star Wars lore and history, in this sometimes highly-opinionated piece. You can submit your own question at the end of the article!
Editor’s Note: This is a special edition of Ask A Jedi, where there are no questions from readers. Only a lecture from the Professor!
No. The title isn’t joking; well okay it is, kind of. Yes, I am recovering from a mild heart attack that I suffered a few days ago. People wondered why I suddenly vanished from posting on forums when I did (only a period of about 8 hours when I was in the middle of discussion with people) and that is the answer – the Prof’s health is pretty bad right now.
I joke, because people already found out about my heart issue and everyone knows that I was pretty worked up about Huttball. The fact is, as a designer and a major lore-freak, Huttball bothers me. I don’t like it when lore is pushed aside for gameplay. Though, seriously I don’t think that had anything to do with my heart attack contrary to the sensationalism of this very article.
The truth is that there’s a freaking war going on in The Old Republic, and I am pretty sure that Republic high command would be very angry at anyone who got caught spending their day off playing football with a Sith Inquisitor who recently murdered dozens of Republic soldiers. If that happened the Trooper responsible would be demoted or worse.
I just can’t really rationalize Huttball. I mean we were told that we couldn’t have open flight because of story, but Huttball is just fine? We couldn’t have playable non-humanoid species because of story, but Huttball is just fine?
Weren’t we told specifically that PvP would not be things like capture the flag because it was a “gamey” and was a silly thing to have going on? Didn’t they say this numerous times? I just cannot really let this go.
Yes, I know some people will say that it is just a game and we shouldn’t let this stuff get to us. It does, however, get to me. This is a lore and story driven game; it should be lore and story driven. There was no reason to add this the way it was added.
Some people say, “Well this is fine because people in Greece used to have peace treaties during the Olympics!” To those people I say that this is a totally different situation. This isn’t a state of war that goes back and forth like the Greeks had. This is a situation where an enemy who isn’t trustworthy came in, attacked the Republic unprovoked, faked a peace treaty, then they sacked the capital city of the Republic. This is the biggest point.
The Sith faked a peace talk specifically to get a cease fire, specifically to take advantage of their enemies. How in the world would anyone in the Republic believe them enough to compete in a blood sport? How in the world would anyone in the Republic forgive a Trooper who spent his time off playing a game against a murderer instead of shooting him permanently dead where he stood?
No. That’s my opinion anyway.
Onto looking at extrapolations though this raises one concern. According to a forum post by Daniel Erickson that says that he was asked by the PvP team to make Huttball because they wanted a game to play in the event that there were server faction imbalances. This concerns me.
Many months ago I was really certain that BioWare was making a mistake by overhyping the Sith. I said that this would lead to a faction imbalance. They repeatedly refuted this stating that there was no faction imbalance and they had data that backed it up. Yet now they are making a game specifically for faction imbalances.
My concern is that the situation on the test server, now that there are a lot more people playing, is I’m guessing showing a massive imbalance. If that is the case then there happens to be a LOT of people who owe the Prof a major apology. You can send those, as well as any get well soon wishes, to me here at Ask A Jedi by commenting on this article.
Anyway Ask A Jedi readers, I hate to cut this short but I really feel like something the rancor vomited up. So until next time all I can say is this: Stay safe and may the Force be with you.