On the surface I think this is a scary thing. Once you make a commodity — any commodity — free the value of that commodity goes to zero. I know I’m playing Captain Obvious here, but this is serious stuff. Take the music industry for example. Once Napster came along and made music free, no one wanted to pay for songs anymore. At the same time sites like mp3.com (the original) came along and offered indie artists a way to reach audiences, and nearly all of that music was free. There were some other things that happened, but the end result is that music is freely available and it’s pretty tough to make a living on cutting albums only.

I suppose the same sort of thing has happened in a way to the gaming industry. I mean, we offer free online games, and if you do a search for that term you’ll get hundreds of sites with games you can play. So why do people continue to buy games? One word: scale.

A free game, while fun, usually consists of simple tasks and gameplay. A big console game like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, though, is just so much more. You’ve got great graphics, unbelievable sound, a complicated story, and immersive gameplay that will likely keep you entertained for days. It’s like comparing our Hampton game to what DPRN is becoming. For that kind of experience it is worth the cash.

So while on the surface it may seem like guys like Carmack are cheapening the industry, I think they actually have the opposite effect. By releasing that source code they have raised the bar for the rest of us. Instead of having to take the time to develop from the ground up the kind of situations, environments, game play, etc. present in games like Wolfenstein, other developers can put that time towards advancing the field. Even if Carmack’s work on space and future work on fusion didn’t make him the coolest Geek ever, I think releasing his source code like this definitely would.

Shadowy bretheren (and ladies), welcome to Day of The Ninja. The official holiday doesn’t begin until December 5th, but since Toobix revels in these types of events, we decided to start the festivities a few days early. So we are hereby declaring this Weekend of the Ninja!

Unlike International Talk Like a Pirate Day there will be no silly speeches with “yar” after every fifth word.  There will be no endless stories of the past to show you how too much ale and rum seems to correlate all too well with the loss of body parts.  And there will certainly be no more idly wasting your life away sailing circles around Shamu.  Instead, we will clear our minds, sharpen our talents (and swords), and wait for the perfect time to make a tactical strike.  That is the way of the ninja. 

So let us not waste any more time and begin discussing your mission for the weekend:

1) A new challenge has been added to Hampton’s Very Bad Day.  Are you ready for Sudden Death Mode? Help the smallest white ninja avoid an onslaught of obstacles, but beware: one mistake and it’s all over! We’re also awarding prizes for the highest score. The contest will run from now until midnight on Dec 17, 2009. If you’d like to enter the contest, be sure to use your forum/gamer account username in the “name” field when you submit your score, so we can verify who you are. On Friday Dec 18, we’ll announce the winner, and that person will receive a shirt of their choice from the gamer gear shop, and their choice of 3 songs from the Digital Media Shop! Note: to claim your t-shirt and music, please send us a private forum message/email with your address, shirt design, shirt size, shirt color, and song choices. Prize must be claimed by 12/31/09.

2) Things have been brewing over at the Toobix Game Lab. Head over there to investigate. Report back with news of any dinopirate / roboninja sightings.

3) You call yourself a ninja.  Now it’s time to dress like one.  Look for these sweet ninja-themed shirts in the gamer gear shop:    

So 2BXGMRs, it’s time to unsheathe your digital kitanas and click the links above.  Let Weekend of the Ninja begin!

The thing is that my computer hardware have always been obtained and housed in one of two ways: a new office/productivity PC or a hand-me-down office/productivity PC.  It’s not that my Gateway PCs have been bad per se, but when you’re an electronic musician you have to face the reality that audio computing takes A+ performance, a high fidelity sound card, and a bunch of storage space.  It’s true that I always did make certain modifications to my computers once I got them so that they would be able to perform as optimally as they could; however, these were cheap mods and I was always either pushing my hardware to the absolute limit or avoiding actually some tasks and programs because I didn’t have the hardware to run them. 

I’ve been at that for about 11 years now.  Care to ask how long I’ve been making music with a computer?  You guessed it!  11 years!

Well, it turns out you parents were not lying to you when they said you wouldn’t be in school forever.  Believe me.  I tried to stay in school forever (stupid!), but I have finally graduated.  The best part about that is that my available cash for PC hardware has graduated from none to more than none!  Turns out that I have also finally graduated from the aforemmentioned PC as I have finally configured my first studio PC!

Now rememeber that I’m more of a software guy than a hardware guy, so you’re probably going to find something wrong in my configuration here.  Please go easy on me, though.  Comments like, “Nice work, but with that configuration your computer is going to overheat and crash if you try and type and email,” will probably have me crying myself to sleep for the next week, but, alas, I know you must say them.  It doesn’t help that the other half of Toobix is a freking computer engineer, so just try to destroy my dreams gently if you must. 

With that, let’s get to work!

As you guys know, I’m a do-it-yourself kind of guy when it comes to computers, but time is not on my side.  Getting our first big PC game release off the ground while working a fairly intense day job takes everything I’ve got.  For this reason I decided I would research the hardware but have a professional do the installation.  Enter www.EndPCNoise.com.

Holy smokes these guys are great.  Turns out they had already researched and selected the highest performing PC components that generate the least noise — an essential element for any studio computer.  Plus, they have other methods of silencing the case as a whole.  I’m mainly going to talk about hardware here, but you can read about their other silencing methods on their website. 

I started out with their flagship digital audio work station (DAW…another name for a kick-ass PC designed for making tunes), the MusicMaker Tower i7 DAW PC.  i7 is for the Intel multi-core processor that powers this beast.  I went with the 2.66 GHz since it will provide me with plenty of power while offerring SSE2 support that is essential for my virtual studio software, Orion, to run.  (The processor actually supports up to SSE4.  Search SSE on Wikipedia if you’d like to learn more.)

A processor is only as good as it’s motherboard.  For that I went with the Asus P6TD Deluxe V2 i7 Motherboard.  This will finally make my studio entirely digital as I will connect the SPDIF audio out on the board with the SPDIF audio in on my Edirol UA4-FX audio interface (http://www.e-effectmusic.com/studio/).  It’s been a long time coming but it’s finally here!  It also has 14 USB 2.0 ports (8 external, 6 internal) and an external firewire port for maximum connectivity.  Plenty of free internal PCI slots, too. 

One thing I’ve learned in modding my other computer is that RAM is cheap.  It’s real cheap.  So cheap that it’s worth just buying as much RAM as your motherboard can hold just to avoid having to crack the case and do multiple installations.  I followed that advice and put 12 GB in it.

With the i7 running on the Asus board carrying 12 GB of RAM, there was only one thing left to optomize the performance for music: the hard disk.  With a little advice from one of EndPCNoise’s lead techs, I went with 3 Hard drives.  The first is a lightning fast 10,000 RPM drive that will run the Windows XP Pro 32 bit OS (most compatible with the software I use).  It has 330 GB of storage space which should be plenty of room to house my audio recording programs so that my live sessions are recorded optimally.  The other two drives are 1 TB 7200 RPM drives that I will use for file storage.  This separates the tasks of production on the 10000 RPM disk and storage on the 7200 RPM disks, but there’s a twist to this story.  See, I am having the storage disks configured in a RAID mirror with the HighPoint Rocket RAID 2640 PCIe Raid Card.  I will save all of my files to one of those disks and they will be automatically backed up to the other.  That will save me loads of time with file back ups. 

With all of the audio optomized, that left the graphics card.  Turns out the Gigabyte 1 GB ATI Radeon HD 4850 (FANLESS) Video Card is not only quite even with high intensity tasks (40 dB or about as quiet as a bed room at night) but it plays Crysis at a screaming 51 frames per second (FPS) at 1280 x 1024!  That’s only one of the most graphics-intensive games on the market right now, and really anything over 40 FPS is good game play.  (If you’re over 60 then some consider that’s the best possible game play.)  It’s kind of a bargain high definition card, too, when you compare the cost to performance.  One thing my research didn’t turn up was the idea of adding a second graphics card to my system.  I asked the lead tech this and he said it really would not add that much performance with a guestimate of about 5%. 

I powered this thing with an 850 W power supply as the lead tech thought that 1000 W was definitely over-kill, and the 850 W would be quiter.  They’re going to jam all of this stuff into this sweet and silent case, too:

Antec P183 BLACK Tower Case

All in all I’m very pleased with the setup, and I am more than pleased with the support I got from EndPCNoise.  What I couln’t find out about the hardware by reading reviews and bench mark tests, the guys at EndPCNoise answered.  Also, they provide you with all of the user manuals for all of your hardware components, all driver/software disks and other accessories that come with your hardware, and also your OS disk.  We’ll be putting this system to the test in the next 2-3 weeks, so stay tuned to see if all of this theory turns into reality!

——————–
ENTIRE CONFIGURATION (minus the 3rd hard drive; see comments as well)
——————–

[TEXT VERSION] (minus the 3rd hard drive; see comments as well)

Asus P6T Deluxe V2 i7 Motherboard
Intel i7 920 2.66GHz 8M 4.8 GT sec
12GB (six 2GB) Mushkin PC3 12800z
No Modem
No Keyboard and Mouse
Western Digital Quiet 300GB VelociRaptor 10K SATA 2 Hard Drive
Install 1st hard drive in Smart Drive Copper HDD Enclosure
Nexus 850 Watt Inaudible 15dB 80 Plus PSU
Windows XP Professional 32 Bit
Antec P183 BLACK Tower Case
Gigabyte 1 GB ATI Radeon HD 4850 (FANLESS) Video Card
LG (BLACK) 22X SATA DVD +/- RW
Noctua NH-U12P SE 1366 CPU Cooler
No Floppy Drive
No Media Card Reader
No 2nd Optical Drive
Western Digital Quiet 1 TB 7200RPM 16MB SATA 2 Hard Drive
No Smart Drive installed for 2nd Hard Drive
HighPoint Rocket RAID 2640 PCIe Raid Card (mirroring)
No Speakers
No Microsoft Office Software
No PCI Firewire Card installed
Install Acoustipack Ultimate
No LCD Monitor
No Audio Interface
No Audio Software
No Studio Monitors
No MIDI Controller
No Anti-Virus Software Installed
Standard Processing- Ship within 5-10 Business Days
One Year Parts & Labor Warranty
Restore Disk

We thought we’d take a week to prepare a little something for you to get us all in the 2BXGMR spirit.  And what better to get you in the groove than Hampton narrating to a funky beat:

http://toobix.com/gamer

Did you know there was a whole Gamer Account set up for you right now?  That’s right.  You can get access to our forum discussions, our community of gamers and a bunch of free stuff like cool Toobix Game Wallpapers for your desktop.  We’re even offerring 3 free music downloads from our digital media shop just for activating your account and signing up for our mailing list!  You’ll definitely want to tell your friends about that one!  If you’re one of our faithful fans already on our mailing list, we’re extending this offer for you as well!

So have fun with the Gamer page and Gamer Account.  As always, enjoy the free tunes!

www.e-effectmusic.com

Look different? I know! The reason is that this vision came from a true artist. My talented business partner, redbeard_prime, has graciously and completely redesigned e-effectmusic.com. More than that, though, he has finally visually captured what e-effect has always been all about while at the same time bringing all of our artistic endeavors full circle.

See, my music used to be here, there and everywhere, but now my music is completely dedicated to supporting the audio behind our independent video games at Toobix. The prime and I have spent the last 3 years laying the foundation for the company, and are now proud to announce that the ground work is complete. With over 30 different products in two online shops (15+ gamer T’s in our Gamer Gear Shop and 20+ songs in our Digital Media Shop), 6 classic online arcade games, a hilarious bi-weekly web comic at eddiecheddar.com, almost 40 songs to stream free at e-effectmusic.com, and a community of gamers in our forums and on our blogs, we think that the future of full scale production at Toobix looks bright.

Stay tuned because we have something special planned for all of your continued support. Hope you enjoy the new website!

So what types of festivities can pirates (and landlubbers where applicable) expect from Toobix this weekend, ye might ask? Well, me hearties, gather ‘round and I shall tell ye…

First, head over to the Toobix Gamer Gear Shop and cover yer bones with one of these new pirate shirts! Aye, now that’s what I call booty!

Next, ye should sail over to e-effectmusic.com (you can also get there from the “music” button on the toobix site menu). Looks like that ninja-lovin’ son-of-a-biscuit-eater e-effect got his site pillaged! Hear hear!  **UPDATE : If you’re readin’ this after Sept 20, then we’re sad to report that e-effect has reclaimed ownership of his site.  All the pirate goodies have been taken down.  We’ll get him again next year, though! Yarr!

Then it’s time to visit yer favorite webcomic, EddieCheddar.com for a pirate joke! (you can also get there from the “comics” button on the toobix site menu). If ye don’t, you’ll be made to kiss the gunner’s daughter for sure.

There’s one more thing to do before headin’ out to splice the mainbrace. I hear there be trouble brewin’ over at the forums. Ye best go have a looksee. But first, ye might want to brush up on yer pirate speak. Here’s some phrases that’ll help you sound like an old salt:

• Arr! - A common pirate expression.  Can be used to express joy, anger, or to scare stray cats off the porch. (note – when speaking to another pirate, the proper form “Yarr” may also be used)
• Avast ye – Hey you!
• Aye - True dat
• Blow me down! – No way, dude!
• Buccaneer – How much a pirate’s earrings cost
• Cap’n – The leader of the crew.  Makes a fine crunchy cereal
• Hang ‘im from the yardarm – Not sure about this one, but it sounds bad
• Keelhaul – Also bad.  Specifically, to punish someone by dragging them beneath the ship (told you it was bad)
• Landlubber – A big, slow clumsy person who doesn’t know how to sail (so pretty much me in real life)
• Pillage - To score epic lootz! (by way of taking them from others, in a non-civilized way)
• Savvy? – Capice? or.. Are you picking up what I’m laying down? or.. Did you understand what I said, you good for nothin’ bilge-rat?
• Scurvy dog - Someone you don’t like.  Offer them a multivitamin if you have one.
• Shark bait - Someone who was standing too close to the edge of the ship.
• Shiver me timbers! - I am very surprised right now.  Seriously.  Look at my face.  Surprised.
• Splice the mainbrace – To enjoy a tasty adult beverage.  Must show proper ID before purchase.
• Wench - Something that you should never call your wife, even on Talk Like a Pirate Day.  Trust me on this one.

So fair winds, lads and lasses, and have yerselves a fine Pirate Weekend. If you like digging, (and any man, woman, or child what calls himself a pirate likes digging!) then be sure to click on the Digg button below and help us spread the good word. But be on yer guard… I’m sure that nunchuck nerd e-effect will be plotting something for Day of the Ninja (December 5^th)…

Come looking for treasure, have you?  Well, you’ll have to wait one more day, lads.  The International Talk Like a Pirate Day festivities will be startin’ at Toobix on Friday (Sept 18). 

So come back tomorrow, or you’ll be keelhauled at sundown!  And trust me, ye don’t want that! 

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

“Aren’t you afraid you’re ever going to top that?”

Why is it that whenver you tell someone that you have succeeded, they tend to find the one negative thing about that success?  Then they try and put it in a phrase that makes it sounds like they’re concerned, but in reality they’re just hoping it makes you feel bad. I’ve seen it a hundred times, and usually it makes me laugh. This time, though, it really got me thinking about how our society looks at success. 

I think Americans really strive for success.  We strive for success in our business and in our relationships.  We strive for success in our contributions to the next generation with mentoring and raising children.  We strive for success in just about everything we do, but there is that undertone in people looking on at the successful person that just never goes away.   It’s that undertone that is described perfectly by the question above.  And it’s result is simply to punish.  It’s result is to punish success.

Why is our society so hell bent on punishing success?  I see it in so many different ways.  Take taxes for example.  The better you do out there, the more money the government takes from you. We punish the very people who create jobs in this country! What the heck, man?  

Take politics, for example.  Ever hear politicians use the term “evil oil companies” or “evil drug companies”?  Why are they evil?  Simple: profits.  They are evil because they have succeeded in providing a good/service that A LOT of people need.  Actors do that.  Professional football players do that.  These celebrity types are also monumentally trashed by media and non-media alike.  While this is sometimes deserved (Tom Cruise…great actor…a little different when it comes to medical issues such as ritalin), for the most part our society seems to take slander to a whole new meaning on these successful peoples’ lives.

You don’t have to go to the political or celebrity worlds to see the ugly face of success destroyers, though.  One of my co-worker’s daughter play soft bal locally in the about 13 year-old division.  This summer one of the neighboring counties allowed her to join one of their teams.  This was unusual, but she didn’t have any other teams to play on and wanted to get in some games.  Everything seemed fine until she pitched her first game.  Turns out she could throw 70% faster and 99% more accurate than any other girl in the league!  Pretty awesome, right — for a young one to have such talent?  The other teams, coaches and parents in the league didn’t think so, and they even put social pressures on the poor tween to limit her playing time and game appearances.

Both in pop culture and in our local communities, we see this happening.  Instead of cheering on our young ones and praising there abilities, we’re limiting our best players opportunities just so someone else who isn’t quite as good won’t be outshone.

But there’s a silver lining to this cloud, and in this case the good guy/girl does win.

See, competition makes everyone better.  When I played basketball as a kid, I would always gaurd the best player on the court.  When I was 13, I was gaurding high school kids.  They beat me — badly most days — but by the time I was in high school my defensive skills were so much higher than anyone my age that I earned the privilege of being one of the best defenders on our team.  I was the guy who was the 1 in the box-in-1.  They would put the other four guys in a zone and I would chase the other team’s best player around the whole game to shut down his scoring.  If it weren’t for the better players on the court in my younger days, I would have never been able to do that.

So if you think you’re hurting someone else by trashing their success, you’re just kidding yourself.  That person is just going to find another game, or another group, or — in this case — another book idea that is not only going to top the one she just wrote, but is most likely going to top anything the condescending individuals asking that stupid question at the top of my blog post can come up with.  It’s high time we stop with the success destruction.  I want to meet my match.  I want to be beat.  That way, next time I will be better for it.

 I recently picked up a copy of Punch Out for the Wii.  This game is awesome.  Of course, I was a fan of the original Mike Tyson’s Punchout for the NES (which later dropped Tyson and just became Punchout), as well as the Super Punchout on the SNES.   The Wii version plays much like the first two installments, that is, if you choose to use the classic controller setup (you can hold the wii remote sideways and use the directional pad and buttons similar to the way the old NES controller used to operate).  The game also allows you to flail your arms around like an idiot (if you’re into that sort of thing) which is largely what the Wii is known for.  But I’m not here to talk about controller setup.  Let’s talk about the game.  Once I heard the bell ring at the start of my first match, I felt like a young redbeard again, sitting two feet away from the tv while waiting for mom to finish dinner.  All of the old gang was there … Glass Joe, Von Kaiser, Bald Bull, Piston Honda, etc.  Good times.  After I was wrapped up in this game for a few hours, my wife asked me why I enjoyed it so much.  I think it is partly due to the cartoony nature of the game (I have an affinity for such things), as well as the character design.  Each character has his own style, moves, and new to the Wii version, background story.  Also in a recent magazine interview with the developers,  I read that the game was really designed to be a puzzle game, and not a sports game per se.  You have to figure out each fighter’s pattern and weak spots, and use that information to put together a series of repeatable moves that will allow you to win.  Although it made perfect sense, I found this to be somewhat mind blowing.  I just never thought of the game as a part of the puzzle genre… but it explains why I am drawn to it, as opposed to regular boxing games, which I tend to avoid. 

The game does more than just rehash old content, though.  Once you have defated all 8 boxers, followed by Sandman (who I never even beat as a kid – I always got stuck on Super Macho Man), you then are faced with the same lineup again, but this time the fighters have all learned new moves, and are quite a bit harder to defeat.  Glass Joe, for example, got tired of getting hit in the face, so he wears protective headgear that you must knock off (or hit him in the stomach when he doesn’t block it.  And let me tell you, he was tough! It’s not easily forgotten when you when the world championship, and then lose a Glass Joe rematch a few minutes later).  And King Hippo figured out that his weak spot was his belly, so he duct-taped a manhole cover to it, preventing all damage done by your jabs.  All of the characters also are quite displeased that they lost to you the first time around, and you can tell that they are out for revenge.  Another cool feature is that they each have a good number of spoken lines, which were recorded in their native language (Glass Joe speaks French, Von Kaiser is German, etc).  So you may not always know what they are saying, but you can tell when it is insulting.  I’m currently on Piston Honda in this “rematch” lineup, and whew – he’s fast.   I think after you beat the game for the second time, there is also a third lineup called Mac’s Last Stand, where you are out if you lose 3 times in a row.  Haven’t gotten quite that far yet, but it sounds challenging.  So if you have a Wii and were a fan of the Punchout series a while back, pick this game up.  It’s worth it.

 Another game on my watch list is called  Meatboy.  I would describe this as a platform/puzzle game.  The original version of the game is currently available for free on the Newgrounds website (a site where you can upload flash games/videos and have people vote on them).  There is also talk that the game will be released as a WiiWare title (think of XBox Live but for the Wii) in a few months.  What I like about this game is that it’s simple, easy to get into, and fast.  The main character is a tiny chunk of meat with eyeballs.  His goal is to save his girlfriend Bandaid Girl (don’t ask me to explain that one).  Some evil dude captures her and flies away, so you must navigate through a series of traps and dangerous projectiles in each stage (of which there are many) to reach the end, where she waits.  Simple, right?  The gameplay is really quick.  It is easy to die in this game, but you have an unlimited number of lives, and respawning only takes like, maybe a second.  At first the stages are short, but they get more complex with time, as new traps are added to the game (such as buzzsaws, firepits, etc).  I also love the art style and animation of this game.  It’s just plain fun, let me say that.  Take five minutes and try it.  But don’t blame me if your entire afternoon disappears.  It’s one of those.

First off is Scribblenauts for the DS.  The game’s own website is rather lame, which is disappointing, so I will do my best to explain it here.  Imagine that you are playing as a litte guy known as a scribblenaut.  You are faced with a problem to solve, such as getting a cat out of a tree.  On the bottom screen of the DS, you are prompted to write any non-proper noun you can think of (within a pg rating) and voila! The object appears in the game screen above.  This alone is a concept worth pausing for.  If you want to jump on a trampoline to get the cat, write “trampoline” and boom – it appears.  If you want to fly a helicopter over the tree to get the cat, write “helicopter” and boom – there it is.  Want to cut down the tree? Write “chainsaw” or perhaps “beaver” if you prefer animals.  What’s amazinng about this game is that it’s supposed to accept tens of thousands of words, each with distinct properties that allow the objects to interact with each other.  And the game comes with a few hundred levels, so I can’t even imagine how the developers managed to cram all that stuff in there.  It’s rather mind boggling.  If the puzzle about the cat in the tree seems lame, then consider this example that was demonstrated at E3 recently :  you are thrust into a level where zombies are running rampant.  What should you do?  Sure, you could ask for some sort of weapon, but instead, somebody wrote “time machine”.  This allowed them to go into the past to snag a dinosaur that they were able to ride,  allowing them to trample the zombies.  Puzzle solved.  Awesome.  This game may be the one that forces me to get a DS.

Next on the list is Muramasa : the Demon Blade, a 2D side scroller about two young ninjas battling ancient evils.  The storyline may seem tired at first, but what makes this game shine is the artwork and animations.  The game draws heavily on Japanese folklore, so you can expect to see things like ninjas, demons, spirits, samurais, goblins, foxes, and of course, legendary swords.  The action reminds me a lot of the Capcom vs Marvel fighting games, which I find interesting.  The game is another great example of the fact that the 2D sidescroller is not dead.  There are still great games yet to be made that infuse new ideas with  oldschool style.  I just hope the soundtrack is good…

Last on my list is a game that I am reeeeallly hoping that they don’t screw up … Star Wars: The Old Republic.  This game is a Star Wars MMORPG.  That alone makes me excited, but in the days of WoW, a new MMORPG has to be really really really good, or it just won’t last. But after watching the trailer, I have hope.  You might even say .. a new hope.  Heh heh … heh … (ahem) …

I honestly hope that this game is able to pull me away from WoW.  Or at leat share some brainspace with it, if only for the simple fact that I need some variety in my gaming life.  Let’s face it, WoW is currently the best MMORPG out there.  Blizzard made a gem, and they keep polishing it.  But let’s also keep in mind that WoW is almost 5 years old.  That’s a long time to be playing the same game.  Sure they introduce new content a little bit at a time, but come on.  Five years.  It’s time for someone else to knock Blizzard off the pedestal.  I don’t know if a Star Wars-specific game will be able to match the number of fans that a general fantasy-themed game can, and that’s ok.  I just want the game to be good.

The developers are aware that in order to compete in the MMORPG market, you need to have something new to add.  And they might be onto something with their idea to make the storyline important.  One thing that is lacking from WoW is a compelling story.  Sure there are key NPCs and locations and whatnot, but at the end of the day the lore tends to feel empty, as you are often more focused on getting a new pair of gloves than, say, defending your hometown, or promoting your own personal story.

Here is a blurb from the website:

Star Wars: The Old Republic will be similar to other MMOs but with several key innovations. Traditionally MMOs are built on three pillars; Exploration, Combat, and Progression. We at BioWare and LucasArts believe there is a fourth pillar: Story. Our mission is to create the best story-driven games in the world. We believe that the compelling, interactive storylines in Star Wars: The Old Republic are a significant innovation to MMOs and will offer an entertainment experience unlike any other.

Let’s keep our fingers (and lightsabers) crossed for this one, people.