Species & Character Creation

Soude wrote:

Near-human do not deserve being a race,

RACISM!!!

(hahahaha just kidding )

Seriously though, I suspect that there will in fact, be a fair amount of customization (and races) even if they need to change things between now and release.

TOR is shaping up to have a truly massive amount of players, possibly even overtaking World of Warcraft. If that's the case, if they want to succeed then characters will HAVE TO look different just due to the sheer numbers involved otherwise the game will bomb horribly.

Plus this is BioWare - if you look at their last few games, even if you are stuck with a single race, they've never been short on customization.

I remain hopeful.

I call that smartness racism I keep it for my Imperial officers and ISB friends

Anyway, I'm hoping you're right about customization, LW.

I'm liking the implication of Rakatan love scenes. I think this is about as diverse Bioware could really get. The Rakata are supposedly dying out and their place in the galaxy uncertain. I wonder if we'll have story arches connected to species as well as class? I could see some kind of Krogan-esque story coming into play, with the Rakata seeking to regain their affinity for the force. Possible arch nemesis being a Rakata taking on both the Sith Empire and Republic?

Could their inclusion as a race suggest Lehon as a playable planet?

The reason i think they begin with a near human species on announcement is that ...... I got no idea why.

But the last few weeks we got species, inhabitants, biography and much more so this summer to PAX Prime (That i my attend) in Seattle in september i think we cant get much news

Lord_Nord wrote:

The reason i think they begin with a near human species on announcement is that ...... I got no idea why.

I'll use a very famous quote from SS:

LULZ!!!

The Partisan wrote:

I'm liking the implication of Rakatan love scenes. I think this is about as diverse Bioware could really get. The Rakata are supposedly dying out and their place in the galaxy uncertain. I wonder if we'll have story arches connected to species as well as class? I could see some kind of Krogan-esque story coming into play, with the Rakata seeking to regain their affinity for the force. Possible arch nemesis being a Rakata taking on both the Sith Empire and Republic?

Could their inclusion as a race suggest Lehon as a playable planet?

Any chance we could shoe-horn you in to write for BW/LA, Partisan? I'd loooooooove the Rakata to make a major come back. My quite obvious love for the Infinite Empire aside, think of all the awesome Star Forge-style plots they could include! Derelict space-stations, ancient ruins, defunct superweapons.. *cough* dark secrets *cough* - it'd make some great storylines, thats for sure.

I suspect that kind of thing would be in an expansion though.

I kinda suspect were not going to get many species at all and they will be mostly "Near Humans" it seems odd the first Alien reveal is a near Human thats something they would drop half way through in between some good ones to hide its shoddyness

I think with all the character choices/story choices something had to suffer and it was the species :/
It might be the case though if you remember all those cutomizations you could create on your character that the near humans and humans are so customisable and the class and their armour so unique that each person will look different anyway but still....

I kind of feared this when I saw the companions becuase it felt like they were compensating for the lack of playable species by giving you unique alien companions

PrioryJK wrote:

I kinda suspect were not going to get many species at all and they will be mostly "Near Humans" it seems odd the first Alien reveal is a near Human thats something they would drop half way through in between some good ones to hide its shoddyness

I think with all the character choices/story choices something had to suffer and it was the species :/
It might be the case though if you remember all those cutomizations you could create on your character that the near humans and humans are so customisable and the class and their armour so unique that each person will look different anyway but still....

I kind of feared this when I saw the companions becuase it felt like they were compensating for the lack of playable species by giving you unique alien companions

This.

Well said sah and I agree completely. The one thing that I held very important was character customization as after all this is Star Wars and what would it be like without the diversity we see in the movies?

I could be wrong but I think the "Near Human" theory seems quite probable now. At a rough guess I'd say we may be looking at the following now:

Human
Rattataki
Twi'lek
Zabrak
Togruta
Chagrian
Mirialan
Cathar (possible I guess)

Seeing as the developers don't want romance arcs with so called 'blobs' (I assume they're referring to the Hutts) I wonder where they stand on the not-so-human looking aliens like:

Mon Calamari
Rodian
Trandoshan (although they're looking quite unlikely now anyway)
Nautolan
Kel Dor

A lot of the above are REAL fan favourites so if they're not available I can hear the screams from the TOR community already!

I doubt we'll even get that many, I'm guessing we'll have species like Zabrak, Miraluka etc really close to humans, not Tweliks or Togruta :/

I dunno I reckon Twi'leks are one of the most likely to be honest , mainly due to their popularity. Both them and Togruta's have very human attributes and are fairly easy on the eye.

Sureshot wrote:

Human
Rattataki
Twi'lek
Zabrak
Togruta
Chagrian
Mirialan
Cathar (possible I guess)

I think you are most right

I don't think we'll get the Togruta or Cathars, as for the Twi'lek they're very iconic. Twi'twi, wookies and Dosh are the only species I feel unavoidable.

Strange that most don't see the Togruta as playable species. I see them as a bit of a cross between that of a Twi'lek and a Chagrian. Also we've already had one species made famous by the Clone Wars (Rattataki) so I get a feeling that Ahsoka's species might get the same love. I for one would love to play a Togruta JC.

Sureshot wrote:

Clone Wars

SS i think you may be in on something with Clone Wars its a chance that the famous humanoid Clone Wars species may be playable

You have to consider modeling though, they could do it but each species with a odd shaped head would require a different helmet

PrioryJK wrote:

You have to consider modeling though, they could do it but each species with a odd shaped head would require a different helmet

Or they could ignore helmets entirely as they are the bane of all MMO's!!!

I'm willing to consider all of the following as possible candidates for playable species: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Near-Human

Knowing Bioware, they'll probably find the perfect balance between the "fan favorite" species and species that would impress the harder critics. Also, if they're really going to try to dethrone WoW, they may have a quite extensive choice of different species. I'm not going to rule anything out (besides Wookies).

It's not so much species I'm interested in... I'd like to see if droids will make the cut.

Jokoro wrote:

to dethrone WoW, they may have a quite extensive choice of different species. I'm not going to rule anything out (besides Wookies).

I agree Wookies & Gungan are some of the classes iam sure we cant play in SWTOR, but they may be NPC

Jokoro wrote:

I'm willing to consider all of the following as possible candidates for playable species: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Near-Human

Knowing Bioware, they'll probably find the perfect balance between the "fan favorite" species and species that would impress the harder critics. Also, if they're really going to try to dethrone WoW, they may have a quite extensive choice of different species. I'm not going to rule anything out (besides Wookies).

It's not so much species I'm interested in... I'd like to see if droids will make the cut.

Well I've always loved the look of Aurra Sing, so playing as her as-of-yet unknown species would be quite ace.



As for Droids, as much as I'd love to see them playable I think they're more likely to be companions and NPC's unfortunately. Mainly because I can't see Droids in a position where they have to make many moral choices like that of an organic.

You bring up an interesting point, SS. If we consider that Bioware are approaching species with emotion and attachment as paramount, rather than gameplay, we can see that the obvious route to take is species that closely resemble humans, allowing for the player to better connect with their character. I don't doubt that Bioware will attempt to push the boundaries, but I'm not betting on any Quarren romance arches.

The line gets hazy when it comes to Trandoshans and Wookies. They're much loved species, for many reasons, but they aren't the easiest to connect to.

What I'd like to know is how they'll be handling near-human species. They can hardly have a selection of hundreds of races that are only slightly different to humans. As long as I can make it clear that my character is eye-less, that's fine by me.

Is it too much to ask for a Wookie to love?

Looks like Twi'lek and Rattataki are in, someone who played the first 6 classes used those two species plus the human

Chiss are confirmed too: Link

Oh yeah we Reetak is a shoe in then

I have no idea how many species it will be. but i think it can be as many as planets 16+.

Added Chiss, Rattataki and Twi'lek as options on the character information section.