Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Zombies may be fun in games, but I don't think I'm the only person that can't remember ever reading anything about them in any Star Wars media. I can't imagine George Lucas would ever sign off on anything like that either. Fortunately for all parties involved, the poster we received was just a fun piece of artwork and nothing more.

The Big New Thing (as the SWG team is calling it) is a new profession called the Chronicle Master that will be able to generate new quests for players to try out and enjoy. Not only will they be able to create the quests, but they'll also be able to burn them to Chronicle Holocrons to be sold or traded to other players. The team at FanFaire 2009 gave the panel attendees a demo of the system in action, so let's get right to the good stuff.

To create longer and more interesting quests, Chronicle Masters must gather Chronicle Relics. Relics can be acquired by looting them off of mobs and purchasing (or trading for) them. At this time, they haven't decided on things like frequency of the drop rate, or what mobs (perhaps all) will have the potential to drop them.

During the demo, the team showed how a quest gets created from beginning to end. The order of operations didn't appear to have to be done in specific order, but they started off by choosing to create the text for the quest. Rather than just a simple ambiguous person giving the player a quest, you can choose to use an iconic figure from Star Wars lore (such as Hans Solo) by way of receiving a communication from them. In the future, the team hopes to implement other ways players will be able to interact with their favorite characters.

So as an example, let's say you create a quest for your friend, Spiffy. You can create a quest to have Han Solo send Spiffy on a mission to kill 16 Nerf Herders on Naboo. Killing them isn't going to be enough though. The evil Nerf Herders have been stealing all the Crabby Hooyahs on Naboo and you want them for yourself.

When you create the quest, you'll be able to create the text, choose the tasks from a menu, set the location, select the mob desired, create the name of an item, and even select the drop rate for that imaginary item on the mob. All quests created by players are meant to be indistinguishable from those created by the development team in terms of how they look and feel. When a quest is received, it will show up in your quest journal just like a normal quest. Due to the coordinate system used with the creation of the quest, Chronicle Master created quests will also work with the quest helper system in the game.

The system is still under construction. In fact, the demo we saw had not even gone through QA yet. On the surface, there is a staggering potential for abuse with the basics of this system, but the team will continue working to on ways to inhibit any destructive aspects of the system while leaving the players free to create the quests they've always wanted.