By Nathan Grayson on December 12th, 2012 at 9:00 am.
Star Wars takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, and Star Wars: The Old Republic is set an even longer time ago than that. Thus, this Hypergate – which is positively ancient, even by SWTOR’s musty standards – must be older than time itself. Naturally, then, people (and blue not-people and green not-people and spiky faced not-people) must risk reducing the precious relic to ash by waging brutal, ceaseless wars over it. That’s just how these things work. And now you can join in on the ill-advised carnage for absolutely no money*. No strings attached**. Nope, none ***. Seriously****!
Oh huh, apparently Hypergates run on the lifeforce of slain enemies. That’s somewhat, er, totally evil of them. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to see this one fall. BUT ANYWAY. The goal of each match is to power-up your team’s energy pylon – by way of flashy, spark-scattering glowstick murder, naturally – until it’s ready to unleash “deadly reinforcements” and finish the job.
Six new level 50 space missions (per faction) are also part of the package, and they’ll apparently “challenge the greatest pilots in the galaxy.” Are you one of the greatest pilots in the galaxy? Are you sure? Oh, well OK then. But only if you’re sure.
The update’s flopping about like a summer trout (Sorry, the rhyming headline appears to have infected my brain) right now, so you can give it a go whenever you please. Do that, if you’re feeling so inclined.
*Well, until you’ve played it five times, anyway.
**Oh, but either subscribing or forking over cash for Cartel Coins will fix that right up.
***You should probably tell BioWare this sort of thing’s a super bad idea for an MMO. It’s apparently all-ears.
****CARTEL COINS.
12/12/2012 at 09:05 SocraticIrony says:
You got your Stargate in my Star Wars…
12/12/2012 at 11:00 Lemming says:
Yeah I was about to say, I bet the Stargate writers are pissed off.
12/12/2012 at 19:23 Shralla says:
Because Stargate invented warpgates?
12/12/2012 at 09:07 DutchDrunk says:
HYPERFACE
Still sad that Galaxies never worked out. I find myself really missing the freedom that game offered to do your own thing. Perhaps I should give Wurmonline a whirl.
12/12/2012 at 10:48 SuicideKing says:
STARFACE!
12/12/2012 at 11:36 Tridae says:
Somehow there are always some idiots that comment this ‘FACE’ thing. It’s not funny now, nor was it ever.
12/12/2012 at 11:39 Kaira- says:
We got rid of “not for me”-meme, this too will die off with time.
12/12/2012 at 14:30 Mad Hamish says:
I dunno man. Over the last few years I’ve seen the RPS comments page basically become what seems like an extension of reddit. Where by the dozen, witless gobshites mistake memes and references for humour.
12/12/2012 at 16:42 dontnormally says:
“It’s not funny now, nor was it ever.”
12/12/2012 at 09:11 kikito says:
Just out of curiosity: is there a setting to turn off the “shiny, shiny” particle effects? It reminds me too much of Street Fighter vs Tekken.
12/12/2012 at 09:44 Chupacabra- says:
People still play this?
I played it for about 2 weeks last year when it came out, but it just wasn’t fun to play.
12/12/2012 at 09:51 Harlander says:
@DutchDrunk
It’s funny you should mention that. We’re setting up a group to forge boldly on to the new server when Wurm is officially released. Join us.
Joiiiiiiiiin ussssssssssss
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forums/showthread.php?6936-RPS-Wurm-Online-Village
(Yes, this was meant to be a reply. I blame the way the site doesn’t take you back to what you were looking at after you’ve logged in. Not my own incompetence at all)
13/12/2012 at 08:11 DutchDrunk says:
Glad I still saw it, Harlander! I’ll get on it tonight.
12/12/2012 at 09:54 Hoaxfish says:
That explains why they thought a subscription MMO from the last decade would actually work.
(I wish I’d thought of this joke when the game was still fresh)
12/12/2012 at 10:14 killuminati says:
Nonenthless, you still made my day.
kudos to you!
12/12/2012 at 12:44 sdancer says:
And I wish people who keep saying that would stop playing SWOR and take their complaints out of general chat.
12/12/2012 at 10:38 Pryde says:
My worst 60 bucks spent on an online game. This and The Secret World. The problem is not that subscription-based MMOs can’t survive anymore. The problem is that SWTOR (and other failures) are just very *bad* games. Free or not free – that fact is not going to change, sadly.
12/12/2012 at 12:32 Xardas Kane says:
So you didn’t buy Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Auto Assault or EarthRise at launch. Lucky you.
EDIT: Vanguard is pretty cool for a DIKU clone right now, just FYI. Not when it launched though.
12/12/2012 at 13:12 RvLeshrac says:
Auto Assault was actually a great game, it just got no support whatsoever from NCSoft.
12/12/2012 at 14:09 MiniMatt says:
Yep, count me another closet Auto Assault fan.
Sure the end game was non-existent and the out-of-car movement round towns was diabolical and the balance was atrocious *but* there were moments of honest to goodness fun to be had there and it made a reasonable stab at combining twitch and stats based gameplay.
12/12/2012 at 19:27 Shralla says:
Thirding this. NC Soft isn’t doing so well and I think they could improve the company’s image and production by releasing some of their older failed games as f2p games. Auto Assault is at the top of my list for that. I would love to play that game again. It was so much fun, and there’s nothing else like it, with the way your movement was so important to the way fights played out.
12/12/2012 at 13:02 JKjoker says:
i dont understand why Bioware keeps using high fantasy cliches and concepts for sci fi series, chosen ones, prophesies, evil in a can, corrupting evil influences, magic, ancient forgotten evils, ancient portals… of evil!, etc
cant they… dunno… maybe come up with something unique to sci fi ?
i mean … you could use some ideas from fantasy but for almost everything ? the only actually scifish thing i can think of from their products is the Quarian/Geth thing
12/12/2012 at 13:25 drkeiscool says:
I don’t think it’s Bioware so much as Star Wars. Isn’t Star Wars basically High Fantasy IN SPACE? The Old Republic setting even more so, with evil places like Malachor, and bad guys who essentially have godlike powers.
12/12/2012 at 13:31 Hoaxfish says:
yea, Star Wars doesn’t exactly push sci fi boundries. But Mass Effect didn’t really feel like it pushed much either.
12/12/2012 at 19:28 Shralla says:
Yeah but Mass Effect is just shitty Star Wars.
12/12/2012 at 22:20 Hoaxfish says:
My main issue is that the initial concept art of Mass Effect made it look much more like a Star Trek without the politically correct utopia… the sort of sci fi stuff like Babylon 5, Farscape, or Stargate gave us.
The sheer failure to implement that was a disappointment.
12/12/2012 at 13:35 JKjoker says:
maybe, but they do it in mass effect too, and even star wars has SOME sci fi elements as long as you keep the force lightshow down and focus on the rebel-empire thing (not like its ever going to happen with Sithlords being more common than normal ppl in the universe)
12/12/2012 at 14:01 mmalove says:
Wait, the UI is for sale on the F2P star wars? I’m so glad I didn’t even try to get back into it.
12/12/2012 at 14:35 Arcanon says:
So the “Ancient Hypergate” is just a prop inside a PvP Battleground? Wow…..
I tried this F2P but it’s just so boring!!!!!
12/12/2012 at 18:48 Richard Nixon says:
It is ze Fargate! It is totally different from that movie and syndicated TV series!
13/12/2012 at 05:27 Ahtaps says:
Personally, I don’t see why they can’t just construct additional pylons. Probably makes things a lot easier.