I don't remember that ever being stated in canon, but then I've read so much of the EU shit that I can barely remember what is and isn't full canon anymore.

True, Wookieepedia says that there were somewhere around 200 survivors (out of ~10,000 Jedi pre-Order 66) out there, but if you place any stock in the EU, there were also dozens of Darksiders trained during the Purge. The Inquisitors (Jedi Hunters), the Emperor's Hands (Palp's personal assassins), the Prophets of the Dark Side (Seer-advisors), the Dark Side Elite (Dark Jedi bodyguards)... I think there's a few more out there, but I can't remember them offhand.

Anyway, the point is that either way, the Jedi and Sith were roughly numerically balanced. Really though, I think of the millennium that the Light dominated things completely as the source of the "Imbalance". If you look at the long, long history of the Republic, the Great Purge and the conflicts that followed in the movies and EU were more of a return to normality for the galaxy than anything.

Edit: Also, Zahn and the X-Wing series FTMFW.

 

Another new video. Last from e3, I think.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2010-star-wars/700578

Looks quite good. Companion characters look quite good.

 

You see, this is one thing I love about Star Wars, there is LOTS of room for interpretation, something I see as a good thing, as you get to justify certain things just like the characters would have to.

And yeah, Companion characters are starting to look like a pretty cool idea.

 

The Thrawn Trilogy was pretty awesome, but I seem to be one of the few who couldnt stand the X-wing series....I also couldnt finish Shatterpoint >.>


Favorite is probably the Darth Bane Trilogy though. It's amazingly epic.

 

I've never really got round to reading many of the books, I never really know where to start. I did read a trilogy about Boba Fett though, which was a little...lack lustre.

 

Just watched the E32010 combat showcase video. It's everything I don't want.

-5 man pve challenge is "impossible" for a group smaller than 5
-5 man pve challenge is "impossible" for a group that isn't "balanced" (tank/healer/dps/cc)
-Jedi hangs backs and heals tank because they've specced 'healer'
-"PvP areas" for (my own words) "scheduled pvp"
-(paraphrase) In pvp, Class X beats Class Y because Scissors beats paper, then added "can change due to how you're geared"

This is all wrong. This is exactly like WOW.

1. Challenges should be possible for smaller groups, if you can play your game well enough. Or at the very least, the challenge should scale with the number of players who want to attempt it. Why restrict it to always 5 people? More time waiting around looking for that 5th person who will probably be bad anyway, instead of just playing with people you know.

2. This is the worst. So we have to have X number designated roles? Why can't a team of 5 tanks beat the challenge? They should be able to. This tells me their classes are not very balanced, and that you will need a Jedi counselor to heal your group, or a healing-specced smuggler or something - because non-specced classes cannot heal efficiently enough for PvE. This means there will be healbots, dpsbots, and tankbots. Why can't there be a tank with a good self-sufficient heal?

People who have played WOW and still like its concepts will disagree with me on this, but I really feel this is the worst approach to designing an MMO.

3. This is pretty bad from a lore standpoint. At the very least, a healbot Jedi should have some incentive for melee autoattacking or offensive casting. It's a Jedi!

4. Bad. Instanced PvP? An endless tug of war where one side dominates all the time because there are X% more/better geared Rebels than Imperial.

5. This seals the deal for me. I can understand if a class has an advantage, but if this game is really as gear-based as its being described as... There should be more skill-based spells / skills. So far all I've seen are instacast / autotarget - no skill involved to use. All of our ability will be determined by our gear. This does not make for fun PVP or skill-based PVE.

 

Did they say it would be impossible? My impression what that it whilst it would be difficult, you then always had your companion characters that can back you up, and fill in any gaps that you need.

And yeah, whilst I thought they had said you wouldn't need a designated healer, I can't really see how the game would work without you having one tbh, you need to be able to heal damage in combat.

 

Healing could come in many forms ... lifesteal, incombat health regeneration stat, self-heal abilities, potions & items, etc. You'll probably need healing, but in what form? A heal bot? That kind of healing should be avoided, or at least, it shouldn't be required.

And from what I heard from the dev and from my own experience playing WoW, if you don't have all 5, the challenge becomes ridiculously difficult/impossible, to the point that you're sure to almost wipe on every fight and that clearing the challenge will take three times as long. Doing the dungeon/boss/whatever with 3 / 5 players is impossible. I think SWTOR is going this route, at least from what little I've seen.

Sure they've shown 2 man dungeons, but if I can't do every dungeon with 2-3 people, I'll miss out on experiences unless I find those two others.

 

They've only just released the bare-bones info so far, I suppose we have to wait for them to show more to draw a concrete conclusion.

 

Yeah and it's annoying. I think it's deliberate. I mean, this can't be bare bones at this point - they only have a year (which isn't long, since you need to send the product through QA and publish it and print it, so that's like 3-4 months off dev time) and have spent multiple years already on this game. They probably don't want us to know anything until it's 2-3 months before release.

 

If you watch the latest video I posted the dev says the companion characters mean you wont need a balanced group all the time.

 

But the other dev says you can't do one of the challenges with 5 tanks - why not? That would be fun. Maybe you won't need balanced groups for 2 man dungeons since they'll be easy...

 

Actually he was 86.

As for the game itself, I'm still excited and skeptical.

 

By Emperor he means the one at the time of this game, who is indeed about a 1000 years old.

 

The guy who said that 5 tanks couldn't cut it didn't mention using companion characters, so there is still hope on that front. If anybody played Guild Wars when they released Nightfall then I hope they're with me when I say that the companion characters sound similar to the hero companions from GW.

I also don't think that it will be quite as simple as rock beats scissors, I'm keeping in mind that you could build your skill set towards certain threats - or all of them. As a smuggler, trooper, bounty hunter or imperial agent you should have skills that help deter melee sith or jedi.

 

Ugh I have to agree with Chime a bit here that Im disappointed by what I'm hearing so far, 5 man instances, designated jobs for classes the whole 9 yards. I want to be able to do whatever I feel like doing not forced into a role, if Im playing as a Sith Inquistor then I want to be able to suck the life right out of people and have zero need for a healer at all beyond oh thats nice or just the same if I'm a Jedi I want to be able to fuck someone up at range with the Force but just the same there is no reason why I shouldn't be perfectly capable of running in and cutting some shit up with my lightsaber. Im also very disappointed by the gear based idea, I have to be honest the idea of crawling through some tomb 400 times just to farm some new lightsaber doesn't appeal to me a bit. I've been there done that and its called WoW folks.

 

I'm not too happy with the fact that I'll be forced into using certain types of weapons depending on the advanced class I choose. Do.not.want offensive specced dual wielding sith warrior.

Meh.

 

Well, we haven't seen any kind of example of talent tree's for the classes or advanced classes yet, there might be some hope in them to allay some people's fears.

 

IIts funny, the appeal of this game seems to be graphable as a bell curve: Until a point, the more we knew, the more we wanted to play the game, and now, its the other way around.

 

Uh...from what has been released, admittedly not much, people are griping pretty bad. Personally, I don't want a WoW clone. Nor do I want to slog through dungeons to get good gear a thousand times.

As to healing and then cutting shit up with a lightsaber...you can't have both at the same time. The game would be horribly imbalanced otherwise. "Let me heal the tank for the dungeon...oh nos he died, let me jump in and tank." You heal, you're not going to be that great at killing. This system is fine with me.

What I'm really looking forward to is the PvE. The way they decribe it says impressive. Much better than the rewash WoW throws at us, though I think Cataclysm may be changing shit up there.(crosses fingers.)

tl;dr People are bitching too much without much info. Can't wait to see about PvE.