Solving BioWare's TOR faction crisis…

There was a strong buzz around Star Wars: The Old Republic last week when it announced bounty hunter as one of the games official classes.

Interestingly enough, it wasn’t that bounty hunters would be in the game that generated the buzz, however, as they had appeared in game artwork and been alluded to for quite some time. No, what started the buzz was the less-than-subtle inferences in the class description that it would be a class for the Sith faction only.

That’s right… besides the obvious point that bounty hunters don’t work for any particular faction anyway, it staggered many TOR watchers that if the class had to fall under a faction, that it would, seemingly, be limited to Sith players only.

Accordingly, I have an explanation for this: story. BioWare is making such a big deal out of the storylines for each character class in the game, that I think it’s going to make EVERY class unique to its faction and, through doing so, not have to write a Sith-flavoured and Republic-flavoured version of each class storyline.

So in the weeks and months ahead, expect to see, for example, smugglers and troopers announced as Republic-only classes and, perhaps, spies to join bounty hunters as a Sith-only class. Jedi and Sith Lord characters, of course, will be Republic and Sith faction respectively. That’s a no-brainer. What does this mean for the gamer?

It means that BioWare had better be planning on some sweet faction-swapping in its class storylines, or the game is going to be horribly unbalanced come end game.

Just think of it… your Jedi gets to the crest of their storyline… along the way they’ve made some mistakes and maybe done some dubious things. It’s my conjecture that, at this point, if enough dubious behaviour has occurred, that a fall to the darkside might be available. Or think of a spy for the Sith. Perhaps, over time, they haven’t been quite as ruthless as a good Sith should be… will they get the option to join the Republic?

In this way, BioWare only needs to write six to eight unique storylines, depending on how many classes the game ends up featuring (some people swear it’s six, others swear it’s eight, but no one seems to have proof), yet, at end game, with spies turning good and troopers turning evil, etc, the game will start to balance out with bounty hunters, spies, smugglers, troopers, etc, appearing within both factions.

Mentioned on the TOR forums, the concept of faction swapping has been rejected by as many people as embraced by others. All this correspondant will add to that debate is that EQ2 has allowed faction swapping, in the form of a “betrayal” quest series for many years. That alone shows that characters can change faction in an MMO and the sky will not fall down, nor will fire and brimstone rain down from the MMO gods in disgust.

Meanwhile, if BioWare doesn’t allow faction changing as part of its storylines, it’s going to have a LOT of very pissed off gamers on its hands. People who want to play Republic spies or Sith troopers, to name just two. I guess all we can do is wait and see!