Star Pirate Space Wars of the Old Republic

Let me share some screenshots of one of my Star Wars: The Old Republic characters:

Here stands Captain Jacc Flynt in front of his XS stock light freighter which, unfortunately, the game does not allow you to name Redemptrix. He is a smuggler by trade. (Both the first name "Jack" and last name "Flint" were taken. I don't know if by the same person, but that would be kinda cool.)

Here is Captain Jacc Flynt on the bridge of his ship, surveying a map of the galaxy. Perhaps he is trying to plot a route between Ceres and Callisto in less than 12 parsecs. Come to think of it, plotting a route from Ceres to Callisto that would be more than 12 parsecs would be quite the feat indeed. (Ok, so you start at Ceres, head towards Callisto. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Then just before you get there, veer of course, head to Vega, and come back.)

Here is Captain Jacc Flynt talking with his companion who is, unfortunately, not named Yosef Lwanga. He is, however, the hired muscle and handy with a gun.

Captain Jacc Flynt looks over the shoulder of his crew mate who, come to think of it, doesn't really look like Regina Burke. Miss Burke has blue eyes, not merely lots of blue eye shadow.

At some point, apparently, Captain Jacc Flynt froze someone in carbonite. Tim Sikorsky, perhaps? Seems awfully cold of him (yuk yuk yuk).

Apparently, Captain Jacc Flynt now has a droid. He purposely removed the three laws programming so he could tell it to kill people.

Shocked and Appalled

Star Wars: The Old Republic launched about a month ago (motto: "What Would WoW Do?"). There is much that can be said about the game, like EA's general jackassery, the fact that it is simultaneously the fastest-selling MMO and failing to meet sales projections, whether or not a game of that scale is sustainable, how successfully Bioware integrated their "fourth pillar" of story, or myriads of other topics. Many others are talking about such things, and perhaps I will weigh in later. But for now, I wanted to focus on one particularly shocking and appalling aspect of the game.

The artists at Bioware decided, it seems, to give one of the six Star Wars movies particular attention. One scene from one of the six movies. One costume choice from one scene from one of the six movies (I think you see where this is going).

Slave Leia costume, seen modeled here by the Murloc's cosplay friend Christy Marie.

Apparently, Bioware thinks that this costume comprised fully three quarters of the Star Wars films, despite the fact that the costume only has a combined 150 seconds of screen time, "including facial closeups and shots of stunt doubles and visual effect images," according to Wookieepedia. Every planet in the game has at least one scuzzy dive populated by alien slave girls doing erotic dances while wearing this costume.

Please Do Not Plant Bombs in the City

So the Murloc and I have been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. For those of you not in the know, it's  the Star Wars version of WoW. I may talk about it in more depth later, but for now, there's a particular quest that caught my attention and I had to highlight it.

Here's the quest text:

"Dear New Yorkers. Al Qaeda has left several bombs in Times Square. We think we got them all, but if you happen across any, could you please pick them up and drop it off in one of the handy bomb-disposal bins we've left around the city?"

The mission requires that you locate four bombs stuck to walls, lamp posts, and other features of the city and take them to a bomb disposal unit, which deactivates them with the sound of a garbage compactor.

I swear, every time I picked up one of these, I heard Yakety Sax

 Once you've removed the bomb from its place, a one minute timer starts, after which it will explode, damaging you for about half health. The bomb disposal unit is centrally located, a quick jog away, but shares a 5-10 second cooldown with all other players in the game. That means that once one player has activate it, no other players can use it for about 5-10 seconds.

Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb.

This must have been a fun quest to do immediately after launch, when a dozen other players are trying to get the quest done. I imagine a queue of players standing at the bomb disposal unit trying to get rid of them, and all waiting for it to refresh. Sort of like a game of hot potato with explosive consequences.