The Old Republic Gets Zombified Content Update
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BioWare’s MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic will take a turn for the grisly as the update Rise of the Rakghouls will pit players against hordes of mindless infected.
Before everyone wades in with the “oh no, not more zombies in gaming!” comments, bear in mind that Star Wars games have had rakghouls (rage-fuelled mindless killers like in 28 Days Later) since the original Knights of the Old Republic, so they kind of get a pass.
Despite the slew of zombie games and appearances of the living dead in non-zombie games (Call of Duty, Red Dead Redemption, etc) BioWare can’t really be accused of jumping on the brain-feeding bandwagon. For a start, I think developers are coming to grips with the fact that the zombie hype has peaked and a lot of gamers are getting a little tired of it.
However, there’s no denying that taking a team of players and pitting them against a zombie horde that they can hack through will make them feel legendary. Using large groups of individually weak enemies to let the player feel powerful when unleashing their abilities is a device that’s had proven success in previous MMOs. World of Warcraft often unleashed waves of increasingly numerous enemies in dungeon encounters in order to instil a sense of desperation and eventual satisfaction as the party fought back-to-back to survive.
Here’s SW:TOR‘s take on introducing zombified hordes:
January’s first update to the Star Wars MMO will become available on Jan 17 and the Rakghoul rampage is designed for the more experienced players who are at level 50 or hovering close to it. Also included in the content update is Operation: Karagga’s Palace, a large Raid-like instance for groups of 8 to 16. Those who venture into the palace will battle the perfidious Hutts and their minions!
After its smooth launch just before Christmas 2011, SW:TOR looks in good shape as BioWare are keen to produce more content to keep top level players occupied.
