Darth Hater

Further thoughts on the unlocking races for classes, in addition to what Tailen says, looking at it logically, it makes little sense. Maybe BioWare was considering, but most likely testing discouraged it and here's why:

Let's say that, in the above example I gave, that the added race for Consulars is Miraluka, and the only way to unlock it is to first level 1 to 50 on another Miraluka, and the only other Miraluka class is Jedi Knight. We have the new player, little Timmy, who loved KotOR II and loved Visas Marr and wants to make a character like her. He imagines Visas Marr as more of a Consular than a Knight, so he clicks the class only to see four races, one grayed out. Mousing over it, a text bubble pops up and says "This race is not yet unlocked." A little bit of research reveals that he needs to get to level 50 on a Miralukan Jedi Knight to unlock the race for Consulars.

Now little Timmy is dead set on having his Miralukan Consular, so changing to a Miralukan Jedi Knight or just forgetting about the idea entirely is out of the question. So little Timmy rolls up a Miralukan Jedi Knight and gets started.

Now, little Timmy doesn't care about about the storyline or any of the options. He skips past the hours of recorded dialogue and just picks whichever text option is on top, hoping that the least amount of talking will happen that way. I don't think I need to state the obvious issue with this...

Anyway, while skipping past all this awesome content bothers little Timmy because the idea of a story-based MMO is something he liked, what really bugs him is all the wasted time. "Wasted time?" you might think? If he's rushing through to max level it shouldn't take that long... If you're not familiar with MMOs (don't know if you are or not), you might think that time spent would be similar to other BioWare games, and with little Timmy rushing to 50 it wouldn't take more than... 30-40 hours, right?

Well, assuming BioWare uses a similar time-to-max-level that other MMOs use (not an unreasonable theory, but not one that's flawless either), we're talking somewhere in the vein of 7-10 days, time played, for the first play-through. That's not 7-10 real-life days where you spend some of your time sleeping, some of your time doing work or school, and other time playing SWTOR... that's 7-10 days, by the clock, aka 168-240 hours of time invested.

But let's be generous and say that little Timmy really pushes himself through the quests and levels and reaches level 50 in "only" 5 days played. That's still 120 hours... Wait, it gets worse. Now, little Timmy has responsibilities and such, class, homework, sleep, eating, a little socializing with his family, so he only plays SWTOR for 6 hours a day. That's still a lot, but it's not his every waking hour. So what does the 5 days played break down into in terms of real-world time? Almost 3 weeks later he finally gets to level 50.

So after 3 weeks of owning and playing SWTOR every day little Timmy can finally start to enjoy the game...

I don't think I need to point out how very wrong that entire scenario I just thought up was, do I?

PS: I doubt that BioWare would let something like this go live, if it even reached Beta. They are smart. Really smart. I'm picky about my games and my time spent playing a game... If I think it's bad, even if I've dropped 50 bucks on it, I'll stop, and despite that, BioWare games count as the (non-MMO) games that I have invested the most time in. Taking a quick look at the "time played" section in Steam, of the top three (non-MMO) games I've spent time playing, BioWare games are the top three. KotOR at 142 hours, ME2 at 227 hours (and a ton uncounted because they added the feature after I had been playing it for a while) and DAO at 502 hours(!). I will admit that the time played for DAO is a bit fudged because of current instabilities with DAO causing semi-frequent crashes so I end up replaying sections, but that doesn't come close to accounting for the amount of hours (and it's a recent thing).

Oh, and I'm not done playing DAO or ME2, so I've still got quite a few hours left to invest in those two games, and I'm going to enjoy them immensely. Plus, once I finish DAO for the last time (on my final playthrough), I'm going to start playing DA2...

My point, in the rather round-about fashion I took, is that while BioWare may not make flawless games, they certainly aren't dumb, and I trust them not to make a huge mistake like the idea that was originally being tossed around with unlocked races.

PPS: I realize you were just posting something you heard, but after I went to bed last night, I lay there for about an hour, mulling over your reply and picking out the problems with the idea and wanted to put them all down in text. :)

Taking this with a whole pile of salt

Ordering salt.. ordering more salt.

What is a cyborg? Have we seen one?

Darth Vader?

Someone on the forums linked to a (old, like last year's PAX) picture of one, I think. http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f23/Tricky-Ha/tattoogearexample.jpg

I imagine that the quality for "Cyborgs" has improved a bit if not a lot since then.

I hope it improved! Because... that guy in the picture should be beaten to a pulp and burned with fire!
I almost went blind by just looking at him :D

Quoting DE here:
Hey Folks,

The species/class combo list you're referencing is not accurate. If it does appear in the magazine, that's unfortunate.

My guess is that an enthusiastic member of the press wrote down everything he saw in the character creation screen which, as weve stated often, is nowhere near final. Occasionally well have species in odd classes or in all classes because of a bug or testing.

Hope that helps!

Daniel

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6009694#edit6009694

Added that to my original post.

Awesome, kind of curious about that Cyborg race....

In the magazine, cyborg is clearly represented as a race in the table. A picture of Darth Malgus is used to represent the race of cyborg.

It's lovely how they added Zabrak to the Sith Warrior, after spouting endlessly how the Warrior is high society, and Zabraks are a conquered slave species. Same with Purebloods, how they are uber-mensch in Sith terms, and now they can be Inquisitors, whom are chosen from Force-sensitive slaves. I'm happy for people who wanted to be Zabrak SWs, and Pureblood SIs, but then why the lame restrictions on other species?

Not to mention these species are as diverse as two rubber boots.

Wow, I go to sleep and I am greeted with this.

Thanks for the kudos DH Team.

I totally freaked out when I read the article with my Corn Flakes its great to get some recognition from you guys of all people.

Thanks

Cyborg!! Holy Cow!!

what the hell is a cyborg