Obligatory SWTOR Release Post

So here it is, my obligatory post about Star Wars the Old Republic, I'm sure you can fill your boots with all the information you can find out there on the interwebs, it seems everything from the developer code to the artists car ahs been discussed endlessly as the game as come to fruition.

I'll be interested how many over time hours the staff have to put in at the game data centers, keeping it alive under the loads it'll get first week will be a challenge.  It being Christmas will also mean, any serious players taking it up will be on there around the clock, so the servers if they go down will be a real sticking point.

In fact, its my past frustration with server down time at the launch of WoW, which is making me steer well clear of SWTOR.  I suppose that's unfair of me, and its certainly putting a negative spin on an unknown entity; after all I've not really paid any attention to SWTOR, so how can I judge it.

But, I really don't see how they can change the formula of what an MMORPG is... Wow defines the genre, so its going to be WoW like... but not Wow... there are still going to be the elitist jerks, there are still going to be the RP maniacs, the gankers, the griefers, the scammers, the ninja's and the rest of us mindless automatons "Hey I got an epic"... "Gratz"... NEXT!

So, with that said, I really will be looking how the technology stands up, how do they cope with the influx of new players, have they load tested it alright?  And my interest stems from my current personal development efforts.

Some of you may know, I did a degree in computing, Computer Studies with Software Engineering to be precise.  My dissertation was on the topic of "Parallel and Cluster Computing in an Open Environment".  Ironically, wenty years after the fact, you might know this exact idea as "the Cloud".   Indeed Amazon offer a service very much like the concept I had put together in, the then fledgling, Java programming language.  I was told all that time ago, it'd never work, go get a job.  And I did, but I can't help I missed the boat.

I played games as a kid, lots and lots of computer games, I was one of that first generation who put down the boardgames to play their computers.  And I had the idea of a server back end controlling multiple hundreds of parallel instances (not just sharing a mainframe as was popular) but descrete processes or worlds belonging to different players running a thin-client on their computer infront of them, connecting to the world over the internet... I missed the boat, but I love the technology.

So, lets see if Bioware and the rest, can stand up to the all conquering Blizzard and through my bitterness at having thought about this in the 90's and being ignored can they deliver a WoW Slayer?