[Mobius]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN0D8TU_TVE

STAR WARS™: Attack Squadrons is a free-to-play online space combat game where players customize iconic STAR WARS™ ships and engage in high-velocity 16 player dogfights in fabled STAR WARS locations.

Sign-up for a chance to be a beta tester at www.starwars.com/attacksquadrons.

[MatthTheGeek]

PvP = no interest, but at least it's good news they're willing to reboot SW games a bit, even though it's with an arcadey FtP that will probably go down the BGO and MWO route.

What happened to the exclusivity deal with EA ?

[Dragon]

Not another multiplayer only game! Have their lost their minds? Instead of giving us another epic, sprawling campaign with memorable characters, great battles and the whole galaxy at stake, they give us another dumb multiplayer shooter. Really disappointed in here.[/rant]

At least it's FTP, I hope it doesn't turn into another MWO. I may even play it for a bit, but shooting things gets old after a while, I usually need a good reason to keep at it, and previous SW games were pretty good at providing one. That said, anyone knows how I can get my hands on the old TIE Fighter and X-Wing? I played XWA, and loved it, so I suppose I couldn't go wrong with those, either.

[BloodEagle]

At least it's FTP, I hope it doesn't turn into another MWO.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that free-to-play is a cancer not unlike early-access (or as it's known in sane circles, open-alpha-that-you-pay-for).

That being said:

Star Wars™ : Attack Squadrons is a free-to-play online space combat game where players customize iconic Star Wars™ ships and engage in high-velocity 16 player dogfights in fabled Star Wars locations.

FEATURES

Intense PVP Action:
Battle online in 3 PVP game modes
    Free For All: Fight for glory in 16 player death matches.
    Team Dogfight: Join a team and decimate the enemy team.
    Base Defense: Defend your base or coordinate an attack on your enemy’s base.

Ship Customization
Upgrade and personalize your ships as you collect and modify them to your own specifications.

Team Play
Team up with your friends and develop a community of Starfighter Pilots.

Rewards
Earn points after successful matches to unlock new items and upgrades.

Regular Updates
New ships, items and upgrades every month.

It certainly sounds like they're going the MWO route -- albeit with no promises for anything interesting up front.

I'm also rather concerned about the fact that, of the three companies listed, only one of them is likely to actually be making this thing.  And the one likely to make it, well, has no released titles and their main page is a filler page and a hiring page.  Oh and the positions they're hiring for just happen to be the most important ones for a game like this.

:/

Still signing up for the beta, though.

[StarSlayer]

Unless you're an independent I don't think the Alliance or the Imperial Fleet are especially keen on letting you screw around with their hardware.  A T-65 is supposed to be T-65, slapping five extra lasers, hot rod flames and super fancy engines irks the **** out of me.  Unless the 'verse' is setup for such a thing, tagging on customization on everything just seems like such a tacky gimmick.

[Scotty]

On the other hand, we have a fairly detailed tree of craft to go up, at least.  An X-Wing is not an X-Wing is not an X-Wing, especially the further into the EU you get.

[MatthTheGeek]

Pretty sure the Rebels didn't give a crap whether your ship was modified or not, as long as it was yours. Many Rebel pilots were flying their personal ships, even fighter pilots (Corran Horn comes to mind).

[StarSlayer]

Hence the independent caveat.    Horn's X-wing wasn't Rebel hardware.

Besides if you want to see a Imp squadron of TIEs decked out in extra micro transactioned lasers, shields and pink pokadots...


well whatever floats your boat mang.

[Dragon]

Really, that sounds like another MWO. And at least in MWO, customization was common in the 'verse. In SW, not so much. Rebels did that a little bit, pirates did that heavily, Imperials didn't. And even then, unless you count smuggler/pirate contraptions, those weren't extensive mods. Even Imperials sometimes swapped lasers on their TIEs for a different variant, but it was very rare to see a new added on either side. The only ones who actually customized their ships to an extend you seen in such games (and they were mostly freighters, mind you) were the smugglers and pirates.

[Sandwich]

I'm looking forward to trying it at least. Soon as we can, we should definitely set up an HLP squadron... hopefully FS flight experience will translate into superior capabilities here.

[An4ximandros]

Don't they give you a modded TIE fighter to fly in the second mission of SW:TIE Fighter?

I'd guess the empire does modify their craft when needed to fill a role they have no ships that can already do it.

But suspension of disbelief here.

And it's Star Wars , so canon is at best a loose amount of good stuff surrounded by metastatic additions, such as Dark Empire...

[BloodEagle]

There's very little (I can't recall a single occurrence) in the way of personal modification to Imperial hardware.  The 181st (The elite of the elite) is specifically mentioned as using stock equipment in the expanded universe.

[NGTM-1R]

Don't they give you a modded TIE fighter to fly in the second mission of SW:TIE Fighter?

It's not actually modded in a meaningful sense, they duct-taped a couple of ejector racks to it.