Yesterday BioWare made a substantial portion of Star Wars: The Old Republic‘s player base angry by offering a free month of play to its “most valued” players — those that had reached level 50 in the game. Today the developer continues to surprise and delight players by expanding the promotion as to not alienate people.
Who is waging the public opinion battle between anti-gay “family values” groups and the video game creators who dared to allow same-sex romance in their massive new Star Wars game? The anti-gay crowd says the Star Wars defenders are getting help from spam-bots. (Would they be spam-droids?)
The Florida Family Association, best known for badgering companies into pulling advertising from TLC reality show All-American Muslim last year, is hard at work ranting about a new target: BioWare/EA game Star Wars: The Old Republic. This isn’t the first temper tantrum that supposedly pro-family groups have thrown over The Old Republic, just the most recent.
Riffing on the Family Research Council’s outrage over same-sex NPC relationships in Star Wars: The Old Republic, talk show host Conan O’Brien and team cobble together some footage of the science fantasy franchise’s most famous gay couples.
Oh boy. The Family Research Council, a US organisation that “promotes the traditional family unit and the Judeo-Christian value system upon which it is built”, has finally noticed that BioWare intends to publish a game update to Star Wars: The Old Republic that accommodates same-sex relationships between player characters and NPCs. This didn’t go over well with them, because he’s a total canon fiend who says there can never be anything gay about Star Wars, ever.
The advocacy publication for disabled video game enthusiasts has named Star Wars: The Old Republic its Mainstream Game of the Year, meaning it is the most widely released title that also is most accommodating of gamers who have different needs to enjoy full-featured gameplay.
Now that BioWare has instituted fixes limiting the number of Republic and Imperial players taking part in each instance of player-versus-player planet Ilum an uneasy truce has been formed. Now both sides can take turns killing each other for credit!
With yesterday’s patch 1.1 player-versus-player debacle stemming a flood of threatened account cancellations, BioWare has released a video showing off what the coming months have in store for Star Wars: The Old Republic, in case you choose to stick around.
The fine folks over at iBUYPOWER have put together this Star Wars-themed case. Which might be a sweet gift for any The Old Republic player… you know, if you could actually buy it here.
