The latest foofaraw in Star Wars: The Old Republic — an MMO that exists primarily to make people complain, it seems — concerns an Ewok. Yes, a cuddly Ewok, the action figure picked last (after Mon Mothma, even) when you were choosing up sides for battle.
Treek the Bounty Hunter is an Ewok companion for your character who becomes available this August. When originally announced, you got her if your character had a million credits on hand and a legacy level over 40. First people started grumbling about whether or not, at this point in the Star Wars canon — Ewoks were known off of Endor, and then how the hell could one get off Endor, much less become a fearsome bounty hunter. Now it’s been discovered that people can just up and buy off Treek with real moolah. I know, paying real cash for the services of a bounty hunter? In a free-to-play MMO? The hell?
Because everything in video gaming has to be a zero-sum argument, people who have the requisite legacy level are super pissed off that those who don’t can just up and acquire Treek for Cartel Coins, the currency of the Cartel Market, aka where things are bought and sold for real bucks. The fact this game is published by Electronic Arts figures into the discussion, too, I’m sure.
“Not everyone has to be able to have everything in the game and this promotes the fact that you should indeed be able to buy anything and bypass requirements,” said one subscriber on the game’s forums. ” have been waiting since February of ’12 for something awesome to come out for legacy level 50 and so far we get absolutely nothing.”
“It’s not P2W but it’s a slap in the face to people that actually played the game long enough to earn a high legacy level,” said another. “Thanks for continuing to not value the subs.”
Others are not as offended.
“Honestly, I don’t see that much broad based backlash about Treek,” wrote one in this thread. “I do see the same handful of players running heavy on the hamster-wheel of faux indignation. But this is true for everything about the game for the most part.”
As I’ve written, this is partly why people despise free-to-play models. When everything is for sale, the game removes the feeling of being able to get something for nothing. It also drives some people nuts to have their hard work — whatever it takes to get to legacy level 40 and acquire a million credits — given a monetary value. That is kind of insulting.
But come on, we’re talking about an Ewok. This would seem to be the kind of thing that would distinguish a freebie player, because no one cool, or in their right mind, would be seen walking around with a space teddy bear.
SWTOR players not pleased with Ewok being purchasable on Cartel Market [Just Push Start]
Comments
16 responses to “Ewoks For Sale Outrages Some Star Wars: The Old Republic Subscribers”
Well at least it’s not Jar Jar’s great great grandfather, I suppose.
For all our sake, DON’T GIVE THEM IDEAS.
“No. MEESA you great great great bombad great grandfather!”
*Subscription terminated*
▲idiot▲
Also kotaku I will no longer read your tabloid website.
This is nothing new, the Star Wars lore has been thoroughly plundered for decades. Hoth appears in virtually every game since Empire as the requisite ‘snow level,’ so it seems like a good chunk of galactic history is decided there. Yet every time it’s revisited, characters remark how they’ve never heard of this desolate ice planet, even though it should be their Gallipoli times a billion.
Ditto with Tatooine. As Luke remarks, the planet furthest from the bright centre of the the universe, which most of Queen Amidala’s crew hadn’t heard of… pretty much every EU novel or game uses it as a setting for the newest cataclysmic event in galactic history. Why bother inventing a new desert planet when you can give fans the scenic tour of a recognisable setting? The twin suns, Mos Eisley, the John Williams score, that little hole over there? That will be Luke’s home in 10,000 years. Oh and that NPC named “Lars,” maybe it’s an ancestor of Uncle Owen!
Shameless fanservice means that everything in the Star Wars movies has to be referenced over and over to make the universe seem as small and uninteresting as possible. That’s why we nearly had a kid Han Solo appearing as a cameo in RotS. I love Star Wars, but sometimes the fandom is too much.
For the record, Legacy level 40 normally takes at least 4 toons worth of leveling plus months of end-game content to achieve. Speaking as someone who has got to legacy level 50, it does make me somewhat irate that people can just pay RL cash to bypass the need for all that work to get this. That said, I can understand the business model used to justify it being obtainable via RL cash. It’s an extra few million dollars easily. They’d be fools to ignore that being the cash-hungry bastards they are. That said, it’s disappointing to see them once again putting the business model ahead of actually making people work and making having an ewok comp an actual achievement in the game (not the nansy-pansy award achievement, but a reward for having actually accomplished something).
And yet, subscribers get 500 cartel coins per month free. Which they can choose to spend on Ewoks or whatever shit they want from the Cartel Market.
Again, I point out I’m objecting to the cartel coin unlock system for things that are supposed to be a reward for achieving something, not the existence of the cartel market in general. The adaptable custom gear and weapons is fine, getting custom gear was never really that much of an achievement. Likewise for speeders and appearance mods, etc. That’s what the market was originally designed for. But making it so that you can bypass all in-game accomplishment requirements to get access to something through the use of RL money is just wrong. They didn’t do that for HK-51 (except for once you’d actually done the original questline) and they shouldn’t do that for Treek. Make it an accomplishment to have something rather than just being able to throw RL money around and buy it
Agreed. People could argue that it does not affect you so why argue? But just like the non-gaming world, you work hard to achieve something. You don’t need to be told the boss has changed the rules and now you can pay to to get a promotion.
Make another questline that starts off solo but requires you to do a bunch of flashpoints to complete? No thanks, I never got HK because I didn’t want to faff around and suffer with PUGs to get some flashpoints done.
If you don’t like doing pug runs, there’s a number of social guilds around that are not just about endgame content, but cover all aspects of the game (and other games in the cases of multi-game guilds) and are more focused on having fun and relaxing and helping out one another than actually creating a formal “you must be on at such and such a time for this run or you’re out” attitude. Or, alternatively, you can just join them and never actually participate in the guild activities outside of the runs you actually want to do.
I help run one such social guild on the Harbinger server, currently under the title of “Project Camelot” whilst we wait for the formal merger so we can get our guild bank back, and we have a huge range of attitudes. If someone joins us just for the XP/Rep bonuses and the occasional FP and op, and never says anything outside of that, we’re fine with that. The guild officers have even spent entire nights just helping out with the HK parts on occasion and we welcome anyone along on such runs, even non-guild members if they’re not being total |expletive|’s.
The point I’m trying to make is, if you want the droid, you have to be willing to put in the effort, and if you don’t want to risk running with idiots to get it there are ways around that. In the case of Treek however, all you need to do is have Legacy level 40 to buy it. There’s no questline, there’s no endless searching for parts, there’s just a reward for having invested the time and effort in the game to get your legacy xp up that much. And then they make it so that any idiot can throw cash around to get it.
Isn’t that why Star Wars exists in general?
They should have just added hats.
Everyone on the server i play on seems to love the idea of ewoks, i literally have not heard one bad thing from anyone about it when the subject arises. And anyone who plays on The Harbinger will know we get some heavy traffic regularly having mass discussions about these sorts of things
and also i think a force weilding ewok would have made a hell of a lot more sence because then they could just explain it away that some darth or something came down and saw potential in him