Oh My Goodness, WANT!

There are all kinds of crazy awesome things coming out of E3 (a huge video game expo going on this week), but I don't know if anything is going to be able to top this:

It is a brand spanking new cinematic trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, Bioware's forthcoming MMORPG. Now, if you stop by this site even a little bit regularly, you know full well I am eagerly anticipating the release of this game (sadly, there's still no release date announcement, but this is not really a surprise).

This video just upped the amount of WANT I have been feeling. Exponentially, in fact.

It just looks SO. FREAKING. COOL. Seriously. Somebody commented on Bioware's post for the trailer that the company that made this should just make a full feature as a companion to the game. I would so not complain if that happened.

I mean, yes, obviously, this is just a trailer to showcase each of the different classes and the combat possibilities of the game, as well as to show off some of the settings and give a bit of story background. It succeeds on all counts with flying colors, by the way. There's no actual game content here, but I am okay with that. Watching this video made me so excited I had to get up afterward and walk around the house for a bit to come back down.

I thought the use of Satele Shan as one of the Jedi in the clip was a nice little touch. She was a main character in one of Bioware's The Old Republic webcomics. They have been releasing a new series once or twice a year to help give us some background into the political situation of the game and to keep up excitement for its release. Satele, aside from being awesome in her own right, is also a descendant of Bastila Shan, who was a primary companion character in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. (The webcomics also do a nice job of bridging the gap between the two KOTOR games and the forthcoming TOR.) I like that Satele appeared to be a Jedi Sentinel, which is the class I have been planning to play in the game. So that was a nice treat all around.

A part of me really, really would like them to at least announce a release date for this game. At the very least so that I can plan my replays of the first two KOTOR games. But I do understand why they are hesitating to do that. They don't want to tell the world they are releasing this game until they know they have everything figured out and working correctly. When they do, they can announce the release date, and that gives them a deadline to allow for one more round of beta-testing and the chance to tweak any issues they might have overlooked.

All accounts of people who have seen this game in action at this stage of development or who have played the beta version are that it is phenomenal. A lot is riding on the success of this game, for both Bioware and the future of MMO games alike, and I completely understand the impetus to get it just right. I am willing to be patient and wait because I know that I will be getting a quality product that will give me untold hours of entertainment and spark my imagination for years to come.

I am willing. I can wait. I can. I will.

But oh man, I really want it now.