Despite the fact the community was unable to get 30,000 people to follow SWTOR on Twitter and to get the hundreds of thousands of needed likes on Facebook, much was revealed today at the “Crafting the Multiplayer Story” at Comic-Con San Diego. And, as I was able to predict, the biggest thing people have been wondering about Star Wars: The Old Republic was revealed today. There will be space combat.

I’ll touch more on the space combat at a later point–PC Gamer is doing an exclusive on it–so for now, let’s focus on what was revealed at “Crafting the Multiplayer Story.”

• Each of the classes in SWTOR have enough content to fill an entire KOTOR. While this is nothing new, it really is amazing to imagine how much content that means. There are currently eight classes and that means, in theory, they’ve created eight KOTORs for this game. That’s pretty sweet in my opinion.
• The story arcs are both worldly and galactic. What this means is that some of the quest arcs that you’ll be doing will be specific to the planet you are on. But, others that you will be doing are galactic.
• Your ship is customizable. This goes hand in hand with everything they’ve been talking about. They want you to truly appreciate your experience. I actually had some notes prepared about Fatal Alliance that fit in with this. There was too much mention of “modified ships,” but we’ll get to that when I finish.
• There is space combat. It should be noted, though, that the space combat doesn’t appear to be free-roaming. So, don’t expect to fly through space, happen upon a Sith/Jedi ship and open fire. Sean described it as, “Space combat is an alternative gameplay experience to the primary game of storytelling, questing, and ground-based combat. In space combat, you fly your personal ship to various “hot spots” on your galaxy map. From there, you will blast your way through asteroid fields, enemy fighters, frigates, destroyers, and a variety of other obstacles that will evoke memories of some of the great Star Wars™ space battles.” So, maybe I’ll be sitting in my cockpit dog fighting? We’ll have to wait and see.
• Once you are a part of a faction, you cannot switch. This, too, was also a question of mine. I’m at the part of the book where Shigar Konshi is with Darth Chratis and it’s obvious Chratis is trying to turn Konshi to the dark side. That would suggest faction change, but according to this panel, that is simply not possible.
• Not every class can play every race. This could potentially go against what I wrote about yesterday pertaining to aliens being open to mane different races, but we’ll have to wait and see. It could also suggest that they are, in fact, releasing races that are not force sensitives. We’ll have to wait and see on this. They wouldn’t reveal any other races, though.
• Mandalorians will play a huge part in this game. They are definitely going to be an interesting addition to the game.
• Progression is important. Crafting, tons of gear and other things. There are rewards for all of this.
• When grouping, if the group does something bad, if you choose good, you get light side points. This was an issue some were concerned about. When in a group, if three chose to do an evil act and you chose to do a good act, the evil act would be done. But, you’d get light side points for wanting to do the good act.
• Alderaan’s families are split. Family Organa is on the Republic’s side. Family Thulu is on the Sith side. Easily a great way for there to be serious problems.
• Lightsabers will be visually restricting. Double bladed Jedi Consular is a DPSer. Therefore, if you see a single bladed Jedi Consular, that means that they are geared toward something else.

This whole event turned into a huge Q&A which is always cool. Very little was provided about the overall “multiplayer” experience, but at least we know that there isn’t a problem if you choose to do something light sided and the rest of the team does something dark. This will put some people’s fears to rest. And, most importantly, there’s space combat! Wait until August when PC Gamer’s issue comes out. You can bet I’ll devour that for information for you guys!