SWTOR's Jedi Knight class confirmed

By Oli Welsh Published 2 November, 2009

BioWare not repeating Galaxies' mistake.

We've known from the start that BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO would allow players to be Jedi Knights - but the developer has only just confirmed the character class and published the first details on the official site.

There's not a lot substantive there, but you can watch videos of some of the Jedi's skills: deflecting blaster shots with his lightsaber, throwing it like a boomerang, and using the Force to knock enemies down and push them away.

The Jedi will face off against opposite number the Sith Warrior in the game. We also know about the Trooper and Han Solo-style Smuggler classes on the Republic side, and the Bounty Hunter fighting with the Sith. That leaves three classes yet to be revealed - one good and two bad.

We'll be playing The Old Republic at an EA press event later this week, so stay tuned for more details.

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About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (32) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • Fleisch #1 2 years ago

    how exactly is SWTOR not going to turn into a massive jedi fest? Is anyone really going to choose another class!?!? (aside from sith warrior)

  • Benno #2 2 years ago

    Me. Jedis will just be like Night Elf Hunters called Legolas when Wow came out. It doesn't appeal to everyone.

    I like the sound of a bounty hunter.

  • Skorms-Boss #3 2 years ago

    have to agree with Fleisch, this is going to end up 49% Jedi 49% Sith 1% Smuggler and 1% Bounty Hunter..

    why couldn't they have just made KotOR III?!

  • Digital_Forge #4 2 years ago

    I do miss my Droid Engineer from Galaxies.

    I'm with Benno on this one, not everyone will want to be a Jedi or Sith Lord - but yeah sure there'll be loads of them about at launch but as It's an MMO people will soon realise it'll be quite balanced, hopefully anyway.

    Quite like the sound of Smuggler myself, but will see.

  • Antaios #5 2 years ago

    They should have stuck to what SWG did in the beginning; making the Jedi status ridiculously hard to get to. Now it will be a massive Jedi vs. Sith fest which could seriously ruin the experience for me personally.

  • viper_h #6 2 years ago

    Not everyone will want to be a Jedi or Sith?

    Have you even seen Star Wars?

    You guys are idiots.
    Edited by 1 at 02/11/09 @ 09:46

  • DaveTHX #7 2 years ago

    Bounty hunter for me. I'm sure at some point I'll roll a Jedi, but working for the Sith and hunting Jedi seems more appealing.

  • MikeR90 #8 2 years ago

    I understand that Jedi V Sith battles should be commonplace in TOR, but unlocking them from the start is a bad move. And the biggest mistake SWG ever made IS unlocking the Jedi from the start. The holocron system worked perfectly, making Jedi status a reward, as it should be. Now there will only be Jedi/Sith players (i'll bet mostly Sith, which will unbalance the game -> e.g. Destruction majority in WAR, at least when I was playing)

  • PenguinJim #9 2 years ago

    @MikeR90, Star Wars Galaxies did not have the option to be a Jedi when it first released. They were not "unlocked from the start".

    @people who think everyone is going to be a Jedi (especially viper_h's comment "Have you even seen Star Wars?";), whiny Jedi Luke vs cool smuggler Han? And let's face it, just that glimpse of all those bounty hunters in Empire was unforgettable. There will be plenty of Jedi and Sith Warriors, but I'm sure a lot of other classes will be represented too. Personally, I'd fear the Great Jedi Nerf of February 2010. ;)
    Edited by 1 at 02/11/09 @ 10:12

  • Britesparc Verified Creative, ITV #10 2 years ago

    If I do get TOR - and I might not, as I'm not a MMO fan particularly - I think I'd be a Smuggler just to be different.

    But wouldn't the Jedi just own the game? They're the super-powered ninjas of the SW world. They'd kick everyone else's arse. Plus, in-universe, wouldn't there be far fewer Jedi than any other class?

  • Shinetop #11 2 years ago

    How the hell was it Galaxies' "mistake"? I thought the decision in Galaxies made perfect sense. The Jedi were supposed to be a rare breed that you wouldn't just encounter on any street corner, and they're supposed to have some degree of wisdom and insight to them. Which is why it took tremendous effort to become one: the process alone immediately weeded out the "lol wut hlz plz!" crowd and only people who truly cared for it became one.

    Granted, in SWOTR's timeline Jedi were much more common, but allowing people to just choose the Jedi class from the start is going to be murder on the level of immersion when the wise and noble jedi all act like idiotic 13 year old griefers.

  • WinterSnowblind #12 2 years ago

    The Jedi and Sith are definitely going to be popular classes, but I don't think it's going to be that bad. I think Bioware have done a great job on making the other classes interesting enough.

    I mean look at the Bounty Hunter, you get to be a Boba Fett esque tough guy with a wrist mounted flamethrower and a jet pack, that doesn't appeal to you at all? Or a cocky Han Solo style smuggler that can use cover fire and amusing quips, and then there's the Republic Soldier class, the Clone/Storm trooper that wears heavy armour and uses big guns.

  • Fleisch #13 2 years ago

    Its not that the other classes don't look cool, they do, they look super cool. They just don't have force powers or lightsabers....

    On PVP servers its going to be all out Jedi vs Sith...which will be cool for 10minutes and then just dull.
    PVE it doesn't really matter as no one will get anywhere if there is an instance run of 5 jedi dpsing away. Theres no force heal....
    on RP servers.....good bloody luck explaining how everyone is suddenly force equiped and how theres an elite force of 3bounty hunters who seem to be able to kill people that can sense their very presence...hmmmmmm.

  • Shinetop #14 2 years ago

    Also, how are bounty hunters and smugglers ever going to stand a chance against Jedi and Sith without making the Jedi and Sith look incredibly incompetent?

  • Murton #15 2 years ago

    Seems to me that the more we hear about this game the more I ask myself, why? Star Wars Galaxies already did all of this, learn from their successes and mistakes and you'll have a new king of the MMO sector, Bioware seem to be choosing their own path, hopefully it'll lead us somewhere good. Two big questions for me though:

    Jedi and Sith available from the start? That's going to make force sensitivity more common than it should be by a factor of millions. Sure not everyone will roll a Jedi/Sith, but with eight classes on display and 2 of them being force equipped, do the math. Not that you would but if you did get a perfect distribution that's still 25% of all player characters being force users, was every fourth man in Star Wars a force user, no. Even in the KOTOR games on which this is supposed to be based had them as a very rare class of individual, they certainly didn't have a full standing armies of force equipped warriors ready to fight as we will see here.

    The biggest why for me though is why are smugglers tied to the Republic (Republic = government and smugglers = criminals, it makes no sense) and why are Bounty Hunters tied to the Sith. Smugglers and Bounty Hunters don't swear allegiance to political types, they're in it purely for the money. All of the regular classes should be strictly neutral and players be given the option of choosing a side if they want to, perhaps with each side offering each class different perks.


    Look forward to seeing the hands-on later, should hopefully learn something there that might answer some of my questions.

  • actionfitz #16 2 years ago

    @ Shinetop
    "I thought the decision in Galaxies made perfect sense. The Jedi were supposed to be a rare breed that you wouldn't just encounter on any street corner"

    well look at it from a players perspective...
    I just bought ToR after a couple of years excited anticipation, I'm a starwars nut, I log into the game on the first day ready to play as my bad-ass lightsaber wielding nerd-wet-dream avatar...
    You fucking what? you want me to put hundreds of hours into the game to get to the 'Content' I bought the game for in the first place?

    I guess it's up to Bioware to make the rest of the classes compelling enough to stand beside the jedi etc.
    I like the 'Warcraft Nightelf Hunter' analogy personally. yeah there might be loads of them, but provided the class balance is sort of equal... they'll be that much sweeter to gank. :p

    This:
    [link url=http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=CJvxEjGpIqU
    ]http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=CJvxEjGpIqU
    [/link]

    hehe.

  • viper_h #17 2 years ago

    I'm just saying, when you mention Star Wars to someone, they always associate it with Darth Vader and lightsabers, not Han Solo and blasters. I don't see how anyone who isn't a massive SW nerd is NOT going to pick a Jedi/Sith.

  • TeaFiend #18 2 years ago

    Because it is an MMO and being part of a popular class means you are less likely to go into groups as people need a balance of classes. See rogues and hunters in WoW, both are popular but you rarely need more than one for a dungeon. People will see they are getting no action as one and roll something else to balance it out.

  • mkreku #19 2 years ago

    What class was Jabba the Hutt? I just want to sit and drool on myself all day long, surrounded by hot chicks who feed me grapes.

  • penhalion #20 2 years ago

    They can easily balance the game if they make the Jedi and Sith paths as hard as they should be. It takes a long time for a padawan to become a knight and even then there is no guarantee you'll survive the trials. If they make the classes too powerful, too early, then I agree it's going to be a jedi vs sith game with a few side smugglers you never actually see.

  • YourMessageHere #21 2 years ago

    This is why not to make a Star Wars MMO - if the universe is suddenly brimming over with what ought to be the rarest sort of person, it doesn't really encourage participation in the fiction. If everyone wants to be a Jedi and everyone wants to play with their friends, make it an RPG with the ability to drop in and out of each other's games whenever - not a giant Jedi-fest.

  • Senate #22 2 years ago

    I think the smuggler looks ace and look forward to owning any sith looking for trouble.

  • Rubarack #23 2 years ago

    The players are only going to consist of a small proportion of the populace, if there's room in the fiction for a few thousand Jedi it will work fine, if not the player base is handled rather loosely, gien each player has the same backstory and quests you could easily argue they only represent a raids worth of individuals.

    I can see a decent split of Jedi, Sith and Bounty Hunters, but with the Smugglers skills being "hide behind a rock" and "kick" I can't see them being all that appealing.

  • Shinetop #24 2 years ago

    well look at it from a players perspective...
    I just bought ToR after a couple of years excited anticipation, I'm a starwars nut, I log into the game on the first day ready to play as my bad-ass lightsaber wielding nerd-wet-dream avatar...
    You fucking what? you want me to put hundreds of hours into the game to get to the 'Content' I bought the game for in the first place?

    This is like saying "What? You're saying that I can't instantly skip to the last level to see the content I bought in the first place?". It makes no sense.

  • Crea #25 2 years ago

    You guys bemoaning the availability of Sith and Jedi may have a point from a lore/consistency stance, but at the end of the day Galaxies was a colossal underachiever, largely (IMO) due to the fact that while it was (initially) an ably-designed non-themepark MMO, the wider market was looking for something that was a lot more iconic Star Wars. And that means Jedis and glory-for-all. Galaxies has its admirers, but you can't argue that it pulled in the numbers it should have.

    The market has spoken, which is why Bioware are making a very safe, polished, theme-park style MMO on WoW lines. With some innovations here and there, to be sure, but with EA probably dropping $50m+ into this they're going to give the paying public what they want.


  • Sunyavadin #26 2 years ago

    "the wider market was looking for something that was a lot more iconic Star Wars. And that means Jedis and glory-for-all. Galaxies has its admirers, but you can't argue that it pulled in the numbers it should have. "

    And yet they LOST the largest number of users, without gaining a similar (Or as your logic would suggest GREATER) number of new users, when they made Jedi available to everyone? This should say something.

  • Drakron #27 2 years ago

    "BioWare not repeating Galaxies' mistake."
    Or
    "BioWare repeating Galaxies' mistake."

  • Mono_X #28 2 years ago

    Star Wars is about larger than life heroes not the toilet cleaning droid.

    And the most interesting and unique thing about Star Wars are the Jedi and the Force.

    Outside of the SW fanboys nobody really cares about smugglers or Bounty Hunters.

    That's why games like Jedi Academy get released instead of space chav simulator. That's why at it's heart KOTOR was about Jedi.

  • Crea #29 2 years ago

    @Sunyavadin

    I perhaps didn't make my point clear enough. Yes, they did indeed lose subscribers once they caved in and made Jedi more attainable. But the game had ALREADY by that point failed to reach the potential indicated by the most bankable license in gaming. The Galaxies audience was a standard MMO audience of a couple hundred thousand, an audience predisposed to world-y MMOs in the Koster vein. That's grossly underselling the license potential, which is why they kept trying to (unsuccessfully) shock it into life, why they're rebooting the franchise. It's like Marvel taking a second bite at the Hulk movie - they KNEW they pooch screwed the first from the get go, and the major mistake wasn't about Jedi, or Holocrons, or skill-based development or any of that crap, it was the fact that the game just wasn't Star Wars enough to break out the MMO niche, when it absolutely was the license to do just that.

    What it SHOULD have been from the beginning was a theme park MMO designed to bring in a mass audience. At least from a business perspective. That's what they're doing now.

  • Lin #30 2 years ago

    you realise that two of other classes are probably jedi as well right? probably something more powers-based, like the jedi consular from KOTOR.

    it doesn't matter if the majority of people play jedi. they may be a tiny minority of the galaxy, but they're a pretty substantial part of the list of significant characters in the films - that's the point of reference you should be looking at. leave the moisture farming to the npcs. we already know this is going to be a highly instanced game; more of a massively co-op RPG. you're probably not going to be running into many other players at all, unless you really want to.

  • Lamont #31 2 years ago

    If they made the Bounty Hunter and Smuggler 1% more powerful every hardcore player will want to be them. It's all about balance, this is a non-issue. If people overload one class just give the least played classes a little bonus and voila soon everyone is playing them.

  • Valland #32 2 years ago

    Am I the only one who finds Tropper appealing? I'm definately going with that class.
    I have to admit though, Sith looks awesome.