With BioWare's Star Wars MMO coming out in Spring 2011, players will have to find ways to maintain interest in their current games until then. Read on for some tips from ZAM!

With BioWare's sad announcement that their coveted Star Wars: The Old Republic won't be released until the spring of 2011, fans around the world are lamenting the fact that they'll have to "do something else" until this ultra anticipated MMORPG lands at their feet. For some, this information doesn't really change anything; it just means that they'll be romping around Coruscant in Jedi Robes at a later-than-anticipated time. For others, however, SW:TOR may have been the one shining beacon that would save them from the boredom of their current gaming diet.

As well, for the budget minded gamer, this ambitious Star Wars MMO may very well be the one MMORPG purchase that they would have liked to make over the next few years. Perhaps they are playing World of Warcraft and have no real desire to purchase the Cataclysmic events that are to occur after the Wrath of the Lich King. Either way, the end point here is that the SW:TOR release date so far in the future is no good, especially when most fans were making plans to migrate to this game en masse the moment BioWare opened their pearly gates.

So what's a gamer to do in the meantime? Well, since MMORPGs are what we do here at ZAM, we have some tips for both the bored MMO player and the gamer on a budget that may just help tide you over until SW:TOR comes out in a year.

Give your MMO a new look!

This is a concept that is often overlooked when a player starts to get bored with his or her respective MMO. The problem here is especially apparent in players who are entrenched in their endgame activities - the closer you get to finishing off your raiding set, the slower your gear intake becomes. Thus, players may spend weeks (maybe even a month or two!) staring at the same old avatar in the same old gear using the same old user interface.

So change it up!

A common cure for individuals suffering from boredom in real life is for them to change their image in order to get them out of their rut, and this is no different for tired MMO gamers. Some MMORPGs (like World of Warcraft) that allow you to completely customize your UI can be refreshed by simply deleting your old UI and recreating a new one from scratch. Not only will you be able to streamline your new interface to better suit your needs, but this will definitely give your game a new look and potentially resurrect some of the interest that you were losing.

If your chosen MMO isn't quite so easy-going with players modifying the in-game UI, a more risky approach would be to look into model changing to get a new look without having to get a new set of gear. While it's obvious that model changing can be exploited in a negative way (like giving a rare monster model giant spikes so that it's easier to see), many MMO developers will not persecute a player who swaps their Staff model for a giant fish (or vice versa if it's a really ugly fish…).

Not only is it difficult to tell if a player has changed his or her in-model (because the change is only apparent on their computer, and nobody else's), but purely cosmetic changes can really pump new interest into the game that may have been stagnant otherwise. Have you been using that piece of rare armor for a few months now? Change the model to something new, but be sure to back up your files!