Play an extensive variety of favorite match types online against countless opponents for the ultimate WWE experience! The Royal Rumble is playable online for the first time ever and the number of players has been increased to six. The Community Creation feature has been improved drastically as well, the user interface is a lot more intuitive and searching through all the creations is a lot easier, thanks to a better category breakdown and a better rating system.
The Royal Rumble is going online for the first time ever. Yes, now you and 11 others can pop online and face off in one of the cornerstones of Sports Entertainment. The addition of human opponents using tactics and button-tapping skills makes the Rumble a lot more entertaining. Now, only six people can be in the ring at a time (This is for all online modes – yes, you can have six-player normal matches this time around), but when the other six are spectating, quizzes (Who will be the next to enter? Who will be eliminated next?) pop up to keep them involved.
When you get eliminated, you come back as the next available Superstar until the Rumble is said and done. When a winner's been declared, you're kicked to the stats screen where – if you're good – you're rewarded with a ton of Prestige Points. These points govern your online rank. As you eliminate people and keep yourself in the match, bonuses pop up on the screen, and these are all tallied in the end so that you can see how far you've advanced on your quest to move up from the "jobber" rank.
The Prestige Points were in last year's game, but you'll be able to bank way more this year – commenting on a creation, downloading someone else's work and so on earn you XP. Basically, whatever you do online is contributing to you becoming an online dynamo. Speaking of rating content, the stars are going to be a bit more diverse this year. Whereas in the past, content had to be full five stars, four stars or so on, averages will come into play so that there's a difference between 4.5 stars and 4.6 stars online. Plus, leaderboards will now track the best of the best in single matches, cage matches, Royal Rumbles, Community Creations, and so on.
Also, in last year's Community Creations whatever you downloaded could not be touched or edited. Well enough of that! THQ heard you and they agreed with you. This year anything you download in community creations can be edited to your liking. Be it look, moveset, entrance, whatever. You want it? You got it!
From THQ producer Bryan Williams in exclusive to TheSmackDownHotel:
"The multiplayer aspect of the online experience in SmackDown Vs. RAW 2010 was most certainly not the quality we envisioned when we set out. Believe me when I tell you that, outside of Community Creations, the Design Team was not happy with how much lag and latency the user experienced in the end product. Can I guarantee a lag free online experience for SmackDown Vs. RAW 2011? As much as I’d love to make that guarantee to you and everyone else reading this, I can’t. I don’t think any game developer can make such a guarantee as there are simply way too many factors and conditions associated with online gameplay. However, with all that said, our primary focus for SmackDown Vs. RAW 2011 (in terms of our online component) has been on improving lag in order to make playing online comparable to that of playing offline. I recently played an online match with some members of our team and I can honestly say that I’ve experienced some of the best online matches ever for this series. We are fully aware of the issues and are doing everything that we can to offer players a rich and rewarding online gameplay experience."
