Star Wars: The Old Republic

[Regorium]

Anyone still need to get into a weekend test?

Curse is giving away some beta keys that will guarantee your invite into the next weekend play period.

http://www.curse.com/betas/swtor-na

If you don't want to register I grabbed one just in case and can send it over.

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by Blaster86

This is the thing: that is only a factor because it is new. People cared about what the WoW quests said too when it first dropped. That will fade after a toon or two. The fact that lightside/darkside points can be earned is moot since it's fairly obvious in most cases with what answer gets you what and never mind the fact it's the exact same as faction grinding. I'd much prefer the phasing that Cataclysm introduced, but won't be there.

Actually, it isn't fairly obvious, it is completely obvious! There is a little red sith icon beside your choice if you make the evil one or a blue republic icon if you make a good one.

What ultimately kills MMOs is bugs - I can tell you this from experience, but probably one of the main reasons why WoW was able to generate so many subs was it's focus on customer service. They fixed crippling bugs in 2-3 days. When I played UO (an EA MMORPG), it could take 6 months - 1 year + for certain bugs to be patched and fixed.

I'll believe it when I see it, but unless EA's customer focus and programming team is really dedicated to the long term health of this project, it could be a major downfall. Based on EA's business model, I don't know if it is.

And to answer questions is, yes I am going to try it, but will it hold my interest after 3 months? Will the PvP be remotely rewarding / not completely and utterly item based (will playing somewhat casually even allow me to compete)?

[MarchHare]

They fixed crippling bugs in 2-3 days.

That depends on what you classify as a "crippling" bug. I remember, for one example, that C'Thun (a 40-man raid boss in vanilla) was literally unkillable because of a bug. It took weeks or even months for Blizzard to even acknowledge the issue.

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

That depends on what you classify as a "crippling" bug. I remember, for one example, that C'Thun (a 40-man raid boss in vanilla) was literally unkillable because of a bug. It took weeks or even months for Blizzard to even acknowledge the issue.

EA allowed / did not fix gold duping multiple times during it's history with at least 2x taking 1 year + to fix. Single handedly ruining the economy of the game and punishing very few (very archaic tracking system) and not being able to remove the gold from the system.

[Raekwon]

If anyone wants it heres a key


DWDG-PNCS-MPW5-A2EM

Originally Posted by Regorium

Anyone still need to get into a weekend test?

Curse is giving away some beta keys that will guarantee your invite into the next weekend play period.

http://www.curse.com/betas/swtor-na

If you don't want to register I grabbed one just in case and can send it over.

[MaDMaN_26]

Originally Posted by CaramonLS

Actually, it isn't fairly obvious, it is completely obvious! There is a little red sith icon beside your choice if you make the evil one or a blue republic icon if you make a good one.

I believe this is a option you can turn off and on and those indicators may even be removed completely for release, I do not remember seeing them during my beta... not sure if that's because I turned it off, they were off by default or they were already gone. But I think it's really up to you how obvious you make want to make it. Although you can hit escape during any conversation to reset it and start over if you do something you don’t want to do. Expanding on that, and based on my experience it is not always top answer is good, middle is neutral and bottom is evil… it does change up a bit.

You commented on EA being the key to success… and I do agree with you’re their track record is not great, but Bioware seems to be driving this more than EA… it remains to be seen, but it sure seems like the commitment is there.

Originally Posted by Blaster86

"We have a brand new shiny shoe. It's awesome and totally fancy but fits exactly like your favorite old pair of shoes." That's the problem. They didn't copy WoW. They didn't copy Cataclysm. They copied a 5 year old game. Vanilla WoW.

I couldn’t disagree with you more. Does it use some wow mechanics, many of them… sure. As has been stated copying wow was not only necessary but the smart thing to do… Do I agree it resembles Vanilla wow…? Not at all, not even kind of… I don’t see how you can make that comparison. Did you play vanilla? I think time and many many patches and expansions have softened your perspective… this is hardly anything like vanilla wow. Vanilla wow sucked and in today’s world would be considered unplayable. It was just slightly better than a stale EQ.

Originally Posted by Blaster86

This is the thing: that is only a factor because it is new. People cared about what the WoW quests said too when it first dropped. That will fade after a toon or two. The fact that lightside/darkside points can be earned is moot since it's fairly obvious in most cases with what answer gets you what and never mind the fact it's the exact same as faction grinding. I'd much prefer the phasing that Cataclysm introduced, but won't be there.

I disagree again, reading wow quests got old fast and I started skipping them level 10 or 15 if it was obvious the object was go get a leaf and bring it here. Additionally each class story arc quests are completely unique and are with your character until level cap (50). In SWTOR even if I’m dead tired my eyes are sore from a day of reading scripts and code on my PC at work I can just sit back and watch the movie version of quests. And I’ll say it again the ability to interact with the conversation instead of just saying accept or decline at the end is fantastic… even if its just a sarcastic quip or a threat that this better be worth my time it invest me in going and collecting that item and bringing it back… it’s hard to describe but I cared more about the typical leveling/filler/stupid quests that all MMO’s have. Maybe not true if you go into this game rolling your eyes, determined to dismiss it all as superficial and stupid, but I went in wanting to like it, with an open mind and I found it very refreshing.

Originally Posted by Blaster86

It is WoW in space. That's not nay saying, that's fact saying. That doesn't make it terrible. Vanilla WoW was and is playable, but the fact they have all this ground work WoW has laid and they opted to ignore all of it and start from the same place WoW did.

No it’s a StarWars based MMO using StarWar canon and environments. Hardly any of it actually happens in space. Other than you have a ship a small space shooter mini game and planets. Your adventures are all on the ground or inside ships… space is not really a factor other than on the map/navigation screen. Wow has become simply by its dominance the definition of MMO – I do not get people on one hand blaming SWTOR for copying wow and then on the other saying it’s not as evolved as WOW. It has clear MMO components – and yes many of those are right out of wow, but since WOW is the definition of a MMO… what choice did they have? Does SWTOR have the maturity of a 7-8 year old MMO that’s prints money? No. Does it do nothing to meet the very high standard today’s wow sets; I think it’s doing fine. E.g. Vanilla wow had no Battlegrounds, SWTOR only has three and by all accounts and my personal opinion they are a blast (I didn’t get to play all but fansite personnel have) Every SW instance you visit while leveling has a lvl 50 heroic mode for end game activity they even have a raid at launch. Vanilla wow patched their raid in after launch.

Originally Posted by Blaster86

No, I wanted an MMO. Go back to the start of this thread and see how excited I was. My excitement waned as report after report painted the picture most people were afraid of.

It’s statements like this that make me think I’m wasting my time… you decided this game was going to suck before you played it for even a minute. Based on peoples on the internetz opinions. Other people that had never actually played it.

Originally Posted by Blaster86

Agreed. Know what else is a special kind of dumb? Ignoring all improvements that juggernaut has made and starting back at step one.

How have they done this?

Originally Posted by Blaster86

Not what I've heard. Not what I've read and after this weekend not what I've seen. It has all the crippling flaws of Vanilla WoW. How many people will walk right back over to WoW after getting griefed for two hours while waiting for one spawn for a quest. Players from Vanilla WoW will want nothing to do with that again, people that started after won't have the patience.

Again what vanilla specific flaws does it have that do not exist in wow today or after Burning Crusade came out. You keep saying Vanilla specifically… So I’m really curious what this Vanilla specific MMO crippling flaw is.

Originally Posted by Blaster86

I'm going to love playing it. But the question is will it hold my attention after the 3 months? Only if the end game content isn't as bleak as it is expected to be. If it is, I'm out just like I was with WoW when the Cata end-game was uninteresting.

Really? Sounds like your looking forward to hating it. You give them absolutely no credit for anything good, talk like it’s a pile of the worst code ever compiled since vanilla wow, worse than that actually… I don’t see how you could “love it” or why you’d even bother trying it.
The amount of criticism you have for this game vs. the amount of personal experience you have is wildly disproportionate. I just do not understand why you would get so negative about something that really isn’t that negative of an experience. This is not STO or a thousand other MMO’s that have been hyped and sucked… it truly is fun to play… will the end game be there, NO ONE knows this answer but at least there is content… Only time will tell if remains interesting…
Worst case scenario there are 8 completely unique story lines that resemble a KOTOR RPG.

[Icon]

I just can't get past how the game looks. It's just not drawing me in. Especially when you combine it with the gameplay... it just all seems very dated.

[MaDMaN_26]

Originally Posted by Icon

I just can't get past how the game looks. It's just not drawing me in. Especially when you combine it with the gameplay... it just all seems very dated.

I guess style is a personal thing, I thought it was a pretty decent looking game... I never once thought it felt old or dated while I was playing... didn't even cross my mind...


oh side note... someone mentioned something about launch issues and standing around waiting for a mobs to spawn to complete quests... can't remember who.

Just a fyi - the initial release will be staggered with pre-order folks getting in up to 5 days early to help stagger the rush. Secondly after a set number of toons are in a zone a new instance of that zone will be spawned. A bit of a pain for grouping as I may be in instance 12 and you are in instance 4. But they changed how it works from early beta - you can now switch instances on the fly. It does not move you back to the beginning, and does not share a Cool Down with your hearthstone anymore. Basically if you run up to a quest object and some one is camping it- change instances and do your thing. I have yet to experience this as it was working the old way when I beta'd but a Dev said this is how it will be for launch at the fan-site summit.

anyone has other questions I'm pretty aware of what has been said publicly and not NDA breaking and what is not so ask and I may know...

[Icon]

Originally Posted by MaDMaN_26

I guess style is a personal thing, I thought it was a pretty decent looking game... I never once thought it felt old or dated while I was playing... didn't even cross my mind...

I think I was just expecting more from it... I knew it was going to be A LOT like WoW, and that was ok... but not only does it draw similarities from it, but it also looks like vanilla WoW, which was underwhelming for me (mostly the textures & monochromatic color choices of a lot of the areas).

Maybe it just looks too much like the Jedi Knight series (good games mind you)... low res, plain, flat, etc textures. Yes they've upped the polycount & so on... but there's just something about it that's still very "meh".

Jedi Knight:



ToR:

[MaDMaN_26]

Originally Posted by Icon

I think I was just expecting more from it... I knew it was going to be A LOT like WoW, and that was ok... but not only does it draw similarities from it, but it also looks like vanilla WoW, which was underwhelming for me (mostly the textures & monochromatic color choices of a lot of the areas).

Maybe it just looks too much like the Jedi Knight series (good games mind you)... low res, plain, flat, etc textures. Yes they've upped the polycount & so on... but there's just something about it that's still very "meh".

The default graphic settings are not max'ed out - I had to go into settings and turn them all up... I had them maxxed out while playing, not sure if that's what happened to you perhaps? "Vanilla wow" - thats pretty harsh, I sure did not feel that way. I wont say they blew me away or were ground breaking, but I also didn't feel like I had just stepped into the original Duke Nukem with lightsabers either.

Anyway there are tons of gameplay videos released now so people can look and see for them selves, so its kind of a moot topic... but I'm sad to hear your were so severely underwhelmed.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by Icon

ToR:

Are you sure this is actually a screenshot from TOR? It looks like KOTOR1 (released in 2003) to me. Two of the characters look exactly like HK-47 and Mission, and there was a scene where your party was ambushed by Dark Jedi on Tatooine that looked just like that.

[Muffins]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Are you sure this is actually a screenshot from TOR? It looks like KOTOR1 (released in 2003) to me. Two of the characters look exactly like HK-47 and Mission, and there was a scene where your party was ambushed by Dark Jedi on Tatooine that looked just like that.

Considering the bottom left corner of the pic says © 200X (X looks like either a 3 or 5) I would say your right.

[MaDMaN_26]

Oh work stripped the screenshots out. I didnt know there was any... lol I wondered what his "TOR:" bit was for, lol.

I will take a look when I'm home.

[nik-]

ok yeah ... my TOR looked alot better than that. Are you sure that's not Star Wars Galaxies?

[MaDMaN_26]

Originally Posted by Icon

ToR:

Ya thats not SW:TOR that's KOTOR.


Try these (huge images... probably not NDA compliant *shrug*)
http://www.betacake.net/2011/11/14/s...y-screenshots/

[Esoteric]

lol that's definitely kotor. Probably my favorite game of all time. I'd like to replay the two kotor games before tor comes out, but skyrim definitely killed that plan.

[MarchHare]

The NDA is no longer in effect. Go ahead, all you in the beta, tell us all about the game.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...9#edit10939389

[Muffins]

I really enjoyed the game for the most part. Played an Agent and an Inquisitor and enjoyed both story lines (played both up to lvl 11ish).

A couple thoughts:

The graphics were decent for an MMO (although I was at max settings so I can't say about lower res/detail). There were quite a few graphical bugs that hopefully get ironed out before launch.

The conversations were cool for the most part, although some did drag on a bit. I always seemed to choose the option that made me seem like a prick (very entertaining).

[MaDMaN_26]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

The NDA is no longer in effect. Go ahead, all you in the beta, tell us all about the game.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...9#edit10939389

Yes I saw that today.. very nice... although It's hard to know what to say or tell people... its not like there was this overwhelming secret item I was dying to tell people...

Any specific questions?

[PowerPlayoffs06]

The Legacy System sounds like it'll finally allow players to have a surname for their characters. That was one of my first beefs about this game - not being able to have a family name in a Star Wars game was ridiculous.

http://www.swtorstrategies.com/2011/...ntent=FaceBook