OT: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware PC MMO)

[TCrouch]

Is anybody else going to be playing this? The early start begins today for the early preorders. My code wasn't redeemed until October 2nd so I probably won't start for a couple of days (they're releasing the early start invites in waves).

I played in 3 different beta test sessions and can see how this will be immensely popular to some (like me) and irritating to others. Considering I have a long history of raving about MMOs when they release, I'll try to temper this...although it's difficult since it's a freaking Star Wars MMO with Mass Effect-style conversations in it! Considering Bioware is my favorite developer (with a mulligan issued for Dragon Age 2--fun game, but calling it Dragon Age was a stretch), Mass Effect 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, and Star Wars still has me feel like a nerd in a Jedi Outfit at a film release, this is tough...I'll just list off what I feel are the pros and cons.

PROS:
- Conversations are incredibly immersive for an MMO. You end up "killing X number of Y" like any MMO, but you're fighting bigass critters quicker than most others. Even with the typical kill and fetch quests, getting sucked into an overarching story line does wonders for the grind.

- Combat animations are actually pretty cool. It doesn't have a true autoattack--you have to hit the attack button when it cycles through (much like City of Heroes had), but if you're a melee character and your character blocks, he actually puts the weapon out and BLOCKS...go figure. It's harder to explain than it is to see, but the combat ends up looking like they're actually fighting instead of just going through separate dance routines. However, it's evolutionary and not revolutionary, because the same sh*t is still happening behind the scenes.

- Companions are interesting. If you're a tank class, you always get a ranged companion to start. If you're a healing class, you get a tank. They aren't as good as having a real player with you, but a pair of players grouped up has 4 characters in it, which is fairly formidable. Each player has his/her companion, which helps quite a bit. You can apparently have companion-specific quests and romance stories, but I haven't seen much of that. I've seen the odd conversation (the Dashade for the Sith Inquisitor is hilarious. He wants to devour everything and constantly comments on how he'll eventually devour your soul. You have to keep putting him in his place).

- The game world itself is gorgeous. Not quite realistic, but not quite as cartoony as WoW. If you have ever seen the Clone Wars animated series, it's very similar. I ran through about 3 planets before I decided I didn't want to be seeing all of the stuff in beta and leaving nothing for retail, but every location I saw was pretty impressive (other than Coruscant, which is like one big huge city so it's tough to make that look better than a big gray city).

- Some of the choices you get while questing are mighty impressive. *MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD* I won't spoil the specific plotline, but you might have a main objective to kill a high-ranking enemy in a little story arc. To do this, you get assigned the task of killing his son. You get there and run into his wife and kid. Then the wife offers up the main bad guy instead, if you spare the son. How you choose to proceed COULD be the illusion of choice, but I'm not sure. The choice I made definitely had repercussions later, so I'm curious to see what happens if I change that outcome. It could be the exact same thing, but it was still an "oh, s***!" moment when I first experienced it.

- AOE LOOTING! I can't tell you how much cooler it is to slaughter a whole horde of bad guys and then loot one body and have all of them loot. It sounds like a little thing, but MMO players know that you spend as much time looting as fighting sometimes. Now it's 1 click and you're off.

- Every Class I've played has been incredibly fun. Tanks feel like walking tanks. Dual-saber wielding Marauders/Sentinels (Dark and Light side Jedi, respectively) have REDONKULOUS single target DPS. Troopers lay waste to entire groups of enemies in short order. But the most interesting one I've played was the Smuggler and Imperial Agent. Both of them have a "cover system", which is unique to an MMO as far as I know. Click the MMB and the character drops into cover in place, and certain abilities require cover. But when you run around the world, you see green outlines of a character silhouette, and clicking the MMB while looking at one of those has you somersault into cover at that position. This leads to a lot of cool firefights and timing patterns, because if you're behind cover, the blaster bolts can't hit you. When you attack, you stick your head up and expose yourself, so there's a rhythm you get to fighting this way. The dual-pistol-toting Gunslinger class is a hell of a lot of fun because of this, and what I may end up playing as my main as soon as I get in.

I can probably think of a bunch more, but here are some cons:

- The conversation system, while incredibly immersive, can be tough for people. If you're running a flashpoint, people get irritated if you don't press spacebar to skip cutscenes. Impatient people will probably hate seeing the conversations over and over, and you can't completely skip them and still advance. You can press space to skip individual lines, but pressing ESC will back all the way out and you re-do the whole thing.

- Combat still isn't ground breaking. You're hitting buttons to perform your specials, and it's the same thing that's been done for a decade. The animations help, but people will point to this as feeling "samey".

- Level 50 cap will probably be hit pretty quickly by people. Probably within a week or two. If that happens, they better have some pretty crazy endgame content, and I haven't seen it yet, but heard complaints on it.


So what you have is an incredibly immersive MMO that might end up being just like a single player game--play through once, or maybe once in each class, and then retire your character to a Legacy status, which then contributes to a "legacy xp pool". You give other characters bonuses through that pool....or something. Nobody's quite sure yet. But that system alone makes it sound like Bioware set it up to be played through multiple times with different characters, not with a single main that runs a lot of endgame content. That could be a big problem with the MMO crowd, but I can't say for certain what it's like at 50 yet.

So the question remains--anybody else preorder or plan on playing? I know my brother's guild is on the Canderous Ordo server, so I'll have my light side toons there. I haven't decided on a dark side server yet, though.

[Danimal]

I'm interested in it but since every MMO except WoW has gone free play within 6 months I am probably going to hold off.

[Danimal]

Wait so if you buy this game today you can't even play it for a week or more?

Sorry if that is a dumb question but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

[TCrouch]

It doesn't actually launch until the 20th. That's when you could buy it.

They have an early access promotion that allows early preorders in today. Guys who preordered on July 21st to the 27th are in now. Guys like me who didn't redeem preorder codes until early October probably won't get in until Friday or the weekend. They stagger the early access by preorder date to prevent insane population spikes and inability to complete quests by sending out early invite emails in waves.

I'm bummed I didn't preorder earlier, but they were pretty up front with the whole process. On the 20th, anybody could walk up to a store and buy it and play, which is the official launch date. A lot of these MMO's do "early access" starts for preorders so they avoid the rush of people just walking into a store and buying it on day one, but this is the first I've seen of them staggering the preorder access out.

[Gurantsu]

I have a code for a free download and I think 30 days of this. I know I'll never use it, so if someone is interested shoot me a PM.

[TCrouch]

Resurrection of an old thread just to notify people of the expansion and how much it changed the game.

Companions can all perform any role (Healer, DPS, Tank) and no longer must be geared, it's all tied to your level. The world has been overhauled so that there's "level scaling" on a planet, where you could be level 60 and come and play on a starter planet with a friend, and you're scaled down to level 12 power. This is similar to Destiny, so there are fewer hurdles for friends wanting to play together.

This has been the single most-played game I've ever had, and I'm aware not many other guys like MMOs. But I've actually level capped a player from every class, both factions, finished all the story content, done all the expansions...and I'm usually a guy that doesn't get past level 20 in most MMO's.

If you liked SWTOR but burned out, or never gave it a shot but had interest, now is the time to try it. If anybody has any questions on it, I can certainly answer them, although I expect this bump will just filter off the front page shortly

[Danimal]

Was actually considering getting back into this. However you need to pay to get the new expansion right?

[TCrouch]

Yeah, but that doesn't come in until level 60. The core game changed (companions, level scaling, etc.) without it. So you have a lot of time before you have to decide on an expansion.

I would highly recommend it, of course, as you build your alliance in the end game at 65 and can recruit companions from across classes and even have them die. It's pretty crazy, building your own private army.