[AsheMan]

I got into the beta in mid June. I created an Imperial Agent.

General Impressions:

The graphics are good. I liked the look of the planet I was on and the atmosphere was decent.

The gameplay is quite standard for an MMO. There is no auto attack, but you are essentially just hitting 1, 2, 1, 1, 4, etc. as you cycle through your attacks.

My Imperial Agent is able to take cover in predetermined positions (you see a light green hologram of a person taking cover where you can take cover).

The quests were all standard kill X, collect Y, talk to so-and-so.

I ran into a couple broken quests, which bothered me quite a bit. I'm sure they will get tweaked by release or have already.

The voice acting is good, and everything is voice acted, but did anyone else feel the echo/reverb was insanely high? Everyone sounds like they are talking in a big sewer pipe or cave or something even when you're standing there talking to someone in their house or outside. I wrote numerous complaints about it when prompted to give feedback during the beta test.

There were some decent named bosses out in the world that you can run into, but for the most part it was solo content or small group content. I did not run any instances/dungeons. I did not leave the starting planet for my Imperial Agent.

On the technical side, it ran decent for me. I can't recall my FPS, but it was not stellar, but totally playable. I hope they improve the performance before release.

My hype for this game on a scale of 1-10 went from a 10 to about a 3 after playing the beta. I will more than likely buy the game, but it was not addictive enough for me to even want to play the beta beyond level 10. I did not have any friends in the beta, so I kind of just ran around soloing everything. I also knew that I would likely buy the game and didn't really want to spoil the fun I get from experiencing the game for the first time. I quit playing the beta after the first weekend. I kept getting invited back, but the idea of downloading 30gb everytime they opened a new beta session was ridiculous.

I'm not the best person to give information because even though I've been in the beta for 5 months now, I probably played for three days total.

In short, seems like a solid MMO, but not too different than what you can get already. The Star Wars theme and voice acting will set it apart for those that care.

[perfect]

TL;DR
I do not recommend SW:TOR. It is a single player game that they are charging you monthly for.

Originally Posted by AsheMan

...My hype for this game on a scale of 1-10 went from a 10 to about a 3 after playing the beta....

Mine went from a 7 to a 4. I didn't have much hope to begin with (I want to believe) and I was not disappointed with my imagined disappointment.

I concur with most of what AsheMan said.

I played a Trooper. It's pretty much standard MMO fair. The quests were nice with the whole voice acting/cut scene thing and the story is good.

I did not have any issue with reverb, Ashe.

Ran great for me. No crashes, no major bugs.

It's just so...boring. Quest points are laid out for you, no real need to read the quests (or listen to the quest givers). Just go to highlighted area, kill things until highlight goes away, go back and get reward. Over and over.

And that's all well and good for casual gamers. BUT then there are the Flashpoints. These are instanced story quests. I found and did two of them. First time I did the first one, it took us three and a half hours. By the time I got 'good' at that one (knew what I was doing), I could get it done in two hours. The second one I left after four hours. Never completed it.

How is this geared to casual gamers? While it is true you don't NEED to do them, they have the good loot and story. You'll want to do them. So, make it easier to level up solo but harder to group? Seems wonky. This is a MMO, right? How does this build community?

The great thing about the Flashpoints is the story. It's really well done. If you have a group of four players and you encounter a NPC, there are typically three answers to any question. Sec, I'm explaining badly.

So you find the BadGuy. He begs you for mercy. You have three options: Let him go, Arrest him, Kill him. You pick a choice. You get Light Side or Dark Side points based on that choice. However, your other three team members also picked things. It rolls randomly between you to see who 'wins' the response. So you picked Arrest Him. Two others picked Kill Him and the fourth picked Let Him Go. You get, say, 5 Light Points. Kills got 10 Dark Side Points, Let Him Go got 10 Light Points. Then it rolls and picks Kill Him. So the Story progresses as if you killed the dude. The Kills get 50 more Dark Side Points but you don't earn any. If the Arrest was selected, you would progress as if you Arrested him and you would get 10 more Light Side Points. If the Let Him Go was picked, you'd progress as if you released him and the Let Him Go would get 50 more Light Side Points.

So, your choices in Flashpoints affect your Light/Dark Side Points (it's like a scale/balance) and if your choice is picked at random, you get more of your chosen points but other player's choices don't negatively affect you (other than you losing out on the bonus points).

It makes you want to group with your same faction (faction is the wrong word because you can be a Light Side Sith or a Dark Side Jedi) in order to improve the odds that your selection is picked.

[mmorpeegee]

Thanks, I read all.

Originally Posted by perfect

It's just so...boring.

That's like the bottom line for this entire industry. I understand why it's like this, it's just a real shame that they all follow the exact same mofo formula. I saw a thing on the BBC by the way which talked about how there is no innovation in gaming anymore and they had a statistic about how a huge number of games released this year were sequels. I coulda told them this years ago.. but it was nice to hear it from someone who is taken seriously.

It's a great shame. My only hope for MMO's is that as the number of gamers are continually growing, it will leave room for bigger niches. The big phat budgets and sexiest graphics, are sadly always going to go to the big uninspired and unoriginal stuff. But if some indipendent MMO could come along with a humble budget and end up with 50,000 players or something, that could be really profitable for them, and yet we could something really great to play, even if it is a bit fugly.



P.S. Back on topic, I saw some post on the web about this game and it says:
- Yesterday they added level 50 versions of all the "dungeons" you can do leveling up, 2 operations (raids), and a bunch more content is supposedly coming for release

- dungeons are 4 char groups, while operations are currently 8 chars. So it'll be easier to find groups and raids.

- loot drops based on the classes you have in the group, so you don't get useless stuff / and you can also disassemble stuff kinda.

- A lot of sites are streaming now, if you want to watch.

- There's a plan for some sort of "Legacy" system, where at level 50, you're given the ability to unlock new races and such

[ForestWhitakerEye]

I only played the beta the one time with my friend. I might have played it that Friday night. Played it a good bit on that Saturday. On Sunday I played it a little bit and then just didn't want to play it anymore.

We only got to level 17 or so, left the starter planet and made it to Corsucant, so while I'm sure there are major story consequences that I didn't see, I thought the average choices of the quests left a lot to be desired. Like you do a quest and it gives you a light side and a dark side option. The choice just feels so illusionary and preprogrammed. Like I decided at character creation this guy was light side, so of course I'm going to pick all light side choices.

I don't know if they've come up with a better system for it, but certain caves on the starter planet at least would have a green forcefield that only allowed your class to go through it or a red forcefield for another class which blocked you. Class specific quest content was behind those forcefields. I found them extremely unimmersive.

I am a GW2 fan, so I'm a little biased, but my biggest complaint was just with the quest system in general when you compare it to dynamic events. Voice acting gets rid of the wall of text presentation, but it doesn't address their other flaws. At one point I did a few quests that took me to one enemy fort, then came out and found I missed one which also took me into the fort. Even if DEs end up not being all they're cracked up to be, that's still the kind of dumb stuff that just can't happen with the DE system.

I played WoW for ages and alpha tested Rift so I'm just done with this style of MMO. If you're still in the mood for a traditional themepark but just want a different setting or really love Star Wars, you'll probably love it.

[Dragon-RD]

Originally Posted by perfect

...snip...

I read that Perfect, thanks for the feedback. The Flash Point questy thingies seem like a great idea, even if the rest of the game doesn't hold my interest over me.



...PS: Star Trek > Star Wars (Though, perhaps not STO)

[perfect]

<wanders back into the room>

So I played a bit (read: 30 hours) more this weekend because I want to believe.

I was either stoned or drunk or angry (or any combination thereof) before this weekend.

I had a good time. I preordered. I cried. I blew stuff up.

Leveled all 8 classes to at least 10 (some 12) and did the first Flashpoints for each of them.

Trooper: Ranged tank. Ammo mechanic; you run out of ammo, you have to reload. Very standard. Boring.
Bounty Hunter: Ranged/Melee tank with a FLAMETHROWER. Heat mechanic; you get too hot, you have to vent heat. Death From Above. Massively fun to play if you like explosions and fun.

Smuggler: Ranged DPS. Cover mechanic; you dodge behind things and fire from cover. Certain skills only useable from cover. I *HATE* the Cover mechanic.
Imperial Agent: Ranged/Melee DPS. Cover mechanic; you dodge behind things and fire from cover. Certain skills only useable from cover. I *HATE* the Cover mechanic. However, the best story line of all eight classes. Strongly considering this as my main. Fracking Cover mechanic holding me back.

Jedi Knight: Melee Tank/DPS. Force mechanic; you gain and spend Force by using skills. Very standard. Boring.
Sith Warrior: See above.

Jedi Councilor: Ranged DPS/Heals. Force mechanic; you gain and spend Force by using skills. Potentially the most powerful class in the game.
Sith Inquisitor: See above.

[mmorpeegee]

Jedi Councilor/Sith Inquisitor - they are kind of like mages? Is there much depth to their combat? Or is it just pew pew pew with forces?

[perfect]

Originally Posted by mmorpeegee

Jedi Councilor/Sith Inquisitor - they are kind of like mages? Is there much depth to their combat? Or is it just pew pew pew with forces?

Kinda like Mages. They can go Ranged DPS (amazing Ranged DPS, mind you), Melee DPS, Stealth or Heals. It's a three branched skill tree.

The Councilor can become a Sage or a Shadow. Sage has Seer (Healing), Telekinesis (Ranged DPS), and Balance (Utility). Shadow has Kinetic Combat (Melee DPS), Infiltration (sneaky sneaky), and Balance (Utility).

The Inquisitor can become a Sorcerer or Assassin. Sorcerer has Corruption (Healing), Lightning (Ranged DPS), and Madness (Utility). Assassin has Darkness (Melee DPS), Deception (sneaky sneaky), and Madness (Utility).

[Fozzik]

So...I guess now that I have a dog in the fight, I should come and admit I was wrong. Sort of.

I played for about 24 hours or so over the three-day weekend. I went from confirming the game was exactly what I expected (utter crap) in the first few hours, to deciding that I will probably buy it and play it for a month or two.

My own impressions -

First thing...I was extremely surprised at the lack of polish and low production quality. This is one area where I was expecting to find absolutely nothing to complain about. BioWare is taking a single-player RPG (which by all accounts they do extremely well) and mashing it together with the WoW formula for modern MMORPGs (a formula which has been done dozens or even hundreds of times and clearly has had time to get the kinks worked out). With their massive budget, the long development time, and the above givens...I was expecting this game to be rock solid in terms of quality and finish.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. This game, in basically their final stress test of beta, three weeks from release, is sloppy. The game engine itself appears to be one of those MMO game engines that will annoy me forever... it has all kinds of clipping and shadow rendering issues, it has issues with speed tree that cause ground cover and trees to "pop" right in front of you at odd times...even NPCs and sometimes the symbols over their heads don't appear until you are right on top of them.

To go along with this, we have an audio engine that absolutely brings shame to the LucasArts tradition of Industrial Light and Magic and THX. I was expecting state of the art...and it seems they not only have issues with directional sounds, but also have issues with sounds playing at all. You can hear NPCs or others' companions at great distances as if they were right in front of you...many times the NPC's background audio in towns doesn't play at all. Combat sounds are hit and miss, sometimes overriding each other in a very sloppy way...causing silence or one channel to be much louder than the other for no reason.

I ran into a serious map bug that completely stopped me for a while. There were bugs which kept me from entering a cut scene once, and froze the game until I hit escape and tried again. I had a graphical glitch where my character had a green glow for several hours even though nobody was casting heals on me.

I could go on...hopefully you'll get the point. It was just a little disconcerting to find the same old bugs, lack of polish, and issues that we have grown unhappily accustomed to with these games. This game should have been much better in this department, without a doubt.


First came character creation and race/class choices. I liked the information that is provided for each class, it's broken up nicely and provides more detail than I've seen in a lot of MMORPG character creation. It's pretty much impossible to know what you're going to like, but at least it was there to help with an informed choice. Everything else about character creation was very underwhelming. You can be a human, a human that's blind, a human with horns, a green human, a blue human...you get the idea. There really aren't any race choices at all...just different colors and head styles. I know their excuse for this is that it was difficult to animate different heads close up for the cut scenes...but come on. You spent more than 200 million dollars...at least give us three distinct choices per side or something. The customization options are about as extensive as WoW, in other words, lousy. Just some presets to choose from, and a lot of the presets are fugly. I did manage to make characters that I was reasonably happy with...but I spent considerably less time in character creation than I typically do when I can really get into the choices and making just what I want.

So...game play. Here is where I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised.

The MMO portion is exactly what I suspected (not good...just the same old stale WoW mechanics, combat, etc. with some very glaring issues and omissions that should never have occured. Grouping is very actively discouraged by making the solo experience front-and-center and smooth as silk...it's literally painful to break out of the fun you're having when they force you suddenly to group in one of the heroic quests or areas...and once you finish your objective there's really no reason to stay together unless you want to settle for standard_MMO_grind_00221 or an instance story controlled by arbitrary dice rolls instead of getting back to the more immersive, more fun solo story.

Just as a few examples of the issues that they wouldn't have had if they'd just copied WoW properly...they have the quest tracker on screen just like WoW, but no way to easily handle quest items which you have to put to use...you have to open your inventory, realize that there's a second tab in your inventory for quest items, then find the item and click it. It's positively arcane...and that's just one example. Don't even get me started on the screwy UI or the mess that is trying to equip your companion with items. They expect you to group at various points out of the blue, but provide no mechanics or mechanism to help you find a group or get together with your friends...people were just shouting in general chat for long periods of time. UG. What year is this again?

Anyway, I pretty much expected the MMO portion to completely turn me off with it's lack of innovation or focus on the elements of the genre that I enjoy. Everything I had heard lead me to believe that the story portion of the game...all the elements that came from BioWare single-player RPGs, would be excellent. The choices, the voice acting and animation, the story itself and the companion characters and relationships.

What I assumed before playing was that the yucky stale MMO would drag down the other half, no matter how good it was, and before long I wouldn't be able to enjoy the story. In truth, after about 12 hours of play...I realized that the opposite was happening. The single-player story experience and the companion character was actually breaking up the task grind and making it bearable...and when I didn't focus to much on achievement and just sat back and let it come to me...I was enoying myself. So...in this single respect, and fully acknowledging everything I mentioned above...I realized I wanted to keep playing. I have no idea how long it will last, but the cut scenes, the silly converstaion choices, and the cliche relationship with my sidekick, actually made the game immersive and enjoyable enough to be worth the price of the box.

Then the dilemma became...what about the monthly fee? As a single-player experience, I was really having a hard time with the idea of potentially paying a monthly fee. I had to admit something to myself, though. I've been playing WoW off and on for years because I need some sort of MMORPG "fix" and it serves the basic need. I play it totally solo, and just continue to grind the treadmill on more and more characters and do my thing. I've been paying a monthly fee for that already. SW:TOR is better in terms of that particular experience...more immersive, more fun. So...it would make no sense to not pay a monthly fee for as long as I enjoy myself.

I don't expect it to last long...a few months, tops...but I find that I'm willing to pay the money and enjoy the story. I'll deal with the bugs and the stale MMORPG...because it's better than my alternatives at the moment.

I find Perfect's assessment of the classes pretty funny, because it exactly matches my own experience with the two classes I played. I first played a Jedi Knight, but I found the class mechanics had me staring at my skill bar most of the time and I really didn't get any sense of fluid or visceral combat. I was just mashing buttons and feeling frustrated that this or that wasn't re-popping and that I seemed to be having more trouble with mobs than I should have. What sealed the deal for me, though, was the droid companion. I was able to handle about thirty seconds of that...and I had to make a new character. Holy crap, there's a reason why those droids were just used sparingly as comic relief in the movies. Having to listen to that constantly and read subtitles all the time is just flat annoying. Some things don't translate well into game play.

My second character was a bounty hunter mercenary. MUCH better...not super great since it's still pretty standard MMO mechanics in terms of combat (I HATE having to stand still to fire a gun, and not being able to get behind things!!), but definitely an improvement over the Jedi. I like the companion character (Mako), and I was having a good time shooting people with my missiles and dropping bombs on them from above.

Sorry for the novel...but you know me.

[perfect]

Originally Posted by Fozzik

...I don't expect it to last long...a few months, tops...but I find that I'm willing to pay the money and enjoy the story. I'll deal with the bugs and the stale MMORPG...because it's better than my alternatives at the moment....

Just long enough for GW2 and I will be a happy camper with SW:TOR.

That's two people (you and me) out of the three people who care that have changed their minds due to this last weekend (and mostly for the same reason).

[Fozzik]

Yeah, I'm sure this game is going to do massive numbers the first 6 months. No question. I really wish they weren't going to get away with such lousy production quality...it sets yet another bad example of a sloppy game that sells big.

It kind of makes me wonder if maybe I should avoid all the hassle and just get the good parts... by playing one of their single-player RPGs.

I normally can't get into and enjoy SPRPGs... but I've never tried BioWare's games. Maybe it turns out that I would like them.

[Fozzik]

Does the sith warrior have the same abilities as the Jedi Knight? maybe with a less annoying sidekick I could play a melee character after all.

Otherwise, it's bounty hunter all the way. I normally like to play good guys...but if all the other classes suck...so be it.

[mmorpeegee]

Well sadly there aren't many single player Bioware games to choose from these days. Their most recent is Dragon Age 2 which was a monstrosity imnsho.

The good thing about SWTOR maybe not lasting long, is that the monthly fees wont last either. Not sure if we have to pay for the box? But either way, I learned with Rift that enjoying a game for 1 month (maybe 2), is pretty cheap! With Rift I just paid for one month and then cancelled.

Reading the stuff above reminded me a bit of Age of Conan. I hated that game but I loved the first 20 levels done in Tortage which was like a semi-single-player experience. In case you haven't played it, you get tons of quests from this one little town and some of them are done offline in an instance, and some of them are done online like a traditional MMO, but you are still connected to the chat channels either way. I found it really fun, I just got fed up once it ended

I'm sure this is better though, but like I said, there isn't much to be excited about in the way of single player RPG's these days anyway, for me at least, so I would definitely consider giving this game a shot for a month or two.

Thanks for all the info btw.

[AsheMan]

Originally Posted by mmorpeegee

The good thing about SWTOR maybe not lasting long, is that the monthly fees wont last either. Not sure if we have to pay for the box? But either way, I learned with Rift that enjoying a game for 1 month (maybe 2), is pretty cheap! With Rift I just paid for one month and then cancelled.

$59.99 for the box.

[mmorpeegee]

Ahh. Well that includes 30 days so not too bad. I'm guessing I would be all done within that 30 days too, but if it ends up 2 or 3 months, that's not too bad. I just hope it's got a bit more 'stuff' than Rift.

[Fozzik]

SW:TOR is pretty much like Rift with a single-player RPG added and less polish.

[AsheMan]

I haven't played since June, but I thought it was fairly polished for being early beta stages. Maybe it hasn't improved much on that front in all this time.

[perfect]

Originally Posted by Fozzik

Does the sith warrior have the same abilities as the Jedi Knight?....

The gist is there. Slightly different methodology but overall, the skills are the same. The Warrior has a female Twi'lek (ranged DPS) as the first companion. Mind you, each class has like six different ones (that we know of) and getting a different one is just a matter of going to the other starting planet and doing the quests there.

[Fozzik]

Six different companions for each class? Wow...do you have them all at the same time, or do they come and go? That would be kind of annoying to spend the effort outfitting a companion and then have the story take them away. Jedi can't do the sith starting experience, can they?

[mmorpeegee]

Sounds pretty promising. I'll definitely give this a try, the only exception is if Vanguard's changes come first and the population increases. Not likely I know. I also would quite like Vanguard to go Free To Play at some point but that is even less likely I suppose.