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Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to shock the MMO world.

JocktheMotie

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I'm pretty impressed with the game's presentation so far, and focus on your character's story arc. Everything is voiced, everything feels like it's KotOR but with other dudes with names like Gingivitis running around. I'm curious to see whether it can be sustained beyond level 10, and if it is, that's a tremendous feat. I'm glad animations and the kinetic feel of combat has been considerably tightened up and it gives the illusion of being very interactive. Like everyone else who bought this game so far, I'm a Sith Inquisitor :/

I play on Port Nowhere, an east coast PvP server if anyone else has gotten early access/is going to play.
 

Lateralus

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Two of my brothers work for BioWare and have been working on this game. They've been trying to get me to play (offering me a discounted copy). I might try it, but I'm skeptical of anything with the Star Wars brand on it. I don't think it'll be revolutionary, but it will get a lot of Star Wars fanboys to give up some of their cash. I'm more interested in Guild Wars 2, myself.
 

JocktheMotie

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Two of my brothers work for BioWare and have been working on this game. They've been trying to get me to play (offering me a discounted copy). I might try it, but I'm skeptical of anything with the Star Wars brand on it. I don't think it'll be revolutionary, but it will get a lot of Star Wars fanboys to give up some of their cash. I'm more interested in Guild Wars 2, myself.

In terms of interesting gameplay, or a new model of MMO games, GW2 is definitely on my list and I'd say I'm looking forward to that more than I was looking forward to TOR. I'd agree that this game is targeted towards the Star Wars fan and the Casual WoW player looking for something new, as it's very familiar and from a mechanics standpoint nearly identical.

The emphasis on story though, is all Bioware, and it's done really well. It doesn't feel like an MMO, it feels like a single player epic at times.
 

Totenkindly

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I put in my order on Monday for the digital expanded copy (which ran me about $75 online); I can't believe the freaking collector's edition is selling for $150. I'm sorry, I can't justify spending $150 on a freaking MMO opening software pack, no matter what it is.
 

Lateralus

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In terms of interesting gameplay, or a new model of MMO games, GW2 is definitely on my list and I'd say I'm looking forward to that more than I was looking forward to TOR. I'd agree that this game is targeted towards the Star Wars fan and the Casual WoW player looking for something new, as it's very familiar and from a mechanics standpoint nearly identical.

The emphasis on story though, is all Bioware, and it's done really well. It doesn't feel like an MMO, it feels like a single player epic at times.
In that case, I might be inclined to try it just to play through the storyline once. But I have a limited amount of time to play games and I'm still working on my HOM titles.
 

KDude

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I like Bioware, hate MMOs.

I think I'll pass... I'm more sure of the idea that "MMOs suck" than "Bioware saves the genre from suckage".
 

kelric

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I'm curious to see whether it can be sustained beyond level 10, and if it is, that's a tremendous feat.

I think this is the key point... and although I have plenty of confidence in BioWare, I think that they're doomed to fail when it comes to this. Granted, it may not be at level 10, but the MMO model simply doesn't support storytelling of the nature that folks are used to with BioWare's single player RPG's. Granted, I've not played it -- but the amount of time people spend playing MMO's simply dwarfs the gameplay in a story-based game like KoToR -- and MMOs don't make money with content. They make money with subscriptions, and keeping people playing for long stretches of time. I know that they've been working on this game for years... and that the idea is that each class has its own deep, involved storyline. But... they've been working on this game for years, and there's a LOT of money to be made up. At some point they're going to hit the point where players will burn through the content in story content in X months, and I think that (X*subscription rate) is less than the amount they'll need to make it worthwhile for EA -- if the gameplay is story-centric all the way through.

At some point, I think they're going to run out of story and need to keep people playing with the MMO standards of incremental, rare improvements that can take months to achieve. The same model that Everquest, WoW, and pretty much every other longterm MMO has depended on. At the very least, the time between plot points in each character's story will stretch out and the day-to-day play will descend into the "old MMO grind" with rare and hard-earned story progression.

Now granted... I've not played it. But I did spend a lot of time playing EQ back in the day, and I have played (and loved) BioWare's single-player games. I'd like to see this game succeed (even if it turns out to be a fancy WoW clone in the long run), and I've no doubt that it's well made. But I'm just not sure that they can really deliver as much story-driven gameplay as an MMO player can consume.
 

JocktheMotie

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I think this is the key point... and although I have plenty of confidence in BioWare, I think that they're doomed to fail when it comes to this. Granted, it may not be at level 10, but the MMO model simply doesn't support storytelling of the nature that folks are used to with BioWare's single player RPG's. Granted, I've not played it -- but the amount of time people spend playing MMO's simply dwarfs the gameplay in a story-based game like KoToR -- and MMOs don't make money with content. They make money with subscriptions, and keeping people playing for long stretches of time. I know that they've been working on this game for years... and that the idea is that each class has its own deep, involved storyline. But... they've been working on this game for years, and there's a LOT of money to be made up. At some point they're going to hit the point where players will burn through the content in story content in X months, and I think that (X*subscription rate) is less than the amount they'll need to make it worthwhile for EA -- if the gameplay is story-centric all the way through.

At some point, I think they're going to run out of story and need to keep people playing with the MMO standards of incremental, rare improvements that can take months to achieve. The same model that Everquest, WoW, and pretty much every other longterm MMO has depended on. At the very least, the time between plot points in each character's story will stretch out and the day-to-day play will descend into the "old MMO grind" with rare and hard-earned story progression.

Now granted... I've not played it. But I did spend a lot of time playing EQ back in the day, and I have played (and loved) BioWare's single-player games. I'd like to see this game succeed (even if it turns out to be a fancy WoW clone in the long run), and I've no doubt that it's well made. But I'm just not sure that they can really deliver as much story-driven gameplay as an MMO player can consume.

The good news is, that nuts to bolts, it's an extremely well made MMO in a rich universe where the only complaint is that it's essentially too familiar because of how similar it is to WoW from a systems point of view. From a technical standpoint, I'm amazed at the polish. Everything has worked so far, without a hitch. I haven't lagged out or been disconnected once. Could be that it's because of early game access that I'm not experiencing that, but I've come away impressed.

They do add some interesting tweaks to some things that are nice; quests are very rarely "kill x number of these," they're typically about finding some artifact, some information, or performing an action that advances your story while piling up a body count manifests as a bonus objective yielding extra experience and cash. The visual element of your character is something the player has a lot of control of, most of the best armor items don't have stats on them, but modification slots where one places stat mods. This allows you to conceivably wear a robe you really love at level 15 until you're level 50, just keep upgrading the mods in the slots, which I think is a cool tweak and something that always made sense to me. It may have been in another game, but I've never seen it before and it's refreshing to see here.

I've yet to hit end game, obviously, but like you I wonder how the flashpoint/missions will go once people are running them multiple times daily or if that's even an end game requirement. I can see going through voiced conversations you've had 10 times becoming exceedingly tedious and irritating, unless they just start to cut them out.

As for more personal experiences playing the game, I started out as a Sith Inquisitor/Sorcerer and wasn't really feeling how the class played, it was pretty uninteresting and while the story arc of finding powerful knowledge was fun, I didn't like the skills or how the class was built. Oddly enough, I decided to give the Republic version a whirl, and for some reason it's night and day to me. The Republic brand of Dark Side is far more...selfish and indicative of moral relativism rather than the Sith teenage boy version of mindles cruelty and I didn't think they were able to capture the idea of a behind the scenes super strategist bent on mastering the Force through knowledge. Any kind of confident answer sounds as though he had a massive slave inferiority complex and it got irritating. But I was only level 13. Also, the visual style of the class abilities I find to be far better for the Consular, as PULLING A GIANT ROCK/DROID/DEBRIS FROM THE GROUND and tossing it at some poor fool never gets old and is far more exciting than tiny static discharges you can barely see from the Inquisitor. Again, the skills are numerically identical but I found the overall feel of the class more enjoyable. I may go back and try again, but I think I'd find my Sage hard to pull away from now.
 

kelric

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This allows you to conceivably wear a robe you really love at level 15 until you're level 50, just keep upgrading the mods in the slots, which I think is a cool tweak and something that always made sense to me. It may have been in another game, but I've never seen it before and it's refreshing to see here.
That's a pretty good idea -- the whole "mod" thing is something that Everquest has been doing for years (they call them "augments"), but they didn't approach it at the level of making visible customization the point (which is a great idea). In EQ, it was far more about simply doubling the number of "equipment slots" that needed to be upgraded to maximize character power (and double the amount of time it takes to effectively upgrade your character).

I've yet to hit end game, obviously, but like you I wonder how the flashpoint/missions will go once people are running them multiple times daily or if that's even an end game requirement. I can see going through voiced conversations you've had 10 times becoming exceedingly tedious and irritating, unless they just start to cut them out.
Yeah -- I'd read that before -- it'll be interesting how that goes, especially if it's the case where if one person wants to hear the dialog, everyone else in the group must sit through it, too. I'd think they can get around that, though -- perhaps by allowing toggles for things like "group leader can eliminate cutscenes", "ignore conversations that I've heard X times before", etc.

As for more personal experiences playing the game, I started out as a Sith Inquisitor/Sorcerer

...

I'd find my Sage hard to pull away from now.

Heh -- those were the same two classes that I considered playing, back when I read the class descriptions. I like the "light caster healer" type classes -- I loved playing a BloodMage in Vanguard (probably the only thing to like about that game). I probably won't wind up playing, though. I don't have a PC anymore (Mac), and I don't want to spend *that* much time in-game anymore. Which could likely happen with this game :p.
 

Totenkindly

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The good news is, that nuts to bolts, it's an extremely well made MMO in a rich universe where the only complaint is that it's essentially too familiar because of how similar it is to WoW from a systems point of view. From a technical standpoint, I'm amazed at the polish. Everything has worked so far, without a hitch. I haven't lagged out or been disconnected once. Could be that it's because of early game access that I'm not experiencing that, but I've come away impressed.

All the servers were Heavy loaded yesterday, but seemed to run okay just the same.

WoW did do a lot of good -- they built off EQ. Rift ended up building off WoW and hammering out more bugs. A lot of things have become standardized and the companies are less likely to be blindsided. Plus, it's all new construction rather than cobbled together like EQ2 felt.

They do add some interesting tweaks to some things that are nice; quests are very rarely "kill x number of these," they're typically about finding some artifact, some information, or performing an action that advances your story while piling up a body count manifests as a bonus objective yielding extra experience and cash. The visual element of your character is something the player has a lot of control of, most of the best armor items don't have stats on them, but modification slots where one places stat mods. This allows you to conceivably wear a robe you really love at level 15 until you're level 50, just keep upgrading the mods in the slots, which I think is a cool tweak and something that always made sense to me. It may have been in another game, but I've never seen it before and it's refreshing to see here.

That's a great idea. I was annoyed in other games where the armor and clothes designs I liked showed up at lower levels, then I had to wear things I didn't like the design of because I needed good stats.

I've yet to hit end game, obviously, but like you I wonder how the flashpoint/missions will go once people are running them multiple times daily or if that's even an end game requirement. I can see going through voiced conversations you've had 10 times becoming exceedingly tedious and irritating, unless they just start to cut them out.

I don't know. I mean, I've found the voice acting so far to be decent, at least, but it's also on my first play through. To have to sit through those dialogs over and over leveling up new toons would drive me crazy. Sometimes I want to skip them anyway. That's a problem esp with MMOs and spending money on voice acting... after the first pass or two, players want expediency more than immersion via dialog options.

As for more personal experiences playing the game, I started out as a Sith Inquisitor/Sorcerer and wasn't really feeling how the class played, it was pretty uninteresting and while the story arc of finding powerful knowledge was fun, I didn't like the skills or how the class was built. Oddly enough, I decided to give the Republic version a whirl, and for some reason it's night and day to me. The Republic brand of Dark Side is far more...selfish and indicative of moral relativism rather than the Sith teenage boy version of mindles cruelty and I didn't think they were able to capture the idea of a behind the scenes super strategist bent on mastering the Force through knowledge. Any kind of confident answer sounds as though he had a massive slave inferiority complex and it got irritating. But I was only level 13. Also, the visual style of the class abilities I find to be far better for the Consular, as PULLING A GIANT ROCK/DROID/DEBRIS FROM THE GROUND and tossing it at some poor fool never gets old and is far more exciting than tiny static discharges you can barely see from the Inquisitor. Again, the skills are numerically identical but I found the overall feel of the class more enjoyable. I may go back and try again, but I think I'd find my Sage hard to pull away from now.

Interesting. So far I have a level 8 Jedi Consular and a level 4 Sith Warrior. I started as Sith, then decided to match up a Consular on the Jedi side, and then never went back to continue leveling. Not that the Sith game was bad, but it was kind of claustrophobic at low-levels and also it was unclear what the "Sith path' was. I got chewed out by my mentor for the prisoner judgment exercise because I made decisions based on what made sense to me as a Sith and ended up only getting one "right" and the two others badly wrong for Sith purposes. it was just kind of arbitrary. Note that the Jedi side is not perfect either, they're not really "good" they're more "lawful" if anything, and their aversion to good passions is inane to me, but at least it was more easily discernible how to approach a scenario to get a particular result, since it influences what gear you can use later.
 

Totenkindly

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Leveled the Twi'lek Consular to 10, got my lightsaber (I actually got a little choked up during the Jedi ceremony, doh).... now I'm stuck trying to pick between Sage and Shadow. I'm still not sure, especially because from forum reports the Sage [trees: 1 heal, 2 dps] actually levels well and quickly if you have a companion along with you, unlike most games with healer classes. The Shadow I'll assume does well too, but it's a closer-range game, and you never get direct/mass heal ability.

.... gaaa... just not sure. I need a book or something.

Also, with the freebie lightsaber-color-change gem, is the color it becomes defined by the color in the name of the gem, or is there some way to get to a color wheel and change it as I see fit? A little confused there...
 

Kyrielle

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Also, with the freebie lightsaber-color-change gem, is the color it becomes defined by the color in the name of the gem, or is there some way to get to a color wheel and change it as I see fit? A little confused there...

The color of your weapon should be defined by the color of the crystal (which is to say, the name of the gem). Unless, of course, they did make a color wheel/option thing bound to that item...hmm.

Ah, after some research, it appears everyone gets the same pre-order color crystal. Suckage.
 

Totenkindly

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The color of your weapon should be defined by the color of the crystal (which is to say, the name of the gem). Unless, of course, they did make a color wheel/option thing bound to that item...hmm.

Ah, after some research, it appears everyone gets the same pre-order color crystal. Suckage.

Yeah, mine was yellow with a black core. Stupid.... I mean, it's ugly. Has a +4 on End, but I don't like it; I bought a blue one off the market and am using it even if it's only +2.
 

Totenkindly

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Interesting choices on voice actors:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320395/

I could have sworn the female Sith Warrior was Morrigan from DA, but I was wrong on that one.

But the female bounty hunter played Tootie/Vicki on Fairly Oddparents, and the female Jedi Consular played Agent Perez in the Saw movie series.
 

entropie

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hmhmh, Consular or Guardian thats a tough choice. I hate class choices so badly :(. Prolly will start every class and play it till level 30.

Any help appreaciated, I like to fight in the midst of battle, so a tank with strong mitigation is usually my first rule of choice. I still want some flexibility in talent allocation, like they had in Rift. When you can switch to DPS for solo playing. The consular is intresting too, stealth abilities and rogue tactics are my second preference. Any experiences yet on how good the consular will be as an off-tank or how its dps are ?
 

Totenkindly

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Any help appreaciated, I like to fight in the midst of battle, so a tank with strong mitigation is usually my first rule of choice. I still want some flexibility in talent allocation, like they had in Rift. When you can switch to DPS for solo playing. The consular is intresting too, stealth abilities and rogue tactics are my second preference. Any experiences yet on how good the consular will be as an off-tank or how its dps are ?

I only know what I've read on the SWTOR forums, but people seem very happy with the tank/DPS capability of the consular-shadow. Wish I could give you stats.

The thing to remember is that it's balanced differently from the MMOs you're used to. I picked consular-sage (healer/ranged dps), and unlike being a conventional healer that can't solo, because you typically have a crew to accompany you, I can send in my companion tank, heal/do whatever, and also have some great telekenisis damage from that tree. From all indications of players in their early 30's, the solo sage is a viable build even having chosen the class with the heal tree. In older MMOs, often picking a heal class ruined you for solo (at least, that's what happened to me in City of Heroes, with my Emp/Psy).
 

JocktheMotie

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Yeah, a lot of the classes seem viable at their roles regardless of actual spec, at least from what I've seen so far. I've gone Balance on my Consular-Sage, but I can still heal flashpoints and heroic areas like a champ, which is a lot of fun. I never thought I'd like healing until this game, but it's pretty fun and awesome to manage. The flexibility of roles seems to be built into the classes themselves rather than something strictly dictated by your spec, so something like a dual spec system isn't as important.
 

entropie

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Yea I see, thx for the info. Gonna see what my girlfriend picks and then I'll go for the support role necessary. Normally when she plays her underequipped tanks and runs into masses of 50 mobs at once me as a healer is in order :D. Tho in Rift I did quite well to rescue her ass as a tank.
 

entropie

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Can you btw. choose between different talent builds (like in Rift) or is the respeccing like in Wow ?
 

Totenkindly

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Can you btw. choose between different talent builds (like in Rift) or is the respeccing like in Wow ?

It looks to me like you get three skills trees for your toon, but they're defined by your class rather than being as flexible as Rift (which is essentially mix and match ad hoc trees). Which is why your advanced class choice is so important; at the moment, you cannot respec and pick the other class, you are stuck with those three trees that belong to your class. That's why with the sage/shadow thing, if you ever want normal heals, you have to pick sage.

You can however respec within that class (i.e., reset your three skill trees and rebuild the character), just like in other games, with increasing financial cost per respec.

Yeah, a lot of the classes seem viable at their roles regardless of actual spec, at least from what I've seen so far. I've gone Balance on my Consular-Sage, but I can still heal flashpoints and heroic areas like a champ, which is a lot of fun. I never thought I'd like healing until this game, but it's pretty fun and awesome to manage. The flexibility of roles seems to be built into the classes themselves rather than something strictly dictated by your spec, so something like a dual spec system isn't as important.

Yeah, that was what I was perceiving too. What people on the forum seemed to say that, within Sage, you can heal pretty well even if you are specc'ed as balance or TK, and it's more a matter of fine-tuning your character for a very specific role for pure healing (probably a respec in endgame).
 
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