SWTOR Beta

[themadbomber]

Played about 2 hours last night. Got to level 4 - wasted a lot of time messing with controls, and playing with the UI, and seeing what the game options were like

Playing a Sith Warrior.

Game play was smooth, graphics rendering was really good - compared in playability to WoW. Not choppy at all. Lag was not an issue.

The quests I did last night all worked great. Rather than getting a text box, you get an audio conversation dialogue... reminds me of Mass Effect. The player controlled character isn't a mute that just responds with written text, he has a voice. Very similar to Mass Effect... you get options, and then the character talks a longer sentence referencing the conversation option you picked.

Still very similar to WoW in that you get a quest to kill go "X" creatures, you go there, you kill the mobs and get XP + shit loot, and then return to the quest giver who gives you XP and a Reward sometimes, like a weapon or armor...

I haven't left Korriban yet - as a Sith you start out there as an Apprentice trying to get into the Academy. If you played any of the KOTOR games, Korriban is all excavated now - in previous games, the sand had blown over all the ruins so you can't see anything. IN SWTOR, it's all dug out - the landscape is really cool. There are Star Destroyers orbiting the planet that you can see from the ground.

Grouping is pretty cool. A buddy of mine signed in to a new character he made and when we joined a group together, he was able to shuttle straight to me... Didn't have to run for a half hour. If you're in a group, you can actually watch the Quest Dialogue of other players, and see what options they are picking. You coversation options can dictate whether you get Light Side or Dark Side points.

Combat is mostly similar to other MMO's. As a warrior most of my abilities right now are just melee combat enhancements. I have a "Force Jump" ability to close distance on a target faster. Have 1 AOE ability that hits up to 5 targets. Don't have a ranged ability as of yet.

Not much to report after just the 1 night, other than it looks like Bioware and EA are putting together a well coded MMO that should rival WoW at least in stability. That's been an issue in MMO's over recent history - good ideas, but not well coded.

Will play more tonight.

 

[themadbomber]

Quests show up on the overhead map too, so you're not running around blind trying to figure out where the fuck to go... It's right on the overhead map, just run to the blinking dot.

Same thing with Quest Givers. Once your shit is completed, they are on the map too - just run back to them, if you get lost, press M and find blinking dot.

I like the fact that they have cut scene style quests, instead of text blocks to read... makes the story come to life a little more. And it's cool that you can watch other people's cut scene's to see what choices they make.

Most of these games begin at the end game, I think with swtor they are doing their best to keep the leveling "grind" as entertaining as possible, and if the rest of the game is like the first 4 levels, then so far so good.

 

[Mitchrapp]

The map where quest show to make it easier have usually been with all recent mmo's that have came out. In that respect, I like what WoW had. You get a an idea or a hint and you'd have to find them. Makes it tougher. I hate easy when it comes to quest.

 

[themadbomber]

Yeah, but the game is less about the "grind" to top level, and more about what you do once you're at end-game.

All these games are about raiding, and accumulating gear and items and the challenges you face with 24 or 9 other people (25 man or 10 man raiding). And if it's not about that, it's about the PvP to control planets, or zones - or even organized PvP like Arena's.

I think the first time through it would be fun to have a bit of a challenge, but when you're on like 2nd, or 3rd, or 4th (ect) character you're rolling, you just want to get the leveling done and get on to the end-game.

 

[Mitchrapp]

For an MMO, someone has to come out with one like Skyrim but as a MMO. Just make the quests tougher for groups. I always wonder why no one does. Too hard maybe?

 

[Mitchrapp]

Thanks for the info. I pre-ordered some time ago but still not sure if I'm going to sub.

 

[themadbomber]

Lineage II was like that. Quests were super hard, you almost constantly needed groups for everything.

It flopped.

Being able to play at your own pace, and not having to schedule groups to complete levels is part of why WoW is as succesful as it is.

 

[themadbomber]

Mitch[/color]]Thanks for the info. I pre-ordered some time ago but still not sure if I'm going to sub.

I've got a group of people I've been playing with for a pretty long time (some since 1996 Ultima Online), but life is a lot different for me now than it was back then.

Wife, kids... ect.

I'm probably going to play eventually, but it won't be at release. After holidays at the earliest.

Should be a fun game though. I'll write more stuff up tomorrow after I play tonight.

 

[Mitchrapp]

Lineage II was like that. Quests were super hard, you almost constantly needed groups for everything.

It flopped.

Being able to play at your own pace, and not having to schedule groups to complete levels is part of why WoW is as succesful as it is.

I'm not saying that. Have your dungens, kill the leader, steal this guys stuff etc, just like now for solo players. But if you bring a group, make it harder. I'm just getting really sick of, kill 5 of these 10 of those.

Have more quests where you have to get somewhere but you have to kill along the way, but 15 of those and 30 of these are getting redicuolous. No imagination maybe but a quest that says Aunt Milly has a garden problem, kill 12 cows is really sad

 

[Mitchrapp]

There was one game, I think AOC, that I played briefly well after release. But they had a town where you could switch it to night and it was you and them, no other real player. So when you killed a guy during that time, he was dead and would stay dead and not come back 2 minutes later. During the night. It was pretty cool.

 

[themadbomber]

Mitch[/color]]
[quote="The Mad Bomber":3oh3h6b0]Lineage II was like that. Quests were super hard, you almost constantly needed groups for everything.

It flopped.

Being able to play at your own pace, and not having to schedule groups to complete levels is part of why WoW is as succesful as it is.

I'm not saying that. Have your dungens, kill the leader, steal this guys stuff etc, just like now for solo players. But if you bring a group, make it harder. I'm just getting really sick of, kill 5 of these 10 of those.

Have more quests where you have to get somewhere but you have to kill along the way, but 15 of those and 30 of these are getting redicuolous. No imagination maybe but a quest that says Aunt Milly has a garden problem, kill 12 cows is really sad [/quote:3oh3h6b0]

LMFAO!

For sure. Those quests drive me crazy!

I remember somebody doing a comic strip when Wrath of the Lich King came out about Death Knights that take up Herbalism, and the Profession Quests they'd get to go pick 5 flowers and bring them back... ect. Funny shit.

This game is doing more with Cut Scenes so far. Now I don't know if that's a "newbie area" feature, or somethign they plan to carry over to the entire game... I'll hopefully be able to answer that question tonight depending on how much time I get to play.

I know WoW started doing "Group Quests" with the Burning Crusade expantion, and carried those over through both of the expansions after, and they seemed to work ok.

I dunno.

I know with players like me - who've done basically every MMO that's been out since Ultima Online first released, don't really put much stock in the quests leading up to End-game. I know I want the "grind" to be somewhat enjoyable, and I want the story to suck me in, because that what will keep me playing, but ultimately I just want to be done leveling and doing the end-game PvP or PvE.

The whole saga with Arthas is what kept me playing WoW. When i finally killed him in Wrath, the game basically ended for me. I played Cataclysm for about 4 months, but ultimately the story dried up for me.

The KOTOR series is a good story - I really enjoyed playing Revan in the first one, and the follow-up "Sith Lords" was fun too, imo. This is continuing on with that story, so it's interesting to me.

So far, they are incorporating that story into the leveling grind in the form of Cut-Scene's from the quest givers, and I think it's ingenious.

 

[Mitchrapp]

I p.ayed WoW for about 18 months. Quit two months after the first expansion so quite awhile ago. I did like having flying mounts though . I have always preferred PVP over PVE but its been awhile where a game has had good PVP.

 

[themadbomber]

Played:

Ultima Online for 5 years
Everquest for 2 months
Asheron's Call for 2 months
Dark Age of Camelot for 6 months
Shadowbane for 2 years
Lineage II for 1 month
City of Hero's for 2 months
City of Villains for 2 months
Star Wars Galaxies for 6 months
World of Warcraft for 6 years
Darkfall for beta only (REALLY LIKED GAME, but literally no time to play)
Dark and Light for beta only (didn't like it)
Age of Conan for beta only (didn't like it)
Rift for beta only (didn't like it)

Basically wasted a lot of time and money on MMO's

Ultima Online was the best PvP game I ever played, followed closely by Shadowbane. UO was more about 1v1 PvP, and then later incorporated Guild Wars and Faction Wars, ect... which was fun. Shadowbane was about large scale PvP conflict. Was in lots of siege's of cities where there were over 500 players on each side. Very fun game - very bad coding. Eventually the game failed because people quit over time due to the coding being so bad.

I can see swtor being fun because it looks like there will be plenty of PvP in both the large scale and the small scale. Plus with companies like Bioware, EA, and Lucas Arts - you know they have the money to get the game coded properly, and working the way it should. In these games, that goes a long ways.

 

[Mitchrapp]

One game I really liked early was Warhammer. The PVP was good. But then as usual its always about the loot and armor. One side would take a keep and the other side knew it but wouldn't do a thing because they wanted to take it back with no resistence. The side that controlled the keep knew this but didn't want to defend because they wanted to retake it back so they could get more loot so eventually PvP and taking keeps you never seem to fight anyone, outside of NPC guards.

The same reason why I quit WoW. AV used to be fun as hell, granted the old days the matched would run hours and hours, 23 hours once. A bit excessive okay. Then they realize the honor points are what really matter so both sides just run straight to other side, no defense. We try and kill their guy, they kill our gal. Matches rarely made 20 minutes and when they did, you'd get a bunch of "just let them win" etc. There was game after game I never saw a gjy from the other side, Horde. What kind of PVP is that.

Oh well. My rant for the noon slot time.

 

[themadbomber]

WoW added a Combat Zone with Wrath of the Lich King xpac that opened up a pretty easy 10 and 25 man Raid Dungeon you could do once per week, and the boss in the raid dropped PvP gear from the current arena season.

Basically there was a Keep in the center of the zone, and whoever had control of the zone had to defend it for a period of time - could be as long as 30 min. On the outside of the zone, the attacking team had towers. Each Tower you detroyed cut the time you had to defend down - so you had incentive to knock the towers down.

Both teams could drive Siege Vehicles - catapults, ect.

Was a really fun addition to the game.

Basically though, if you ask me - Battlegrounds are what ruined PvP in WoW. The World PvP was fun. I remember back in the old school days taking over the Zeplin or the boat. Raiding towns was fun too.

 

[themadbomber]

Yeah so this game is sweet.

You basically have your own storyline, and a lot of the decisions you make as you go through the story impact the game on a permanent level. For instance, there are situations when you can choose to murder NPC's and if you do, they are dead and gone and never coming back. That's a cool feature.

The game uses a Phasing Technology that got popular in World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expantion where the physical game world and map can change and evolve as you do things.

Rather than running around completing mindless quests that appear to serve no logical purpose to the overall storyline of the game, you are basically playing an RPG Storyline in an MMO setting.

As a Sith Warrior you become the Apprentice of a Sith Lord and basically do things that affect the game world per his bidding. Eventually you turn on your master and murder him in the Sith style, and take over his mantle.

Crafting isn't annoying either. You start off with a servant that you can send on different missions. He/She can do things like Treasure Hunting or Crafting, and instead of having to stare at a Crafting Interface for hours, you assign your servant to complete whatever it is you're trying to do (like craft a utility belt for instance) and as long as you have the materials (which your servant can also acquire for you) then it gets done and a timer ticks down untill completion.

The dungeons (instances) in this game are called Flash Points, and are done in groups of 2. Raids are done as either 8 man or 16 man. Like in other MMO's, your better PvE gear is obtained by doing these.

PvP is done depending on the type of server you play. If you're on a PvP server, there are some of the starting planets that are "safe" area's, but the majority of hte galaxy is wide open. If you're on a PvE server, then you can choose to make yourself vulnerable to PvP encounters int he world - in which case anybody can attack you - or you can queue of for the instanced battlegrounds that are similar to other MMO's.

All in all, I thought the beta went well. There were queues for some of the servers, but that's because they overloaded a small number of available servers to stress test them. Once you got through the queue, the game ran extremely smooth. Much better than previous beta's I've participated in. Graphics rendering was smooth, and even at the highest settings the game ran flawlessly - and I don't have the latest and greatest for hardware. Good stuff, but not great.

 

[Mitchrapp]

Sounds great. The Guild I've been playing with over the years, ranging from 50-100 people, most are sitting this one out. Looks to be only about 10 of us trying out SW:TOR. Not sure how much time I get early being Christmas and all but I'll be there at the start.

Btw, I haven't seen it anyway though I haven't been looking too hard, but when is the head start date?

 

[themadbomber]

I wanna say 12/15??

 

[MalFunkShun]

Mad, if you decide to play, are you going to be on a PVP or PVE server??? East Coast/West Coast? Republic or Imperial?

Not many friends from WoW are hopping over.. always nice to level with someone aside from yourself, although I heard it's possible to not be excruciatingly boring in this game.

 

[themadbomber]

Mad, if you decide to play, are you going to be on a PVP or PVE server??? East Coast/West Coast? Republic or Imperial?

Not many friends from WoW are hopping over.. always nice to level with someone aside from yourself, although I heard it's possible to not be excruciatingly boring in this game.

I'm gonna play eventually... just won't be right at release because ton of shit going on... Holidays, ect.

Sounds like the guild I've been playing with is going to be on an East Coast PvP server, playing Sith.

Leveling in this game isn't horrible like it is in WoW. It's like playing Mass Effect. Awesome idea for an MMO.