Yay, no NDA.
Character classes & companions
I’ve played a number of classes, but the main classes I played were a Republic Powertech (ranged tank) to the mid 20s and a Empire Shadow (stealth, force-using tank) to around the same levels. I’ve also fiddled with some level 40 characters when they were awarded to the beta testers for testing purposes.
I’ve also played a Empire Operative, an Empire Sage, and a Republic Commando.
I usually don’t like tanks that much, and I usually like hybrid characters that can heal. That said, I’ve really enjoyed the tanks in SWTOR. A lot of it depends on the companions you get. The Bounty Hunter (who becomes either a tanky-Powertech or a healing-Mercenary) gets Mako, who is a healer. Once you get an assortment of tanking abilities, you can do quite a bit as a tank with Mako providing heals. The Shadow (and the Assassin, which is the Republic class that’s the same) gets a tanky-type companion first, so there isn’t quite as much synergy between you and your companion.
The Powertech is what’s called a ranged tank, which I guess means he starts tanking from far away. You do get a zipline attack (which pulls an enemy to you) and a jump-over-there attack, so between those two you can easily jump to the mobs, then zip a straggler over to you. He receives a fair assortment of area-affect damage abilities (focusing on flame effects). My Powertech felt powerful, capable, had a ton of tricks, and with a healing character, was almost impossible to take down (this is in PVE, incidentally). The main resource he has to manage is heat - attacks build up heat, and you have to be sure to vent your heat and/or use the default attack, which doesn’t generate heat, in your attack rotation, to keep from overheating (all that happens then is you revert to using the default attack until the heat dissipates). I did not care for the Bounty Hunter story initially, but once I got off the second planet it began developing and I started developing an interest in it. Mako is also a pretty decent companion.
The Shadow/Assassin gets stealth and a double bladed lightsaber, and strangely enough (for a tank that is), a positional attack. This guy is sort of an odd beast. He gets stealth, but he’s not really a rogue, because he’s a hybrid user - for best effect you alternate using your force powers and your melee attacks. They recently lowered the range for the Shadow’s ranged attacks to 10m from 15m, meaning you pretty much need to run up to the mobs to use a force power. And there’s no force leap ability (until you get to around level 30 I believe) so if you’re tanking you have to run up to the mobs and throw out some taunts. They did just in the current patch get an area affect taunt, which is something Shadow tanks have said they need badly. Shadows can operate as just DPS by relying on their companion, who is a tank. The tank can grab the mob’s attention, and you can scoot behind them to kill stuff from the rear. For both the Assassin and the Shadow, you receive an alien hulk companion who speaks through subtitles. Some people don’t like that. The Repubilc companion is also always saying how he’s going to kill you. The Shadow/Assassin is balancing his force energy, as everything you do uses it, so you’re alternating the default melee attack with the force lightning/throw pebbles ability. The Empire Shadow gets a force power that throws a water heater at the enemy (it’s also been described as a car engine…). I found the Empire class storyline pretty drippy, but I thought the Republic one was above average.
I found the Operative/Smuggler a weird character. I think it’s because you start out having to use the cover mechanic - you’re a ranged character. Then at level 10, when you pick Operative/Smuggler, all of a sudden you get a positional knife attack and a heal and stealth - it’s like WTF? The implication is you’re now a melee character, and I found the transition difficult. So I either did one of two things: kept using cover and just healed my companion, and shot a blast now and then, or stealthed in, told my companion to attack, and stood behind the mob and stabbed them in the back. But it took me a while to change over from being a guy who hid behind cover and threw grenades and shot his blaster to a guy who was all of a sudden relying on his vibroknife to kill stuff.
Perhaps one reason I played tanks was because healing is an issue in SWTOR. People coming over from WoW will moan about the lack of things like any sort of mouseover ability, macros, target of target display and decent group and/or raid frames. Healing reminds me of 2004 WoW. You have to click on the group plate or character and hit the heal spell. I was doing this a bunch with one of my companions and I thought “why isn’t his health going up?” Then I realized I had accidentally targeted the enemy, so I was casting heal after heal and nothing was happening. Thanks, game! The one reason people play healers (ur, make that Sage or Sorcerer) is because they are insanely powerful. A Sage/Sorcerer and his tank companion can tackle pretty tough content. When you become a Sage/Sorcerer, those 10 meter spells that the Shadow/Assassin has get a 30m range, your force pool goes up by 500%. Plus these guys get a shield spell which other healers don’t have. I tried a Sorcerer but honestly it was pretty boring standing back casting lightning bolts while my tanky companion killed stuff.
Of the three healing classes, it’s widely accepted that (for now at least) the Sage/Sorcerer is far and away the most powerful. They have the most tools, the biggest resource pool. The Operative/Smuggler is I believe in second place, and the Commando/Mercenary brings up the rear (the one issue I’m aware of with the Commando/Merc is that they don’t have any real tools to handle an emergency heal - if only the tank is taking damage it’s ok but if stuff hits the fan and they have to heal a bunch of people - and their heat builds up too much - they can’t catch up). Of course, all this is subject to change.
The IA’s first companion, Kaliyo - is a ranged tank, and is pretty good. So if you choose Operative, you’ve got the tank-healer thing going again.
The Trooper’s first companion, Aric Jordan - is annoying and is either DPS or a tank. Did I mention he’s annoying?
Of the remaining classes, I personally liked the Trooper class questline (I followed that about level 20), and the Imperial Agent one I thought was good too (again, to around level 20).
Crafting
I’ve played with crafting, having been a Weaponsmith (non-force using weapons), an Armortech (non-force user armor), a Cybertech (force user bracers, boots, earpieces, and droid parts) and a Synthweaver (force user chest and pants pieces).
Your crewmember does the crafting. You can have 3 “crew skills” but only one can be crafting. There are crafting skills, gathering skills and mission skills. Mission skills, like Underworld Trading or Treasure Hunting, provide ways for your companion to get rare crafting components that are otherwise almost impossible to get. So typically you’ll take a crafting skill, a gathering skill, and a mission skill.
You level your crafting skill by making items. You level your gathering skill by using it to harvest stuff in the world, or by rarely going on missions for the chance at rare materials. You level your mission skill by going on missions. Sending a crewmember on a mission costs money and takes time (starting at 2 or 3 minutes for a mission but going on up to 30 minutes or more at the high end). Missions are the big moneysink for crafting.
Crafting follows the Wow model of being resource limited. So you gather resources, and combine them to get an item. One cool aspect is that you can “reverse engineer” the items you make for the chance to discover a better version. So you can make, say, a green quality pair of boots. You RE them and discover a blue quality version that’s like the green version but has an extra stat on it. You can then make a blue version and RE that one and potentially discover a purple version - that would have one more additional stat on it. The stats that get added are random, so you can discover something that’s useful for tanky characters, or for healers, or for general DPS. The downside of this is that the blue quality takes an additional - harder to obtain - (blue quality) ingredient, and the purple version take - you guessed it - an even harder to obtain purple quality extra ingredient. So it’s not like you can pop those suckers out on an assembly line once you discover the recipe.
On my Trooper I had the good fortune of discovering a purple assault rifle for level 14 characters. I believe I used it until I hit 20, as it was quite good.
In addition, when you craft something, you can have an “extra good” result (I forget what it’s called) and the item you make will have what’s called a “modulator slot” on it - this is a place where you can add something called a modulator - which is a little in-game item that confers additional bonuses.
The Game World & Openness
Finally I can respond to the the “closed-in” feel of the worlds argument. In SWTOR the worlds start out very enclosed - the starter worlds are very small and have narrow passages. I agree it gives off a bad vibe. But as you level up, the worlds open up more and more and when you get to a planet like Hoth, in your 40s, it’s wide open. So you’re not always running around on rails.
I enjoy the game world (aside from the starter worlds, which I think are pretty ugly). I especially like Dromund Kass, which is the Republic second world. I find it leaps and bounds better than Coruscant (I get so tired of the endless metal corridors and passages).
