3101

I’ll make sure to camp out at my mailbox on Tuesday then. Thanks for the .NFO :-)

3102

I think you’re right, that if Bioware had dropped crafting, this would not be a problem.

3103

Yes , power and color crystals are interchangeable between all weapons that use them. Saber, blaster ,rifle …whatever. Crystals are the -thinks- enchantments of the game. Look pretty and make them burn (freeze, crit …whatever)

3104

How does reverse-engineering work? Can weapons crafters make things competitive or better than the quest rewards?

I only tinkered briefly with crafting, but the available weapons didn’t look very compelling. I was an agent up to level 19 or 20 (I think) during the weekend test. Loved that quest line. And the ship is gorgeous.

3105

Oh crystals get special properties like that eventually? I just had time to mess with artificing at very low levels so maybe it gets better later on.

The crafting system of swtor is actually one of the bigger improvements it makes to the genre in my opinion. I don’t think people really enjoyed crafting 1029 iron daggers in a row in ironforge. Running around looking for ore between killing godlike beings got old as well. Swtor lets you outsource the menial labor to your slaves… i mean companions. This means you can go blast/light saber someone in the face while your companions are crafting that Reinforced Corellian Brassiere of Gravity Negation +4 on your ship or out gathering that iron ore from the swamps.

3106

The download page for this weekend’s beta is now active. It’s the tester page at swtor.com (I still don’t have enough posts to link).

3107

www.swtor.com/tester

It is indeed only downloading 12gb for me, as hoped, as I was in the last weekend beta. If they just patch it for retail too I’ll be quite pleased, bandwidth-wise.

3108

Firing up Treesize Pro to find out what I can delete

3109

Well, being able to read the testing forums sure is… interesting.

3110

Official MMO forums are the armpit of the internet. The beta itself frequently pops up feedback requests; I dunno if they can really process it all but that and the lengthy exit questionnaire were where I put my feedback.

The official forums are just full of hysterical fanboys and outraged MMO-lawyers.

3111

I downloaded the installer but when I try to log in it says “you are attempting to log in from a region we do not allow.” WTF? I just want to kick off the download while I’m at work!

Edit: Oh wait now it wants more security info.

3112

I found there was a bit of a time delay between when I RSVPed and when the patcher (which I already had from the last beta) would allow me to login without that error and start downloading. So I’d try it in 10-15m.

3113

Well, on the Official forums, when you read
“Its good enough for release, they’ll fix stuff later”, or when it is compared to WOW at launch.
It should set off some alarm bells.

But yes, in general MMOs really shouldn’t have forums at all. At least not for general discussion.

I think the only good beta forums I have seen were the ones for DAOC.

3114

Loon spent most of the beta this weekend crafting. You have an option on things you craft/pick up so on that fall into your profession (weaponsmiths can rip apart weapons so on) that lets you reverse engineer. Weaponsmiths for instance can only make basic color crystals, if you want a spiffier one talk to an artificer. I am not sure how the effects work, I could swear he mentioned fire on one, but that may be me cross remembering something else he was going on about. That said he is an avid crafter. The profession that seems to be lacking is slicing, either it gets more useful later or it is perfectly worthless. Your mileage may vary.

3115

Except that there’s a beta, which has been rather more informative than the monkeys-and-typewriters MMO launch forecast.

3116

If I hear right, slicing used to be the profession you took if you just wanted to be overflowing in money. Not that you actually crafted anything from it, but you it basically allow you to open up safes and their like while out exploring. In previous builds at least it was making people quite a bit of credits. I suspect it’s been toned down though. I tried doing slicing in the last build and while I was never broke, I’m not sure I was making enough to make it worthwhile. I think you can also get some greens occasionally out of it though, which might be useful if you reverse engineer them or can sell them.

3117

Well, with only one companion I rarely had more than a minute or two where I’d really feel like not having a companion. 5m was longer than it took me to do turnins or whatever.

3118

One might call it… a hive of scum and villainy.

3119

The nice thing is that it doesn’t take all that long to get your second companion. And even with only one, there are times when you might be running around town or traveling. At the worst, you can always send your companion(s) off just before you log out. While you can’t queue gathering type missions, you can queue crafting items up to 5.

3120

I’m curious about the “Cyborg” race that was announced. Hopefully they’ll be in this build.

I’m also a little surprised they haven’t posted (officially, though a PC Gamer mag apparently had a grid) the race/class combos available.