3401

Heh, after playing a bit on my Sith Inquisitor last night, he had 500 light side points!

I’m interested in what kind of quests people want instead of kill x or do that x times or fight this and that guy? Within the constricts of an MMO that is?
I know people compare it a lot to Kotor, which may be a bit unfair, but then again, the Class quest on the first planet actually WAS very fun to me, and I felt like it was a story, and not a collection of kill and fed-ex quests, even though the mechanics behind it are exactly that. Thats due to the voice-overs.

3402

I’ve been messing around a bit with an Inquisitor too. I’m planning to play Jedi Knight at release, but I agree the force lightning is a lot of fun!

3403

SWTOR overall just lack any quest with unique mechanics. I guess it does have the whole dialog system going for it.

3404

Forcelightning questioning is part of other MMO’s as well?

3405

if you read the 2nd part of my sentence.

I guess it does have the whole dialog system going for it.

3406

Sure, but I’m still interested in what kind of mechanics you’d want in an MMO that are unique?

MMO’s are defined and also limited by their very nature, but if someone had a bright idea on how to revitalize and add unique concepts to the genre, I’m sure those that make them would be very very interested.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, that people’s expectations are perhaps skewered a bit, when it comes to new MMO’s, and thats a damn shame. While SWTOR doenst bring anything unique to the table, it does its thing quite well, and thats storytelling.

3407

WoW did have a few torture quests.

3408

Sure, but I’m still interested in what kind of mechanics you’d want in an MMO that are unique?

WoW quest have a lot of unique mechanics/contents… just to name a few

Plant vs Zombie quest(tower defense)
Storm Giant Riding quest(vehicle combat)
Battling Giant viking women while jumping from dragon to dragon in midair(that was awesome).
planting mines to blow up Kamikaze kobolds.

There are tons of different quests in WoW compare to SWTOR.

WoW is getting really good at mix up different mechanic in a single quest.

Most of the quests in SWTOR are basically comes down to follow.

  • Get Kill quest from quest giver
  • Go the area and Kill X amount of guys.
  • run/walk/drive back to the quest giver and turn in quest.

Most of the New Wow quests are like

-Get kill quest from quest giver.
-Go to area and kill X amount of guy.
-One of the monster you kill drops an item that trigger another quest that’s close to the area you are killing the monster(usually not an kill quest).
-Go to that area and do the quest which involving some type of unique mechanic but eventually lead you back to the initial quest giver who will complete both quest for you.

a good example is the quest kill hunter as a horde in Grizzly Hills. There are tons of quest similar to that format.

Also having to walk back to NPC to turn in quest is so 3 years ago. There are few quests in SWTOR(usually class quest) that involving people contact me after quest complete via holo. I mean seriously, I’m a freaking Sith Lord you want me to run back to you after getting Wompat rat skulls(true quest, lvl 28 quest too, Luke must be a powerful Jedi when he was Bullseye womp rat on tatooine), how about just contact me using the communicator and deposit the money in my account.

3409

I played a Tauren Hunter to 60 and a Night Elf Warrior to 40 and I didn’t see anything like that. I remember jumping off a cliff for a quest and following a ghost around. That’s about it as far as memorable quests go. Well, there was also Mankirk’s Wife.

3410

How long ago, Matt? Vanilla WoW certainly lacked for imaginative quests but they’ve made an awful lot of changes in the expansions.

3411

Yeah I’m not sure if it’s fair to judge TOR based on WoW now or based on vanilla WoW.

Compared to vanilla WoW TOR is pretty good I have to admit but it can’t hold a candle to Northrend or Cataclysm state quest design wise.

I have a friend who was pushed into pre-ordering TOR by some other friend and I worried he wasted his money but after the beta I think he will have some fun with it which makes me happy.

For myself I don’t have enough time in my life right now to commit again to something like WoW so I won’t jump in at least for now.
It helps that to me a got a lot of WoW vibes playing the early content so I don’t have the feeling I miss out that much for now.
Also curious about end-game not only for hardcore raiders but other people as well (is there enough?).

3412

One thing that may be happening is that the game apparently locks out those interactive doohickeys if someone else is using it. I had to wait for it to recharge or recycle or whatever after another player used it. Seems pretty lame if that’s what’s happening, but I’ve noticed a lot of “click on these” quests where there were little queues of people waiting to click, so that might be part of it.

3413

I played a fair bit over the weekend–three characters to 10 to choose an advanced class, and a couple not quite there–on both sides, Empire and Republic. I was pleasantly surprised, in that I actually like the voice acting, the stories vary but are overall interesting, and the “feel” is pretty good Star Wars-ish. I’m not put off by the generic MMO-ness of the mechanics and game systems, as I’m pretty comfortable with those, and the game has enough of the carrot on a stick dynamic to keep me going for a while at least. I definitely see, though, that if you were hoping for a breath of fresh air in the MMO arena, you’ll be disappointed. It’s unfair to say it’s WoW with lightsabers, but there’s a degree of truth in that nonetheless.

I also don’t expect it to launch with as much content as something like WoW, with seven years of stuff under its belt. No matter how much they put into the game initially, they can’t replicate seven years of constant play, development, feedback, and testing. Nor should they, as a lot of WoW’s best content sort of evolved with the interaction between the developers, the player base, and technology over time.

The Light/Dark stuff is not the game’s strongest point, I agree. It’s a bit wonky, but ultimately you have to see it as independent of the Empire/Republic split. The way the game decides what is Light and what is Dark seems to hinge on micro-moral decisions–be nice or be mean, privilege the personal and individual over the collective, go for emotion over duty, that sort of thing. It’s pretty consistent but not totally, and at best it adds a bit of flavor to things (and some of the Dark side responses are pretty darkly funny). My bigger gripe is that it appears that there’s no reward for balanced approaches–if you’re all Dark or all Light, you can get gear and stuff, but if you’re a NN Druid type, you get diddly.

3414

I had big problems with these as well. I don’t think it’s a matter of just one of them being the right one, since I’ve seen a variety of terminals usable at various times. At one point, I tried to get a terminal to work, it didn’t work, and then a while later, it become activate-able. I think Wombat is right in that they’ve got really long recharge cycles, but I’m not sure.

3415

Click on quests not working- One reason is lag. It may look like it is glowing to you, but bob just clicked it and it is no longer working /waiting to respawn.
Also if you are in a group, you all have to click things most the time. Get a checkmark over your head when you do so.

I am lvl 19 jedi sage currently , my other half is a jedi guardian just so he could stay with me on story. Disappointed that if I don’t do my primary planet I miss out on -everything-. You pick up your friends in Coruscant if they didn’t start with the force. (the same sort of pattern holds true on red side).

Did quite a bit of crafting myself. Most recipes have a better version, then an epic version that you get from reverse engineering. The first level of things it is rather easy currently to get the blue version of things. The blue things often require some sort of rare item that comes from your mission type deal. They have set it up so that there is no real advantage to getting your class skills earlier than going to your secondary world. Expect your world harvestable nodes to increase as you go up in level and further into the secondary world. For instance -the- place to farm T1 and T2 archeology (crystals and things) is the Jedi temple. That is the endish zone for Coruscant. Metal and slicing is down in the works. Before that things are rather spread out on the other zones there. Trying to get a T2 level (lvl 20 ish) craftable blue recipe is like pulling teeth. Time is running out so I am not sure how much more effort I will put into it currently.

I call right now that the most profitable long term selection of crafting is a slicing, underworld trading, archeologist. Rare metals and cloth from the underworld, arch is all the gem things for -everyone’s- weapons. Slicing is pure money. Once the auction house becomes a need those should net some serious profit.

Neat thing, other half got his ship from a shareable instance. I had already received mine a few moments before. His required he board his ship and go off to Ord Mantell, and I ended up along for the ride. I left said ship and turned around to rejoin him, only to be on my ship. No leaving your ship behind. There are fuel costs between planets I did not try out the space bit.

Overall the story elements sort of cement it for me, I already like the current mmo setup or I wouldn’t have so many danged alts in wow.

…
Questions were poised to a healer. I was healing the whole time. You can effectively think of Jedi Sage as a holy priest. I got a force shield (pw:shield GO) and the highest talent point is effectively circle of healing from what I can read of it.
Healing wasn’t hard, I strongly suggest moving to the raid (operation) frames as they are smaller and respond faster to clicking. I have no means to see anyone’s pet but my own which explains why they gave me the tanky type companion. Most my keybinds were applicable but I never did mouseover healing so I can’t say how backwards it may feel for that style. The hard bit for me was knowing when to dps vs save for a heal since my dps was -absolutely- required. (duo with 2 companions) This said, with gear and tenacity we downed everything but the world boss mech thing in Coruscant. This included doing all the heroic areas.

Gameplay isn’t the original thought here. This is all more story on top of old gaming. That is ok by me.

3416

The morality of the light points are strange. As a jedi consul most are of the type betray teammates-> light points. That is weird. Good in the star wars world seems to mean be a yesmen. Except the “true republic” quest in coruscant. I supose i want a game that present to me hard moral dilemas and swtor may habe a bit of that but sometimes is unitended because the strange idea of morality of the devs…

3417

Yeah, WoW was a while ago for me. I dropped out before the first expansion. I guess I’m just saying, while opening with mis-en-scène car chases, cavalry charges, and dragon fights are great, he may be comparing years of WoW content as a whole with a small slice of SWTOR content. I don’t know how much he’s played of either game.

I’ve played some of the Sith Inquisitor storyline and while certainly all the sidequests are “hey, go here real quick-like and do this”, the main thread taken as a whole is something that MMOs really never pulled off-- maybe because it butts heads more squarely with the paradigm of a “world” with everyone walking around with storyline companions identical to yours. But the main quest lines for each of the classes in SWTOR give the baseline MMO gameplay (aka soloing) a feel that goes way beyond the go/kill/find bite sizes that MMOs are known for.

I’m not here to put WoW down and say that SWTOR is objectively better at every single point in playtime or anything. I am no WoW expert and I have only played SWTOR for maybe 20 hours. I don’t even want to draw any direct comparisons. idrisz just seemed to be taking what must be expansion WoW content and comparing it to what is probably not a very big slice of SWTOR.

I am pre-disposed to defending SWTOR because Angie just started working there, but I am attempting to be fair.

3418

It’s “kind of” expansion WoW content, in that these changes came in with expansions but are in place for everyone. Vanilla WoW no longer exists. idrisz is being fair comparing current / recent WoW (even 1-60) quest types with SWTOR.

3419

Matt, the original 1-60 content was mostly redesigned during the last expansion so even people playing new characters today are seeing much more variety in their quest design than people who played WoW at release. It’s pretty slick. I’m not trying to rip on TOR but Blizzard has been at it for a while and they’re just really good at quest design now. I would love to see what their quest designers could do with Bioware’s conversation trees, voice acting and facial animations.

Agree with idrisz about walking back to town quests feeling very dated. In fact, even worse than that is that there have been a number of times where I will complete a quest and walk back to town only to get a follow up quest that sends me right back to the same cave/warehouse/whatever to do more things right next to the place I just was. Ug. That is so 2009.

That said, I’m enjoying TOR. It won’t replace WoW for me but I’m definitely interested to see more of the story when the game comes out. I was on the fence but the beta weekend convinced me to put in a preorder.

3420

I really wish I could have made this game install. I tried so hard.