Star Wars: The Old Republic

walTer · 2011-12-05T12:41:28.000Z

Ouch.

I hope they release the new client long enough before release and/or early release.

Razgon · 2011-12-05T12:41:38.000Z

Weird - I distinctly remember them saying that wasn’t neccesary.

Jason_Townsend · 2011-12-05T12:43:31.000Z

Yeah, Reid twittered something or other about how it hopefully wouldn’t be necessary. I just checked his feed and it says “Confused about #SWTOR install/uninstall? We’ll have a Forums post up soon about it.”

My downloading-20-gigs sense is tingling, unfortunately.

Jason_Townsend · 2011-12-05T13:45:41.000Z

Clarification.

Allison Berryman:

In preparation for the official release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, we wanted to make sure that everyone has the correct game client installed on their machine.

If you participated in our Game Testing Program before November 25th, we recommend that you uninstall the game testing client (refer to instructions below) and then download and install the launch game client. We’ll update this post with more instructions when they’re available. The size of the launch game client is approximately 27 GB.

If you have played in our game testing program at any point from November 25th onwards, you will not need to re-install the game client, as you should already have the launch version installed.

To verify that you have the launch version installed, you can check for the “assets_swtor_main” version file in the following location on your computer: \Program Files (x86)\EA\BioWare\Star Wars – The Old Republic\assets. If you have that file present, you do not need to reinstall the game client.

EDIT: Having beta tested the 11th-13th and 23rd-25th weekends, then patched the launcher periodically, I have assets_swtor_main_version.txt in that folder. (Electronic Arts\ not EA\ but hey)

Marcus · 2011-12-05T15:37:20.000Z

Jason Townsend:

Clarification.

EDIT: Having beta tested the 11th-13th and 23rd-25th weekends, then patched the launcher periodically, I have assets_swtor_main_version.txt in that folder. (Electronic Arts\ not EA\ but hey)

Yeah mine is also Electronic Arts.

Jason_Townsend · 2011-12-05T15:45:29.000Z

I’m guessing they’re urging a reinstall of the recent (ie last two beta) clients just for the heck of it, but the assets_swtor_main_version.txt file from Dec 2 actually exists in the install directory of anyone who’s kept patching since beta ended. Maybe Charlatan or other long term betas can indicate whether there was a full reinstall on the 25th of November, after the weekend ended?

At any rate I’m not reinstalling anything just yet, but it may well be necessary, assets_swtor_main or not. Ah well.

walTer · 2011-12-05T16:00:38.000Z

I was going to ask (I guess I am to a certain degree) if it makes sense to just go a clean install anyway. Does anyone know if you can NOW dl the final client or will that actually not be available until release day?

Jason_Townsend · 2011-12-05T16:09:06.000Z

It’ll surely be available a few days before the 15th. I dunno what I’ll do. I hate to download the thing for basically a… 4th time? in 2 months, but if I stick with the beta client and it’s flakey/unusable I’ll have missed several days with which to replace it before early access, and it takes me like 24+ hours to DL on my crummy connection.

instant0 · 2011-12-05T17:42:31.000Z

Patch Version 13, Built on Fri Dec 2 18:51:58 GMTST 2011

Is what mine says.

Any ideas?

Charlatan · 2011-12-05T19:35:49.000Z

Mine says:

Patch Version 13, Built on Fri Dec 2 18:51:58 GMTST 2011

But my feeling is that the contents of this file are just what the patcher is telling you, so it should reflect some version relative to the last time you patched the client. So I’m not entirely convinced looking at that file’s contents is valuable information.

Also I’ve read lots of differing opinions on what files they’re actually talking about and where it really resides. And since I’ve got lots of extra cruft in my folder (“green” asset files, which I assume are assets from a prior build) I’m probably going to uninstall and reinstall the client anyway.

Jason, I have a crummy/not terribly fast connection too, but I feel the same way you do - I’d hate to try to launch the client on the 15th and learn I had to re-download it then. Much better to do it ahead of time, crummy connection and all.

Murbella · 2011-12-05T19:38:18.000Z

I was hoping i could play the beta download until my dvd version arrives so i didn’t have to re re re re re download it personally.

Neopythia · 2011-12-05T19:58:56.000Z

If you have the yellowish-orange launcher, then you should be ok. The old beta launcher was far less polished.

Neopythia · 2011-12-05T20:23:44.000Z

If you have the yellowish-orange launcher, then you should be ok. The old beta launcher was far less polished.

Jenner · 2011-12-06T07:06:36.000Z

I’m so on the fence about this one. I love Star Wars, and I really dig Bioware games in general. Never played WoW and have yet to find a MMO that I can stomach for more than a month’s sub. I played in the Thanksgiving beta weekend and in general had a good time, but I can definitely see how TOR could get on my nerves.

Things I liked:
-Bioware story model & full voiced characters.
-Fully realized Star Wars theme.
-Flashpoints & ability to do story missions with a group.
-Space combat. (Yes, it’s a rail. Reminded me of Rebel Assualt actually. Fun, though).

Things I hated:
-Endless fights with groups of 3 dudes standing around doing nothing.
-Lame-ass side missions that recycled the same handful of RPG quest archetypes.
-Environments that were at the same time overly large (ceilings being 20 feet high) and still felt restricted. Very lineral, box-caynon areas on all 3 of the planets I saw.

So yeah. I guess my overall impression was “meh”, but I still kinda want to give it a shot and see what comes out of leveling up past 15 or so, which is where I stopped.

Ryslin · 2011-12-06T07:12:15.000Z

Jenner:

I’m so on the fence about this one. I love Star Wars, and I really dig Bioware games in general. Never played WoW and have yet to find a MMO that I can stomach for more than a month’s sub. I played in the Thanksgiving beta weekend and in general had a good time, but I can definitely see how TOR could get on my nerves.

Things I liked:
-Bioware story model & full voiced characters.
-Fully realized Star Wars theme.
-Flashpoints & ability to do story missions with a group.
-Space combat. (Yes, it’s a rail. Reminded me of Rebel Assualt actually. Fun, though).

Things I hated:
-Endless fights with groups of 3 dudes standing around doing nothing.
-Lame-ass side missions that recycled the same handful of RPG quest archetypes.
-Environments that were at the same time overly large (ceilings being 20 feet high) and still felt restricted. Very lineral, box-caynon areas on all 3 of the planets I saw.

So yeah. I guess my overall impression was “meh”, but I still kinda want to give it a shot and see what comes out of leveling up past 15 or so, which is where I stopped.

Decent points, though I would wonder what planets you went to? Ord is seashore island, hutta is a swamp neither have high walls… the no go zone being where you hit the ocean/mass body of water.
Linear progression is an issue, especially on the low end planets.

I do wonder if they will break up quest progression with new tactics, some of the things bliz came up with might not work so hot in bioware’s story mode.

Jenner · 2011-12-06T07:30:21.000Z

I visited Hutta, Korriban, and Dromund Kaas. Yes, Hutta wasn’t nearly as boxy now that I think of it. It’s a bit smaller than the others since it’s a starter world. Dromund Kaas, though, was terrible that way.

Another thing that annoyed me about Kaas was the huge Imperial city that took forever to walk across. And walk across it you will, many times, as quests take you from one end to the other.

Jason_Townsend · 2011-12-06T07:47:25.000Z

Bear in mind that at 14 you get a +35% run speed buff (which I could definitely have lived with at level 1 once I’d gotten it for the first time.)

I’d also say that DK is a pretty open environment. Certainly not “boxier” than Hutta or the other intro worlds. The quests are basically structured in a late-2000s MMO way, which is to say you go from quest hub/area to quest hub/area in a fairly linear way, but that’s the current MMO standard. If the quests are laid out more haphazardly the whole exercise takes longer and whoever has the most expedient levelling guide levels faster (c.f. vanilla WoW and the Jaime’s guides for both factions.)

That said I didn’t finish DK on any of my imperial characters; didn’t want to spoil my post-launch IA.

Mike_Cathcart · 2011-12-06T07:50:37.000Z

At around level 20 the leveling begins to slow to a crawl and the honeymoon phase ends as you realize you’ve got about 2000 more fights with 3 dudes standing around doing nothing.

I’m up for it, but if you’ve never lasted past the first month of an MMO I don’t see any reason this one would be different.

Jason_Townsend · 2011-12-06T08:02:54.000Z

Aside from 21-23 on Nar Shaddaa - and, again, because the non-class Republic quests just seemed a bit aimless/disagreeable - I had a blast in the 20s. 24-8 on Tattooine and Aldaraan were great. Levelling slows - it’s an MMO - but I didn’t feel like it was “cutscene - grind for 2 hours - cutscene” or anything.

ibdoomed · 2011-12-06T08:04:40.000Z

What’s the 3 dudes thing? Is that like the 3 sea shells?