Star Wars: The Old Republic

Nephrinn · 2011-12-19T16:58:24.000Z

I can’t say it enough. SWTOR has me totally hooked at this point. PVE is KOTOR quality, crafting is done extremely well and unlike anything we’ve seen before, and the space combat isn’t half bad and has a lot of potential.

They just need to fix queues and some annoying bugs and I’ll be 100% happy.

The question is, can Bioware keep giving us high quality content in the same time frame as say Rift? If they can, I think they’ll easily compete and maybe surpass WoW at some point. If they can’t, then its days may be numbered.

balut · 2011-12-19T17:00:49.000Z

Random thought: All the voice acting has been great so far, EXCEPT for whoever does Yadira Ban in the Black Talon Flashpoint. Wow, that’s just bad, like mid-90s “grab anyone in the office to do voiceovers” bad. OTOH, it makes all the other voice acting seem that much better.

Murbella · 2011-12-19T17:08:40.000Z

Bah i was really looking forward to playing swtor tonight.

Dejin · 2011-12-19T17:13:39.000Z

Nephrinn:

The question is, can Bioware keep giving us high quality content in the same time frame as say Rift? If they can, I think they’ll easily compete and maybe surpass WoW at some point. If they can’t, then its days may be numbered.

Supposedly they are keeping the entire SWTOR team on as the live team. I don’t know what the typical draw down is for an MMO post-release, so it’s a bit hard for me to evaluate. For those of you in the know is this as impressive as it sounds or not?

"James Ohlen:

In other MMOs, the team moves on to other games or gets downsized. We’ve actually kept our team, and we’re not working on anything else. It’s a little bit different for me. Basically, when I finished with Baldur’s Gate, I went on to Baldur’s Gate 2, then I immediately went to Neverwinter Nights, then I immediately went to Knights of the Old Republic. But here I’m finished with SWTOR, and it’s just more SWTOR. The whole team is that way. We don’t have a secret project. It’s nothing but new content for The Old Republic. We have teams working on new flashpoints; we have teams working on new operations; we have teams working on new game systems and on new space missions.

From interview in Massively.

MattKeil · 2011-12-19T17:16:27.000Z

balut:

Random thought: All the voice acting has been great so far, EXCEPT for whoever does Yadira Ban in the Black Talon Flashpoint. Wow, that’s just bad, like mid-90s “grab anyone in the office to do voiceovers” bad. OTOH, it makes all the other voice acting seem that much better.

Is that the Jedi at the end of it? Yeah, that was a serious “Nice read, Velma” scene.

Nephrinn · 2011-12-19T17:17:47.000Z

Yeah, ydejin, that quote is really encouraging and I hope it’s true. :D

Aki · 2011-12-19T17:18:32.000Z

This is the best first few days with a game since probably Baldur’s Gate 2. This game is incredible.

lostcawz · 2011-12-19T17:23:55.000Z

Loving the hell out of the storyline so far I’m very surprised to say since that wasn’t a draw for me at all going in. But when does the game open up a bit? I’m not even level 10 yet, I realize, but it’s been a pretty linear progression so far, and I’d like a little MM in my ORPG.

Dejin · 2011-12-19T17:27:54.000Z

lostcawz:

Loving the hell out of the storyline so far I’m very surprised to say since that wasn’t a draw for me at all going in. But when does the game open up a bit? I’m not even level 10 yet, I realize, but it’s been a pretty linear progression so far, and I’d like a little MM in my ORPG.

In terms of level design, Taris, which is the third planet is quite open. Courscant (2nd planet) and Nar Shadda (4th planet) are basically closed in city areas. For the city planets design tends to be a combination of straight linear or circular areas. I thought Courscant was well done storywise (I’m a JK) and I think the Nar Shadda art direction is well done, but I’m looking forward to getting out of the city again.

One thing about picking and choosing which quests to follow. I stalled on my character quest while doing other world quests. If you don’t like repeating areas, that’s not the right move. I had several occasions where after I finished all the world quests in an area, I went back to my character quest only to discover that it was taking me to the area I had just finished world quests for.

Also if you do all the world quests, you’ll probably end up overlevelled. I’ve done pretty much every world quest I’ve run into except the Taris bonus series, and a smidge of Space combat, and I’m about 3 levels over where I should be.

Tyjenks · 2011-12-19T17:33:10.000Z

Dejin:

I had several occasions where after I finished all the world quests in an area, I went back to my character quest only to discover that it was taking me to the area I had just finished world quests fo.

I did this with the Justicar area on Coruscant. I got Kira through my main storyline when I was almost completely done on the planet.

Dejin · 2011-12-19T17:40:34.000Z

Teiman:

I don’t think the “optional” quests are optional.

If you only do the main quest, you will be underleveled, and you will start dyiing a lot. So you will be forced to go back and do something to level up more. And with something, I mean the optional quest, and perhaps pvp, and… I don’t know… crafting xp? that one come very slow… The quest are optional, the grind is not.
Swtor is not a honest game, but is not a good liar either.

I’m way over-leveled and have done no PvP at all. I’ve done 2 heroics and 1 flashpoint. I’ve probably done 3-4 space missions.

I’m currently about 3 levels above all the mobs (IIRC I’m at 25 and the NPCs on quests are around 22) and I’m rather sad about it because right now the game is way too easy for me. Unfortunately I’m rather compulsive about quests, although I did leave some Taris quests unfinished – didn’t do the Taris bonus series.

So no, doing all the optional quests is not in fact required to keep up.

Jakub · 2011-12-19T17:46:54.000Z

Dejin:

I’m way over-leveled and have done no PvP at all. I’ve done 2 heroics and 1 flashpoint. I’ve probably done 3-4 space missions.

I’m currently about 3 levels above all the mobs (IIRC I’m at 25 and the NPCs on quests are around 22) and I’m rather sad about it because right now the game is way too easy for me. Unfortunately I’m rather compulsive about quests, although I did leave some Taris quests unfinished – didn’t do the Taris bonus series.

So no, doing all the optional quests is not in fact required to keep up.

That may annoy completionists, but for people such as myself who’ve done all sorts of quests in other MMOs, and can often deduce what we won’t like based on the description, it’s a godsend.

Besides, having too much content leaves some for future playthroughs.

Brad_Wardell · 2011-12-19T17:48:16.000Z

I flew around to some of the level 50 spots. There was no one there yet. I singled handedly attacked a level 50 republic outpost. The single NPC there killed me with a single blaster shot. Very humbling.

Dejin · 2011-12-19T17:48:52.000Z

Jakub:

That may annoy completionists, but for people such as myself who’ve done all sorts of quests in other MMOs, and can often deduce what we won’t like based on the description, it’s a godsend.

Besides, having too much content leaves some for future playthroughs.

It’s not a bad thing. I just wanted to counter Teiman’s claim that you have to do the optional quests. You definitely do not need to in order to keep up.

Murbella · 2011-12-19T17:54:49.000Z

I will likely end up there too. I haven’t been pvping, but i refuse to leave a planet until i do all of the quests (including the heroics). After i do all of the quests, i find all of the holocrons and check them off on my list.

idrisz · 2011-12-19T17:56:48.000Z

The highest level I saw on my server was a Powertech at lvl 41 last night. that was on Hoth, he might have moved on to Voss already… there were only like 2-3 people on Hoth.

I really hate most of the planet after Taris, because how badly the spaceport is constructed(or lack of).

Quesh have this stupidly long elevator ride from the spaceport.

Dejin · 2011-12-19T17:58:20.000Z

idrisz:

I really hate most of the planet after Taris, because how badly the spaceport is constructed(or lack of).

What do the higher level space ports look like?

Personally I’m rather annoyed by the jumbo-sized space ports and am kind of curious what the design thinking behind them is. I suppose realistically they would probably be quite large but that’s the one area where I really do feel like I’m running around for no reason other than that the designers wanted me to run a lot.

idrisz · 2011-12-19T18:03:42.000Z

you land on on a space station(big empty room with your ship) first, then you take a shuttle to the surface. shuttle takes you to the spaceport(big empty room, with 4 doors for each class), then you walk out and take a 500 meter elevator down to the actual questing town. that’s quesh.

There are so many empty spaces in SWTOR, a lot of redundant running. prime example is the ship dock in Kass, you enter your ship hanger, instead going straight for you ship, you have to run up the hanger control room, then run all the way down again because for some odd reason they close the hanger door.

another horrible example. Mos Ila(imperial town on Tatooine), horrible layout for a town. Town/Station like Taris is perfect, it’s a nice compact area with pretty much everything you need. They might have remove a particular quest in Tatooine, where you need to hunt down multiple saboteurs for drops, I can’t imagine doing that quest with 20 other people because there is literally like 8 spawn spots in the town, and spawn time is like 5 minutes. In beta with 2 other people, took me 20 minutes to finish that quest.

Union_Carbide · 2011-12-19T19:00:20.000Z

Michael Fortson:

I can’t figure out why they take the forums down when they do game maintenance. That seems…backwards: “Get out of the game!” <people go to forums instead> “Get off the forum!”.

Clearly you’ve never seen the WoW forums during downtime. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Douglas_on_QTT · 2011-12-19T19:24:41.000Z

Union Carbide:

Clearly you’ve never seen the WoW forums during downtime. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Sounds like every MMO forum at any time to me. :b