SWTOR Beta Key Giveaway

Grab yours here:


EU: SWTOR (EU) - Beta Keys - Curse
US: SWTOR (NA) - Beta Keys - Curse

 

Thanks, figures this is posted right after I uninstalled and deleted the 25 GB installer/game that I had from the server load weekend test.

25GB download and I played for like 25 minutes

 

That bad, eh?

 

Ouch. Did you like what you played or you thought that would be it?

It was quite fun imo. Spent the entire weekend almost exclusively on this game. I ran into fewer bugs than most AAA games released nowadays. Being something other than a force user is enjoyable too.

 

No not that I only felt like playing 25min I only had the chance to play 25min I had real life obligations. (25m was probably maybe closer to an hour)

The weekend access only granted like 2 days of time to play and then they shut you out. First time I got a chance to sit down and play for a while I log into see my access is gone

However if you want my honest opinion about the game.....

Man, dunno what I can say don't we have NDA? I guess that only means I cant talk about actual things in the game, not about how I felt about the game.

Granted not much time in, so this may not count for much.

I felt that what was advertised and blown to a huge proportion is not here.

Graphics didnt seem good, gameplay felt extremely WoW clonish, lots of things that were supposed to be in this game to make it different did not appear to be there.

I dunno its beta so you cant judge, only time will tell.

But I feel the game will flop unless just the fanbase SW has can carry the game.

Lets hope GW2 ends up being closer to what they are advertising it to be, if so it should be the easily superior game. Even if they are similar in greatness I would pick GW2 due to free to play.

 

Thanks! When will the beta start?

 

I haven't played WoW so I can't compare, but if all it took was a sci-fi setting to hook me, I'm in trouble. Does WoW have individual storylines for each class throughout the game?

Mostly likely Thanksgiving Weekend since it'll just be a bigger server stress test.

 

WoW is the most polished and complete MMO out there and I doubt SWTOR will compare.

WoW provides a separate story quest line and separate starting zone for each race, not class. And every race is limited to certain classes. For example, an Undead cannot be a Shaman. When I was playing, only Night Elves and Tauren could be Druids.

As WoW expanded, they added new races which provided a new starting zone and quests. At each expansion though they provided an entire new area with their quests, introduce new factions to get reputation with (which are needed to buy certain items, goods, open areas, do quests, dungeons, raids). Each expansion has large massive cities for each faction etc.

Eventually all the races do the same quests, usually around like level 40 or so.

It's just a very very complete game. Blizzard is constantly changing and tweaking the game for balance. I'd say 99% of all MMOs out there have very unbalanced PvP and gameplay. Blizzard is probably the ONLY one that isn't. Every game has certain class that is just OP, some tactics that are just OP. Blizzard made sure no character is OP and every character has their benefits. That's why Arena is so team based. A Shadow Priest is probably not going to go head to head with a Death Knight. But a Death Knight can't survive without a healing class. Mages are amazing with crowd control. For every situation there is a class that can excel at, while others will fail.

When I was playing, WoW was the most balanced, awesome MMO out there. The raiding is unmatched. The raids have the most incredible boss fights. It's all scripted with various phases but so hard. So many things happening that require all 25 people to do it right.

I"d say in 99% of MMO PvE is just have a tank, tank the boss, some just DPS and others heal.
- WoW is not like that at all.
- WoW requires multiple tanks. Tanks have to communicate so well. Then other times sometimes 25 people have to split into three groups. And boss may randomnly focus on one group so as people run to the next group, the healer in the group has to be aware of players coming there way. While healers in the other group will have to try to use bubbles etc for safe running. Other times you have to assign multiple players to call out what is happening. Like whether the boss when i takes flight will blast the ground the top, middle or bottom. While one person is kiting a bunch of mobs away from the rest of the raid etc. It's just so dynamic. In a boss fight, everyone will have run around covering the entire map at some point. Always moving. You are rarely ever standing still at one place for long and constantly switching targets. And all the while if you are DPS you have to watch for your threat level so you don't pull aggro from tank or having to worry about doing enough damage in a certain amount of time. One mistake can cause the whole raid to fail. And often that is the case, it's just one player, making one tiny mistake and it all falls apart.

 

I have played wow for all the years its been out and I got to play in the beta this weekend for swtor and got a good 20 hours into the game and level 20 character on beta.

I found it entertaining for what it is... which to me was like a slightly slightly upgraded version of KOTR 1 and 2 with mmo aspects slapped in at the last minute. Graphics I have to say only suck for the character models/players/npcs... the environment is way way better than anything I have experienced in WOW/RIFT/AION but that may just be an aesthetic preferrence.

Game play though it plays very much like the single player game most "worlds" are really just bigger maps of the same types that the single player game had. Many features are not very MMO'ish many aspects of the game are very different than what WOW offers while others are just exact clones talent points/pvp gear come to mind. Frankly swtor has as satisfying a solo experience as a multi player experience.

If you liked Kotor part 1 or 2 you should like this game but its no WOW killer for sure. WOW has way more polish and cleaner ... well everything MMO's are known for PVP/GUILDS/DUNGEONS/RAIDS/ETC ETC ETC... I cant speak for the highest levels as I only played to level 20 but even those reviewers (getting weekend beta access lets you read full time beta testers notes on closed beta forums) most seem to think the same as I am relaying to you all here.

I will certainly play SWTOR for the nerd points and to see all the story lines they created because I love the star wars mythos but as an avid MMO player I cant see this replacing a game like WOW.

 

Games like this fail because they try to start big, "like wow".
But hey, wow got ... for a second... ONE HUNDRED millions dollars of spending per month. So far all of them released unfinished games where you simply have nothing to do once you reach high level.

And wow didnt start big, it was rather silly unbalanced and game with boring quests.

Atm Wow got around 10 000 quests. Sure first quests were like "kill 10 goblins" but as the game progressed recent quests are really fun to do with quite a story behind them.

So ye. i am pessimistic xD

 

More opinions on SWTOR? Nobody played beta?

 

A majority of the missions are voiced and before I tried WoW a couple days ago, I didn't realize how immersive and more engaging it made SWTOR. As Vicious mentioned it felt WoW clonish, but compared to what little I played of WoW, SWTOR has made little improvements to individual gameplay - loot and death being the most noticable.

I'm not sure how much more is safe to say (NDA and all), but you might get to try for yourself. The next beta weekend might be on the 25th to 28th so if you signed up via the swtor website before the 11th, you're guaranteed to get in otherwise you'll have to try and grab a key from one of the media sites like in the OP.

Via Twitter:

 

I've seen so many of these games, and played a bunch, and they all start off really strong. WAR was pretty solid at the beginning. And then you kept playing and all there really was to it was PvP and public quests and a whole lot of boring grinding and no late game content at all.

 

Even if its fun for a month or so i would still consider it xD

 

It's gotta be frustrating for developers these days. WOW made leveling quick and painless, so everyone wants that from an MMORPG now. They want to hit max lvl in a matter of days/few weeks at most, not months like it used to take.

That's puts so much pressure on the developers to have more content sooner. Too many people look at what's there and then compare it to a 7 years old game(WOW) and not like the comparison, without regard for the 7 year difference(Vanilla WOW had very little end game content as well).

People just don't want to give a game time to develop anymore. That's not to say it will devlop to everyone's liking, but at least give them a chance.

 

Why would anyone focus on leveling at all? End game content is what keep people playing for longer then few weeks.

Leveling is irrelevant. If its boring i will bot, if not — will have some extra fun, but i would hit cap sooner or later and the game have to throw something at me at that point.

I am more of a pvp kind of guy so just need fun and flashy combat system, decent pvp balance, and good risk-reward system + obviously some nice battlegrounds. Lets face it — wow pvp endgame is arena and battlegrounds, counterstrike only got battlegrounds and its still popular so they just need to make it fun. It doesnt need to be huge or anything. Wow was fun (even vanilla) because combat was fun and it become even more fun, i am still a big fan of mage combat in wow — blink in range, summon elemental, cast frostbolt, WHILE its flying, cast pet nova and icelance, block incoming spell and use a fireball proc right after into some more spells that benefit another spells. It feels really fluid and fun, like tons of spells land at the same time benefiting each other. No other game had anything like that.

 

Thanks for making my point. That's the mentality WOW has created these days. The journey to max level used to me a bigger part of the game, now it's viewed as a "hurry up and get it over with" type thing.

That's what makes it tough for developers. They want to create an immersive world, but they get stuck between dealing with the immersive world and having to create more and more end game content because players raced to max level. It's hard to keep up with amount of end game content players want, at the pace today's players want it at.

It's almost to the point of why have levels anymore? Just create a game where everyone starts at lvl 50(max) with appropriate gear and let them have at the end game content.

For me, the JOURNEY is just as much fun as the end game(or at least it SHOULD be, depending on whether the game delivers or not).

 

Why not just give everyone the same stats (or at least the same stat opportunities, and then simply ramp up the difficulty level of new sections?

 

No, that's not it at all. It's that ONCE YOU GET THERE, AT YOUR OWN PACE, there's nothing to do. Eventually you're going to hit max level. And WoW had a bunch of end game content at launch. Not as much as it has now, but it had enough. And when you're trying to compete with an established giant, saying "it'll be better later" doesn't cut it.

 

You know, when you spend YEARS playing a game you cant think about leveling as something permanent. No matter how many hours of play time they will create it will be eaten within a month before one need to resub.

Your point is not entirely correct though, wow is using leveling over and over when they create enough content to initiate it. Its just its HARD to create enough content to let leveling take months. Unless you want to go lineage way when one need to kill millions of same mobs to level.

the solution is in my post above there. Game just needs something fun to do over and over.
Look at SC2 or league of legends — no leveling, same over and over. Yet people play it.
Means you dont need truckload of content for people to play ur game.
Whether or not you create a lot of content is totally up to you. It doesnt impact customer loyalty much.

 

It is certainly going to be a niche game.

Not everyone will like it (most probably will not) and its certainly not at the same level of WOW or even Rift at end game content.

Depending on how Bioware decides to take the game model they will either make it more of a clone of other MMO's to get more subscriptions and dump tons of content in first 6 monts to a year... or they will stand their ground on the feel of the game now include more storyline personal quest type of progressions/story arcs added in and probably go free to play within a year is my prediction.

I personally like it the game is not as shiny and polished as WOW and something about that appeals to me... It has potential to be lasting game but I doubt it would take over the MMO gaming genre anytime soon if ever.