Star Wars The Old Republic NDA has been lifted

NDA HAS BEEN LIFTED!!! Lots of people are streaming and or lots of information is coming available all over the internet. Please post if you have something you would like to share with those of us who are excited about this game. Thanks

 

Wow those graphics. They look so 2004...

 

The graphics DO look really dated (particularly compared to other BioWare offerings like Mass Effect 2 or 3, or Dragon Age 2 (which had bad gameplay but looked great)). But looking at the trailers for character progression and character classes on TOR's website, it looks like the classes are very cool. And I have absolute faith that BioWare can make it feel like you're part of a real story in a real universe, instead of the overt "here's a fetch quest, here's a kill quest" feel of WoW (which I tried and hated).

 

I played up to level 18 as BH last week, what do you want to know? As for the graphics, they look dated, but once you play and get into your class story, you'll probably not be so bothered by it.

 

Is each planet open world or more like ME2 with very small exploration areas

 

More like the Mass Effect 1 exploration planets, but they vary in sizes. There are 4 starter planets and the one I played on, Hutta, is for Bounty Hunters and Imperial Agents. Once you leave that planet you move onto the Imperial capitol planet Dromund Kaas which is a lot larger. The missions take you to a lot of the areas in the map, but there are little areas that you won't and could explore. Like WoW, you can rent a taxi to take you to one the major parts of the map after you've discovered them.

 

FANTASTIC news. ME1's combat system was a mess, but the planetary exploration really made you feel like part of a vast, diverse universe. It was great. I'm replaying through ME1 right now.

 

Can you go back and forth to any of the planets whenever you want?

If you go back to an older one do areas respawn?

 

It seemed like you could, but I never actually tested it out. Once I got my starship I wanted to venture forth. Then the beta ended soon after With that said, planets are limited to certain level ranges so going back to say your starter planet wouldn't be beneficial unless you missed a side mission you want to finish or grab a codex entry you didn't get. Likewise going to a higher level will probably get you killed fast the moment you encounter a hostile NPC.

 

When I playing the beta I enjoyed it. I managed to get to a Level 10 Jedi Sentinel before the beta weekend was over.

 

A couple of good databases based on beta info
Torhead: Try Aunt Beru's Blue milk! Made without artificial growth hormones.
DarthHaterDB - SWTOR Database

 

Am I the only one that likes me1's combat system?

 

My opinion on SWTOR in a nutshell for those who do not like to read my super long explanations.
__________________

Take World of Warcraft, Add Lightsabers.

- Fin

 

I heard a lot of people ended up turning off the voice overs because they took too long. This is kind of ironic because full voice acting was supposed to be one of the major selling points.

Oh EA/Bioware...when will you learn that even gold-plated garbage is still garbage?

 

I wonder if they are really too long or that people have become impatient these days. I vote for the latter. With WoW, it's click, click, click and you run off to do the quest. Sounds like in this game you can't really do that.

I've been playing Skyrim lately and it's made me appreciate slowing down and listening/dealing with dialog.

 

is pvp fun? do u have lots of skills? combos? synergies?

 

Not sure if serious, or...

Interesting that it's Skyrim, of all games, that has made you slow down and listen to dialogue. The voice acting is almost laughably bad. In many cases, it is very much laughably bad.

Gotta love the conjured Dremora Lords, though. Summon two of them and watch them engage in a scenery chewing contest.

"A CHALLENGER IS NEAR!"

"I WILL FEAST ON YOUR HEART!"

 

played the beta not impressed. might still buy it and play it since its starwars lol

 

You're the first I've met, I'll say that much. The cover system was poorly implemented, pistols with the marksman ability are way overpowered compared to the other weapons, and movement isn't dynamic enough (all just "in my opinion," of course). ME2's combat system was worlds better than ME1's.

 

It reminded me of the combat in KOTOR...

 

The graphics are clearly stylized, but, then, so are wow's. The gameplay graphics, when turned up a bit are worlds better than what you see in most of the videos. In fact, most of the videos on the TOR website, especially when set to full screen look awful. However the actual game is terrific. Smooth, with a well executed style.

Im one of the people who hoped for a redux of SWG, but Im still won over.

 

I listened through the storyline voice overs, but I skipped through most of the general ones where it's pretty much do this or that which gets repetitive. There were some conversations worth going through that were interesting if you're somewhat interested in Star Wars lore. But to be fair I do the same thing for the Mass Effect games except I'll skip most of the companion related dialogue too since they're not interesting either.

 

I figured I'd dredge this back up since the beta weekend just ended.

I got a chance to play it over the weekend, taking a Jedi Sage to lvl 16. I had a great time and will definitely be buying it on release(I already have it preordered anyway ). The game has some nice elements to it and I like the atmosphere they created. I was able to get my ship at lvl 14(it was a serious struggle to finish the last part at that lvl to get it tho). The ship setup is cool and it opens up the game immensly. I wish you got it a bit earlier tho. Around the time you get you advanced class(lvl 10) would have been better.

Space combat... well, lets juts say it reminded me of an OLD arcade style game. It really needs some advancement, as it is very simplistic now. However, it is a nice change of pace from the land/building grind and adds an extra element to the game as you can improve your ship. I did read where they will be focusing on advancing it after release so we shall see.

As for the voice acting, I found it quite good. Yea it can get repetitive at times and I did find myself hitting the space bar to skip certain lines of dialog, to speed things up, but overall it gave you a good sense of what was actually going on with the storyline. I can see this being a turn off to those people that just wanna race thru everything to max level. This game WILL slow you down a bit and make you pay attention to the storyline. The dark/light points you get, depending on your choices when doing a quest change your appearance in game, so keep that in mind. I thought that was a cool idea.

All in all, I really like what I see and an definitely IN at release.

 

I'd just like to add that currently the game has memory management issues. 2GB is the minimum system requirement and there have been people that complained about slowing down and crashing. I got up to something called the Taris Bonus Series (level 20+ content) and the game just brought my dv6 to its knees, dipping to 0.1 FPS and using up around 3.1GB of memory before crashing or forcing a hard reboot. I managed to get myself unstuck by slowly waiting to use the quick travel function.

In short, I recommend waiting for some sort of confirmation that this is no longer a concern before buying the game. Otherwise upgrade to at least 6GB RAM especially if you're using integrated graphics.

With that said the game is pretty fun. I played as a Jedi Consular up to level 26, rushing a bit because I wanted to get a taste of the speeders. For those that played KotOR, revisiting Taris is interesting to see how it all turned out.

 

They did just release a new client today for the full beta testers(not the weekenders like me) that is supposedly their release client. So it will be interesting to see if that changes anything.

I will say, up to lvl 16, I did not see any performance issues nor did I crash or get dropped. Then again, my laptop if a DV6-6135DX which has 6GB of ram already in it.

 

Oh, that is cool to hear. I didn't know another client was up yet.
Check me out in this video we did.

I'm on the right. (no hood) Let me know if the link is working.
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.


I also have a picture for you below from Sunday night:

 

Unfortunately, I'm at work and good ole Websense blocks YouTube. So I'll have to wait till I get home tonight. I can't see the picture either... grrr, damn Websense

 

I had fun this weekend and was suprised my level 20 Jedi shadow was still saved with all his progress from 3 weeks ago playing Beta for the first time.

I only got him to level 26 this go around as the NPC's were hitting way harder. I specialized as a tank class and found with my healing partner (you gain him around level 24) I could still solo fairly well but not as easily as 2 builds ago.

The game is what you expect to be a very stylized. The corny starwars type of storylines could have been written by lucas circa episode 1-3. Personally I love that kind of stuff you can certainly call me a fanboy but I am also a realist. I think the game will have a good opening just for the name and marketing that Bioware has been doing but will soon (possibly before even most people reach level 50 sadly) start to decline and its actually my hope it will go free to play sooner than later!

One thing I do like is tanking seems somewhat viable in group play PVP. Its not a spec you will want to fill all your ranks in a premade PVP group but at least one is a huge asset due to taunts reducing damage/changing targets of opposing players. PVE is pretty similar to many MMO's the game lacks some of the quality of life features of WOW and other big MMO's but some classic MMO lovers may like that. No group queues or random dungeons will be found here you have to form parties the old fashion way /yell pick me pick me!

The voice acting is neat... I will leave it to you to judge wether its worth the expense or not. Sometimes like with the class story I listend to everything but other times I just had to fast forward even in the "instanced group" story. I was not always enthralled with the conversation but your mileage may vary.

Ranged classes seemed to have a distinct advantage in PVP and PVE so that is not new to MMO players. The "planets" are all just bigger version of the theme park maps you saw in the single player KOTR video games so dont expect fully fleshed out endless "planets" when you play.

All in all if you like WOW type MMO's and KOTR 1+2 it will prob be worth playing at least to level 50 to finish your class story before giving it up. I dont know that I will play it after that we will see what new patches and items Bioware adds in the time it takes me to finish out the story but I am sold enough from trying it out to preorder my copy.

 

I doubt it ever goes free to play. There is real content here unlike STO. They plan to add 1-2 planets every couple of months. I can see myself playing every class past at least Level 20 and possibly to 50. I never was interested in doing this in Wow. We currently have the problem that we have so many people authorized on our website that we are expecting at least 2 (500) person max Republic side guilds and at least 1 (500) person Sith side guild for launch. As an officer of SFD I feel like the amount of work we have ahead in the next couple of weeks is going to be insane. 500 is the cap population per guild.

 

New MMOs often start out this way.