Swtor

[Roo Stercogburn]

Trooper is great fun. Got mine to 17 in beta. When I get around to having fun on Republic thats definately the class I will play.

 

[Aada]

Fuck fuck fuck, I still can't decide on a class or the side I will play my heart says Empire but my underdog feelings say Republic!

 

[Sockstuff]

The guild I'm with is Republic. I'll give trooper another go and if I'm not convinced by level 15ish ill roll a sith warrior and dump those losers.

 

[Fafnir]

some eve corp?

Sounds more like they are the Borg...

Fuck fuck fuck, I still can't decide on a class or the side I will play my heart says Empire but my underdog feelings say Republic!

Same here...

 

[Calaen]

My main concern is what the Sith/Republic split will be when the game launches. I've got this horrible feeling most people are going Sith and we're going to have the same situation we had back in WAR. Again, just got to wait and see. If Sith gets oversubscribed I'll be putting my Sith toons to sleep and playing Republic.

Still not read up on the PvP server mechanics, need to check up on that before launch too

PVE servers are like WAR, pvp well it's like Camlann on cammy I suppose

AS for the top bit of yuor comment, this is the reason I am gong Republic, I expect that the majority will be rolling Sith so I'm not gonna be short of enemies to throw myself at relentlessy regardless of the futility of my efforts

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

I really liked the healing mechanic of Trooper Commando. Its like a ranged version of the Disciple of Khaine and I really enjoyed it in PvP.

 

[Nate]

The Sith Marauder was pretty good 1v1 but most of the time you find yourself jumping in to a group of enemies and splat That and the getting pushed off a bridge sucked arse.

I did like jumping up to the platforms with the hutball though, that was pretty cool. If someones in the wrong place it doesn't take long to score

 

[Mabs]

we made a tactical decision to go Sith, as weve gone "good" in almost everything else.
but then were good at arbitrary decision : we chose our WoW server on the "sort by name, third from bottom" on the assumption most people would start from the top to avoid the queues

 

[svartalf]

You might need to download it all again...

With 15 days to go before Star Wars: The Old Republic's launch, it doesn't seem like there's much time to get everything stocked and ready before the year's biggest release happens. Fortunately, BioWare's helping us to run down the preparation list with a series of informative forum posts.



First on the list is to make sure that SWTOR players have the latest version of the client installed on their computers. BioWare says that if you played the game prior to November 25th, you'll probably need to install a completely new client; if you played since, you should be good. There are instructions on the forums as to how you can check which version you have.



Pre-orders are wondering about early access, which BioWare says is the same between the three editions of the game -- it only matters when you added your pre-order code, not which edition you purchased. More information about the early access program is coming later this week.



Finally, BioWare is preparing to make major changes to SWTOR's forums following a December 10th outage, during which all posts and PMs will be erased (as will infractions!). New forums, including those covering crew skills, story, lore and PvP, will be added, and guild forums will be expanded significantly. Those just starting to learn about the game will appreciate the new player help forum and community blog that's coming with the update.

 

[Aada]

Can't believe early access is creeping up pretty quickly its only next week.
Registered my code on the 24th July so im hoping I get a full 5 days or 4 days at the very least.

 

[Corran]

rumour doing the rounds is all July - mid august be the 5 days of early access. . . but think it people guessing based on the pre-order information levels available that show how many people purchased it when.
21st July here (or whatever the first day was), so would say Im more or less safe with 5days be great run up to xmas. Just need to be sure i got everything needed done before then so can sit back and relax between the 15th and going to the inlaws on xmas eve

 

[Nate]

Just gave zavvi a ring, apparently they have 15,000 early access codes now. Should be getting mine in a few mins

 

[Aada]

You will literally get like 1 day if your only just going to enter your code in now ;/

 

[Nate]

Where did you find that out?

 

[rynnor]

Where did you find that out?

He didn't get it anywhere - no one knows so all is speculation. One thing I did spot that no-one on the forums seems to have noticed about early access is that its not just by registration date but also by country and internet provider.

Edit - so if I was going to speculate I might guess that North America will get in first followed by the other regions.

 

[Corran]

Where did they say about Country and Internet provider? And how will they know who has what internet provider as well? Given that I access from various locations all with a different provider are they going to pick at random ?

edit:
ah i see they slipped it into an FAQ now instead of their actual announcements

 

[Nate]

I did see this, but it does seem a lot of the playerbase has jumped to conclusions and spread rumours about it.

http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20111104-0

Early Game Access will be granted according to when your Pre-Order Code is redeemed at the Code Redemption Center.

 

[Corran]

This was a twitter conversation that apparently clears up the "location and ISP".. basically confirms it first come first served, location/isp dont matter as they covering ass incase someone gets pissy with no real chance of getting on due to where they are:

@Rockjaw If i preordered the game in a country, and i registered it in another, which country will be used to determine the early access?

Rockjaw Stephen Reid
@
@Desaroll Whenever you redeem the code is the key, not where you redeemed it.

makaaly Marton Makai
@
@Rockjaw @Desaroll But I read that the time of early access depends on when we redeemed our code, "our location" and internet connection.

Rockjaw Stephen Reid
@
@makaaly That's just in case someone is, for example, on a boat with no internet connection and complains we didn't get them Early Access.

 

[rynnor]

"The length of your Early Game Access period will vary depending on the date and order in which you redeemed your Pre-Order code, as well as where you live and your Internet service."

That doesnt sound quite the same - why would you worry about country unless you were going to filter on country? The twitter conversation doesnt make sense since being unable to connect to the internet would not affect your early access date.

 

[svartalf]

Here some low level beta footage and links to lots of other low level videos this guy has done.

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_jfcKxwf4o

 

[Corran]

I know. Think he trying to say "There are stupid people that try to sue for anything and the law is a joke as if we didnt put this clause in then people with no internet connection would try sue us as they cant play the game and could win"

But with any company you can only take things at face value as they all bullshit

 

[Aada]

With little over a week till early access starts they just need to start giving out the info, surely by now they know exactly how they are gonna play it so just out with it and piss the people your gonna piss off and get it done with.

 

[rynnor]

They wont say because they sensibly believe that telling people who are to pre-order at this point that they will get in at 23:50 on the last day might put them off

 

[Aada]

Good point, sorry but i believe people preordering now hoping to get the ''up to 5 days'' as they so craftly word are going to be very angry when they only get 1 day.

I hope everyone get's 5 days but tbh i see major tantrums inbound!

 

[Corran]

What is craftely worded about it? from the beginning it been "upto 5 days" other then those making things up saying CE get extra

You get upto 5 days. how long is up to them to decide when they feel like it. if you get 1 day you cant complain as it still upto 5 days. THat said be pissed of people no matter what

 

[rynnor]

Heh - I'm on holiday for most of the early access so its not a biggy

 

[adoNix]

Looking forward to this, gonna be playing a powertech BH.

 

[svartalf]

I know a lot of you already played, but here are more impressions.

Hyperspace Beacon: End of beta impressions

by Larry Everett

on Dec 6th 011 3:00PM

Betas, Sci-fi, New titles, Opinion, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Hyperspace Beacon


I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened. Oh no! Something did happen! Beta testing for Star Wars: The Old Republic ended. A full nine days without SWTOR -- I think our lives are over! (Hopefully, you noted the sarcasm in the last statement.) Yes, it's true that our favorite beta came to an end at 1:03 a.m. EST Monday morning. Appropriately, the last thing posted to general chat was "Keapen bids everyone farewell." We all know that this isn't actually the end; it's truly the beginning of the game.

I count myself among the lucky people who were able to play in the beta for an extended period of time. I played through the origin world of all but two classes, and three times I leveled my characters past level 20. (I usually stopped about level 28 so that I would not ruin the ending of the story.) I wanted to get a good feel for all the class stories, so most of my characters got to about about level 15. Once I found out that the beta would end well before early access began, I decided to take in all the classes I could so that I could give you a well-rounded opinion.

Follow me beyond the break as I navigate the asteroid field of SWTOR.

I'm not really going to spoil anything, but if you're interested in knowing absolutely nothing about the stories I've played, then you'll want to skip down to the gameplay section.

Those who watch Gamebreaker know that Justin Lowe of Darth Hater says he skips over the dialogue parts now in the Bounty Hunter story, and one of the writers for the show, Pyrofox, said that SWTOR really becomes just like any other MMO when you skip over the dialogue parts. Generally, I agree. During my third time playing through the Sith Inquisitor starter world, I skipped the cutscenes so I could level with a friend.

Two weekends ago, I played through Tython with Gary Gannon and another producer at Gamebreaker, which prompted Gary to exclaim multiple times, "How can anyone even compare this game to WoW?" He believes it is so far removed from World of Warcraft that it's not even comparable. Of course, he played through every cutscene and dialogue choice. I could almost see the wheels in his head turning as the conversation choices came up: "Is this what I would say, or would my character say this?" He was thoroughly enjoying it.

Every day during beta testing, I have been surprised by the story. BioWare has told us from day one that this MMO would have story, the "fourth pillar," but few of us understood how deep and intriguing the story would be. Sure, some of the plot is predictable. We knew that Skavak was ultimately going to be working for the Empire and that the Jedi Consular's driving mission would be tracking down all those infected by the Dark-Side sickness.

Interestingly enough, it's not the plot that makes the stories so interesting. It's the characters who really envelop you in this game. On Tatooine, I ran into a Jedi character whose ignorance of my character's advances prompted her to reply, "Nothing you say makes any sense." Other people in my house wondered what movie I was watching that was making me laugh so hard. It's not often that a story in a game prompts such varied emotion, and it's never happened to me in an MMO.

After having spent about 100 hours in the game total over this last beta and the previous one, I must still admit that there are weaknesses in the some of the core game designs. The most common issue most MMOs suffer from is class balance. Thanks to SWTOR mirroring its classes, this is not a problem for this game, which is very satisfying. Hopefully, that means this game will not suffer from constant jumps in class design for future patches. However, that doesn't mean there are no problems with combat at all.

I watched gameplay and livestream videos from various blogs and fans. Most suffered from the same issue I had. I was certainly relieved to find out that I was not the only person who mashes on a specific key repeatedly until the action is performed. Even though I'm watching my cooldowns less and less, I still find myself waiting for them in the form of slamming on a key and finding nothing happening. In fact, in certain areas -- mostly PvP warzones -- by the time I actually saw the animation, I was behind hitting my next key. Two issues cause this: the animation system and latency. Nearly everyone complained about the lag in warzones. Many times, it would take me several times of smashing F before I even rolled into cover, let alone rolled into cover and immediately firing off a shot. On top of that, when there was no lag, I still felt that my character was slightly behind my clicks.

Think about this: If my biggest complaint is that I have to smash buttons and there is lag, then this game must be pretty awesome. And it is. If you don't like this game, you don't like video games. I'm not ignorant enough to believe that all players are going to fall head-over-heels in love with this game as soon as they first log in. In fact, I believe that I mentioned that this game feels very much like any other MMO. But I'm willing to bet that anyone who sticks out the first 16 levels will be totally wrapped up in the game.

I speak my opinion on this column all the time, but I want to hear what you have to say. Send me an email with your beta experience. What worked best? What struggled? Next week, since I won't be able to do endgame as planned, I'd like to feature some of your opinions of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The Hyperspace Beacon by Larry Everett is your weekly guide to the vast galaxy of Star Wars: The Old Republic, currently in production by BioWare. If you have comments or suggestions for the column, send a transmission to larry@massively.com. Now strap yourself in, kid -- we gotta make the jump to hyperspace!

Tags: beta, BioWare, darth-hater, EA, Electronic-Arts, end-of-beta, featured, gameplay, gary-gannon, impressions, justin-lowe, lag, latency, LucasArts, opinion, pyrofox, Star-Wars, star-wars-the-old-republic, story, swtor, tor

 

[old.Tohtori]

LAst article shows that swtor fans are going to be even bigger dicks then wow fans.

"If you don't like this game, you don't like video games...." Iiish, nice generalisation of taste.

"I'm not ignorant enough..." Yes you are.

"to believe that all players are going to fall head-over-heels in love with this game as soon as they first log in. In fact, I believe that I mentioned that this game feels very much like any other MMO. But I'm willing to bet that anyone who sticks out the first 16 levels will be totally wrapped up in the game." Oh surprise, something you spend time on, comes important?

F*Ck me if i played 20 hours of hello kitty, i'd get a sense of need to log in and check on my furrymachine.

 

[svartalf]

CUSTOMISING GEAR
I'll be honest, I don't fully understand the original post. Some people will say I therefore shouldn't even bother to try to summarise it, but it's sooo long and boring, here is my effort anyway:

Custom gear is actually pretty common: it can be obtained;
-through class quests around level 8
-as social gear
-as space quest rewards
-as light side / dark side gear
-it is also the typical gear found in Flashpoints
-as rewards for Heroic missions
-using planetary commendations


The second change introduced in the latest build is the locking down of the base mods
-Armoring
-Barrel
-Hilt
-color crystal mod on the Artifact items (purple)

Other stuff...
- Item modding can now be done anywhere at anytime. No workbench required.
- Crafters can now reverse engineer mods and create blue and purple mods.
- A new Custom quality (orange) was introduced to legitimize moddable items as their own quality and type. This isn’t a big deal but does clarify things a little.
- Mods can now be extracted from a Custom item. This is the single most important change and has many, many consequences.
- End game artifact quality (purple) gear is now partially moddable.

Here is the original:

So, it turns out some of the patch notes regarding our modding system were probably poorly written (by me, I must add) and generated quite a lot of concern. I’ll try to explain the changes better and, while I'm at it, explain the logic for those changes.

To start with, we’ve introduced a new color and item type: the Custom items. Those are shown with an orange border and are fully moddable. This change is purely cosmetic. What we have done is take all fully moddable Prototype items (blue) and simply changed their icon color. This helps us create a better and more unique identity for fully moddable gear.

Since other games have used orange to signify truly rare and epic gear, let me clarify that orange in Star Wars: The Old Republic has nothing to do with 'epic' gear. (And for those curious, our version of 'epic' is a very deep purple, bordering on a rich blue). The orange we use is actually the old bronze color we developed a long time ago when our color coding was based on metals (bronze, silver, gold, platinum, etc).

Custom gear is actually pretty common: it can be obtained through class quests around level 8, as social gear, as space quest rewards and as light side / dark side gear. It is also the typical gear found in Flashpoints and as rewards for Heroic missions. Several pieces can be acquired using planetary commendations.

The second change introduced in the latest build is the locking down of the base mods (Armoring, Barrel, Hilt) and color crystal mod on the Artifact items (purple). To explain this change, I need to also explain the history of the the modding system...

So, the first version of the modding system had many issues. It is amazing that a system that is only a few months old is already quite misremembered, but that’s because while the system implementation was less than stellar, players really liked the concept that tried to shine through and now remember it much more fondly that it truly deserves. The main issues of the old system were as follow:

- There were too many different modifications. Sure, the mods had a lot of flavor and made sense: triggers and scopes for guns, underlays and overlays for armors, power cells and crystals for Lightsabers, etc. But in the end, keeping the mods in all gear up to date every few levels was a major pain on the players’ side. Remember, at that time, mods could not be extracted - so a replacement for each and every one of those mods had to be individually located every few levels. And let me tell you, creating and maintaining all those tens of thousands of mods on our end was also not exactly sustainable.

- Some items only had a few mod slots. I know everyone by now remembers a 'perfect' world where everything was moddable, but that simply wasn’t the way it worked. Most premium (green) items did not have a full set of slots and which slots weren't present was a bit random. So, you could find a purple trigger and get all excited about fitting it on your moddable gun - until you realized the gun mysteriously had a scope slot, but not a trigger slot. Of course, your next gun could have a trigger but no scope. This left many players scratching their heads.

- Once slotted, a mod could not be removed. This had a very perverse effect: players would find a really good mod - say a purple overlay - but would really hesitate in slotting it into an armor. What if they find a cooler looking armor next level? Many players would end up saving their good mods for later and ended up over leveling them.

- Mods that were crafted or purchased were most of the time inferior to the mod already slotted onto a prototype (blue) item. This made the entire mod system somewhat useless. One of the main reason was that crafters could not create good mods. Reverse engineering - the main method to obtain prototype and artifact (blue and purple) crafted items - did not work on mod.

- Modding was only done at a workbench. This made it rather cumbersome as the players had to hunt down a workbench before they could fit a new mod into one of their items.

So, to summarize: in the old system, you could not take any piece of gear, fit it with the best mods and keep it all the way to the end levels: a lot of the green gear did not have all the slots, the mods that could be obtained were for the most part... not good, and you could not extract better one from existing gear.

So... things had to change. Because despite all those warts, some of the players who tested the system really liked the concept: that a player could find an appearance they really like and work to keep it relevant all the way to end game. So, we knew we were on to something and we also knew the old system was just not delivering.

Those changes took time to implement. Some of them concerned large amounts of data and some required new code. Unfortunately, not everything could be implemented on time for each testing build and, in some of the builds, testers were exposed to a very raw and partially completed new system. However, today, we are close to where we want to be - but not quite there yet (more on that later).

So, the changes we made are:

- Item modding can now be done anywhere at anytime. No workbench required.

- Crafters can now reverse engineer mods and create blue and purple mods.

- A new Custom quality (orange) was introduced to legitimize moddable items as their own quality and type. This isn’t a big deal but does clarify things a little.

- Mods can now be extracted from a Custom item. This is the single most important change and has many, many consequences. However, we feel that being able to slot a mod and then extract it back truly opens up the system and makes it a lot more fun, easy and safe to experiment with. I’m not 100% happy about how the system interface and GUI works today (it is still a bit clunky) but at least it is functional.

- Rather than have a whole bunch of unique mod types, some mods are now common to all items. This greatly helps players who are 'going the mod route’ to stay relevant and competitive as they now have a much higher chance to find exactly the mods they need, level after level, be it from a crafter, at a planetary commendation vendor or by extracting it from another item.

- Partially moddable premium (green) items were removed as they essentially lied to the players: an item missing a mod slot would never be able to match a high end non-moddable item. Instead, to compensate for the loss of diversity, orange versions of all green armors was created and given to the crafters. So, yes, if you see a green armor you really like, you still can have that appearance until end level. It does take a bit of work - you either need to become a crafter yourself, befriend one or trawl the GTN.

(Note: recipes for those orange appearances are discovered through Underworld Trading missions.This allows us to have a truly large number of those recipes without overwhelming the crafting trainer inventory. As a side effect, this opens up class quest green armor appearances from other classes as well as long as you fulfill the armor requirements.)

- End game artifact quality (purple) gear is now partially moddable. Why moddable? Because that allows the players to customize stats such as critical, etc. to their exact desire. Why only partially? Because mods are now extractable... Think of it this way: it is easier to defeat the first boss from an Operation than the last boss. So we want to reward the players with the best possible loot for defeating the last boss and that loot is typically the Chest piece of a set. The first boss drops less interesting stuff, say boots. This may sound old school, and it is. But by doing so, we ensure that both players that get rewarded by looks and those rewarded by stats are properly rewarded for taking on the most difficult challenges.

Now, if purple gear was fully moddable, players would simply farm the first boss, acquire 5 pair of boots, extract the armoring, mod and enhancements from the boots and slots them in their favorite Custom items. That actually sounds cool, but it really isn’t. Letting players extract the armoring mod from the purple items would trivialize end game gear progression and stop rewarding successful and dedicated players for their efforts.

So, instead of letting that happen, we prevented the Armoring, Hilt and Barrel from being extracted, but we also made sure of dropping purple Armoring mods of equivalent power as Operation loot. This means that players going the mod route can still take their favorite orange armor and make it as good as a operation purple armor (with some temporary caveats).

- Some crafting recipes that allowed the creation of moddable armors and weapons have been replaced with non-moddable versions. Why the nerf? Because those recipes were no longer properly balanced once we allowed mod extraction. It became far cheaper and faster to create an item for the sole purpose of extracting every mods out of it than creating mods in the first place. This also allowed nearly every crafter to create every type of mods, which wasn’t very balanced either. Instead, the crafter can now make a non-moddable item for those players that enjoy that and, thanks to newly introduced recipes, a moddable (but empty slotted) version of the item.

Now, with those changes, we are closer to an actual implementation of our modding philosophy than ever before. Is it perfect? No, not yet. There are still some imbalances here and there (and I trust this community to let us know loud and clear if we miss any) but it is close and the remaining issues are on their way to be fixed. Of course, it would help to clarify what that philosophy is:

To put it simply, we want moddable items to offer an alternate and optional loot system that allows players to customize their look and their stats with more freedom and without penalty for doing so.

However there are many times where it will be easier for a player to just put on whatever stuff they just looted and not care about the way it looks. Keeping a specific outfit or weapon “up to date” or obtaining a specific look may require additional time and dedication, such as finding a crafter that can create that specific smuggler shirt or that rare color crystal.

I hope this clarifies things a little. As always, we are very much interested to hear what you all have to say on the system, but at least you now have a bit more information to go on - and of course, in a very short time, you will all be able to test this on the live servers.

Anyway, thanks to all of you who have been helping with the test of the game and offered your very passionate opinions - on this subject and others. Testing a beta isn’t easy. Things changes all the time, some stuff isn’t finished and nothing seems to make sense without the benefit of knowing what’s going on behind the scene. So thanks again and I hope to have the chance of meeting each and every one of you in game.



Emmanuel Lusinchi
Associate Lead Designer
Star Wars - The Old Republic