My only complaint about this game so far is why they haven't come up with a username login system vs using the email address.  I'm SO freaking tired of having to change my password a couple of times a day just to play.  Hackers? Please, you're not getting in, simply as that, but I'm getting annoyed at finding my account locked CONTINUOUSLY!!!  How about Bioware/EA pony up some cash and find these IP's that are trying to get into these accounts? 

If they'd only STARTED in the Forgotten Realms, I think the game would have been a success from the start, but better late then never.  Just sayin...

The great thing about  the Imps outnumbering the Republic on our server is that its forcing the Republic side to play better.  Where once we were getting our asses handed to us, now the Republic PvP warzones are way more effective at teamwork and are starting to succeed more and more.

To the bellyachers, I'm glad you quit. Move along to Lineage II or Darkfall or whatever you're currently playing. Nothing to see here.  I'm enjoying the game, I feel for the first time where my chracter is actively involved in the story line.  The space combat is a nice distraction and a great stress reliever.  PvP can be frustrating, but the pvp tokens and exp definately takes the sting off of being trounced by the Imps most of the time.  Out of all the MMO's I've played, I like this one the most.  Don't like that? You don't have to, go play something else.

Originally posted by Dwarfman420

Red lightsabers can only be had by empire sith I believe (or while your neutral faction with good/bad points).

It is of my opinion that there are a lot of people wanting to vroom vroom with red lightsabers.

Possible clothing looks better on "evil" side as well.

Republic can use red light sabres, but they have to have dark side alignment.

As far as looking better goes, you hit the nail on the head!  I have a lvl 37 healing spec Sage.  I kid you not I look like a muscle bound buffoon in drag with a bra on my head.  I KID YOU NOT!!!!

I swear, the person who did the chracter design for the Jedi Sage must've hated their work, because my characters look BLOWS!

Ok, your comment on crafting is strange.  Sure it's cost me money, but I've made WAY more back.  Gotta spend money to make money, that's just basic economics.

As far as the UI goes, I agree that it needs work.  That being said, the game has not even passed its first month yet.  Compared to many, MANY other MMO's that have been released the last five to ten YEARS, the problems with this game are vastly insignificant by comparison.

By all means quit if you're not happy, but to expect everything to be absolutely perfect straight out of the gate, you will continue to be immensely disappointed with any game you play.

I'm curious as to how many people have since started playing this game.

I'm also really curious on it's effect on WoW and other MMO's.

Anyone have anything trustworthy?

Having a BALL!!!!  This game has exceeded every expectation that I had.

Downside? Queue's...which by WoW''s original launch standards are miniscule (I've yet to see a queue exceed 300 (avg 150) while starting in WoW when it first launch I rerolled due to being placed 2000+ in queue.)

The staff are quick to get back to you, there's plenty to do and I've yet to get the "I'm sleepy, gonny imprint QWERTY on my forehead" feel. 

Can't get enough!!!!!

Oh God PLEASE! I'm GLAD SWG is gone.

The game was BORING.  Certain skill sets were the ubersetups you needed to get ahead, so forget anything to do with being "original".  Everyone wore the same armor and used the same gear because it made them the best.  The game was a grind fest with almost non existant content and I'm sorry, the community was FAR from being "awesome." There were good people there, but they had more than their share of ass hats too.

Good bye, good riddance.

Originally posted by Gardavsshade

Originally posted by 6SlipKnoT6

Originally posted by drarakkus

too bad ccp keeps going to areas where most people cant get to such as 0.0....glad you guys are rewarding the 0.0 alliances with more money instead of doing it somewhere that anyone can get to.

Just started my shift( yeah I'm working on Sunday :( )here and you already made my day, good sir. Thank you! However if you really mean this then you are not really familiar how EVE works exactly :)

Lol Drarakkus is right. CCP has always loved the big alliances and those Players that have what it takes to venture into and survive 0.0.

The other Players that can't handle 0.0... like myself... are just ingame to pay the server's power bill.

It doesn't matter how many accounts you own, if you can't handle 0.0 space as a Player you do not really matter as far as CCP is concerned and they would just as soon have you replaced with a Bot.

Nothing new with this to be honest, EvE is as it always has been. EvE is good in that way.

This event is still a great one from my point of view because many Players will indeed have a great time and get some great loot hopefully. I could be bitter but my bitterness would be a waste because CCP don't give a damn about Players that can't handle 0.0 space for whatever reason even if it is a real life cause.

So.... have fun and enjoy and happy holidays in EvE. :)

 

That pretty much sums up how I feel about the game as well.  I had to stop playing in 0.0 after they nerfed jump bridges simply because there wasn't enough time in my day to try and get somewhere to do anything.  With limited time to play, it was a waste of money to keep my subs going simply because outside of 0.0, the game blows.

I think the space combat is merely something to do when you're bored and need a break from the regular game.  I also think it's filler for a possible future "open space" expansion that EA/Bioware can dedicate more time to.  I can understand what they did.  You can't have star wars without spaceships, but at the same time they had to get their ground game down first.  Give it time folks, give it time.

I'm sorry, but YOU do not speak for the industry.  YOU don't even speak for those who miss the "good ol'days" of the MMO industry.  YOU speak for you, and that's it.

Do I agree with how the industry is going? It's a mixed bag.

Though I miss the challenge, the time constraints imposed on those playing the older games are simply not realisitic if you wish to get as many players as possible. "Back in the day", EQ was king with 1.25 million players.  These days? WoW almost lost that amount in the last six months and is still going strong.

The thing is, the devs had to reach an equilibrium between challenge/playability vs player time available.  I do not have 4 to 8 hours to spend playing an online game anymore.  I know those that do have that time, but I know FAR more people who don't.

WoW showed that you could expand a market by toning down the difficulty while still maintaining an addictive quality.

You'll see the games change (as they have in the last 10+ years), but die? Naw, too much money to be made.

Get used to the new standard in gaming, me thinks it's here to stay.

The fact that the game is bringing out the "supposed" game experts in droves so they can knock the game means it will be a success.  The same people giving their crappy reviews because the game doesn't cater to them personally will be the same ones complaining because they can't get into their three new accounts fast enough.  Enjoy the money EA!

Mirroring may suck, and I certainly don't think these classes are IDENTICAL, just really similar, but the alternative is MUCH worse.

I still remember playing EQ.  While a Necromancer could have a nap fighting a group of dragons, you had Warriors who couldn't even fight a single green (no exp) mob without help.  The rest of the classes fell in between those two, and there were subtle differences depending on gear and later AA build, but ultimately the games balance was WAY out of whack.  This is not nearly as bad if it's a PvE server, but for PvP it can kill your game.  Not striking a balance does two things: a) frustrates the HELL out of players and b) you have the same class with the same gear running around in droves.  It stops being about the whole game and only about the class.

It's hard trying to make each class unique.  The tiniest difference may not do much in the early levels, but the butterfly effect at lvl 50 could be HUGE.

It's the lesser of two evils.

Originally posted by Odysses

Originally posted by Raora

Sandbox was the ONLY thing going for SWG. Beyond that SWG sucked!

 

This can't be overstated enough, SWG was more of a disappointment to me then TOR is.   SWG combat was horrible, the classes were boring and it was grindy for grindyness sake.  But the crafting was cool :)

Completely agree.  I was BORED in SWG.  Yeah it was a sandbox, but it was also incredibly unbalanced and really NOT fun to play.  Certain character skill builds meant completely dominating PvP while individuality in a character build often resulted in nothing more than repair costs and immense amounts of frustration.

Granted, the crafting system and housing bit was nice, as was the non-combat classes, but these are things that can be added to an already functioning game (see Vanguard).  The actualy star wars galaxies game itself blew chunks, and yes before the NGE.  I fell asleep grinding my toon fighting Krayt Dragons.  I guess I won?  And don't even get me started on becoming a force user.  Holy Crap!  I'd sooner remove my own eyes with a splintered wooden cooking spoon.

Originally posted by h0urg1ass

After having experienced two Beta weekends now, I have to finally say something somewhere about this game.  That something is that I'm highly disappointed in this installment of the Star Wars franchise!

TL;DR VERSION:  Star Wars: The Old Republic is simply more of the same old garbage that you've seen in every other WoW clone to date.  It is less refined, less polished and you're simply trading swords for lightsabers.  Their single point of ingenuity is an abundance of voice acting which takes the same exact dialogue options found in any other game and puts a voice to them.  It has zero longevity and will probably hemmorage the majority of it's player base within 3-4 months of release as players finish the main storylines and realize that WoW, EQ2... ect offer the same end game experience with more polish, customizable UI's and better graphics.

Back to my highly opinionated review:  This game pretty much takes the worst part of MMO's and puts them all in one place.  I work better with lists, so let me list out the issues that drive me crazy:

 

1)  Bind on Pickup, Bind on Equip.  This is one of the most immersion breaking aspects of MMO worlds in existence.  My first MMO experience was EVE and it has set the bar extremely high.  If I want to fit laser beams on my Hurricane, then I put the damn laser beams on there.  No, I don't get any bonuses for using the wrong weapon on the ship, but at least I have the choice to do whatever I damn well please.  This extends to finding a lightsaber that I don't want or need and not having the option to give it to my buddy just because I equipped it once.  Apparently there's this magic superglue in MMO land that permanently attaches items to one single player at which point your options are to use it or throw it away.  How ridiculous.  I can't believe people aren't up in arms that this convention is still being copied ad nauseum from World of Warcrap.

 

If you need people to keep questing for items, then simply give items a chance of loss on death or make it to where a weapon can only be repaired so many times before it needs to be replaced.  Poof, no need to glue everything to everyone anymore.  If game items can be lost or destroyed through game means, then people will need to keep searching for them just in case the one they have breaks or gets lost on death.  Not only that, but it creates a vibrant economy where crafters will know that there will always be a need for their products rather than selling it to someone once and now they'll have it forever and never need your item again.

 

2)  Classes.  Yay, another MMO with the class system lifted right out of 1970's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  *puke*.  Can we please let this convention go?  Are we really this imagineless when it comes to creating games?  Why can't I make a character with Attributes and Skills and then play what I want to play?  Hey BioWare, Gary Gygax called from fourty years ago and wants his antiquated and clunky character system back.  Give us Attributes, then let us choose from a list of skills and advantages. 

For instance, if  I want to create a double bladed lightsaber wielding Jedi who wears heavy armor and has a small amount of skill in blaster pistols, then I should damn well be able to.  If you're afraid that force powers and heavy armor are too powerful a combination, then give force powers a percent chance to fail that grows higher with heavier sets of armor.  See?  That took me less than two seconds worth of imagination to balance heavy armor and magic.  You think that Jedi that can use heavy blasters might be game breaking?  Well there's a way to mitigate that with a teeny bit of imagination.  If you want to play a Jedi, then you need to buy into an advantage called Force Mastery.  Different force powers and combat stances require a higher level of Force Mastery, therefore if you want to be a decent Jedi, then you won't really have enough points left over to spend on heavy blasters anyhow.

 

3)  Inventory.  Why why oh why do games still have slotted inventories?  I can carry 50 sets of heavy armor chest pieces or 50 pieces of chewing gum.  They all take up the same amount of space on my character, and when I run out of that space, well, I just couldn't possibly carry another stick of gum.  But If I take one stick of gum off of my character, then I can suddenly carry an Ewok in my left cargo pocket.  Give each item a weight and give our characters a carrying weight limit based off our combined strength and endurance attribute.

 

4)  Levels.  This goes along with classes.  The 70's are calling again and this time their getting ready to sue for plagiarism.  Levels are so boring and old school.  Oh, you're a level 50 Sentinel.  Well, I know exactly what you can do to me since you're just a cookie cutter, carbon copy of all the other level 50 sentinels in the game.  Instead, they should have quests reward us with force points that we can either invest into attributes at a high exchange rate or skills and advantages at a lower exchange rate.  Then we can make the character that we want to play instead of the one we're shoehorned into.

 

5)  Space Combat.  I'm having a hard time even trying to figure out what StarFox is doing in my Star Wars MMO.  What the crap is this pure utter garbage BioWare?  I know you guys have meetings to discuss content.  You know the guy that stood up and said "Hey, lets put StarFox in the game and call it space combat"?  Yeah.  Fire his ass.  Then fire the guy who said "Hey, that's a great idea!".  If you didn't have enough time to develop good space combat, then just don't do it!  Tell us it will be in a future expansion and leave it the hooha alone!  ... and for heavens sake, if you're going to copy someone elses game then why didn't you copy X-Wing or Tie Fighter?

 

6)  Character creation.  Honestly, if you're not going to put sliders in the game that allow us to modify our characters in every shape and size, then don't bother with character creation at all.  This system has to be one fo the worst I've ever seen in my life.  If you want some inspiration, then go download the free trial of EVE and create a few characters in that game, then redesign this crap.  The short skinny body type is absurdly short and skinny and the big fat body type is a beached whale.  Now I realize that I was just testing the beta and maybe the character creator was simply limited to a few options, but with only a couple of weeks to go until full release I don't see a lot of possible changes here.

 

7) Character progression.  Go to place "X" and kill a bajillion of "Y" and bring their lower intestines to "Z" has been done before.  In fact, it's been done to freaking death.  You've beat the dead horse so much now that it's just a pile of organic goo.  Not only that, but it makes absolutely no sense that my Light Side Jedi needs to go slaughter 50+ justicars to complete a quest... especially when I just finished another side quest that shows the Justicars treating their prisoners fairly and honorably.  "Just don't do it" some of you will say like some anti Nike spokepeople.  Well, if I "just didn't do it", then I'd never gain a level past 10 during the entire game. 

I never complain without providing an alternative, so here it is:  Instead of slaughting our way through thousands of innocent people who inexplicably attack us for walking within some arbitrary agression bubble, let us have fewer and more meaningful fights.  Give us situations where we know that there's a sith presence in the Black Sun territory, but we don't know where, so we have to talk to NPC's, hack terminals and use the force in other interesting ways in order to locate this sith operative and then we need to carfully plan our attack.  For instance, we find out that he's operating out of room X and wth a little research we discover that room X runs directly under a main hot water pipe so we send a droid in to make sure that the water pipe bursts just before we attack which distracts him and causes hot water damage... ect.  So many imaginative ways to have character progression without wholesale slaughter.

... and don't ever send my highly trained and skilled Jedi to fetch some ridiculous item that a droid could go pick up and bring back.  It IS beneath my character and his/her abilities.

8)  Tab Targeting.  This is really boring.  Tab+1+2+3, Tab+1+2+3, Tab+1+2+3, Oh this ones epic so +4,+5,+6... *puke*.  There's a game that came out in 2008 that pretty much had the perfect combat system.  That, much disregarded, game was called Age of Conan, and although it failed very hard on so many levels it did give us one of the best combat systems I've ever used.  You walk up to what you want to fight, hit a combo hotkey and then you have to push some other keys to execute whatever combo you want to execute... oh and if your sword, spear, giant hairy banana manages to hit three enemies facing you, then you damage all three of them!  How novel!

 

9)  World on rails.  What's the point of playing a game if everything is spelled out for you and you're simply guided straight down a walled in path?  That's what a movie or TV show is... you get the same experience every time you watch it.  A game should have the ability to have a different experience every time you play it.  If there's an island that we need to assault, then put it out there, let us find it and let us plan our own way in past the guards and defences.  Instead we get a straight path right to the door that we aren't allowed to veer off of because if we do, then there's this magic invisible force field that tells us we just went off the railroad tracks and how dare we try to play the game our way!  They wrote it and dammit, we're going to experience exactly what they want us to experience!  How dare you, sir, want to approach the island facility from it's less guarded western approach and sneak through the pineapple plantation unnoticed to one of the rear air ducts and crawl past the guards to drop down on the sith lord from behind!  That simply wouldn't be as fun as beating up and a bajillion pixel punching bags along a straight path to your target!

 

10) Graphics.  Again, I realized that we've only played the beta so far, but there's really only so much more they can do with the engine they are using and it's not much.  If the goal was to create a cartoony game that everyone can play, then why not go the shaded cell route like Borderlands.  If it's going to have a comic book feel, then go the extra mile and make it look like a comic book.  I'm really starting to believe that this game powered by the same engine that KOTR and KOTR II were powered by.  It doesn't look all that much better to be honest and those games were both released last decade.  If you don't want photrealism, then don't do it, but this halfway in between stuff is just painful to look at after playing Witcher 2, EVE, Age of Conan and Skyrim.

 

On a final note I'd just like to say that I'm sick and tired of playing the same game over and over with a different skin and a different name.  I pre-ordered it long ago and therefore I will play through the main quest line on a couple of characters, but then it will go right on the shelf beside all the other WoW clones while I pack up and go back to a game where I'm not shoved in a tiny box and pointed at my next target like a guided missile.

 

You say you're tired of the same old thing, but yet you support it by paying for it, thereby completely pulling the rug from under your own argument.  The game companies could care less how long winded your review is, it's your dollars that matter and that's it.  Don't like it? Don't buy it.  If the game doesn't make money, there's a good chance that said companies will observe this and NOT go down that path.

If you're looking for something new and fresh and different, forget expecting earth shaking change from a large company like Blizzard or EA.  There are far too many investors to worry about pissing off to risk on unproven game mechanics.  If you want something that breaks the mold, it's going to come from an small, independant shop who don't have idiot investors telling that what they can or can't put in their game.

Hmmm, I have to say my favorite thus far is the smuggler, though I haven't played them all.

I found it funny and witty, as any Han Solo'ish type of story should be.  When a game makes me laugh at the diallogue, you know the story is good.

The imperial agent was surprisingly bland.  It seemed just like a smuggler but without all the humour.  Not that I need to laugh, but it seems like a stripped down version of the smugglers back ground.

The Sith Inquisitor whole slave story was kinda neat.  Now that you're free, you need to prove that you deserve your freedom and what not.

The Sith Warrior was a little more traditional in the "melee class story".

Trooper seemed pretty much what I would expect.  You're special forces, you get attacked, you're out on your own, everyone goes "ZOMG! Joo R SpeC Forc35!!1!" and you just shrug and kick ass.  I can appreciate it, but it's standard fair.

Haven't done any of the Jedi yet or the bounty hunter, can't wait to try them though.

(NOTE: Please keep in mind that most of these are between the levels of 5 and 10 with two of them in their teens.  The storys could get vastly more interesting. I'm just commenting on what I saw so far)

I think it's healthy that the old status quo gets shaken up a bit.

Now if CCP would only fix up high and low sec, the rest of us could enjoy the game. I miss having the time to play in Null. :(

Heheh, of course he's worried.  500k subscribers to SWTOR? Keep going...

I remember EQ,back in the day with it's ultimate 1.5 million subscribers losing over 1 million to WoW....and that was before anyone saw the numbers Blizzard reached.

I think that the numbers lost won't be in the thousands, but in the millions.

I played on both an i7 Intel Quad core with Windows 7 and on an old AMD X2 wth Vista Ultimate and never had a crash.