official Star Wars: The Old Republic

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If you were invited to this weekend, chances are you will be in the next weekend beta (which will be the final one).

When is the next/last beta weekend? Is it this weekend (18th-20th)?

[Neo003]

Got the beta key just now, can't wait :woot: .

[Knightwolf20024]

zam/wowhead is also giving away keys

With Star Wars: The Old Republic set to launch in close to a month, BioWare really wants to start stress testing their servers, so they've released a huge batch of beta keys for us to give away (25,000!). So no more moping around, feeling left out from all the fun; grab a key and feel special!

link to keys

When is the next/last beta weekend? Is it this weekend (18th-20th)?

its in the comming weeks not this weekend

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zam/wowhead is also giving away keys

link to keys

its in the comming weeks not this weekend

Are the beta keys offered through ZAM for an event, like last weekend's beta? Or is it for full beta access?

[Knightwolf20024]

Are the beta keys offered through ZAM for an event, like last weekend's beta? Or is it for full beta access?

they are for the stress test in the comming weeks.

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they are for the stress test in the comming weeks.

Lame. But I guess it's good for people who didn't get an invite already.

[Mike Herm]

Has anyone used the beta on a Mac via VMware or Parallels? I'm wondering how performance is and internet connection stability (I frequently have problems streaming over my network to WMP in VMware). I have the high end 27 inch iMac with 256gb SSD, so if anyone can tell me how it is below the specs on that I'd really appreciate it!

[S00N3R FR3AK]

Affirm this was confirmed by the Dev team. After this past weekends test I can't wait till the game is released.. My only problem now is, during beta weekend, I didn't want to play the class that I plan on playing on release (which is Sith Sorcerer) so I played a Bounty Hunter.. problem now is, after playing BH this weekend and getting him to level 18, I must say I am REALLY digging BH now.. So much so that now I can't decide which I wanna play at release. I have played Sith Inquisitor on my last beta weekend invite about a month ago, but I only got to level 10 and stopped..

I didn't take a class above lvl 4 because by lvl 4 for both i wanted to play both and not ruin the story lol.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO GOT A NOTIFICATION, BUT NOT AN INVITE!

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There's a huge stress test coming up, and that's what you'll be invited into.

The invites aren't out yet, obviously, but they're coming. So don't panic...

grab your towel and chill out, it's wasn't a mistake. :)

Thanks for the heads up. I look forward to the stress test. :)

[SMELTN]

Looks like the stress test will be Nov 25th-28th. It was posted early this morning on the Dev log. Man all the people off for Thanksgiving.

[eblkheart]

Looks like the stress test will be Nov 25th-28th. It was posted early this morning on the Dev log. Man all the people off for Thanksgiving.

Good time to stress and crash those servers...

[S00N3R FR3AK]

Crap I'm gonna spend part of that time driving and maybe going to the last home game for OU.

[SMELTN]

Crap I'm gonna spend part of that time driving and maybe going to the last home game for OU.

Same.. We are having the Alabama vs Auburn game here as well.

[Nagisan]

I won't even be near a computer capable of playing any game from 5 years ago over thanksgiving, but from my first SWTOR beta experience, I won't be missing much unless they highly revamped the classes or experience rates.

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I won't even be near a computer capable of playing any game from 5 years ago over thanksgiving, but from my first SWTOR beta experience, I won't be missing much unless they highly revamped the classes or experience rates.

What's wrong with the classes and experience rates?

[Nagisan]

What's wrong with the classes and experience rates?

In the beta I played, the only viable class for solo play (with a companion) was the healer classes, the others just couldn't handle 2-4 equal (or slightly higher level) mobs at a time and make it through without a bit of luck and what not. As for experience, I had 2 characters over level 12, one followed mostly the main story, the other did virtually every side-quest I could find, both of them got to a point where (at one point) I was level 14-15 attempting to kill level 17-20s (elites included) for the main quest.

Not to mention, to stay as equal level as you could with the main quest, you had to do virtually every quest in the zones, which was really slow with how spread out everything was.

As an example to anyone who has played Rift, it took me as long to hit level 10 swtor, as it did to hit 20 in Rift, overall it was just not a fun experience considering your class choice really doesn't shine through until you get over level 10. Another example, in Rift, if you do every quest in the zone, you move on to the next zone anywhere from 2-4 levels above where you need to be for that zone, in SWTOR, I tried doing this, and I ended up 2-4 levels BEHIND where I needed to be for the zone. It also doesn't help, that at 3 levels lower than an enemy, your hit chance goes from like 65% to like 20% (2 levels lower = 65-70%, 3 levels lower is like 20% at best), which makes it blatantly impossible to kill things more than a couple levels higher than yourself. Even with my companion, I fought a single mob that was 3 levels higher than me for literally 5 minutes and it was at full health because it had the capability to heal itself.

[margrave]

I've been in beta for months now, all classes can solo

[Nagisan]

I had problems with the Juggernaut class, it just wasn't dishing out any damage and it was barely more survivable than the other classes. I would often take on like 2 enemies and have to meditate (or w/e its called for the sith side) after killing them just to keep my health above half. Which is fine considering the skill doesn't have a cooldown and all, but its annoying to be forced to do it just to do a quest or two.

[Emn1ty]

In the beta I played, the only viable class for solo play (with a companion) was the healer classes, the others just couldn't handle 2-4 equal (or slightly higher level) mobs at a time and make it through without a bit of luck and what not. As for experience, I had 2 characters over level 12, one followed mostly the main story, the other did virtually every side-quest I could find, both of them got to a point where (at one point) I was level 14-15 attempting to kill level 17-20s (elites included) for the main quest.

Not to mention, to stay as equal level as you could with the main quest, you had to do virtually every quest in the zones, which was really slow with how spread out everything was.

As an example to anyone who has played Rift, it took me as long to hit level 10 swtor, as it did to hit 20 in Rift, overall it was just not a fun experience considering your class choice really doesn't shine through until you get over level 10. Another example, in Rift, if you do every quest in the zone, you move on to the next zone anywhere from 2-4 levels above where you need to be for that zone, in SWTOR, I tried doing this, and I ended up 2-4 levels BEHIND where I needed to be for the zone. It also doesn't help, that at 3 levels lower than an enemy, your hit chance goes from like 65% to like 20% (2 levels lower = 65-70%, 3 levels lower is like 20% at best), which makes it blatantly impossible to kill things more than a couple levels higher than yourself. Even with my companion, I fought a single mob that was 3 levels higher than me for literally 5 minutes and it was at full health because it had the capability to heal itself.

I agree I felt like despite doing several side quests and the main story line it was taking exceptionally long to level. I don't necessarily think thats a bad thing, but I also didn't enjoy the fact that I could only take on a single mob at a time if I didn't want to risk dying, and eventually I'd be one to two levels behind the mobs and therefore forcing me to be even MORE careful. Not to mention the game doesn't make a clear differentiation between group quests and solo quests. Spending 45 minutes trying to complete a quest only to realize that its impossible without multiple players is just irritating. The game offers little in the way of innovation in terms of the MMO genre and the only redeeming factors are that it has great voice acting/chat sequences as well as it being star wars. Everything else is fairly generic and uninteresting.

The only other problem I have with the game is that the starter area takes WAY TOO LONG. I played till around level 12 I think and I was STILL in the starter area (or at least the first planet feels like one giant starter area).

[Nagisan]

I agree I felt like despite doing several side quests and the main story line it was taking exceptionally long to level. I don't necessarily think thats a bad thing, but I also didn't enjoy the fact that I could only take on a single mob at a time if I didn't want to risk dying, and eventually I'd be one to two levels behind the mobs and therefore forcing me to be even MORE careful. Not to mention the game doesn't make a clear differentiation between group quests and solo quests. Spending 45 minutes trying to complete a quest only to realize that its impossible without multiple players is just irritating. The game offers little in the way of innovation in terms of the MMO genre and the only redeeming factors are that it has great voice acting/chat sequences as well as it being star wars. Everything else is fairly generic and uninteresting.

The only other problem I have with the game is that the starter area takes WAY TOO LONG. I played till around level 12 I think and I was STILL in the starter area (or at least the first planet feels like one giant starter area).

I felt the same way, the story and voice acting was good, and 90% of the reason I signed up for the beta was because it was a star wars mmo, but after playing the beta, it seems like an extremely generic MMO. Along with the slow leveling, you don't get your advanced class until level 10, which can often take 5 or more hours to get to. I don't know about everyone else, but playing 1 of 4 generic classes for 5 hours before you get to play your actual class is really lame. Sure you can argue that many other games have this type of character system, but they don't normally take this long until your first advanced class, and they generally do not have talent systems similar of WoW for the advanced classes (which means each advanced class is much more specific).

As for the starter area, its not really that bad, you can leave it pretty much anywhere after level 6 or so (pretty much the lowest level you can be after doing all the main story quests on the starter island). But if you do not stay until a higher level you will be struggling to level later on. I left the starter islands around level 8 or so, only to be moving on to the third zone (1-8 on starter zone, 8-14 in first non-starter zone, 3rd zone after that) at close to level 15, while the lower level mobs in the zone were lvl 16-18. The game tries way to hard to limit your progression through the story line, which is where it fails horribly IMHO.

[Xilo]

I felt the same way, the story and voice acting was good, and 90% of the reason I signed up for the beta was because it was a star wars mmo, but after playing the beta, it seems like an extremely generic MMO. Along with the slow leveling, you don't get your advanced class until level 10, which can often take 5 or more hours to get to. I don't know about everyone else, but playing 1 of 4 generic classes for 5 hours before you get to play your actual class is really lame. Sure you can argue that many other games have this type of character system, but they don't normally take this long until your first advanced class, and they generally do not have talent systems similar of WoW for the advanced classes (which means each advanced class is much more specific).

As for the starter area, its not really that bad, you can leave it pretty much anywhere after level 6 or so (pretty much the lowest level you can be after doing all the main story quests on the starter island). But if you do not stay until a higher level you will be struggling to level later on. I left the starter islands around level 8 or so, only to be moving on to the third zone (1-8 on starter zone, 8-14 in first non-starter zone, 3rd zone after that) at close to level 15, while the lower level mobs in the zone were lvl 16-18. The game tries way to hard to limit your progression through the story line, which is where it fails horribly IMHO.

Agree with pretty much everything. I also felt that the game didn't have any sort of epic or grandiose feeling to it. You know that feeling from other MMOs when you first enter a zone and just want to explore the whole place just because of how cool ior epic t feels? This game completely lacks that feeling. Everything feels too generic and it's all about going from A -> B.

I even had problems killing things equal level to me which is a bit ridiculous.

SWG was a better game.

[S00N3R FR3AK]

Same.. We are having the Alabama vs Auburn game here as well.

Ouch at least I don't mind missing a game against Iowa State.

Agree with pretty much everything. I also felt that the game didn't have any sort of epic or grandiose feeling to it. You know that feeling from other MMOs when you first enter a zone and just want to explore the whole place just because of how cool ior epic t feels? This game completely lacks that feeling. Everything feels too generic and it's all about going from A -> B.

I even had problems killing things equal level to me which is a bit ridiculous.

SWG was a better game.

Idk about you but the first time I saw the temple on the Tythos put me in awe. As for SWG I never felt the need to explore as the worlds were so empty.

[SMELTN]

Idk about you but the first time I saw the temple on the Tythos put me in awe. As for SWG I never felt the need to explore as the worlds were so empty.

I played SWG from the first day it was released until WoW came out (Bloodfin Server) and I must say, I see more awe factor in this than SWG for sure. I mean like Sooner says, honestly the planets were sooooo huge, that you just ran around and had no since of awe at all, except for the huge size of the planets. The cities were great, but again they were just so massive and huge. .

At least in SWToR the cities have massive structures that look great, and all of the temples, and statues outside remind you of huge wow statues, they give me a huge sense of awe. I am playing Sith, so it may be different for Rebel, but there is a quest that sends right at the main Kaas city, that sends you to a place right outside of town where a guy has made a bunch of slaves make a statue of him. That statue is MASSIVE and looks amazing.. I sat there and looked at it for 2-3 mins just in awe.

[Lexcyn]

Don't know what you guys are on about, I was playing a smuggler and could handle 5-6 mobs at a time fine.

But any ways, they really need to optimize the graphics engine, I don't know why I get such low FPS in this game since the graphics are not that great to begin with.

[SMELTN]

Don't know what you guys are on about, I was playing a smuggler and could handle 5-6 mobs at a time fine.

Bounty hunter and was killing 3-5 myself easily.

But any ways, they really need to optimize the graphics engine, I don't know why I get such low FPS in this game since the graphics are not that great to begin with.

Its because there is a LOT going on, on the screen. This is a newer game just like BF3, it takes newer hardware. You have tons of smoke, lighting effects, debris, etc going on. Its going to take more. My graphics are set to High and it looks amazing.