official Star Wars: The Old Republic

[DrunkenBeard]

And WOW didn't look that great when it came out. I mean when I Alpha tested wow I thought, OMG what is this cartoon looking crap, but we all have come to love what it has done and it took them what 7 years before they really even updated the water? Give it time.

Sure but SW:ToR needs to compete with WoW now, not 7 years ago. That being said, I'm looking forward to the Beta today :)

[LOC Veteran]

I'm so glad I kept the install from the last test weekend. Logged in just now, and gotta redownload 12 gigs, YAY.

[McCordRm]

4 hours to go. Skyrim will have to wait. :)

[Teebor]

I'm so glad I kept the install from the last test weekend. Logged in just now, and gotta redownload 12 gigs, YAY.

Pretty sure they recommended deleting the install from previous weekends and re-downloading to avoid and problems

But YAY!! tick-tick-tick watching the clock until I can go home

[S00N3R FR3AK]

This is stupid 2 days in a row I can't log in to the SWTOR website so i can log into the game.

[Alladaskill17]

Waiting on Saturday, 10am CST

[SMELTN]

so... my invite said... Saturday at 10am.. Yet at 10am this morning I just tried to get in and it let me.. I have been playing off and on all morning.. weird and YES!!

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

ingame as Sith Inquisitor Blighton on server Sith Meditation Sphere

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

so... my invite said... Saturday at 10am.. Yet at 10am this morning I just tried to get in and it let me.. I have been playing off and on all morning.. weird and YES!!

Damn. I knew I should have downloaded it yesterday. I was planning on leaving the download running overnight (tonight).

[Hills420]

My invite starts tomorrow as well... although from reading a lot of forums it seems that queue times are extremely long :/

*personal rant* I appreciate being invited into the beta to test the game but giving me 48 hours (tops) to play and most likely less due to queue times is very frustrating. Give me SOME time to actual play the damn game! *end rant*

I plan to go jedi shadow consular...

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

Damn. I knew I should have downloaded it yesterday. I was planning on leaving the download running overnight (tonight).

the download has been active for over a week i think, thats when i got mine

been playing off and on all day, havent ran into queues yet, but also picked a med pop server, not a full or max

[DrunkenBeard]

A bit disappointed. Granted, I didn't go very far (Level 7 on my Human Imperial Agent), but there are three things that I can say right now that I don't like : the animations, some aspects of the graphics, the combat system and the questing system.

1) Graphics and animations. Yes the cinematic sequences are awesome, and the environment is certainly great, but I found the character models to be lacking. The textures seemed flat and poor even with everything maxed out. What made this even more noticeable were the close ups when you start a conversation. I found animations to be very clunky too : for example when you jump there's no animation, your character just goes up, forward and then down. Also, I didn't like the fact that you couldn't rotate your character in the character's pane to see how he looks like without having to zoom-in/out.

2) Combat system. While everything seemed fine with the responsiveness and the general feel of combat, I found the cover mechanic to be extremely erratic. To go behind a cover you first need the game to offer you some eligible spots, sometimes you have to be really careful to not aggro anything while you're looking for your cover, most of the time you just stumble upon a cover and use it, there is no logic to it. Now even when you do find a cover some of them make absolutely no sens. In addition, a lot of times when you're in a group there aren't enough covers for everybody so you have to be careful with your threat or you die. Another thing that I found amusing (and not in a good way) were the abilities that you can only use while behind a cover, actually you can use these abilities without a cover by just ducking down which makes the character do some really strange actions : to use snipe, I have to cover behind an invisible object, use snipe then get up to use my other abilities. It just feels like a two-button ability which makes the combat feel clunky overall. Though maybe it's just an Imperial Agent thing, haven't tried the other classes.

3) The questing system. I have to admit I was completely lost inside the game. It's not that the system is bad, it's just that it's very unusual and doesn't make it a priority to help you out. I'm very tired at the moment, so I'm not going to go over the questing system in detail, but I was quickly overwhelmed with the number of side quests that I had, the mobs that I had to kill didn't really stand out and overall it lacked organization : you have to jump between the map, the actual game and the quest log to just know what you're supposed to do and where to go (sometimes it's not even that clear), then when I finished the quests I didn't know where to turn them in until I noticed a little button in the upper-right corner saying "X pending" and I discovered that I could just complete the quests remotely (?), but for some reason some of them needed me to actually go back to the quest giver (?). There are also too many group quests and I fear when people move to higher level content, it will be hard to go through the leveling area all by yourself.

So overall it's not a bad game, it just needs to stop trying to be different just for the sake of it, and it could also use some user-friendliness in the questing system. Until then, I must say I didn't enjoy it a lot.

[S00N3R FR3AK]

Now my launcher crashes after every 500mbs.

[McCordRm]

My first thoughts:

1. The graphics are very sub-par. Seriously... it's not like I was expecting Skyrim graphics, but

come on!

2. The quest/map system sucks. It's not terrible, but not very player-friendly, either.

3. On a positive note, the voice acting is freakin' awesome.

I'll be playing the hell out of this game since I have real-life friends who are definitely going

to be in it. I just hope they make some improvements before launch.

[Osiris]

Im loving it, feels like KOTOR but with random other people running around :p Its great to be playing a game where you are interested in the story/quest givers speaking the quests etc. The sith storyline at least is keeping me very interested.

Loving being an evil sith

Digging my toons smart arse comments

quests are fun and interesting although objectives its pretty much the same as any other formula (kill x, collect y) although I like the way TOR hides the killing quests. You will have multiple quests in an area and along the way it will pop up with bonus kill x amount of x...so you can do it if you want the xp but its not essential

Map system was a little weird at first but getting use to it now and vastly more friendly than most other mmos.

I see a comment about graphics above...tbh I dont think Skyrims graphics are anything to write home about but thats just it, once you're in the game if you like the game that just doesnt matter. TOR graphics arent amazing but they suit the game, effects look cool and yeah once youre playing you wont even notice.

Cant wait for launch, now to try Republic so not as to spoil anymore of the Sith story for myself

[Lexcyn]

Oh man, I can safely say they fixed all the bugs I had issues with.

I now get 60FPS solid with everything maxed. YES!

Also, they did improve the water... now it looks like WoW haha.

I am just about to pre-order this. Jedi/Smuggler are the classes I am going to be playing.

[S00N3R FR3AK]

My first thoughts:

1. The graphics are very sub-par. Seriously... it's not like I was expecting Skyrim graphics, but

come on!

2. The quest/map system sucks. It's not terrible, but not very player-friendly, either.

3. On a positive note, the voice acting is freakin' awesome.

I'll be playing the hell out of this game since I have real-life friends who are definitely going

to be in it. I just hope they make some improvements before launch.

O yeah the map as well as the chat windows were what I disliked like most about my time with the beta. At least they are just UI though and something that shouldn't take long to change.

[mattmatik]

Anyone testing this with an HD 3000? Will Boot Camp this for sure if it runs well enough.

[Soulsiphon]

Does the speedhack still work? I can't get in to test again until tomorrow :(

[McCordRm]

Speedhack? WTF, man? Are you seriously discussing being a douchebag?

[Miuku.]

O yeah the map as well as the chat windows were what I disliked like most about my time with the beta. At least they are just UI though and something that shouldn't take long to change.

Be happy you didn't see the first UI they had during the closed alpha-beta stage, it was.. it was bad. The current one is a clear improvement and we still thought the current one was from the butt and let the devs know.

They don't really care that much about feedback, to be honest, they have their own.. "vision."

[Alladaskill17]

Speedhack? WTF, man? Are you seriously discussing being a douchebag?

Maybe he just wanted to level and get places faster, in which case is wrong but doesn't qualify him as a douchebag; unless, of course you're attempting to use it in PvP in which case - yes, douche!

[SMELTN]

I hope they add the ability to move elements of the UI. Thats the only thing I need, especially a way to strink the UI like we could in wow..

man do you realize how many people are going to go Sith in this game?!!! Its soo funny. There needs to be a poll somewhere.. None of the PvP servers will have any Jedi on them!!!

[Noveed]

The game is actually really really really good, ignore the graphics its not meant to look insanely pretty, It does a good job at looking good enough to play. Don't kid yourself its an MMO and the only way it can thrive as a MMO if it can be played on as many computers as possible. It's in their interest to keep graphics sub par and not at the cutting edge as this would allow everyone to play it.

The questing experience is second to none, choices are awesome and quests are far more engaging than the ones in wow where you just read a wall of text and you get on with it.

I found it hard to adjust to the map and questing system, its not as simple as the WoW one and takes some getting used to but then again its not rocket science.

There seems to be a lot of "phasing" which I absolutely love. You start heroics and heroic areas by phasing there is virtually no loading new screens for these. I can not remember how flash points work again im level 18 on a Sith Juggernaught and my Second flashpoint is about to kick in.

I really hope they do allow people to customise the UI... would love to get a similar UI to wow, I also wonder if it will have any DPS meters etc.

Lastly I am tanking on it and it feels really strange, threat feels so wrong from what I am used to in WoW and you end up dying a lot if you do a heroic or heroic zone with no healer. The heroics are probably just about right in terms of difficulty not to hard not too easy, Ideally if you do have a healer or someone who can shot a cheeky heal here and there you will be sorted.

[Soulsiphon]

Sorry about the speedhack comment :p

At any rate, this runs like ass on either of my rigs which is odd. I run Skyrim, heck ME2, Portal2, etc etc cranked and at blazing fps. The worst part is that as bad as this game looks on whatever defaults it started up with OOB, there's no way I could stomach this after turning detail down any further.

Ah well.

The game is actually really really really good, ignore the graphics its not meant to look insanely pretty,

Killer graphics are one of the reasons I spend money on a game. If you argue that MMO's aren't meant to look sexy, I'll start a list of pretty much every other MMO out there that has better lighting/shading and detail better than this *iteration* of SWTOR.

It looks awful for the most part.