Star Wars: The Old Republic anticipation thread.

[FordSVT]

Really, there are only two questions to ask yourself:

Did you like KOTOR? If no, skip this game.

Do you want to play KOTOR with other people? If yes, try it out.

It's really not any more complicated than that. It's KOTOR with WoW mixed in and more focus on questing than end-game content. The end-game thing will probably improve over the next couple of years as new patches and expansions come out, but I can see a lot of people burning through a few of their favourite classes and then get bored of levelling and questing and dungeons.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

I
I am ultimately spoiled by Cryptic's character creation tool that allows infinitely better customization of your toons.

Though I have to give it to TOR on character hair options.

Even DCU Online, where you had pretty boring starter toons, let you customize to a much better degree by letting you keep costume parts of any gear you unlocked.

Yeah that is kind of cool, and it gives me a reason to equip low end gear real quick.

The beta has been fun. Of course, there are lots of kinks that will eventually get worked out. I'm running it on a four year old desktop, and so the game is pretty choppy in terms of the graphics. I may need to get a new desktop to play this bad boy, although I haven't tried it on my four month old MacBook Pro yet (I prefer gaming on a desktop).

It's worked good on my 2 year old lap top, though its been a little lagy but I thin that may have more to do with my internet connection and the server population.

 

[TheBrew]

Yes, that sounds about right. It reminds me somewhat of the helmets that U.S. soldiers wore during World War I.

In any event, I'm having a lot of fun testing out the Bounty Hunter, particularly using the "Death from Above" ability to fly up on my jetpack and let loose a torrent of missiles and blasterfire on a cluster of enemies. The farther into the BH story that I get during these two testing periods, though, the more I'm re-considering my initial intention of rolling an Imperial Agent at launch, since the IA and BH will be visiting many of the same worlds. I'm starting to instead consider a Republic character so I can have a different environmental experience early on, though I know if I did change plans to Republic that I'd inevitably end up going with one of the Jedi classes.

I had a lot of fun with the BH. The story was fun and I was crafting a cool little character. I like how the class played too. Since my friends are rolling Republic, that means I am going to go as a trooper, which I hear has a pretty good story as well.

 

[Jax]

I hope there are more options for creating your character, it all seems a little slim for an MMO. I played all the characters over the 4 days apart from the Imperial Agent and I really don't know which I want to be on Day 1 ...

My Guild is going Empire to start with so am leaning between Bounty Hunter and Sith Inquisitor.

 

[PsychoPere]

For anyone who tested over this past weekend, if you haven't already uninstalled, keep your installation! The beta client from the Thanksgiving weekend test will patch to the retail version for both Early Access and official launch. If you have an installation from a previous testing period, however, you should uninstall. That should be nice and convenient for anyone who purchased a digital copy of the game.

 

[Jax]

That should be nice and convenient for anyone who purchased a digital copy of the game.

Also for people like me who ordered retail but will download for the early access.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Here is my beta toon Carryn after her first major step toward the dark side, notice the glowing eyes.
Technically unnecessary, since she is greedy and murderous all without the dark side of the force

 

[O'Dib]

Any info so far on how many days/weeks of free play we get with a purchase of the game? And what the subscription fee might be after that?

 

[sojourner]

1st month free. $14.95 there after.

 

[Jax]

I got an e-mail yesterday with a few other people I know informing us know that we are being let back into the beta testing from friday evening till sunday or Monday, not sure yet.

1st month free. $14.95 there after.

£8.99 per month for UK players

You can order 3 months or 6 months outright and get a little discount.

 

[sojourner]

Yeah, darthhater.com has said this is the final beta weekend and will have fewer participants than last weekend.

 

[sojourner]

And the Beta program is officially over. 11 days till early access!

 

[O'Dib]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbsFqat3XEA[/yt]

Alright, that's pretty funny. Interesting to see what look like black lightstaffs.

 

[sojourner]

Double bladed light sabers.

Squadron 1020 front and center!

 

[Yevetha]

How is the story?

 

[PsychoPere]

Which one? Each class has its own class story, so there are eight stories taking place across the different planets, with shared side quests.

The only one I got into in any depth during the two weekends that I tested was the Bounty Hunter class story. It starts off simple enough with your character vying for entry into the Great Hunt, which is basically a competition for glory originally organized by the Mandalorian clans. Naturally events become more personal, and you can start treating the Hunt as either purely for your personal glory or as a means by which to gain revenge for an act perpetrated fairly early in your story.

Most of the side quests that I undertook were well-done in story terms, offering the BioWare hallmark of different choices and outcomes that you'd expect.

 

[sojourner]

And for the most part, they all seem awesome!

 

[PsychoPere]

The development team has posted a more detailed explanation regarding beta clients versus launch client:

If you participated in our Game Testing Program before November 25th, we recommend that you uninstall the game testing client [...] and then download and install the launch game client. Please note: a link to download the launch game client will be emailed to you soon, and we’ll update this post with more instructions when they’re available. The size of the launch game client is approximately 27 GB.

If you have played in our game testing program at any point from November 25th onwards, you will not need to re-install the game client, as you should already have the launch version installed.

See the link for more information, including how to determine if you have the launch version if you're not sure which version you have.

 

[Jax]

for UK guys, mate of mine rang up GAME and they told him they plan to ship the game early due to early access so they should reach people by the 15th.

 

[Chaos Descending]

The development team has posted a more detailed explanation regarding beta clients versus launch client:

If you participated in our Game Testing Program before November 25th, we recommend that you uninstall the game testing client [...] and then download and install the launch game client. Please note: a link to download the launch game client will be emailed to you soon, and we’ll update this post with more instructions when they’re available. The size of the launch game client is approximately 27 GB.

If you have played in our game testing program at any point from November 25th onwards, you will not need to re-install the game client, as you should already have the launch version installed.

See the link for more information, including how to determine if you have the launch version if you're not sure which version you have.

So I deleted my beta client for nothing, and now have to waste another 14 hours installing the launch client.

Great.