SW: The Old Republic Part 5

[LadyCrimson]

Previous thread.

 

Last few replies:

Yeah, except that pile is very, very small. Planetary commendations being capped @ 50 per week means if you're going through 1 planet per evening, you'll likely be capped after the second and then not get any more.

Eh, possibly. But I find the reason I don't use them is that I'm overleveled for the planet, so spending the commendations earned on that planet doesn't actually match the gear I should be using..

 

This way you should be able to spend them on gear of all levels rather then those specific points. So you shouldn't end up with saved piles...

Oh absolutely, unifying the comms are certainly a good thing. I just know that when you go through some planets, getting over 50 coms can be fairly fast, and then you won't be able to get new ones for a while. So if you cap out on Coruscant (which is easy to do), you may not want to get level appropriate at that time, since you won't be getting any more at taris. I'm guessing this cap is in place due to makeb, because it really makes little sense when leveling from 1-50.

 

I don't mind the weekly caps on the other types of coms, I just think it'll worsen the leveling experience for new players.

[NOK222]

So I'm downloading this game after I completed both Kotors as canon as possible. What should I expect?

[Raithe]

More references to Kotor then Kotor 2, but they do slip a few in there as the game progresses.

 

It's all set up as Prologue then Chapters 1-3. 

 

Prologue is basically the "starter" world (there are two each to Imperial / Republic) and they depend on what class you pick, then you head to the "capital world" of the faction being played, and ends with you getting a starship..

 

Then onto Chapter 1. Most classes attempt to have a "linked" series of storylines over the Prologue and seperate chapters, but not all succeed as well as others.

[Hurlshort]

So I'm downloading this game after I completed both Kotors as canon as possible. What should I expect?

 

Also, it is an MMO, so the pacing is totally different from the KotOR's.  Still, there are some great stories mixed in there, so I hope you enjoy it.

[Raithe]

Heh, I just had a poke on the public test server since I've got a sith warrior lurking around 30th level on there. I wandered to fleet after finishing chapter 1, and encountered a strange glowy thing called "Level Machine" which I clicked on with no idea what it was.

 

Now I've suddenly found myself bumped up to 55th level and given a slew of commendations for picking up Arkanian gear. 

But I still have yet to play through Chapter 2 and 3 at some point.. 

 

That's what happens when you're not paying attention.

[Bokishi]

Is that level machine still there?

[Raithe]

Yeah, The "Level Booster" is on Fleet (both Imp and Rep) on the public test server. Apparently people are running new characters up to 10th level, getting to fleet then hitting that to be 55th level.

 

They put it in to allow people to quickly test out all the new End-game content that's been developed for 2.0 and the Rise of the Hutt Cartel release. Although they aren't testing Markab since that's specifically RotHC related rather then general 2.0 update.

[NOK222]

I'm playing Sith Inquisitor female, it's fun telling people to go screw themselves as they keep reminding me of slavery.

[Azure79]

I started a republic commando and she is currently level 24. I'm mistakenly did Nar Shadda first, so I'm overleveled for Taris. 

 

I did get a wave of nostalgia when the old KoTOR music started up on Taris and I was asked to go investigate the Endar Spire. Will I find the last holo-recording of Trask Ulgo hidden in the wreckage? The suspense!

[Raithe]

I have to say, the quest that has you finding the lost messages of that tribe from the undercity that Revan helped on Taris has got to turn into one of the most depressing and soulful moments. The music chimes in in the perfect way to underscore as each message you find details the slow end that happened to them after the destruction....

[NOK222]

I started a republic commando and she is currently level 24. I'm mistakenly did Nar Shadda first, so I'm overleveled for Taris. 

 

I did get a wave of nostalgia when the old KoTOR music started up on Taris and I was asked to go investigate the Endar Spire. Will I find the last holo-recording of Trask Ulgo hidden in the wreckage? The suspense!

I have female commando on reserve, I was like "Oh look, it's Shepard."

[Raithe]

Having a bit of a play around with my Consular this weekend, and I'm being reminded just how annoying that light puzzle on Balmorra is.

 

Now, I like the fact that the area quest isn't a combat thing, but an actual puzzle to solve. The pain is it's one that involves hitting a whole bunch of switches to get the right combination of lights on, and it's open to every manjack idiot who rushes up while you're in the middle of solving it and they start throwing random switches because they don't have a clue...

[Raithe]

So they've officially announced that Rise of the Hutt Cartels goes active April 14th.

If you pre-ordered it before Jan 7th, you'll get early access from April 9th.

 

http://www.swtor.com/info/news/news-article/20130325

 

Of course, I'm going to be out of the country and away from my pc for those few weeks.. darn.

[Guest Slinky]

Of course, I'm going to be out of the country and away from my pc for those few weeks.. darn.

Knowing the game, the expansion could be full of bugs and cause havoc and dispair amongst players for the first weeks. So you might be doing yourself a favor.

[Hurlshort]

I avoid playing every MMO on major content launch days, they are rarely smooth.

[alanschu]

Wasn't TOR's launch pretty smooth?  Though granted, this is adding content which has historically caused issues.

[Hurlshort]

TOR was pretty average, they had some ridiculous queues.  The fact they went overboard on the number of servers was probably a bad way to begin, then took too long to consolidate.  Who knows how many subs they lost over the ghost town months? 

[alanschu]

The queues was mostly during "prerelease" right?  ( I dislike that term lol)

[marelooke]

TOR was pretty average, they had some ridiculous queues.  The fact they went overboard on the number of servers was probably a bad way to begin, then took too long to consolidate.  Who knows how many subs they lost over the ghost town months?

In all honesty I think they lost more people due to delivering a horribly unfinished and unpolished endgame. My entire guild kinda failcascaded after banging our heads against a broken boss in Karagga's Palace for TWO MONTHS, the game was released in January and in April or so that boss was *still* broken, in fact, pretty much *nothing* had been fixed by then. That's when our main tank (and guild leader) tossed in the towel. Pretty much everyone quit after that, me and one other guy kept sort of playing until the first major patch, which didn't add anything worthwhile to the game really, a few weeks later the Fleet was down from ~100 at peak times to ~7, which is when they merged servers the first time. I moved my character and let my sub expire.

 

Came back to the game recently because a friend of mine picked it up because it's 'F2P' now (more like SubOrPayForEverythingAndThenSome, it's even worse than Lord of the Rings Online in this respect, if anything, consider it shareware). So yeah, since the 'F2P' limitations are stupidly severe I re-subbed for 3 months.

 

So what has changed in those 8 months since I quit? suprisingly little. They got around to fixing the broken bosses (eh, yay I guess...), added one new flashpoint (Kaon was already out when I quit), two new raids (sorry, "Operations") and a horrible amount of daily quests (daily quests are the pinnacle of uninspired MMO design). Now the raids are well done, as are the flashpoints. And of course being able to swing a lightsaber, shoot lightning etc is fun as ever. But that's when the grind sets in, need better gear? Grind dailies. Want some item just for looks? Grind dailies or play on the $$ tombola. Wanna just explore? Eh, tough ****, nothing to see you haven't seen while levelling.

 

SWToR's endgame is stale. It may fun for someone new to MMOs or die hard Star Wars fans, but I've been playing MMOs for a while and I'm not a big enough Star Wars nut to be blinded by that side of things, and really once you look past the setting I'm sorry to say it's a rather bland WoW clone certainly as far as the endgame is concerned (and arguably in a lot of other respects as well, not in the least actual gameplay mechanics).

 

Now levelling is a different matter, the storylines are rather well done, unfortunately the class/companion storyline missions you care about are rather few and far in between meaning you'll spend a lot of time either running the same flashpoint over and over again for xp or re-doing the same quests you've done on other characters and quite a lot of these "shared" quests aren't exactly that great.

 

Eh, guess I digressed a little bit from my initial point...anyway, that's my experience and my opinion, ymmv of course.

[Raithe]

Since, I've been playing it fairly consistently over the last year since it's release.. and I haven't been battling the end-game. Hell, I've done one operation in all that time.

What I have been doing is working my way through all of the different classes and seeing what all the storylines are like. I still haven't finished them all...

[Hurlshort]

Yep, I play for the storylines as well, which I think they did a very good job on.  I can see the complaints though, you need an end game at this point.

[Gorth]

Finally got to put 3-4 hours into the game, playing around with 2 characters, one 'good' Han Solo wannabe (what I always wanted to play in kotor before the silly game castrated him and turned him into a whimpy jedi) and a sith inquisitor just for the pyrotechnics.

 

Game looks nice, but Jebus, the combat is bad. It is everything that prevented me from liking Warhammer Online despite being a fan of the setting for 25 years. I could have sworn that TOR is just a graphics mod running on top of the Warhammer engine. It feels like exactly the same game.

 

Griping about the mind numbing combat aside, it at least looks nice and oozes money thrown at it. Voice acting between mediocre and good (didn't run into anything bad). Visuals are nice, making you wish they had put that kind of stuff into a single player game with good crpg mechanics.

 

What I haven't really gotten to yet (and what really matters for me) is the story bits. I realise I need to focus one character at time and persevere for a bit and progress through at least some of it to get a fair impression.

[Raithe]

Well the Smuggler Prologue and Chapter 1 are pretty damned good. Chapter 2 works fairly nicely, and Chapter 3 kind of loses the plot (at least to my mind).

The Sith Inquisitor is fairly well-handled throughout all the different chapters. You do get a feel for Sith power plays and betrayal all wrapped up in dark side mysticism.

 

I think it takes about 5-8 hours to get through the starter planet (depending on just how you play) and then the story tends to kick off more beyond the basics.

[alanschu]

I enjoyed playing a more light-side leaning Sith Inquisitor

[babaganoosh13]

All my Jedi are Force Lightning to me!!!!!!