Apparently, the NDA is lifted now. Reviews are starting to appear.
I can tell you that my wife and I tried it last weekend, and the experience was enough to convince us not to buy it.
Yep. From the official forums:
I’ll post some comments at later.
For anyone who wants to hook up, I’m currently on the server “Cosmic Turbine” playing a Republic Trooper named “Ravawa”.
Aww…can you say why not?
Not due to any technical fault of the game itself, it’s very well polished and surprisingly bug-free for a MMO beta. It’s just not a game we’re interested in. The gameplay itself is basically identical to that of any generic fantasy MMO, except you’ve got a lightsaber and speeder bike instead of a sword and a horse. Maps made of little funnels with small groups of enemies spaced evenly along them, MMO-standard ‘kill ten rats’ missions. The only thing novel about it are the fully voiced cutscenes and Bioware standard dialog wheel. I may be in the minority, but I find cutscenes, especially in MMOs, more annoying and immersion-breaking, so the things that are novel about this game are actually a turn-off for me.
Oh, the NDA is lifted. This is what I wanted to say:
The game isn’t bad. It’s THE most polished any MMO has ever been at release, including any expansions. Bugs are few and far between, and the ones that do exist are still rare occurances and aren’t game breaking, they’re just on the order of “things glow when they shouldn’t” or “model disappears in conversation.”
On the other hand… oh god, the quests. The quest structure is basically WoW pre-WOTLK. For a game that prioritizes story I certainly don’t FEEL the story being epic. Most Cataclysm quest chains are better. The world is just so static, NPCs don’t move around, you rarely if ever get into a quest where you run into battle with an NPC. There’s no phasing of the game world, just instancing for certain quests.
All in all, it makes the world feel very dead. Even if WoW’s lore is a bit silly sometimes, the world of the modern games feels VERY alive with the quests and the tiny details you can find around. SWTOR feels lifeless, everybody stands there and nothing dynamic happens, the world refuses to change around you.
Again, the gameplay itself is solid, but they “story” they’re overselling is basically Burning Crusade with voice acting and a couple of branching paths.
I’d be up for this. Some ideas for guild names.
Dogs of War.
Belly of Bantha.
Dewbacks of the Straight Dope.
Cecils Conduit worms.
The Dirty Dewbacks.
Geejaw Dopers.
Loper Dopers.
Lopers are small, opossum-like rodents from the fourth moon of Yavin. They are readily identified by their luxurious red fur, sharp teeth and claws, and hairless, bone-plated tail which ends in wicked barbs. Though nasty when cornered, Lopers will tend to avoid conflict with larger creatures.
Cecils Mynocks
I basically had fun with this page.
Okay, here are my impressions of the game. I’ve been in the beta since June.
Good things
Storylines: Voice acting is good. (I read a review somewhere that said “better than the prequel movies”. It’s true.) I like the stories. They feel more engaging than the typical MMO. The class storylines are noticeably better than the zone ones.
The choices don’t seem to have many long-term consequences, other than the alignment effect. They do give a strong emotional connection, though. I’m not sure I’ll be able to play dark-side, because I feel bad when I do.
Companions: This is the best part of the game. The companions interact with your character and your story. Even if the missions don’t have much of a long-term effect, your companion’s reaction adds some depth.
And companions make the game more fun to play. You can solo in any role you like, because your companion can fill any deficiencies.
Mechanics: The four classes are well differentiated. All are fun to play. Roles are a little flexible. This is definitely a tank-heal-dps game, but there’s no clearly best tank/heal/dps class.
Polish: This game is ready to go live. I think Rift was better polished at its release than SWTOR is now, but another month might make the difference. While there’s plenty of “quality of life” improvements that still need to be made, the game plays well. The big question is how well the servers will be able to take the surge of players.
(As an aside, they finally fixed “my” bugs. “ctrl-w” could not be mapped. And the “phase doors” were death traps when they changed colors.)
Graphics: The art style is not ultra-realistic, but it’s not cartoonish (like The Clone Wars animation). The effects are good. The animations are good. The frame rate on my machine (Nvidia 275) is really great when not in busy areas, and decent in those.
Bad things
Customization: 90% failure! SWTOR has better customization than WOW. That’s the only positive thing about it. Species selection is poor. You can’t play a Rodian Bounty Hunter. Or a Wookie Smuggler. Or a Togruta Jedi Knight. Your choices are Human (or some colored variation) or Twi’lek.
Once you choose a species, the options are not good. There’re no sliders. You have to choose among a few choices for most everything that is variable. For a game where you see your character’s face in every mission dialog, the lack of customization is very noticeable.
Alignment: If your character does not consistently choose only light-side options or only dark-side options, you will not gain access to aligned gear, which is noticeably better than regular gear, until you’ve outleveled it. If you want to roleplay a character who is not definitely one side or the other, you will be not be rewarded.
UI: More or less fixed. You can change keymapping, but not much else.
Thanks for the summary, Pleonast. I’m interested in hearing more from you or others who have been beta-testing.
How many playable races are there? From what I looked like it seemed each class had a good number of choices but I might have been mistaken.
I can kind of understand that from a playability perspective; think what it would do to your framerate if every player had unique features that had to be rendered onscreen. Sliders would be great but if it’s better than WoW, that’s at least a step in the right direction.
That’s kind of a bummer; it would seem to really limit your choices. But I only have a vague idea about how the alignment mechanic works.
No wookies? Bummer.
Most of the “other races” (i.e. Miraluka) are humans WITH A TWIST! I.E. Miraluka don’t have eyes, they see through the force, so you get a mask instead of eye color customization or whatever.
Does the game blank your screen out when you’re playing one of them?
From my notes (might’ve changed recently, I haven’t checked all the combos lately)…
Jedi Knight: Human, Miraluka, Twi’lek, Zabrak, Mirialan
Jedi Consular: Human, Mirialan, Twi’lek, Zabrak, Miraluka
Smuggler: Human, Twi’lek, Cyborg, Zabrak, Mirialan
Trooper: Human, Zabrak, Cyborg, Mirialan
Sith Warrior: Human, Sith, Cyborg, Zabrak
Sith Inquisitor: Human, Twi’lek, Rattataki, Zabrak, Sith
Imperial Agent: Human, Chiss, Cyborg, Zabrak, Rattataki
Bounty Hunter: Human, Cyborg, Zabrak, Rattataki, Chiss
Miralukas are like humans who cover their eyes (because they see with the Force instead of with visible light). Zabraks are like humans with horns and big curvilinear tatoos. Mirialan are like humans with green skin and small geometric dot tatoos. Cyborgs are humans with mechanically parts. Sith are like humans with red skin and small chin/mustache tentacles. Rattataki are like hairless humans with gray skin. Chiss are like humans with blue skin and red eyes.
Twi’leks are the least human, but they’re like humans with two big tentacles coming out of their head.
I’m sure performance is partially what motivated the lack of options. Along with making sure the options look good in all combinations. But other games have found ways to give a lot more customization than given here. It’s a big disappoint for me and a lot of other players (there’s always a big complaint thread with each new wave of testers), but not a game breaker.
It’s pretty simple. Sometimes, during a conversation, some responses will give you alignment points (light or dark) if you choose them. By default, an icon will you tell which way, although you can turn it off.
Once the mission is completed, you’ll get the net result of your choices. You accumulate light-side points and dark-side points separately. If you have some of both, the net result is the difference of the two.
When you reach certain net amounts, you advance a “level” in that alignment. So “Light I”, “Light II”, etc. There’s gear from vendors (and some drops) that have an alignment requirement. The only difference between Light I gear and Dark I gear is cosmetic (like the color of the light saber). But it will be better than gear of the same item level that is not alignment-restricted.
So the overall effect is that choosing less than all-lightside or all-darkside means you hit the alignment levels later (if at all). It’s certainly possible to play the game without the alignment gear, but the lack of rewards for mixed-alignment play will discourage a lot of players from taking that route.
So I can see players wanting to group up with similar alignment goals, right?
Because I can also predict cries of “griefing” when someone picks the wrong alignment and wins the dialog roll…
They fixed that early. When grouping, you get alignment rewards based off what you chose yourself. The system rolls a die for each player’s choice and the high roll determines which response is actually used.
Oh, I forgot to mention another nice bit of the game. There are “social points” you get for doing quests with others. The points accumulate towards your “social level”. Social level unlocks some nice (mostly cosmetic) gear. It’s a good way to encourage group play without forcing it.
There’s also some optional group quests and world bosses on each planet to encourage grouping.
If the response actually used calls for dark side points, does everyone in the party get dark side points, or just the players who chose a dark side response, or just the player whose response won the social roll?
Each player gets alignment points for the choice they made themself. So if I choose the light-side option, and you and a third player choose the dark-side option, I get light-side points, and you two get dark-side points. The roll doesn’t matter; alignment point gain is not affected by who wins the roll. But the winner does get extra social points and their character speaks the response.
Well, I finally got the invitation to start downloading the game, but at 366 KB/s this is going to take a long time. Hopefully it will be done by the time I get home from work tomorrow.
Downloading as well, and given this is for the stress test I’d imagine there’s a lot of people doing that. I’m getting 1.2 Mb/s though, not that it matters much if the testing is during the weekend only.
I downloaded the beta last night and woke up to find the launcher splash screen but a cruel, tempting disabled Play button. Latest QQ - this weekend’s test will be staggered:
[QUOTE=SWTOR Devs]
To simulate a launch environment, testers who have accepted new invites to weekend testing will gain testing access in staggered intervals based on when their invites were accepted. The first group of testers will be able to log on beginning on Friday morning (11/25) at 10:00AM CST (16:00 London, 17:00 Paris/Berlin). Then, Saturday and Sunday at 10:00 AM CST (16:00 London, 17:00 Paris/Berlin) the second and final waves of testers will gain access. Please watch your email for details about when your phase of testing begins. This will come in a separate email from your invite.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I got my email at 2:30 am, which means I can’t respond until tonight (no access from work), which means I’ll probably be in the very last phase :(. If I manage to get it downloaded by then!
I don’t know why my d/l speed is so slow; I’m getting 2.5 Mbs on test sites.