Hustlin' through the Old Republic: Update 1.3, up to level 40 and down with the Sith style

You heard it from me last folks, update 1.3 “Allies” is indeed here, bringing with it the much needed “Group finder” to us and I must say from the small amount of time I’ve used it, it’s worked quite well. Also the legacy system with its new character and legacy “perks” that are basically rewards for use with your main or lower characters for having achieved certain milestones, which could be very useful indeed, especially the ones that change levelling xp and speeder access. Apart from that there was the usual small things like class changes, adaptive social gear and some changes to crew skills which bring in the new option to add augment slots to items. Augmentation is basically a sort of different version of the ‘enchanting’ or ‘jewelcrafting’ used in other games you have an augment slot and you can put different augments in the slot in there to better the item. This is similar to modifications though modifications change the base stats of orange modifiable items while augments add to all other items. Though since they just introduced it I don’t have any augments and I never did anyway their apparently obtained through slicing so I’ve never gotten any and never seen them apart from the freakishly expensive high level ones on the trade network.

The Group finder, makes things much easier, especially with a declining population.

Well where was I when we left off?, oh yes quite happily wearing my hood with my headband thingy and then for some reason I could not, and now I can again it looks like except that on my Sith Inquisitor. What I’m babbling about is that you may have heard me mention before that while I was questing on Nar Shadaa I for some reason could no longer wear both my helm and my hood on at the same time this annoyed me cause I liked that look, the other reason is I’d rather have my hood on when wearing those thing as they look pretty silly when you don’t, their some sort of dorky looking headband/tiara thing. But I suppose now I'm wearing some kind of star wars version of shades yes shades or goggles, the game calls them "Rampage Assault Headgear" which makes them sound infinitely cooler than they actually are and absolutely ridiculous for what they actually look like. What's also interesting is when I look them up on ToRHead they actually look completely different, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

Don't mess with the "'Rampage Assault" shades yo

So anyway I was level 31 and was one Tatooine indeed yes, so how do I sum up what’s happened?, well after finishing Tatooine and saving Kira’s master Bela Kiwiik from that big vibrating thingo then heading to Alderaan to do all the quests there and there’s some kind of family wars going on there and I have to save my master whats-his-name from the ridiculous death mark machine seriously whoever came up with that idea needed to think it through more. During Alderaan I found one of the coolest methods of transport ever, in remote places Alderaan has these things called Thranta’s which a big flying Manta-ray like creatures  which look awesome and make cool sounds, Alderaan is definitely one of the best looking planets I’ve seen along with Dromund Kass but I’ll get into that later.

 
The very Majestic Thranta through a whole new wyurld.

After Alderaan there’s fairly big Jedi Knight plot section which I won’t go into in order not to spoil the story as of course this is apparently the end of act 1 of you storyline (yes there are different acts) but I will say that after what happens now it goes pretty full scale and gets kind of boring, though I suppose there’s going to be more than two acts as the game goes on. The story on Balmorra is reasonable I suppose, the sort of struggling resistance (Balmorrans) resentfully accepting help from a major power (Republic) in order to fight off their oppressors (Empire), but it’s a rather dull mucky toxic waste ridden planet plagued by insect-like aliens.

Balmorra, not exactly the most serene place to visit

After the first act I sort of feel like I’m starting again except I’m higher level and the storyline seems more boring now. The stories on each planet don’t seem to be too engaging but what can you do? It’s something else to occupy yourself with while you’re doing your main quest.

One a better note though I got a new hoverbike, the Gurian Hammer to be precise which looks pretty awesome sort of like riding a jet engine with my cape flowing behind. I was glad I moved away from the Ubrikkian style of hoverbike as I was going to use them for the whole game, though to be honest despite their cost the vehicle don’t really go much faster than each other, the first one at level 20 goes 90% faster than running yes running not sprinting and then it’s 100% then 110% so really not that much of a dramatic change each time.

Yeehaw!

This isn't me but this guy probably does a better job at explaining it

Probably almost to the end of Balmorra for some reason I decided to create an Empire alt, yes I know I’m only 40 on my Jedi Knight and yes I know I’m making an alt before I even get to 50 on one character but I was eager to try out the Sith side. I went a Sith Inquisitor which is the Sith equivalent of the Jedi Consular, with the advanced class I chose to go Sith Assassin, the shadowy double-bladed-lightsabre wielding ninja style Sith (similar to the Jedi Shadow) as I wanted to be a Jedi Consular Sage and throw around force waves and telekinetic abilities rather than force Lightning as the Sith Sorcerer does. I also picked Sith pureblood as I didn’t really want to make another human and didn’t really fancy any of the other races, plus the Sith purebloods look pretty cool though they have this “punish companion” social ability in which you give your companion a pretty intense smack in the face which is kind of sad if you ask me.

I have been told by reliable sources that this thing on my Sith Inquisitor's head is indeed a "circlet" which is at least more manly then 'tiara'

That explains why I went the Sith Inquisitor class but the other reason I wanted to make a Sith alt was that I wanted to be a “Good” Sith so to speak I wanted to see what it was like when you chose the good options even though you’re technically supposed to be evil aren’t you? I was finding it fun at the start on Korriban picking all the “good” and “Light Side” options that a Sith wouldn’t usually pick and feeling good. Starting out was great, you start facing a gruff traditionalist Overseer who does not hesitate to show their dissatisfaction that you have risen from slavery to achieve entry to the Sith order, pitting you and you fellow hopefuls against each other with one being particularly powerful. The whole storyline was pretty fun and somewhat challenging especially the quest to seek out Khem Val who will be your first companion, he is a huge monstrous Dashade who has reluctantly agreed to serve me since his former master had died long ago.

You lookin at me, puny Sith?

Unfortunately once I had Khem Val with me I noticed that I was going to have to change around my “nicey” responses. I should explain that to gain “affection” (heh) with your companion you can both give them gifts and interact with NPC’s during missions the way they prefer, for example some companions may frown upon killing innocents while other companions may approve as to them you are disposing of the weak and useless. I soon found that Khem Val’s likes and dislikes weren’t exactly in sync with my “friendly and compassionate Sith” character I had going for example he likes making foolish people unhappy, of which I really don’t do I tend to take pity on them and dislikes: Weakness in any form and not killing Force users, so technically most of the responses I would usually take would mean I would lose rapport with him (-1, 15 or even 30  affection for example), so I am forced to be a mean and somewhat cocky bastard most of the time and I’m constantly losing affection points for him because I always choose the light side options, cause I’m a good guy, you know? even if I am Sith. This will change though once I get the next companion Ashara Zavros on Taris who by the looks of her likes/dislikes will be much easier to please, plus she’s a DPS character with strength+endurance as primary stats so should be a-ok to quest with, speaking of which, who doesn’t have endurance listed as their primary stat? seems like every class does. I suppose I'll at least have to try being bad with another character.

He probably does too (note: you can change his skin colour with appearance modifications)

Also I (or I got my companion to rather) started doing the Crafting skill Artifice (Artification, Artificing however you say it) which is the creation of Jedi and Sith artifacts which include things like lightsabre and armor upgrades and new shields, offhand items and colour crystals. It was during this time that I found that you could send mail and resources between the two allegiances. So for example I could use my Republic side characters to aid my Empire alts with items and crafting skills and vice-versa. This was one of the biggest if not the biggest difference from WoW that SWTOR has, it seems now that I no longer have the problem of having one crafting skill but not the other on either side, could you imagine this in WoW? I’d be going crazy organising resources. Though this leads to a different issue which I swear I don’t know what I’m going to do about because without an Altoholic style mod for the game, I might even go crazier trying to work out what each friggin character has , I don’t know it’s just going to be difficult unless Bioware miraculously allow modding and someone makes an Altoholic clone for SWTOR in enough time but I doubt it. I’ve been ok so far recently I had to take screenshots of every piece of armor me and my companion had in order for me to view on my Jedi Knight and make appropriate armor replacements and managed to juggle the resources fine, so it’s works relatively ok for now.

The Artification screen

So anyway I’ve now finished the Imperial home planet of Dromund Kass  and had quite a good time upgrading all my gear using my commendations,it turns out that the stuff is still better then what I make unless I happen to be lucky enough to be able to make a blue item. My main storyline there ended with me obtaining yet another artifact and having a pleasant conversation with a ghost of a Sith Lord who said we were related at some point, I really don’t know what all of that meant but having the artifact meant a lot to my master Darth Zash. She gave me my own starship and instructed me to go to either Balmorra or Nar Shadaa to get more artifacts for this Sith thingemajigg, honestly I don’t really pay much attention to names anymore as there’s areas of the many storylines in SWTOR that are pretty much just “something, something Sith artifact/lord…” I guess I’m just going to do the same thing and do both planets even if I’m too low for them and I end up getting grey quests, I suppose I could skip the bonus serious but I wouldn’t want to do that unless I’d already done it for a planet before.  My first instance of space combat on this character was fine, compared to the first time. I’m getting more comfortable now as I actually worked out that in order to complete the escort missions easily you just shot whatever was shooting the transport ship with no regard for your own safety as you don’t need to cause there’s no-one shooting you.

I like this picture of me looking at the Holocron at the top of the hill on Dromund kass

Inside the Sith Temple on Dromund Kass

Once I got my Inquisitor to level 20 I decided I’d stop there as the next planet I was up to is Balmorra and that was the same one I was currently playing on my Jedi Knight, funnily enough when I stopped my Jedi I’d just done a large group quest in Sobrik, the Imperial HQ of Balmorra. I then found out that it’s the same place where you start out as an Imperial, on a kind of lower level too so in theory there would have been Empire players around. That’s if there were enough players around at all, SWTOR has unfortunately been losing population ever since its release and only with the brilliant initiative by Bioware to allow newcomers to play for free up to level 15 that the servers have come back up to healthy level again though as you can see this hasn’t had the same effect with Asia-Pacific but the servers do remain at a standard level playerbase remains. I do admit I sometimes find it hard to find groups of people to do heroic-level missions with that require 4 people, but usually there is enough people around to help and the new group finder makes doing flashpoints less of a hassle for finding the right classes.

The US server stats have been in a steady decline since the release but have shot back up to record numbers due to the new free to play up to 15 feature.

The Asia/Pacific servers haven't got that particular feature yet but are sill going steady, mainly do to the fact that there is only 3 of them while the US has about 40

I’m now back on my guardian and kicking ass, I need to finish Balmorra and get on to the next part of the story though I’ve got to take the supplies to Kira’s people on Nar Shadaa first, I must admit I’m a bit too friendly towards other players often helping them and not getting my own stuff done, oh well there’s always next time to let them down heh.

I’ve been unable to hold back the urge and have started playing Skyrim again, this time as a Thief so basically I’m immersed again and can’t really stop I’ve got to at least to try and play a bit of SWTOR for the remainder of the pay period as the end of this month heralds a new Minecraft patch.

Till next planet or universe…

JD


 I don't want to be bad, yet

Hustlin' through the Old Republic: I arrive fashionably late

Well it’s here, it’s been here for a while now I just decided to obtain it when the timing was right, as I had enough things to do and play already if you hadn’t noticed the lack of posts in February and March I indeed have started playing Star Wars the Old Republic (SWTOR). In case you didn’t know it’s been out since December 23rd 2011 in the US but we down this part of the world had to wait till March 3 before it was officially released in AU but the part I’d been waiting for was the Australian based servers, yes you read that correctly and I’m going to say it up front, Star Wars the old Republic has Australian based servers, there’s currently only 3 of them but that’s better than most MMO who have “Oceanic” servers with the correct time zone but located in the US still. In this field Bioware has already stood out above the rest.

A Jedi Shadow on Belsavis

So as you’ve probably guessed it’s time for another post title: Yes, Hustlin’ through the Old Republic, it may sound cheesy but it’s the best I could come up with I was thinking of Fresh Prince of the Old Republic as I like to think of it as World of Warcraft being West Philadelphia but of course WoW wasn’t a bad place at all as I’m sure Will Smith would agree, and also my mother didn’t make me leave there in order to live with my rich cousins in SWTOR as the song goes. But hustlin’ has that kind of ring to it, the term “hustle” basically means to make money in any way possible, a lot of the time illegally and that’s what you’re doing in SWTOR, well mostly and as it only has one type or layer of currency your dealin’ with big money. I suppose this name would suit more if you were playing as a Smuggler or Bounty Hunter who happened to be doing the ‘underworld trading’ mission skill but as with all MMO’s currency is a very big part of the game especially since you have to pay people to train you for new abilities but anyway. As with my WoW related posts this topic will be my adventures through SWTOR and anything interesting that happens during the time, of course I’d have to remember to record it but I always have a few things to show, I will try to feature as much as I can any updates, announcements and special events that happen as well, though there are more than enough sites that do this already.

I was meandering over the fact that should I make this first post a review of SWTOR itself, but of course as Zero Punctuation had put it, it’s very hard to “review” an MMO even after a couple of weeks playing, So I decided that I would treat this first post on the new topic as an introduction to the game. I never did one for my WoW posts but if you’re reading this blog there’s quite a big chance you already know what WoW is, I did one for Minecraft thanks to Dave a bit after I had made my original posts and I suppose I did do a “teaser” post for SWTOR earlier on in 2011. But I’m happy for this to be just an introductory post but I will also give you the basic info which you don’t need to hear it from me, take it away Wikipedia:

 
The original "Deceived' trailer

Star Wars: The Old Republic, abbreviated as TOR or SWTOR, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based in the Star Wars universe. Developed by BioWare Austin and a supplemental team at BioWare Edmonton, the game was first announced on October 21, 2008, at an invitation-only press event. The video game was released for the Microsoft Windows platform on December 20, 2011 in North America and part of Europe. Early access to the game began one week before release, on December 13, 2011, for those who had pre-ordered the game online; access opened in "waves" based on pre-order date.
Although BioWare has not disclosed development costs, industry leaders and financial analysts have estimated it to be between $150 million and $200 million. If accurate, this would make it the most expensive video game ever developed. The game had 1 million subscribers within three days of its launch, making it the world's 'Fastest-Growing MMO Ever', compared with rivals such as World of Warcraft. 
*taken from Wikipedia

I was recently looking for a printed strategy guide for the game but was unable to find one as yet apart from some crap “atlas” from Prima games that’s trying to be passed off as a strategy guide. Now of course you might be thinking who the hell would buy a printed strategy guide to an MMO when all the information you need is freely available online? Well I’ll tell you why, it’s because I like to read about a game I’m currently playing and reading about it makes me want to play it more, also reading a book is both easier and better on your eyes than staring at a screen the whole time, and also I like to read while eating and the guides have a wealth of information that can keep me entertained for weeks. I now have four different WoW Strategy guides, an original guide plus one for each expansion and reading them all and seeing how World of Warcraft has evolved is good fun to read and reminisce of how the game used to be and I look forward to doing this with The Old Republic.

It’s been a while coming since my original post on the subject, and I think SWTOR has lived up to my expectations and of course as you’d expect as a previous WoW player I did have a lot of expectations but I didn’t really want to, I didn’t want to view this game as just another WoW rival that will fail like some others in the past. But it didn’t, it hasn’t it has cost Bioware an incredulous amount of money and resources but it’s held firm as far as I can see. I went into SWTOR with a lighthearted attitude intending to have some fun and play the game the way the designers intended and not try to change things around so much because of the quintessential fact that it would be “more like WoW so it’s better” I’m trying my hardest to keep away from this but with the release of the newest major patch which includes the simple, functional and very useful user Interface editor it was one hell of an effort not to try and re-arrange everything wow-style. But to be honest the whole experience has been rather good and possibly getting better as I go further into it.

A good explanation of the SWTOR gameplay mechanics in a group flashpoint (dungeon/instance)

Before I purchased the game I had decided long ago that I wanted to be on the Republic side and I wanted to be a Jedi Knight. The reasons for this were that at the start I guess I just wanted to be the good guys, I played Horde most of the time which I were (almost) convinced that the Horde had more morality and was more of an Alliance than the Alliance itself but this is open to  debate amongst WoW lore junkies everywhere. But with the Galactic Republic I never necessarily saw them as evil, though if I could nerd out for a bit and imagine myself there to be honest I would be kind of hesitant to pick the way of the Jedi. I knew that since there was technically only 4 main classes and two of them were Jedi/Sith that it was going to be lightsabre mania right from the start and that I probably should pick another class, but I knew couldn’t the “lure of the lightsabre” as I like to call it was too much.  My brother who plays as a smuggler and was always going to play as a smuggler did say to me in a  conversation some quite obvious traits with players that were:

• Not many Smugglers or Troopers around at all i.e. not many non-Jedi, but of course an MMO with only 4 main classes per side two of them being force-swinging lightsabre wielders and the other two being supposedly boring ol Shooty Mcgunguns (with the possible exception of the Bounty Hunter which is probably the most popular non Jedi/Sith class) you could probably guess that was going to happen. But anyway, that’s that I guess, at least the two separate Jedi/Sith classes on each side can heal/tank respectively. 

• The majority of players were human and sure enough I looked around and they were, and I was, of course I could come up with a few of reasons for this. One being that when you select a character you select the race then you get the option of selecting the bodytype, and the reason you are able to do this is because the only difference between the different races is their heads, everything else is pretty much humanlike unlike WoW in which each races body is significantly different. The second reason is that humans are usually the base to get chosen as that’s what we are and can identify with, the majority of major Jedi characters in the Star Wars movie series were human as well. The last reason is that in SWTOR your initial surroundings and main storyline are governed by your class not your race, so class in all respects is the biggest decision whereas races in WoW determine what your character looks like and how they will move/talk/dance/etc, their starting area and home city and also what mounts you will be able to (easily) acquire.

Republic side character select screen

 Most of this is true but it’s not exactly a dire blemish on the game, every main class has an advanced class that specializes in either healing or tanking so a whole group full of Jedi can do an flashpoint (aka instance or dungeon for all you WoW people out there) without any trouble as long as they have the appropriately capable advanced classes. Frankly though I do miss the way WoW handles the races, It’s one of the main reasons I really enjoyed creating a new character. For example as an Undead (or Forsaken) character, you woke up in a  tomb and your starting area was the dreary and gloomy but somewhat hauntingly beautiful Tirisfal Glades where you can get your Skeletal Warhorse with whole area being of undead-style as well as your home city which was the massive Underhalls of a ruined human city. Now you don’t quite get any of this for races in SWTOR the only relative difference is their social abilities and non-body shape related looks, you don’t get a unique starting area for your race, this is done through classes as I mentioned before but I suppose this really doesn’t bother me as the class starting areas are involved and exciting enough though having no home city apart from a allegiance wide space station. In regards to the vehicles available I’m fairly unimpressed, I would rather a certain build of each vehicle be assigned to each major class for example Jedi Consulars would have the Rendill line of speeders, I enjoyed the variety and character of the mounts in WoW, the SWTOR mechanical mounts, are fun to skim along with, one way which you (usually) wouldn’t be able to travel like in WoW but they don’t come very close to the fun and companionship (even the mechanical ones) of the WoW mounts.

Vehicles, fun but still just machines

When I started my character I suppose the hardest thing I had to work out was what to name myself as I said in my WoW posts I discovered the name “hbui” from mashing the keyboard which was a surprisingly more suitable for an mmo then my usual FPS “JDman”, so when I had to come up with a name that I was going to use for SWTOR it was kind of a weird experience deciding how to choose but eventually I just decided to use the same parameters as before, 4 letters, grammatically incorrect and no special characters. So my first character would be named: “Jxan” nothing special I know but MMO names aren’t supposed to be, I actually realised now that I could have made a second name but meh, it’s less to type in as was my argument before spaces in names.

Jedi Knightin' it up

As a Jedi it’s pretty basic, use the right abilities at the right time, manage your attacking enemies, choose the right companion for the job. Things get a bit more complicated when it comes to classes in the game. The Republic side has 4 main classes that being Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular, Smuggler and Trooper, with each having its own advanced class which basically slightly change your style of play, for example my Jedi Knight is a Guardian, so he uses only one Lightsabre, further to that the advanced classes have 3 different skill trees for the Jedi Guardian there is defense, vigilance and focus which are basically the tank tree, the damage over time dps tree and the pvp style burst damage dps tree that is shared over both the Jedi Knight advanced classes. Now this is all well and good but my main problem (and probably a lot of other people’s problem) is that there is currently no dual-spec option so my dilemma is that I want to be able to tank in instances, so I am tank specced, but most of the time I’m not tanking just dpsing and the times I am able to tank for instances usually someone picks up the role anyway, I’ve also been mulling over if I should be keeping a separate set of gear for DPS as because I’m supposed to be a tank I’ve favoured endurance (which increases health, similar to stamina) over strength with most of my gear but then again whenever I did that in WoW I always had to keep checking whether the dps gear I was getting was better than my tank gear, but I spose the stats are a little bit different and it’s vice-versa in this case. I must make a point here to mention the Datacrons which add a marvellous element of treasure hunting and platforming which is pretty much unheard of in an MMO and I’ve had lots of fun laughing at less agile players falling to their doom.

My current Jedi Knight Skill Tree many say the skill tree system should be scrapped in favour of Blizzard's new system

The next points I need to make is that of your companions yes you now have these npc characters that follow you around and help you, and you don’t just have one, by the time you reach level 50 you will have a whole posse of different characters well that’s if you could have them all out at the same time which of course you can’t. Your companions serve a lot of uses, they can tank, heal or do damage in battle, they make comments about random things and can serve as a love interest for your character and they can also perform Crew Skills. Which as you would have probably guessed are similar to the crafting skills in WoW, main difference being that you yourself do not make the stuff and you do not gather the stuff either (well most of the time) it’s your companions that do this. So there is the usual gathering skills where you collecting crystal or hacking systems for valuable data and crafting skills where your making new Jedi colour crystals or droid parts  but there is also a mission skill, where for example you send your companion away for a set period of time to go pick up some illegal goods or do some diplomatic shizz yo in which they come back with rare items for use with your crafting skills. The thing that gets me though is that crafting things take much longer than it does in WoW and I’ve found that kind of hard to get used to, as my usual way of things is to go ok I need 3 of these, then wait up to a minute while I make them, in SWTOR each thing takes about 2 minutes minimum, with semi-rare items taking about 8, I’ve just had to keep remembering to get my companions making them while I’m running around doin other stuff, the mission skills are easy enough as they take thing longest (up to 15 minutes!) but all you need to do is use a non-active companion to do the work. When you request your companions to go on these missions or make these items they simply just disappear, apparently either back to the ship to get crafting or wherever else their going.

Kira Carsen, a Jedi Knight Companion

Bowdaar, a smuggler companion

 One of the biggest differences between WoW and SWTOR is the storytelling inside the game, in SWTOR your have you own classes main storyline which basically leads you from planet to planet each with its own storyline and mini storyline inside it and coupled with the fully voiced players and NPCs and authentic Star Wars sounds and music it’s a very immersive experience, much more then some MMO's which have little or no specific storyline for your character. we all know the whole Bioware conversation mechanic that you’ve seen in the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series as well as many others. Where if someone asks you a question then you have 2 or more answers or actions depending on what they have said and you have the option to pick the polite, controversial or downright offensive reply. SWTOR’s spin on this is sometimes your actions can have Light or Dark side consequences so you could probably guess what that would be: “kill the slaver and free the people” or “accept bribe from the slaver and commit the people to their doom” they aren’t always about money of course though being a Jedi I really couldn’t do anything bad like the good natured sap that I am.

You make many dark or light side decisions with a few consequences

The bottom line though isn’t about the morality of you or your character, there are many items in the game that you need a certain amount of light/dark side points to be able to use it, so as Zero Punctuation mentioned you may as well just pick your allegiance from the start as to get some of the best items at the end of the game you need to have selected the light side option most of the time. The only other difference I can think of is that is you select dark side all the time it visibly shows on your character as I saw with a level 50 Jedi who looked very evil indeed. One thing I really do want to try is play as a Sith and pick all the Light side options, which I really want to see how it works because aren’t Sith supposed to be evil? Well I suppose Jedi are supposed to be good.

Dark side corruption changes

 Not too long into your main characters storyline you receive your very own Starship which serves as a mini home base for you and your crew. It’s basically how you get from planet to planet and also how you access your space combat missions, but to be honest there’s not really much else you do there, just mission briefing and access to your Cargo Hold, you’ll probably spend a lot more time on the main Republic or Imperial space stations which sit near their respective fleets and basically act as the home cities for each allegiance. Apart from getting from planet to planet the space combat missions are probably the main thing you will be using your ship for and I must admit they are good fun I was always wondering how Bioware could pull off space battles in an MMO. Basically it’s like an arcade game, when you start, your ship is at the bottom of your screen and you can move it around quite quickly with the mouse in order to dodge incoming fire and you aim your lasers and missiles using the mouse as well. There’s a few different kinds of missions  including destroying an enemy battlestation, destroying an enemy ship or series of fighters or protecting an allied ship which is possibly the hardest as the upgrades to your own ship make little difference when you’re not the one being shot at. I could possibly argue with my brother forever on this but I can’t help not feeling that this was put in just because it was a Starwars game and it had to have space battles so this is what they chucked in. I suppose it wouldn’t been a semi-large hole in the game  without it and the arcadiness suits because we don’t want to bother ourselves with X-Wing vs Tie Fighter levels of complicatedness in an MMO.

Space Combat, you have to see it to believe it (or understand it)

The graphics in SWTOR are what you’d expect them to be, for an MMO cannot have the fancy graphics of other games for the reasons enclosed in that conversation of course, I never expected the graphics to be anything more than acceptable, there is a bit of popup in the scenery though, especially around the foresty worlds such as Taris or Alderaan, I’ve recently travelled to the desert planet of Tatooine which is very good looking for a desert. What sometimes takes me by surprise is the size of some of the rooms/caves/buildings in the game, whether it’s huge storehouses giant caves or just massive ships or space stations the sheer size of some places is sure grand to look at. One very interesting feature with the characters models is that you have the option of “Unifying the Colours” of your gear so for example remember all those times in WoW where your armor looked kind of like this well Blizzard had their own way of fixing that and so do Bioware. The armor and robes that you get in SWTOR aren’t quite bulky or outstanding as of those in WoW, this allows the unify colours button to basically turn every other piece of gear that you have to blend in with the base colours of your chestpiece, which makes you look pretty cool and is a great feature.

Smuggler Sharpshooter on Alderaan

Overall my experience with SWTOR has been a good one, I’ve played my first character to level 30, I’ve joined a guild, I’ve learned a lot about the game so far and am mostly happy with the experience, there’s so much more class and spec combinations that I want to try  for example Jedi Consular Sage with Telekinetic spec I’d also really like to try the Sith side an be and be a “Good Sith” who always takes the light side option. Whether or not I go back to WoW at some point though remains to be seen, though before I was switching between WoW and Minecraft, now I’m switching between the three of them, and trying to watch the whole 3 Kingdoms TV series as well, sigh I spose I’ll always have too much to do or play.

My current interface setup with Tatooine in the backdrop

 Stay tuned for more SWTOR posts as they come, I can assure you I’ll be playing for a while yet.

JD

Facing the council for "misuse of the force"

Star Wars The Old Republic, patience, anticipation and reflection on the MMORPG genre

I suppose that unless you’ve been hiding in a tree with Bear Gryllis you’ve heard of Bioware’s new upcoming Star Wars MMORPG www.swtor.com, (Massively, Multiplayer, Online, Roleplaying game, I don’t know why I bother writing that anymore really) but for those who have been sitting in a tree.. etc here’s a brief overview courtesy of pyber80 from GameFaqs 

The Old Republic is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG) being developed by BioWare's Austin, TX studio, in conjunction with Electronic Arts and LucasArts. Set to take place approximately 3500 years prior to the events of the movies, TOR picks up the story 300 years after the Knights of the Old Republic games. While it is not a direct continuation of the KotOR games, some of the story does have links to those games.The game is set several years after the Treaty of Coruscant put a halt to all-out warfare between the Republic and the Sith Empire, following the Empire's brutal invasion and the sacking of the Republic capital. Open war is now once again all but inevitable, and it’s into this tense galactic standoff that you thrust upon starting the game.

A Star Wars MMO? What else could you want? I’ve never been a really big fan of RPG’s it’s only been recently that I’ve tried Bioware’s Mass Effect and Dragon Age Origins the latter probably being my most enjoyable but didn’t really warm to the whole “manage the inventory, armor, talents and attack plan of your whole group of characters not just yourself” thing, I much prefer to only manage my own character (and sometimes I can’t even do a good job of that) What I did like however was Bioware’s signature “choose your own responses” type of conversation with NPC’s. I found it fun to get all the information I could out of a conversation, or even choose some of the more offensive or inappropriate responses just to see what the npc would say. Once again Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw was right as I got partway through the game then found I got quite bored with the current and started doing the beginning areas of each race just to see what they were like. 

SWTOR Game interface 29/4

In regards to other RPG’s I have recently finished Mafia II but that’s more along the lines of GTA4 and Red Dead Redemption rather then an RPG. I really have not tried any MMO’s for a long time now (one of them being my ill-fated trial of the Korean made Lineage II and that was made even worse by playing on a hacked server) obviously I did hear about Star Wars Galaxies and Lord of the Rings online and they did sound appealing but I didn’t delve into the mix mainly because they need a subscription to be played and I can’t be bothered getting the ‘trials’, though technically I did try WoW as a trial and have liked it ever since. As for Aion and Conan and also Warhammer Online (I believe their making a 40k one also) I didn’t even bother either because I heard a lot about people trying it then just stopping and letting it gather dust or because of the overwhelming factor is that I already had WoW and I liked it and wanted to play more of it instead of some other attempt at a good MMO, which seems to be quite a large problem that a lot of WoW players experience. This is the problem of the WoW “drug” which comes into effect with WoW players want a newer better MMO to replace WoW but after finding one and playing it for a while they end up crawling back because it just isn’t WoW, all the while Blizzard (and Activision) laugh maniacally as they steamroll any competition largely due to this recurring theme amongst WoW players, and thankfully it hasn’t happened to me yet and I very much hope it doesn’t because I am looking forward to the Old Republic quite a bit.

Anyway, back to our main topic...

Coruscant wowee! (emphasis on the 'wee')

And one thing I am interested in is having those “selective question/answer conversations” that I mentioned earlier that Bioware do so well in a Star Wars environment, it’s one thing to learn a whole backstory while you are playing the game, it’s even better when you already have an idea of whats going on before you even start playing the game. I’m going to try and read as much of the backstory that I can and I’m even thinking of watching the first three Star Wars films (i.e. the newest ones) in order to be fully knowledgeable yo. Also it appears we’re going to have our own personal starships which would be a great new aspect to my MMO playing especially since WoW did not have any player housing (for somewhat obvious reasons) Having an area to just relax, view your stats and talk to anyone you have with you at the time (much the same as dragon age) would be great. A big thing about WoW is the personal mounts i.e. horses, rams, gryphons, wyverns etc it seems there isn’t much in the way of personal mounts at the moment, but when I think about it it seems reasonable that a lot of the transport is planet based rather then race or class based cause it would be kinda weird having differrent animals on planets they shouldnt be. Another thing I found quite interesting was the addition of "crew skills" which basially allows the NPCdimplomacy or treasure hunting missions by themselves all while you aren't there which is quite an interesting feature.



Well thats all I should go on about for now, as you can probably guess I'm quite excited about this game as are alot of people. I don't really want to get into the whole "is this a wow killer or clone" argument as I just think this will be a geat game and am looking forward to playing it. Once it comes out I may do an update on my thoughts and observations but untill, then, pateince and anticipation!

If your after more info be sure to check out the official site and if it's more the bare facts you're after then pyber80's guide on GameFaqs is a great resource for all your questions

 I will leave you now one of the coolest trailers for a game I have seen so far.

JD



May I present... Han Marston!