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.
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| 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:
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Kira Carsen, a Jedi Knight Companion |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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"
