# star wars old republic



## i_got_poison (Oct 13, 2010)

anyone excited by this?

the trailers are jaw droppingly good.



unfortunately the gameplay looks less than stellar when compared with the above. but looks aren't as important as the feel of the game and character interaction.


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## Chester Copperpot (Oct 14, 2010)

i_got_poison said:


> unfortunately the gameplay looks less than stellar when compared with the above. but looks aren't as important as the feel of the game and character interaction.


 
So often the way with Star Wars games. On paper they sound like they should be great but apart form a couple of titles they are universally shit.


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## machine cat (Oct 14, 2010)

I can't get onto youtube at work.

Is this sequel to Knights of the Old Republic I & II? Those were probably the best Star Wars games I've played.


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## stupid dogbot (Oct 14, 2010)

Sort of. It's an MMO.

Vids look ace. Gameplay... Meh.


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## Epona (Oct 15, 2010)

stupid dogbot said:


> Sort of. It's an MMO.
> 
> Vids look ace. Gameplay... Meh.


 
Fuck it.  I don't do MMOs.   

Edit to add: I should really add that despite voicing my disappointment earlier this evening I'm not at all surprised, an MMO has been in the works for absolutely donkey's years.  But I don't have to be overjoyed about it iyswim!


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## Vintage Paw (Oct 16, 2010)

They took Drew Karpyshyn off Mass Effect to write this ... hence why ME2 didn't have the same excellent storytelling as ME1.


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## agricola (Oct 16, 2010)

This should be great, some of the features - especially companions and individual questlines (albeit the restricted space combat, which appears to be akin to what was in Rebel Assault 2, is an awful idea*), and the non-cookie nature of character customization is welcome, as is Bioware's involvement and the rumoured ($200 million plus) budget.  I just hope they dont do what they did to SWG and over-populize it.

* though admittedly the first time you did the asteroid mission it was absolutely ace


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## kained&able (Oct 18, 2010)

see if its better then galaxies! I have a real problem with paying subscriptions for a gamne though. Its a ridiculous way of doing things.


dave


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## ATOMIC SUPLEX (Oct 18, 2010)

Whatever happened to there only being two siths at a time?


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## stupid dogbot (Oct 18, 2010)

ATOMIC SUPLEX said:


> Whatever happened to there only being two siths at a time?



In quite a few of the earlier stories, there are lots. A race of, even.

Only two Sith _Lords_, perhaps.


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## machine cat (Oct 18, 2010)

I believe the Sith were a race of people who lived on Koriban. They were taught to fight by exiled Dark Jedi who eventually called themselves the Sith.


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## stupid dogbot (Oct 18, 2010)

drcarnage said:


> I believe the Sith were a race of people who lived on Koriban. They were taught to fight by exiled Dark Jedi who eventually called themselves the Sith.


 
Those temples on Koriban in KOTOR (or was it 2?) were


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## machine cat (Oct 18, 2010)

stupid dogbot said:


> Those temples on Koriban in KOTOR (or was it 2?) were


 
They were in both games. 

There was one temple in KOTOR I which had apparitions of past Sith Lords and battles. I always remember meeting the vision of Revan and thinking "Fuck. I have to fight this guy?!"


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## stupid dogbot (Oct 18, 2010)

Innit. "Oh, shiiiiiiit!!"


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## machine cat (Oct 18, 2010)

Man that game was awesome. The storyline and characters were much better than any of the three prequel movies. Remember that Assassin droid who used to call everybody a "meatbag"?  He's got to be one of my favourite video game characters of all time.


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## Fruitloop (Oct 18, 2010)

I still have to play this.

In terms of cheesy fun, I still like the Battlefront games.


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## machine cat (Oct 18, 2010)

Fruitloop said:


> I still have to play this.
> 
> In terms of cheesy fun, I still like the Battlefront games.


 
"The enemy have taken another command post!"


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## Fruitloop (Oct 18, 2010)

Some of them were bastard hard! Hoth as the Rebels, for example.


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## machine cat (Oct 18, 2010)

Fruitloop said:


> Some of them were bastard hard! Hoth as the Rebels, for example.


 
Yeah, Hoth was probably the hardest, closely followed by the Jedi Temple.


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## Fruitloop (Oct 18, 2010)

Totally. The room at the back was complete insanity.


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## Fruitloop (Oct 18, 2010)

Battlefront 3!!!

(sorry, I'll stop derailing)


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## machine cat (Oct 18, 2010)

Fruitloop said:


> Totally. The room at the back was complete insanity.


 
The three Jedi Masters at the end were hard as fuck to kill.


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## bhamgeezer (Oct 18, 2010)

The video was pretty damn exciting!


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## stupid dogbot (Oct 18, 2010)

drcarnage said:


> Man that game was awesome. The storyline and characters were much better than any of the three prequel movies. Remember that Assassin droid who used to call everybody a "meatbag"?  He's got to be one of my favourite video game characters of all time.


 
Lol, yeah. 

I need to see if there's a Mac copy floating about anywhere.


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## machine cat (Oct 18, 2010)

Force Storm and Force Crush


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## Termite Man (Oct 19, 2010)

stupid dogbot said:


> Sort of. It's an MMO.


 

whats an MMO


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## Vintage Paw (Oct 20, 2010)

Termite Man said:


> whats an MMO


 
Massively Multiplayer Online - in other words something like World of Warcraft, where you play online with other online players. Often comes with a monthly subscription fee.


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## Vintage Paw (Aug 12, 2011)

So, I know someone who is beta testing this at the moment.

He's adoring it.

It sounds fantastic.

This may just be the reason why I take the plunge into the murky world of dual-booting my mac. And it may just be the first MMO I get into.

It has story. Proper story. With dialogue. I mean, seriously, how awesome is that?

Anyone been keeping abreast of news about this anyway? It's just become available for pre-order, and those lucky pre-orderers get access to the game early, so they can explore and build characters and so on, apparently.


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## bouncer_the_dog (Aug 13, 2011)

I will be geting this. Even if it means a new PC.


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## Vintage Paw (Aug 13, 2011)

He's really, really loving his beta access. He's playing Sith Inquisitor and Imperial Agent and loves them both a hell of a lot. Can't wait to have a play with it next week when I go see him. I shall report back (er, not that I can officially say anything about it, since he's signed a non-disclosure agreement and, er, well, I'm not even supposed to see it, I suppose ...)


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## Vintage Paw (Aug 13, 2011)

Heh, his character just got laid.

Playing Imperial Agent, his character has taken a famous pirate's name as part of a mission, and a guy came up to him saying the actual pirate owed him money, so wanted it from the Imperial Agent. A "flirt" option came up, so they flirted with him, and the dude said he'd let it slide if they kept it up like that. So then his character went back to this guy's room, and then when his character came back out again, they facepalmed. Seems like they got laid.

Heh.


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## Vintage Paw (Oct 11, 2011)

Just pre-ordered this. Standard edition. Not impressed by the in-game items for the more expensive editions.

A friend still has beta access. According to him, it's astonishing that they are considering releasing this in December. Going by what he is saying as he's playing, sounds like it could do with at least another 2 or 3 beta builds and testing before then. Oh well, time will tell.

He says it really does feel like a BioWare game. The stories are good, dialogue feels good. He describes the feel of combat, in terms of BW standards, as somewhere between DA:O and DA2. Without the pausing, obv. He says it never feels grindy, it being story-driven rather than level-driven, and while I don't think he's had much of a chance to level much beyond the mid- to late-20s (although he's had access to level 40 characters as part of testing), story seems to still be going strong. Some class's stories seem to be better than others, as is some of the voice work.

Going on what he says, my first character will be Imperial Agent. They have a great story, the most awesome-looking ship (space combat has a bit of a steep learning curve apparently, but gets easier once you realise the tricks needed to do it), and have portable cover, which is nice.

Anyway, if anyone has any questions I can ask him about stuff. During his first beta build he was playing on the PvP server (only one was available) and had no problems. Now there's a choice he's playing on the PvE server. Think I'll be choosing that one myself too


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## bouncer_the_dog (Oct 25, 2011)

So I guess I will pick this up feb/march after they have patched it like crazy on the ultimate beta testers... paying customers.


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## Vintage Paw (Nov 11, 2011)

So, the stress testing has begun. I've just received an invite for a beta testing weekend, as has one of my friends (we received them at the same time while chatting online, which was kind of awesome). Anyone else received one?

Apparently the euro servers are down at the moment, so everyone's on the NA servers, which is nice, since I want to team up with someone who's a long-term tester over there, let him show me the ropes.

It'll be nice to have a look at it ahead of time


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## Vintage Paw (Nov 11, 2011)

Yes, it's the massive stress test for the servers.

Everyone who signed up for a TOR account on swtor.com before 11/11/11 and ticked the box to be a tester will be invited. Everyone. All of us. Everyone. That's going to be some stress test.

It'll be happening in the next few weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if it's thanksgiving weekend, actually.


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## Vintage Paw (Nov 22, 2011)

I was correct (yay me).

Downloading the client and installing at the moment. It's a beast in terms of size, but I knew it would be.

Only 4 weeks until retail release, or less for pre-release (not sure that date has been announced yet).

Anyone been thinking about what class/alignment you'll be playing?

I'm going with Imperial Agent (sniper) first I think, although I'll more than likely make placeholders for each class.


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## grit (Nov 22, 2011)

Vintage Paw said:


> Just pre-ordered this. Standard edition. Not impressed by the in-game items for the more expensive editions.
> 
> A friend still has beta access. According to him, it's astonishing that they are considering releasing this in December. Going by what he is saying as he's playing, sounds like it could do with at least another 2 or 3 beta builds and testing before then. Oh well, time will tell.



It always seems like that, the reason being that a beta release will always be actually about a month or two old development wise, because it takes time to actually package it up for something that end users can use easily.


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## Vintage Paw (Nov 22, 2011)

Yep. It'll be interesting to see what this weekend's stress test build is like. It's all downloaded and installed, just got to wait now.


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## Shippou-Sensei (Nov 22, 2011)

the video actually managed to make the non force users cool.  which is tough.  when some classes have superpowers you reeealy have to do something special  to  make  peeople  want to play a norm

i mean  i think 60% of the reason anyone plays a non jedi  has to be harrison ford.


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## bouncer_the_dog (Nov 23, 2011)

and the other 40% Boba Fett


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## stuff_it (Nov 23, 2011)

Chester Copperpot said:


> So often the way with Star Wars games. On paper they sound like they should be great but apart form a couple of titles they are universally shit.


Lego Starwars for DS isn't that bad.


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## Vintage Paw (Nov 24, 2011)

From the makers of KotOR, though. It's Mass Effect meets KotOR via the medium of MMO. It's got to be good, amirite?

Anyway, my test begins Saturday, 10am CST. A mate starts his Friday, same time, except he's in Australia, so that's actually 2am Sat morning for him 

I'm almost 90% sure I'll play as Imperial Agent this weekend.


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## bouncer_the_dog (Nov 24, 2011)

Havent got  a good enough machine for this at the moment...


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## Vintage Paw (Nov 26, 2011)

Well, I've made my Imperial Agent. Seems ok so far, haven't done much past kill a few random goons and just the 1 side quest. Spent too much time moaning about the bastard windowed mode, that isn't working properly for me. It's pissing me off massively.

Have joined up with someone, and we're working through together anyway. Shall play a bit more later.


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## bouncer_the_dog (Nov 26, 2011)

Have you played wow? Is it a wow killer?


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## Vintage Paw (Nov 27, 2011)

Never played WoW. So no idea.

Been really frustrated with the game today, as I'm having terrible issues with my mouse. 2 issues, which are probably unrelated: I hold down right-click to move around while pressing W, like I do in all games. Only this seems to have some crazy mouse acceleration going on, because I flip and do a 180 (or sometimes a 360) when I go to turn if I turn too fast, and end up utterly disoriented; laglaglaglaglag, mouse lag from hell - my fps is good (40-60 with vsync on, sometimes up over 100 with it off), varying graphical settings don't seem to change anything, high or low, but suddenly my mouse will stop responding entirely, or will stutter a little in the vague direction I'm trying to move it, and clicks are unresponsive. Happens when I'm just walking, during combat, when I'm trying to loot, when I'm trying to open or close menus, whatever. Some times it's worse than others, and makes the game unplayable. Other times I manage to muddle through, but I've given up on using my mouse during combat, for the most part. Not being a clever sort, I'm not sure what might be causing it. The forums seem to have a few instances of people saying the same, and the responses are utterly undecided upon a cause, ranging from "server lag" to "fps problems", and "your rig is shit" to "your mother is a whore". So who knows.


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## Vintage Paw (Nov 27, 2011)

Got it working ok now. Trial and error. Windowed mode, at my full resolution, works great. It's a totally different game.

And I'm loving it.


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## Vintage Paw (Nov 29, 2011)

They've confirmed that they'll just be patching the current client for early game access/release, so if you've already downloaded for this past weekend beta, there's no need to uninstall it, nor to download anything new later.

Which is great news, because seriously, 20gb was a bit of a bastard.


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## Epona (Nov 30, 2011)

So what's the verdict?

Not going to be doing it myself because I can't afford/justify (at least at this point in time, financially speaking) a subscription fee for something that comes solely under the heading of "entertainment and not strictly necessary" if you know what I mean (already prioritising the internet over having the heating on!)

But I'd like to hear some more detail about your opinion having played it for a bit, you know, just in case I miraculously end up with a regular income or something


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## Vintage Paw (Nov 30, 2011)

Well, I've never played an MMO before, so I'm very definitely the uninitiated. And because of that, I found a lot of the mechanics utterly confusing, often infuriatingly so. Those familiar with MMOs tell me the game simply follows the usual pattern, but for those who've never experienced that before, I was using general RPG logic and trying to make it fit, which, sadly, ends in failure.

For example, stats. The bounty hunter/trooper classes are governed by "aim" as their primary stat; the Imperial agent/smuggler classes are governed by "cunning" as theirs. As someone accustomed to RPGs in general, I'm seeing gear that improves "aim", and I'm thinking "I'm an Imperial agent, I'm a ranged character, most of my actives are based around ranged combat, getting something with aim stats will help my proficiency". Nope. Aim does absolutely nothing for an Imperial agent. You open up your character sheet, and see "strength, aim, cunning, endurance, willpower" and you expect them to work how they do in every other RPG. Eventually being told by the person I was grouped with that they don't work like that made me stop in my tracks, wtf?

There are 2 things here: 1) they named them in such a way as it surely would be obvious that new players would look at "aim" and think "my ranged character needs that" - just calling these things something else would help massively; 2) there are no tutorial boxes that pop up as you start to play that explain it - it's near impossible to find anything in game that helps describe the workings of an MMO style mechanic, so much so I'd say the game itself almost seems to feel contempt for the new player. That put me in a very bad mood on more than one occasion, because I was left feeling like an idiot, because all these other hundreds of thousands of players seem to instantly understand but not me. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. Maybe they'll include more tutorial stuff or easier information in the actual release. I hope so.

After all that negativity, what I can say is that once I realised what was going on, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's very definitely a BioWare game. The dialogue is easily the highlight for me, and I really enjoyed picking up missions and turning them in. The combat can get repetitive, but I guess that's what an MMO is, thank fully the story makes up for that. It feels a bit like KotOR in its combat, apart from there being no opportunity to pause, obviously. In fact, it feels a lot more like KotOR than anything else BioWare has put out since, although your character is voiced, which is great.

On the subject of your character, the CC isn't all that. It's possible to make some really lovely characters, but sadly the options aren't that numerous, especially for non-humans. I hear the CC will be patched and made better for launch, and I hope that's true because it has some serious shortcomings right now.

The 3 characters I made this weekend (you can see the sliders for customisation on the last one - that's all you've got to work with):

















The story content is immense. It's been said that each class has a main story that is the equivalent in length to the whole Mass Effect trilogy. And there are 8 classes. And that's the game at launch - pre-release content over the years will only, hopefully, continue to expand on that. I didn't get further than the end of the 1st story planet with one of my characters, part way through with the other 2, so I barely even began to scratch the surface. Levelling happens relatively quickly at first, but slows down immensely as you get into it.

But none of that matters, because as soon as you've made your first character and hit "play", you sit back and an enormous grin bursts onto your face as the iconic Star Wars music starts up loudly and the big old yellow letters appear on screen, and you're in Star Wars, and it's fucking amazing


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## Vintage Paw (Nov 30, 2011)

(btw, anti-aliasing has been disabled in all beta builds, which is why there are so many jagged edges - my macbook pro can play it on high graphics, with a few things like shadows turned down for obvious performance reasons.)


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## Cid (Nov 30, 2011)

Sounds promising, but the chances of me picking up another mmo involve northern Skyrim and the chances of seeing items created from it's ubiquitous weather in the primary Oblivion plane.


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 7, 2011)

Early access begins on Tuesday, so make sure you check your emails after then.

The finished installed game is ~27GB, you can start downloading now if you want, if you've pre-ordered, by going to your SW:TOR account.

There's no grace period; come 12:01am EST 20th Dec, if you haven't set up your sub account, entered your product key, and so on, you can't play any more.


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## Radar (Dec 10, 2011)

Anyone who ordered via GAME, they're now shipping for the 15th Dec instead of the 20th  

Which means I should have my game code before heading off to Paddyland for christmas.. Sweet!!


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 11, 2011)

Indeed. Lots of places around Europe are shipping early, apart from Amazon *grumblegrumble*, much to the chagrin of the yanks 

However, I can't see that it changes much, since you get early access until the 20th anyway if you've pre-ordered (although when it starts is dependent on when you entered your pre-order key onto their website - first come first served). Early access starts Tuesday. I'd expect I'll get it around Thursday or so.


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## Radar (Dec 15, 2011)

Anyone in yet ???


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## Shippou-Sensei (Dec 15, 2011)

what's the monthly fee?

i'm kinda tempted with this one  but  paying for the game  and then a subscription fee  is not something i relish

also  with other MMOs  i just kinda get bored.  guild wars  held me in for a while and so did LOTR online   but i've just recently tried champions online and thats losing appeal fast


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## Radar (Dec 15, 2011)

8.99 per 30 days, sliding down to 46.18 for 180 days


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## Shippou-Sensei (Dec 15, 2011)

i take it the ame will be about £30 quid?

do you get a month or two with the game purchase?

e2a

ah i see you get 30 days  with it..

hummm


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## Shippou-Sensei (Dec 15, 2011)

i  think i can't justify this one.  too expensive  for what you get at the moment

if it goes free to play i'll deffo sign up  and i'll trial it if it's free download   + subscription


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## kabbes (Dec 15, 2011)

I resent the idea of paying a monthly fee.  It's not so much the amount as it is the pressure to play it to justify paying for it.


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## Shippou-Sensei (Dec 15, 2011)

yeah.   it's the fact i wouldn't want to play this   every night    or even three times a week.

i wish  the subscriptions were pay as you go    and just  logged the time you were on the server


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 15, 2011)

Radar said:


> Anyone in yet ???



Yes, got in during the first wave today.

Not played much yet, just got to level 3 with my Bounty Hunter. And Amazon dispatched my game this morning.

And yes, 30 days sub with the game, then a monthly sub of £8.99. That is, btw, the cheapest so far across all countries - works out cheaper than in Europe and in the States, which makes a nice change. I cancelled my lovefilm sub so I could play this, so I'm not really feeling the pinch like someone who was adding this on top of other subs might do.


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 15, 2011)

Well, staggering early access doesn't seem to have achieved one of the things they wanted it to: queues.

-_-


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## Radar (Dec 16, 2011)

yeah, just got in myself. Email arrived whilst down the pub tonight. Why didn't it arrive while I was dossing at home on a day off


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 16, 2011)

Sod's law.

You got into a server? Or are you saving it for when it's not ridiculously late? There are only ~40 people in my instance right now (Irish server); everyone's asleep, perfect time to play if you're soloing


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 16, 2011)

Well for someone who's completely new to MMOs, I don't think I'm doing too badly. I'm only PvEing, but I'm doing fine. And now I have my first companion I swear it's like easy mode. And I've just had my first stranger asking for help moment, which was nice. I left the heroics until I was ridiculously over-levelled for them, because I'm soloing, and a lower level player asked for my help in them.

It's all so new to me.


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## agricola (Dec 16, 2011)

Quite like it so far.


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 16, 2011)

Me too. Got to level 13 Bounty Hunter, cavorting around Dromund Kaas. Never have much of an idea what I'm doing, but I've crafted my first thing, done some heroics, Mako seems to like me (even though she never stops staring at me), and I'm having a blast.

Loving the BH combat. Make things go boom. Chose mercenary as my AC.

Itching to make a new character. Want to reprise the IA I played during beta, and the smuggler. But want to try a consular too. So many to play, so little time


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 17, 2011)

The queues are painful. I'm not sure what marvellous solution they have up their sleeve for launch, but at the moment, they've put lots of people in guilds on certain servers, but let tons of other people join, and don't seem to have capped it very efficiently, so there are routinely queues of upwards of 40 minutes during peak times (peak = any time people aren't asleep). Last night there were queues of 6 hours for some servers.

The smooth early access lead up to launch isn't going quite as they planned.

Took me nearly an hour to get in this morning.


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## bouncer_the_dog (Dec 18, 2011)

I have read the main criticism of the game is its WOW but with starwars. That, for me, is a massive incentive. I think my ancient rig should manage it, just, but with everything turned down. I'm not buying a new computer for it... yet. I'm even tempted to partition my mac an bootcamp windows 7 for it... but thats going a little far. I think I will wait till next year to se how patches and queues and things sort themselves out..


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 18, 2011)

Yeah, I'm sure the queues will calm down a little after launch, most likely a couple of weeks in, definitely after the 30 day free time expires and people drift a little. I'm SO tempted to abandon my low level characters and switch server, but only one friend would jump ship with me, not the other, because his brother's guild is on our current server, so I feel a little tied into it right now. The new english servers they opened a couple of days ago haven't filled up once yet, whereas mine is the busiest english PvE server -_-

Totally in a quandary.


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## Radar (Dec 19, 2011)

busy server will stay busy, at least in the short to medium term... I suppose they could offer free transfers to aid balance, but it might be better to bite the bullet.

I'm on a quietish pvp server and there's been no queues that I can see.


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 19, 2011)

I bit the bullet. Glad I did. Looks like there were quite a few people from The Red Eclipse moving over. Got my Consular to where I was, now focusing on my Imperial Agent. Would like to get my Bounty Hunter back to where she was too, because it's such fun to play as. But .... one can have a little too much Hutta.


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 21, 2011)

Oh my. Sith Inquisitor is just amazing. The combat is superb (the class may be the teensiest bit OP ) and the story, oh the story! The female voice actor does it excellently.


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 21, 2011)

Spoiler



I've just joined a Revanite cult


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## agricola (Dec 24, 2011)

Vette (the Sith Warrior's first companion) is genuinely hilarious.


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 26, 2011)

I only played Sith warrior for a few levels during beta. So far I've been all about my Sith inquisitor, Jedi consular, Imperial agent and bounty hunter. Finally got to the point where I got sprint for my agent last night ... I swear it's the one "skill" that makes the biggest difference in the game. Damn them that you have to wait until level 14 to get it though -_-


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## Vintage Paw (Dec 26, 2011)

I'm getting way too into crafting. I'm mostly playing all the classes, alongside a friend who is too. So we take complimentary crew skills, and are planning our crafting domination. This really is a game where playing with a friend or several is so much fun. But there's enough there that you can easily play alone and be just as happy.

And my "alts" aren't really alts at all. They're all my main characters, and I just choose what I want to focus on at any one time, for a day or so, and switch for a while.

I really do like this game.


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## kained&able (Dec 28, 2011)

im getting more and more tempted by this!


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## agricola (Jan 7, 2012)

The swear filter on this is ludicrous:

banned:  Buddhism

allowed:  arsebiscuits, cocklobster, jellied ringpiece, catholic


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## tommers (Jan 8, 2012)

why is Buddhism banned? There's not even a rude word in it.


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## Johnny Canuck3 (Jan 8, 2012)

Chester Copperpot said:


> So often the way with Star Wars games. On paper they sound like they should be great but apart form a couple of titles they are universally shit.



I thought Battlefront was a good game.


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## Vintage Paw (Jan 8, 2012)

A new bug that's annoying, but fairly trivial I suppose: my Jedi Knight's companion, T7 (who is awesome) keeps getting un-summoned every time we transition to a new area. That made it fun during The Esseles flashpoint earlier. We kept not noticing, until we were getting smashed to pieces by teh evils.


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## agricola (Jan 9, 2012)

tommers said:


> why is Buddhism banned? There's not even a rude word in it.



I have no idea, though I was able to get around it by having by bounty hunter chant "nam myoho renge kyo" every minute.


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## Vintage Paw (Jul 16, 2012)

Well, I let my sub expire. I enjoyed the game a lot, but felt constant pangs of guilt when I didn't play enough to justify the monthly cost (as is the case with pay-monthly MMOs).

So it's been a few months since I last played, but I logged on yesterday to take advantage of the limited free server transfers to move from my really quiet one to a busier one, for when I want to pick it up again.

There have been some quite nice things that have rolled out since I left, and I'm getting the itch to play again. But, I still can't justify the sub at the moment. It sounds like extensions to the class stories won't be coming until next year, so I'll probably hold off until at least then. I reckon that by then we'll be closer to knowing if they're likely to keep afloat as they are, or try a different funding method. Since they spent so fucking much making the game, I can't see them ditching the sub and moving to micro-transactions any time soon.


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## bouncer_the_dog (Jul 16, 2012)

So is it any good? I have a rig that can actually play it, but also a full steam library of unplayed games that require no further expense..


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## Vintage Paw (Jul 17, 2012)

I enjoyed what I played of it. I got to level 26 with a Sith Warrior (ended up being my favourite class - I chose the marauder spec), and levelled a the others a fair way too. It's nice to have some story to the quests, and the class quests especially are written really well. You need a full server to get the most out of it, or you'll have problems finding people to group with for heroics or flashpoints, and the GTN (auction house) will be quiet too.

If you like MMOs, then you'll probably like it. If you like Star Wars, then you'll probably like it. If you like BioWare games, then you'll probably like it. If you like all three, then you're definitely onto a winner that's worth the sub. For me, I like the last 2 definitely, the first one, well, this was my first MMO, and I've discovered I'm not the sort of person who can justify a sub right now. Even though I'm itching to get back into the game and have another play around.


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## Shippou-Sensei (Aug 1, 2012)

it's going free to play soon!

i'll play it then


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## Vintage Paw (Aug 1, 2012)

Indeed!

I need to find out more about what my current characters will lose as a result. I know you have restricted access to species when creating characters, you'll only be able to list a small amount of things on the auction house, and not be able to access some of the various pvp things (I don't care about them), but there's a small section that talks about losing inventory slots and credits and so on. Which, nope.

We shall see. Otherwise, it sounds great.


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## bouncer_the_dog (Aug 1, 2012)

I'm playing the free trial. 

The thing is I was one of the first wave of Star Wars Galaxies players. This ain't Star Wars Galaxies. Its basically Star Wars WoW. Luckily I like WOW. I like Star Wars. So thsi game is OK. But its NOT KOTOR either. 

What teh gaming elite would like is Vanilla WoW difficulty, EVE trading and Day Z open world-ness.  For Free. In Star Wars. This is not that. Nothing is that. 

When it is FREE it will be worth it... paying £8 a month or whatever would be crap.

Oh yes... and there an no achievements


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## Vintage Paw (Aug 2, 2012)

No, it's not KotOR. I'd have loved the option of a traditional BioWare rpg offline version of this. Star Wars: Origins  Same chance to play through all 8 class stories, but as a single-player (or online co-op with a friend, I guess) game.

One problem, quite apart from the obvious issues with this being yet another not-really-very-innovative entry into the mmo market, is that BioWare and EA marketed the game very, very heavily at former KotOR players and current BioWare fans, as basically being an online version of what they love about those games. But it isn't. So the original numbers of subs for the game in the new year would have contained a fair few of those people, who simply were never going to stick around.

I'm not sure spending so much money on the stuff like voice acting and involved stories was worth it in the end, because the people that stuff appeals to the most (the BioWare fans) aren't necessarily going to stick around for the game play once they've seen through their story of choice; and the people who are going to continue paying a sub -- those who love the mmo format, the raids, the crafting and gear, and what have you -- aren't so bothered about all that expensive stuff as long as the core mechanic is there for them. (I'm generalising, obviously.)

It either needed to be a cheaper single-player game, along the lines of a re-vamped and re-imagined KotOR 3, or it needed to spend the money it did on story and voice acting getting the core mmo mechanics nailed to within a hair's breadth of perfection.


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## renegadechicken (Aug 10, 2012)

It's losing subs hand over fist, theres a lack of content update, and i unsubbed about 2 months ago due to completing end game content at  nm level. Won't be going back despite having about 4 mill credits on my toon and a full guild bank.


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## Vintage Paw (Aug 11, 2012)

renegadechicken said:


> It's losing subs hand over fist, theres a lack of content update, and i unsubbed about 2 months ago due to completing end game content at nm level. Won't be going back despite having about 4 mill credits on my toon and a full guild bank.


 
They spent so much on it by having such a high profile full voice cast for your PCs. They wanted to draw in the MMO crowd and the kotor crowd (even where there wasn't overlap) and they thought they had the right combination of things to do that. But it seems they didn't, and it just wasn't a good enough mmo experience for those who would have been prepared to pay an ongoing sub to do so. Those who wanted the kotor single player experience were only ever going to buy the game and pay maximum of 2 or 3 months sub anyway, and frankly, they should have realised that at the start.

Such a shame, because it really did have potential. It'll be interesting, though, to see what happens over the next few months once f2p gets under way in earnest. I'll reinstall it and resurrect my characters when it does (I've utilised the free server transfer in advance), but it's not something I would pay a sub for.


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## renegadechicken (Aug 11, 2012)

Yeah, we formed an 8 man raiding guild made up of people who raided wow at heroic level. We raided only twice a week and had cleared everything on nightmare mode before they launched the new ops. We cleared the new op on the first night of release on story mode, and nightmare mode within 2 runs. Outside of that there were only dailys or level alts to do..........most of us have at least 2-3 fully rak geared 50's and surprise surprise the guild died.

Such a shame as it had huge potential and i for one enjoyed it, but as you say not enough to continuing paying the sub just to pug stuff.


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## bouncer_the_dog (Aug 15, 2012)

The problem is the voice over. Having to talk endless bollocks for crap quests is very annoying. I remember in WOW when they first had 'auto reveal quest dialogue' - you used to have to wait for it to slowly reveal at reading speed. SWTOR just makes me think what was good about SW Galaxies. I felt it didn't have the meatyness of WoW just in the engine and the combat. It could have been so good.

They could rescue it, but it would require some pretty drastic action. Firstly dumping the voice overs, adding a new class or two and a new levelling track which was easier to grind without voice overs. And why not get rid of the Sith and Jedi characters and go back to levelling endless bounty hunters and traders in hope of unlocking a 'force sensitive' who has to go on an epic quest to get training & a lightsaber. Finally add some EVE like Space economy and we should be there. But no fekking pandas.


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## Vintage Paw (Aug 15, 2012)

They might add in some more quests that don't involve speaking to someone to pick it up, like more on boards around and about, but they won't drop it completely, not after the amount of money they've already put into it. That was what they wanted to focus on setting it apart from some of the others: the 'story' elements.

It's like The Secret World: there are loads of side quests you just pick up when you notice something lying at the side of the road, or whatever, but main missions, story missions, and some side missions, involve an animated cut scene with the quest giver (although there is no interaction like with TOR's dialogue wheel).

I like the voice overs and talking to people, but agree that it isn't necessary for all of the really minor side quests.


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## Yata (Oct 1, 2012)

Does anyone still play this? F2p on the 26th or so I've heard, just finished and trial and its ok bit of a glorified SP game though as prob been mentioned a million times already but the PvP can be fun and by PvP I mean Huttball of course. I'm Yata on Freedom Nads or whatever the servers called (Republic) if anyone wants to add me


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## Vintage Paw (Oct 1, 2012)

I stopped my sub a while back, but I'll be reinstalling it when it goes f2p. I enjoyed it, but I just couldn't justify a sub when I wasn't playing very often.


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## Shippou-Sensei (Oct 1, 2012)

i do want to try this out  but  to be hoest i'll just be dabbling.  GW2  is filling the MMO slot nicely


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## Shippou-Sensei (Nov 21, 2012)

it's gone f2p  and i'm downloading.  but it's taking a year and a day to download


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## souljacker (Feb 11, 2013)

I've been playing it recently. Its alright. I'm looking forward to getting a lightsabre though. That can't come quickly enough.

If I'd have paid for it, I think I'd be pretty pissed off to be honest, but free, its ok.


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