Star Wars: The Old Republic

[Red Charlie]

42 Days to go! WOOP Early access baby. At least I'm hoping I'm in group 1.

[Red Charlie]

Mass Beta invites have been sent out to anyone who applied for beta before the 11th November this year.

[empath]

Stress test-time; I decided not to bother, I'm already stuck into two MMOs (beta testing one) and resurrecting my interest in a third, AND I still have DXHR to finish; ain't got time to see how laggy I can make Bioware/EA's servers for just a brief time.

[Red Charlie]

I just want to really stress the servers out. I'm terribly excited for SW:TOR and I'm a bit worried about taking part in the beta test in case it's a massive let down!

[Gollom]

NDA and all that, but I'm actually very excited about the game now. Like, it wasn't even on my radar at all before the test and now I'm seriously considering selling an organ to buy it.

Not one of my organs, obviously.

[Red Charlie]

Well that's good to hear. I think I will give the stress test a go then whenever it lands.

[Dibria]

I was excited when the beta email arrived but slightly disappointed it was only a weekend stress test, but early access is early access I guess - I gather that there will be multiple stress test weekends from the email, anyone received notice of when they will be on yet? I've had notice that I will be but not a date or code.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I'm sad that I won't be excited for Beta access. I've just got Skyrim so I want to play that to death before SWTOR because if it's going to be to me like WoW was, it will be the only computer game I'll be playing (for the engaging casual character progression bit).

If at end game if it's like WoW where all there is are scheduled encounters (PvP/Arena/Raiding/Guild Instances) and the extra outside progression is actually work, then I'll have time for not playing the game I'm subbing for. I hope because it's Bioware, there'll be something interesting to constantly do. Though, in WoW I was an altaholic.I'll be leaving that game with 11 80->85 characters, 4 which are 85.

To who are staying loyal to WoW; Own Starship>>>Mount Collection.
and Sexing up NPC>>>>Stalking a random real woman.

[I cannot justify spending a week downloading a client for a beta of a game I'll be playing in a few weeks anyway and will probably have to download a the release client anyway]

[Dibria]

Oh I bought Skyrim, I just accept that I will be playing it a long time, I've put 16 hours into it so far and every NPC I talk to is still giving me new quests, it's getting to the point that I'm afraid to talk to people in case my journal fills anymore. I just accept that I will be playing that game for a long time, I'm not putting off other things I want to play until I'm done with Skyrim or I will never play a game again - it is actually impossible to complete all the quests, the game just generates new ones.

[Gollom]

[I cannot justify spending a week downloading a client for a beta of a game I'll be playing in a few weeks anyway and will probably have to download a the release client anyway]

A...a week? Wow, it'd be faster for you to fly to Edmonton, find Bioware's office and politely knock on the door until they burn a couple DVDs for you.

I didn't get far enough for end game stuff(no where near, in fact, and I played at least eight hours a day(I have no life) Friday-Sunday), so I don't know about that. But there seemed to be plenty of content for all levels that didn't require obsessive amounts of planning. Some of it seemed like you could probably grab a pick up group and do.

Honestly? Don't play the beta. I'm not going to play it again if they do open it up again this weekend. I don't want to spoil anything further for myself. Wait for (pre)release. It'll be worth it. Also, there isn't going to be an open beta from what I understand, so if you weren't accepted for weekend testing, you aren't getting in.

[Elomin Sha]

I have the collector's edition coming my way and hopefully my laptop should be able to run the game with out issue.

[Geoff_B]

I just got sent a beta key from Bioware And I didn't even apply for it

[empath]

*glares*

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I have the collector's edition coming my way and hopefully my laptop should be able to run the game with out issue.

If your machine could run WoW then it will most certanly run SWTOR, though there's a chance everyone will look like Morph.

[Jillers]

Got to Beta it 2 weekends ago, and I believe a big mass beta is going on this weekend where practically everyone who's beta tested it before is being invited (or I got extremely lucky to get 2 beta invites in a row). Let me tell you, if I didn't have to save money for a plane to France, I would pre-order this game. I enjoyed my beta time so much, and am looking forward to another couple of days to test it out.

If you do beta it, I recommend playing a class and/or side you don't intend to play on release.

[Gollom]

Ooo, that's really good advice. I hadn't thought of that. I still probably won't be playing again because I don't want to spoil anything, but that's a really good idea.

[Jillers]

Ooo, that's really good advice. I hadn't thought of that. I still probably won't be playing again because I don't want to spoil anything, but that's a really good idea.

Yeah, I got the idea from another LRR Forum member whose twitter handle I cannot for the life of me remember who was playing the beta darkside because on release he's going light side. I was going to try out the Imperial Agent (what I'm playing on release) but then was like: "You know, I am not going to see the light side of this game for a very long while... he had the right idea" and went Jedi Consular.

[DewKnight]

I played SWG almost from launch until NGE. I have been missing a star wars mmo in my life. I was initially extremely excited about SWTOR, hoping that it could fill the void that SWG left.

After pouring over every piece of information on swtor and playing sporadically in the beta for a few months I am less excited. They had so much potential and I feel it was lost.

I wish they didn't go for the cartoony style graphics. I wish that the market was better. I wish that some of the stories were better, and it wasn't such a theme park experience.

Nevertheless, I'll be playing it. I enjoy this period of time in star wars, and it will definitely take up the free time that wow and eve used to take. Unfortunately I'm not really certain that swtor will last too long.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I actually prefer cartoony graphics. You're able to achieve a 'better looking' style without having to invest a lot of time and money trying to emulate realism. And even then you'll probably hit the uncanny valley.
Look at wow. It was built from the Warcraft 3 graphics engine and still looks decent 15 odd years later. Cartoony aesthetics artificially pro-longs the graphical lifetime of a game.

You can't claim SWTOR will be a theme park experience when you yourself haven't played it yet and you also play(ed) WoW. In less you acknowledge WoW is also a theme park experience.

I'm confident SWTOR will be fine and will be better then WoW if you seek a story driven experience. WoW has many subscribers, a huge percentage hadn't played Warcraft before WoW. I don't think SWTOR is in danger of alienating non-Star Wars fans.

[DewKnight]

They have made the cartoony graphics actually work more than I initially expected. It will probably work for them.

I have played swtor. I've been in beta since August, and played through multiple characters on the sith side. I feel that swtor is more of a themepark than wow is, though they are both theme park. I guess that I'm comparing it too much to swg, which I should be because they are extremely different games.

I don't think that many star wars fans will have too much of an issue with swtor. I do think that many regular mmo players will have issues with it, and go back to wow, or guild wars, or whatever. I fear that they'll make the same mistakes or go down the same paths as with swg.

I will definitely be playing it with friends, and I really do hope that it lasts. It certainly satisfies my need for a star wars mmo, I just still miss swg.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

=( I miss Guild Wars. That MMO is on the brink of death now. You can potentially do all PvE content Solo but it's depressing and the real enjoyment I had with Guild Wars was the massive Faction 16v16 PvP. I also miss the good era(for myself) of WoW where the guild would stay on Vent/Teamspeak talking BS till the early hours of the next morning. Now a days it feels like players see raiding as 'profession' and when the raid is over, they evacuate the game asap or slink away onto alts and be quiet.

SWTOR is still in beta mind you. Though it will be inevitable everyone will want to play light sabre classes. But hopefully if they attract enough non-Star Wars fans a good portion will play a gun user (because they won't care about sticky of lightydoom [or prefer class mechanics over aesphetics]).

Secerately(chrome won't correct me) I'm looking forwards more to GW2 but IRL mates will play SWTOR and GW2 won't have a sub anyway.

[Jillers]

SWTOR is still in beta mind you. Though it will be inevitable everyone will want to play light sabre classes. But hopefully if they attract enough non-Star Wars fans a good portion will play a gun user (because they won't care about sticky of lightydoom [or prefer class mechanics over aesphetics]).

I don't see how you can say that - from everything I've heard, and my own experience, they did an excellent job in each and every class to not make you want/miss a light saber if you're not playing a Jedi (or a Sith I imagine). I'm going Imperial Agent on launch, a non-light saber class, and I know there are plenty of people not interested in light-saber roles.
I would bet that people who are NON Star Wars fans would be more likely to play the light saber classes because that is what is iconic of the series.

[SecretsOfMoon]

I'm enjoying my imperial agent, and to me the jedi/sith classes seem a bit bring. In other news, this game is for all intents and purposes WoW in space with a dash of space nazis.

[S.R. Kilvan]

I was in the main beta group from January and for most of the summer before they dumped and re-invited that batch. I've been playing a few hours here and there during the weekend betas since then.

I personally put a lot more faith into Bioware's writing team than Blizzard's, seeing as I've always been much more engaged by the narrative in Bioware titles than I have Blizzard's. That alone sets TOR light-years ahead of WoW in my opinion, and that's before you start looking at the mechanics of it. At the end of the day, I'm hoping that Bioware can repair some of the damage that WoW has, purposefully or inadvertantly done to the genre, at least in regards to the player's interaction with the world in both combat and non-combat scenarios.

So all that being said: now that the NDA has been lifted, would anybody be interested if I Livestreamed a few hours of TOR? Help me roll up a new character and maybe help answer any questions for those that haven't had a chance to play in the beta yet?

[Red Charlie]

So all that being said: now that the NDA has been lifted, would anybody be interested if I Livestreamed a few hours of TOR? Help me roll up a new character and maybe help answer any questions for those that haven't had a chance to play in the beta yet?

Shotgun I be one of your group's partner for going live