Impressions: Star Wars: The Old Republic Beta

[News Portal]

Like many other avid nerds across the world, we dived head first into the beta test for [app=4600]Star Wars: The Old Republic[/app] over the weekend. James Pinnell now returns to us, swinging a pretend lightsaber and making "whoosh" and "phhhwyeow" noises, to tell us how it all went down.

Read full article by James Pinnell

[AusJoKeR]

Good article, but I disagree that Star Wars games have been mostly unfortunate. You're forgetting KOTOR, Lego Star Wars, Galactic Battlegrounds, plus the best of them all: the incredible Super Star Wars series on the SNES...

[zetetic]

Will say first off, the first KOTOR game is probably the best Star Wars game I've ever played.

Anyways, I played the SWTOR beta yesterday, got a jedi consular to lvl 9.
Quite impressed with it. Bioware nails the story elements really well and makes it very engaging.

I will be getting SWTOR - but I'm going to wait at least 3 months, to wait for the servers to settle and for any patches to settle as well.

On another note, I doubt there will be Australian servers or pacific region servers, though I'm hopeful. I will say that lag wise, it was quite good! I was getting around 200ms.

[Kishimojin]

Really enjoying it atm, love the time and attention they have put into the quests.

My favourite part overall are the Companions. Feels really fleshed out, not just like having a nameless pet alongside, and getting them to go harvest for me is a godsend.

Main disappointment for me is really the graphics. Was hoping for something more EVE-esque.

Even still, have pre-ordered a copy, so hopefully we can still actually play it.

[Tas]

I must say I spent 3 days having a ball. Being able to be a complete an utter ****, while watching the story progress in ways that were down to me was great fun. Never thought I would ever champion anything with EA's touch on it. But tor is defiantly worth a go. Only a few things really pissed me off.

1.Forced grouping
It's arguable as to whether its forced or "encouraged" lol, depends how political you wanna be I guess. For me at level 7 being told to group for a heroic quest line, really peeved me off. Then after 10 deaths trying to kill an elite boss guy I needed, suddenly I am presented with a "pet" or companion if your a purist...

Suddenly with care an forethought I was able to kill elites, even though I had a few deaths, I was suddenly able to run 2+ heroics's.
So the fun was back in it for me.
The fun in being able to solo a heroic 2+ was something many solo players like myself have been after for years since days of Daoc. As no MMO's in last 8 years have ever done pet classes that enabled us to enjoy our game.There was a great deal of discussion in game over whether or not bioware needs to nerf pets in favor of raiders. (you can imagine my stance lol)

Well while the raid types were all quoting chapter n verse over the death of swtor if solo'ers were allowed to fun ANY heroic mob, the vast majority wa sin favor of it because it opened up even more options, an as we know options/diversity is what has been lacking in MMOs for many years.

I doubt bioware will change it at this point, specially since it doesn't hurt anyone.As well as it only improves game play for many people.

Crafting, is something I only took a small part in. You can go broke real fast!! running them, but its a great deal of fun to see what your pets bring back.
I dont know how it's going to go later on, but I believe it will be forced raiding if you want to create anything other than average gear. (cant say for sure)

I made mistake of looking at all the pvp battleground farming gear tonight,m an oh man.... If you don't farm BG's your screwed. Anyone with that gear is going to utterly crush you in world pvp. You will be dead instantly pretty much. It is HUGELY powerful gear. I don't know if this is good or bad, but I dare say for those of us who are world pvp'ers, we are **** out of luck hehe

I really am hard pressed to find anything to actually "hate" in the game. Theres so many bits I love that it's hard to really "trash it"...

[zetetic]

I'd have to disagree on the graphics fronts
I loved it. I reckon they constructed their game engine to run on multiple machine specs and not require too much grunt to run. I noticed the game ran smoothly on my PC (most of the time - when a lot of things appeared on screen, I'd get a little stutter) most of the time.

I still don't get the fascination (or rabidness from some people) with ultra realism in games. I think Bioware has a found a nice "middle ground" for the art style.

Oh and I did like the companion(s) (there will be more later on I'm sure). It certainly adds a nice dimension to the gameplay.

[Tas]

The companion's/pets are really great, I have yet to play my chosen class for retail so dont know what pet's I get but the ones I have had, really fun.
The graphics are great to be honest. I run everything maxed out an even my high end system, only pulls 40-70 fps...

I was shocked to see how low my fps was, but it's more likely down to bad drivers (ATI great hardware **** software).....

[DarkMellie]

Ooooh, this article might be the turning point for me. Was really worried about a 'clone wars' approach to the imagery but you've overwhelmed that with things like having bots to go do basic stuff for you and fully-voiced quests.

I hope they don't over-step the price point.. I would have continued playing DCUO after my first 3 months if it wasn't for their stupid $20 price tag. $14.99 sounds reasonable for SWTOR.

[zetetic]

I don't think SWTOR will go over $15 - they will want to follow WoW's model.

Some screenshots:

My blind jedi consular


Some nice scenery:


On some sort of space station:


Coruscant:

[flabcab]

You can just tell a lot of thought has gone into this game on all levels, the quests don't feel like a grind and I am just now noticing that they give you quests all in the same area and it seems so natural, it's hard to explain.

EDIT: In an effort to explain better, the way you move through areas on the larger planets is fantastic you are pushed through to each new area by the quests and you very rarely miss a quest and have to go back and complete it.

They have obviously put a lot of thought into quest placement etc.

[hellbender]

zetetic, what graphics settings did you have for those screenshots? They look like a game from 4-5 years ago.

[zetetic]

I had my resolution down 1 or 2 options below my native res (I think around 1600x1050? or something like that) and I did have some options turned down.

[SA soldier]

Mmm i dunno. I haven't had the time to be able to play the beta. Work = $ and MMO's = time sink and less cash.

I do love the idea of a seriously polished star wars game and I have been following this one for a while but I recon if I picked it up I'd probably have to end my life as I know it.

I'll stick to battlefield 3 for now but will watch with interest.

[James Pinnell]

zetetic, what graphics settings did you have for those screenshots? They look like a game from 4-5 years ago.

They turned off AA and a few other graphics options for the beta. Not sure why though.

[^3xiler]

The most disappointing thing about this game so far is the graphics. It's recently been proven by games such as BF3 and even DCUO that multiplayer games no longer need be pathetic on the display front. For that reason it already has a cheap feel to it, IMO.

The other thing is, how similar is it to the other old republic games (which have to be some of the best games I've ever played)? This is a very important question for me.