[SWTOR] Lagacy of the Empire

Cool title no?

I have been meaning to post this for a little bit. Sorry to any twitter folks that have to see this image for a second time. I was really anxious to get it out there at first.

Anyway, I have finally made it to Legacy level 50 in SWTOR!

I am pretty proud of this achievement considering I rarely have capped a character in a game, but I have managed to level cap 5 characters in SWTOR altogether. Now I don’t have any really cool bragging rights like saying that I have participated in beating Explosive Conflict in Hard Mode or that I am a stud PvPer, but I at least have this accomplishment that I know few of the people that run in my circle have completed.

What have I learned in my time to Legacy 50?

• I have become terribly efficient at running Ilum and the Black Hole Dailies (I never even do the Belsavis ones anymore.)
• I have noticed that will all the bonuses that I have gotten to the “presence” stat, that leveling has become a lot easier.
• I have just about worn out the space bar on my keyboard from skipping all the dialog from the repeated quest content.
• I have no idea why they gave us 50 Legacy levels when they don’t require hardly anything into the double digits for Legacy perks.
• I am perpetually broke because leveling a character from 1-50 is expensive and I tend to buy the Legacy leveling perks.

Anyway, I have 1 character done on the republic side, and 3 more to go. I really don’t enjoy the pub side that much, so I imagine it will take me some time to get that one done. In the meantime, some friends are starting to play the game again so I am hoping to get back into some of that raid content that I enjoyed so much.

-Pid

 

[SWTOR] Some Things That Bug Me

What would happen if Boba Fett and Wolverine had a love child?

I ended up taking a half day yesterday from work and between last night and today I have managed to reach level 15 with Moruth the Powertech Bounty Hunter. Let me tell you, it has been a lot of fun. Ask my wife, I’m pretty sure she thought I moved out for how much she has seen me the past two days. I assured her this will pass in time, and she assured me that “It had better.”

I have to confess, since I had played the starter world a number of times during the beta weekends, I enabled subtitles on the dialogs and actually read them instead of listening to them in their entirety. It did really speed up the process at the time, but now that I am in completely virgin territory I am stopping to actually listen to them. Very cool!

So what is up with the title? Well I would love to tell you all the things that BioWare has  done right with this game, but I am soaking all that in. At present, even if there were no fixes to the game I would not let these few things I am going to talk about below keep me from having fun. That being said, here are the things that are currently sticking in my craw.

The first can best be summed up with this picture.

Hulk Moruth Smash

The game has some minor bugs that really don’t ruin the game, but if they were to go unfixed, they would be very annoying. Mind you, all the bugs I have encountered thus far are VERY MINOR. Please do not think for a second that this game is unpolished. It is polished like grandma’s silver on Christmas. The bug depicted above happens from time to time when your companion heals you with their neon green healing ray. It just doesn’t come out in the wash apparently. A quick logout/login will reset the textures back to their normal color.

There are a couple others I have noticed. Some of the harvesting nodes don’t work. They show up on the ground and on your map, but you can’t target or use them. The guild window for some reason is very buggy. I find that it randomly doesn’t show everyone that is in the guild. It is easily fixed by pressing CTL+U twice, but it is very weird.

It is nice to see that a number of the bugs that I reported to BioWare during the beta weekends were fixed. Additionally I submitted a couple of the ones mentioned above and got replies about them very quickly saying they were known and were going to be addressed in a future patch. I’m sure the team is more worried about getting everyone in and avoiding a server crash apocalypse than fixing a couple of broken resource nodes.

There are a few more things that are bugging me about the game that aren’t “bugs” per se. One is the gobs of trash loot that you get in the game. We were discussing this in guild chat and some people chided me by saying if we didn’t have trash loot, the good loot wouldn’t look so good. At least you can send your companion out, a la Torchlight pets, to sell the junk to vendors. My opinion is that if all we are going to do is turn around and sell it anyway, why not just give us credits instead. Save me the pain of having to be the equivalent of the scrap metal guy that swipes the old bed frame from your font lawn on trash day.

The last thing I’ll mention is something that will be remedied soon. Due to the fact that they staggered access, there were next to no people at the location of the game’s first flashpoint last night when I got there. Everyone from my guild had gone off to bed and the couple of other people in the zone (seriously there was a population of 3 at the time) didn’t want to do the flashpoint. I decided to trudge on to the second planet and now I am probably a little too high of a level to have the flashpoint be worth anything but a few social points.

I know everyone who isn’t in yet are thinking that I am a jerk for complaining. Sorry about that. I think of it not so much as complaining as commenting negatively. 😛

Even though this is probably TL/DR, there are really only a few minor things about this game that bother me enough to complain about. I think people are really going to enjoy playing SW:ToR. Is there enough to keep people here? Only time can tell.

-Pid

[SW:ToR] When Will Then Be Now…Soon

Okay, extra credit for guessing the movie the title is from.

I just finished playing my third stab at Star Wars: The Old Republic during this Stress Test Beta Weekend. I am pretty excited about the game as well as the fact that the folks over at the Republic Mercy Corps and sister guild Imperial Mercenary Corps seem like such a good group of folks to game with. I have played a little team fortress with some of them as well as chatted with a few of them when they set up the ventrilo server. Good bunch of folks.

I suppose I am babbling, but I don’t have a real coherent thought to post up here. The game is a blast, at least what I was able to play of it during short weekends, and I am thoroughly surprised how much fun I was having in a group as opposed to playing it solo. Don’t get me wrong, the game is fun solo, but when grouped up with another person or more, the folks at BioWare have really created a fun environment to game in.

I am trying to consider which class to play, but I am having some difficulty. I really wanted to play a Bounty Hunter before I ever touched the game. I do enjoy the class, but I am not sure if I am a good tank. I am a much better healer, but I don’t know if I want to do that either. The Sith Inquisitor has a pretty good healing specialization, and I was enjoying playing that a lot. Then again the Imperial Agent seems to have a great story arc. Ugh! What’s a gamer to do?!

In any event, I am trying to stay calm over the next 2-3 weeks before launch. I truly have not been this excited for a game since I went to the midnight release of Final Fantasy 7. I’m pretty sure this game will be much more rewarding though! Rest up people, and I’ll see you in game.

-Pid

Soon…

“I’m in” is all I can say apparently, but it has been a long time since I have had something to write about. Soon the NDA will drop, and I will type … soon.

-Pid

[SW:ToR] Thoughts About Gameplay

The folks at EA:Bioware still won’t give us a release date, but they did manage to display a lot of in-game footage at E3. If you didn’t see any of it (yeah right), here is a link to the developer walkthrough video. Notably the game looks very MMORPG-y, but the actual gameplay kind of bothered me for the questing aspect of the game. I don’t know if it is something I overlooked during the flashpoint demo at PAX or whether it is my overall lack of interest in MMORPG’s at the moment, but the way that combat was working in the walkthrough video and especially the live game feed with Daniel Erickson. It was so static for being Star Wars. The parts where the ranged PC and mobs just stood there pew-pewing at each other with blasters and not moving really irked me. It felt so…wrong.

The devs have some time to work on this for sure, but they really need to get this part right. Story or no, if I get stuck standing and trading blaster bolts with a mob that is 6-inches in front of me too often it will really ruin the gameplay for me. I really haven’t heard anyone else mention this, so it may just be me. Then again, I couldn’t get into RIFT because of the art style and lack of races. Mebbe I’m just weird!

-Pid

[SW:ToR] Koona t’chuta, Solo?

If you haven’t taken the time, read the post over at Darth Hater about the topic of a solo end game for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Then come back here and the rest of this will make more sense.

… … … …

Ok, now that you are back:

So apparently there is a big to do about whether SW:ToR will have a solo end game or not. My guess is that it won’t, because most MMORPG’s don’t, but I really hope they prove me wrong.

If you read a lot of the comments and if you dare to wade into the 2500+ comments of the SW:ToR forum topics, you will probably hear this debate.

Soloer: I want to have an endgame that is fun and gives me something to do that doesn’t involve raids or group PvP. I have soloed the whole way to the level cap, why should it stop now? Why can’t I get really cool gear, titles, and achievements too?

Raider: Soloers should not be allowed to have über characters because clearly MMO’s are all about multiplayer content. It’s even in the name, Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. If you don’t want to play as a group go play Dragon Age or the Witcher.

Soloer: I’m not asking for gear that will allow me to raid, I’m asking for content and gear that will allow me to progress in that solo content. Keep the raid gear for people who raid.

Anyway, as a predominantly solo MMORPG player, I can say that a number of the arguments that the grouper/raider people mustered really fired me up. I hate the fact that because they like group content and raiding and have an outgoing personality that they think everyone who plays these games should want to do the same thing they do. I mean really, the reason people can raid at endgame is because that is what the developers made for them to do. If they created more options perhaps people would enjoy doing something else. As it is now, some people like to do group PvP and not raid, does that make them wrong?

Why can’t there be content at end game that is for the soloer? Not just stuff like crafting (not that I think crafting is unimportant) but real adventuring content. Why can’t there be solo dungeons or exploration zones? Why can’t there be boss battles that are tough to live through; battles that require tactics and something other than pressing 4-3-2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1? Why can’t the solo player work really hard and get some cool gear without grinding factions or daily quests?

The answer is plain and simple, there is no good reason.

If developers implemented solo endgame content it could just be another option players have to enjoy the game they want to play. Not the way the raiders/groupers think they should play. I am sick of reading about people telling me how I am supposed to play a game, what build I am supposed to use, or that I am going the “suboptimal” way to accomplish something, noob. Clearly people have me confused with someone else. I pay my $15 a month to enjoy the game however the hell I damn well feel like. Not that I do, but if I wanted to play the game without ever typing a word in the chat box, then that is my prerogative and you have no basis for telling me that I’m wrong.

As far as gear goes:

Should solo end game content give you gear that will allow you to be able to raid?

No

Should raiding give you gear that will allow you to get through the solo end game content?

No

Why can’t they be different?

There is PvP gear and PvE gear, why can’t there be PvE-S and PvE-G gear? Can’t the soloer have elite “Solo gear?”

Sorry for the rant folks, but at the end of the day I want to log into a game and do things when I want and how I want. I don’t want to have to worry about Bill being late for the raid or Cindy having to “AFK for a smoke.” If I have to stop because my wife got a phone call and my daughter kicked my son, I don’t want to interrupt anyone. I have very little free time and the last thing I want to have to do is fit it to a schedule, and even less to another player’s schedule.

Give me a reason to stick around in your game after I reach the cap and I will keep paying you every month. Do you as a developer really care if I am playing the game one way or another? I’m having fun, not bothering anybody, and putting your kids through college. Throw me a bone here will ya?

-Pid

[SW:TOR] The Escape Pod(casts)

Damn PAX!

I was minding my own business, trying to ignore all things The Old Republic, and then I had the silly idea of going to PAX. Damn it. They woke a sleeping giant and now I can’t get enough SW:TOR info. I spent all weekend listening to podcasts about the game. There are a number of them and they are quite good. I would recommend listening to any of the ones listed below. They are all unique in their own way, but quite entertaining. Here they are in no particular order:

1. TOROcast – They are a bit of an elitest group, but have been podcasting about TOR for almost 2 years, so they probably deserve to be at least a little.
2. Corellian Run Radio – A very entertaining group of women who love their TOR!
3. Anchorhead Weekly Podcast – one guy, one mic, lots of ideas
4. Darth Hater – I met a bunch of these guys at PAX. They are militant about getting you TOR data!
5. Mos Eisley Radio – They seemed to have a fair and balanced approach to the game.
6. TORWars – Zany and a little off the wall, but quite informative
7. TOR-Talk – No shortage of opinions here

I guess most of these can be found on iTunes if that is your preferred podcast source, but I encourage you to go check these out if you are at all interested in the game. They are all very informative, many are quite entertaining.

-Pid

Star Wars Domination

Can you imagine a world where Star Wars Dominates the MMOverse? After reading a post from Dragon at Kill Ten Rats, I signed into the open beta for Clone Wars Adventures from SOE. What if in his infinite wisdom, Lucas designed this whole diabolical plan to create a cartoon based on his franchise, then have a group design a youth targeted MMO to go along with it. This will suck in a huge player base who when they outgrow the kiddy MMO, but still bleed Star Wars, sign up to the more mature Star Wars MMO being The Old Republic. (Let’s face it, Galaxies has an end finite lifespan.) Pure brilliance! No matter who makes these games, Lucas gets paid. No matter what age the player base is, Lucas gets paid. No matter what critics say, Lucas gets paid. Say what you want about the man’s vision after the prequels, but the man knows how to make a dime. After generations have lived, breathed, eaten, and drank Star Wars for most of their lives you may see what the true power of the force is…the force of billions of dollars that is!

-Pid

Scratch the Paint on Slave 1 and I’ll Vaporize You

I sat down to read my latest edition of PCGamer Magazine and they had a feature article on the space combat that is going to be included in SW:TOR. Avoiding posting the actual article I can paraphrase part of it that has me concerned. Essentially the devs have said that they went with an approach to the space combat that is very cinematic that will make you sat wow (not WoW). That’s great, but what happens when you play it a second time, or third? MMO’s tend to be very repetitive and I can see grinding space missions to get that holiday paint job for the ship. How many people played KoTOR more than a couple times or Dragon Age or Call of Duty (single player that is)? The story kept you in it and the cinematic scenes were cool, but once know the story, it’s the game play that keeps you coming back for more. I suppose you can circumvent this a bit by using carrots like gear, achievements, or titles, but in the end it turns into drudgery that way and not an enjoyable experience.

I realize that TOR is not going to revive X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter or that it is not going to have space combat as the focus of it’s game, but I am worried about the title as a whole that they are trying to make the game too iconic. I’m worried that it won’t be that great after the new MMO smell wears off. I mean if we all look like Han Solo or Boba Fett who is going to play the bartender at the Mos Eisley cantina or Bib Fortuna, Jabba’s majordomo? Suddenly being that icon is not so iconic if there are a thousand of them running around in front of you. That is a major drawback in my view of games like WoW and EQ1. Everybody looks like everyone else. Every level capped warrior looks like every other one. Don’t let this be you SW:TOR. Help me BioWare, you’re my only hope.

-Pid

Thousand-Yard Stare

I have been playing a bunch of Single Player Games as of late in lieu of any MMO’s. In EQ2 I am currently in the doldrums of the late 50’s content and boy does it stink. I haven’t been able to bring myself to log into my account in well over two weeks. Last night I found myself just staring at my computer screen not knowing what to do. This isn’t the first time this has happened and it is typically pretty short lived. I usually go and watch movies or a TV series on DVD for a week or so and get out of my funk. The sad thing is that I have even been toying with the idea of plunking down all the money required to get a sub to WoW. Not that I have anything against the game, but I told myself that EQ2 would be the MMO I would ride out until SW:TOR drops.

I am almost worried to go home tonight after work for fear that sometime tomorrow morning my wife will find me blankly staring at my monitor. Anyway, not much else to report here, but I thought I should at least mention why there hasn’t been a post here in a while.

-Pid