I got into the early access yesterday and I thought I'd start blogging a bit to talk about the game and my impressions of it. After 6+ years in WoW and at a friend's inability to take no for an answer, I pre-ordered the game about a month ago and started last night.

I'm playing an Imperial Agent, with the intention of going Operative at level 10. My class choice was based on my favorite class in WoW, enhancement and restoration shaman, although the melee parts of the Operative sound more like a rogue than a shaman. I played for about an hour and half last night and only got to level 5. Some of that time was spent running to places that I didn't need to go yet and then back, mostly because I didn't know how to read a map yet.

THE GOOD

Combat

Combat feels MMO-ey, but a bit more action oriented than WoW. There is no auto-attack, and starting out you have maybe 1 or 2 more abilities than you would in WoW. For Imperial Agents, there is a cover mechanic which sort of works like a warriors stance in WoW. Certain abilities are only usable in cover, but you are stationary in cover and weak to melee enemies who run up to you and start bashing you with hammers or whatever the fuck they're using. Compared to early combat in WoW, where some classes like rogue, warrior or shaman really only have 1 button to press after the auto attack button, this feels like way more fun and engaging. At level 5, I only have about 6 abilities now, but each one feels useful in combat situations. I do feel a bit overpowered, taking on between 3 and 5 equal level enemies at a time and not dropping below half health. That's probably normal since I'm only level 5, but I'm probably used to high level WoW where taking on that many dudes will get you killed pretty quick.

Voice acting/quest delivery/story quests

The voiced acting is pretty damn good and it gets you way more into the quests than you get when just reading quest text in an MMO. I always skipped quest text in WoW and skipped to the end. Collect 8 cat teeth from over there? Great. Mount up and fly over there. Until Cataclysm, there were stories told through quests in the leveling zones, but they weren't all that great and you could totally miss them if you were more into just leveling to get to 60 or 70 or 80 or 85 or whatever the level cap was at the time. Questing became a means to an end.

So far in SWTOR, the questing is more interesting for two reasons - voiced acting and story quests. At first, I'll admit that I didn't give a fuck about quests. I found myself zoning out during quest givers speeches, only to press the 3 key (I'm playing my character like the biggest asshole in the galaxy, same a Mass Effect) when prompted. When the conversation ended, I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Couple that with the fact that I didn't know how to read the quest notations on the map, things got boring real quick. After doing that about 3 times, I started to get a feel for the conversations, the characters I was talking to, my mission in the zone and I started getting more into it. The story quests help a lot. Much like a single player RPG, I started to want to advance the story and gaining levels became a bonus. In WoW it was the other way around, I wanted to advance levels as fast as possible, any story that happened while I was doing that was bonus.

I haven't really run into the problem that Jeff mentioned on the Bombcast about the quests not really mattering yet. I haven't had to collect 6 cat teeth yet, but it does feel like it's coming. They did have me kill 16 of these kind of dudes and collect 4 of these crates in this area. It didn't bother me too much, but it wasn't exactly innovative or different either.

THE BAD

A couple quick hits on the bad here as I've been writing for too long...

Queue times

I was in the queue for over 30 minutes last night and people in game were complaining about 1 hour long queues. The game isn't even out yet. You would think that EA or Bioware or whoever is running the early access numbers would project a little better than to have 1 hour long queues when they are the ones that are deciding how many people get to play or not. Oh well, I alt-tabbed out and played 30 more minutes of Saint's Row. That game is just a delight.

Too many games out now

I think my biggest problem is that I had to stop playing Saint's Row to play this game at all. Couple that with all the other games from 2011 that I want to finish (L.A. Noire, Dues Ex, Skyrim, etc.) and a couple from last year I want to play more (Mass Effect 2, Bayonetta), I just don't think I have room in my gaming life for another MMO.

That's it for now - we'll see how this goes as I play more.

These are totally stupid but strangely addicting.  I've been meaning to start a blog here, but never have.  I guess this is the push that I need to do this... maybe.  Anyways, here's to some "free" points!