Quick Look: Star Wars: The Old Republic

@sear: I approve your internet rage 100% Also, the graphics and animations look like complete shit. Pass.

@Cyrisaurus: You're confusing journalism with message boards.

@Paul_Is_Drunk said:

I'm amazed at the number of people that claim to be in the 35-40 level range already. I wonder if BioWare has enough end game content ready and waiting.

they said the story continues to level 50

usually mmos is good the first half, and since the 1-20 experience was so great, i was worried that the story/planets would be boring past that point, but it aint. As you say, im worried for end game content. However im playing this more as and bioware rpg. and i dont have any trouble with that, you get a very good story 1-50 it seems, and it doesnt feel like a grind.

How'd he get some skills on the side of the screen?

@DillonWerner said:

How'd he get some skills on the side of the screen?

In Options, User Interface, check off either the left or right tab options (also the bottom tab if you don't already have it).

@Cyrisaurus said:

During that interview yesterday, I thought Jeff and Ryan were about to team up on the guy and let him know about all the things they don't like about the game. They kinda threw in some light stabs here and there, but no full attack.

Baby steps I guess, one day journalists are going to tell devs to their face "fix this shit it sucks"

And on that day, those journalists are going to look like assholes who don't really understand what it takes to make a video game.

I really want to play this but I have a Mac. I'm stuck playing Clone Wars Adventures and KOTOR as far as any SW experience.

Now we all know Jeff's character's name. Spam him, GO.

The great thing about SWTOR is the group based play - flashpoints and the dialogue options. Excellent stuff when playing with friends or guildies, or even other random adventurers. The benchmark for the genre, WoW, just lets you click accept and skip the boring quest text, but it's important here.

I also like how instances/flashpoints run, it feels a lot more important than WoW ever did for me, and people generally must know how to play their class to avoid the more complicated heroic or flashpoint missions.

All in all, a smooth launch for a decent MMO. I've seen people hit lvl 50 a few days before the game came out, but it remains to be seen what'll happen afterwards.

I hope they make it seem more seamless, real quick. The space combat stuff is the most complete part of the game, and that's shameful, because it's the most primitive one too.

Movement is dodgy, positional sound ain't great, PvP is alright but seems pointless.

@sear: You sir. Have some serious problems. It's just a game. If you don't like it that much then just ignore it.

The space combat looks really underwhelming.

@Cyrisaurus: yep I hate the ass kissing shit I think journalist in general are full of themselves anyway

God damn it.. I really need to stop reading the comments.. My friend always tells me the Giantbomb community can be pretty great, but once I start reading the comments it just instantly diminishes all of that hope.

I can see why you wouldn't like this game if you don't like MMO's(duh). As someone who enjoys MMO's on occasion, loves Star Wars, enjoys all things Bioware, and was begging for a little more plot in these types of games I'm all over this. I've been on vacation this week and hardly done any thing else. Really well done game. Easily the most stable launch I've seen for an MMO. As far as quests they actually make what you do interesting. Voice acting for every thing completely changes how invested you are into every thing you do.

@Hector said:

I really want to play this but I have a Mac. I'm stuck playing Clone Wars Adventures and KOTOR as far as any SW experience.

im playing on this on my macbook air 13" 2011, 1.7ghz intel 3000 hd, avg 30 fps when everything on low

Trough bootcamp

ugly environments

@sear said:

This game looks like fucking shit.

5) /dance. In a Star Wars game. I have no words for how fucking idiotic this shit is.

Because dancing has no place in Star Wars? What?

You should take it easy. Your anger over this is very funny.

Like most EA games, this definitely looks overly safe and focus tested to death. It's a real shame that Bioware isn't allowed to just do their own thing anymore.

And I do agree with Jeff, that space combat looks like they just ticked off a box to say they have it. Waste of time to work on it if that's all it is. This is an MMO, there has to be a way to incorporate that aspect into the mix, though that seems to be a problem with a lot of aspects of the game.

I might end up getting it by virtue of joining friends.. but yea, it just feels like I've been here before. The severely high price tag doesn't help either.

Mhmmmm...generic!

@Hector said:

I really want to play this but I have a Mac. I'm stuck playing Clone Wars Adventures and KOTOR as far as any SW experience.

I'm playing on my macbook pro using bootcamp all on high except shadows and bloom :/

@Scooper said:

@sear said:

This game looks like fucking shit.

5) /dance. In a Star Wars game. I have no words for how fucking idiotic this shit is.

Because dancing has no place in Star Wars? What?

You should take it easy. Your anger over this is very funny.

I'm guessing he'd be utterly disgusted at all the dancing in the Galaxies videos posted a few days ago!

@TehJedicake said:

God damn it.. I really need to stop reading the comments.. My friend always tells me the Giantbomb community can be pretty great, but once I start reading the comments it just instantly diminishes all of that hope.

By "video game community on the internet" standards, this community is pretty great. But it is still a video game community on the internet, so there's that.

Fact: Cool kids don't like MMOs.

I will remain uncool and continue to enjoy the shit out of this game.

Said it before yet I will say it again...this game is awesome. I'm havin a blast. Literally. My Bounty Hunter enjoys missles and things of that nature. :)

@Scooper said:

@sear said:

This game looks like fucking shit.

5) /dance. In a Star Wars game. I have no words for how fucking idiotic this shit is.

Because dancing has no place in Star Wars? What?

You should take it easy. Your anger over this is very funny.

He's confusing Star Wars with the town from Footloose. It's OK though, that's a pretty common problem.

I may play this when it goes free to play this summer

They should add some tumbleweed in the next patch.

@Jackel2072 said:

with all this hype and talk for Old Republic, i bought Star Trek Online last night for 7 bucks.

Hit me up if you want someone to play with in there.

@JerK said:

I can see why you wouldn't like this game if you don't like MMO's(duh). As someone who enjoys MMO's on occasion, loves Star Wars, enjoys all things Bioware, and was begging for a little more plot in these types of games I'm all over this. I've been on vacation this week and hardly done any thing else. Really well done game. Easily the most stable launch I've seen for an MMO. As far as quests they actually make what you do interesting. Voice acting for every thing completely changes how invested you are into every thing you do.

I totally agree, and have found myself in a similar situation. In the past 6 months I took a character in WoW from 1-80, and didn't read virtually any of the quest text, just clicked accept or whatever and moved on. In this game, you couldn't get me to skip any kind of dialogue. That is an incredible leap for MMOs.

I've been really interested in The Secret World for a while now, and I know they are handling quests in a similar fashion, which has me excited for this becoming the norm for MMOs.

Loving this game so much. Never felt as invested in a character I've played in a game like this. I'd easily say I'm as invested in my character as I am in my Commander Shepard.

Bottom line: This game is fucking amazing if you like MMORPGs. If you don't it's probably not going to change your mind.

Finally a MMORPGs that equals WoW in quality.

That Hutt cutscene sold me on the game.

Man, the art style looks like a Disney movie vomited on a Nintendo game.

Oh, man, I totally forgot Rebel Assault existed! I had that on the Sega CD and played a ton of it.

@sear: Talk about no redeeming value, a wall of vitriol. Classy stuff.

I gonna have to eat my words and say I'm positively surprised with this game, It's a fun Bioware RPG and a MMROPG as well, Cool stuff.

I still say they made a singleplayer game and threw in the MMO part after.

@Dberg said:

Man, the art style looks like a Disney movie vomited on a Nintendo game.

I love you.

@avidwriter said:

I still say they made a singleplayer game and threw in the MMO part after.

Each individual story can take hundreds of hours to do. There are eight of those. There is no way to justify spending all of that time and money for one $60 sale per person.

They way they've been talking about this on the Bombcast kind of had me not wanting to bother, but this actually looks kind of cool. It's still an MMO but it looks like one I could put some time into.

They are working on the space combat. This is just a distraction:

http://www.swtor.com/blog/what%E2%80%99s-next-old-republic

Saberhagen? Is Jeff a big fan of Berserker, or Sabrina the Teenage Witch?

Listening to people talk about "hitting 1," or "hitting 1 and sometimes 2 and 3" always bums me out. I remember when I used to play MMOs like that, and it was a dark time. They're so much more enjoyable to play when you get some good keybinds set up.

I have all of my abilities mapped around the WASD keys, with alternate abilities on those keys when I hit Shift. It takes minutes to get used to, and once you are it eliminates that old MMORPG canard of spending the whole game looking at and clicking on your action bar.

I cant believe how bad this game looks, and that makes me really sad since i want to like this so much :/

@Getz said:

@Cyrisaurus said:

During that interview yesterday, I thought Jeff and Ryan were about to team up on the guy and let him know about all the things they don't like about the game. They kinda threw in some light stabs here and there, but no full attack.

Baby steps I guess, one day journalists are going to tell devs to their face "fix this shit it sucks"

And on that day, those journalists are going to look like assholes who don't really understand what it takes to make a video game.

I'm sorry dude, but have you never listened to the Bombcast? These guys straight up talk shit about games all the time, but never have the courage to let devs really know what they think to their face. They don't realize that they have the golden opportunity to let devs know when something in their game is janky or just completely broken and shitty.

If I was a dev, I would much rather be told what was wrong with my game to my face while it was in development and there was time to fix it, instead of being lied to ("hey man this game looks great yeah cant wait for launch") and then hear a podcast where my game gets slammed for all the things they didn't speak up about.

@HaltIamReptar: Hundreds of hours? Come on now.

@Fender: yeah, like dc universe online.

Looks OK but I'll wait for the free to play shift- I hope it doesn't take too long.

Well based on the comments I've read I feel like I'm part of the minority on this site when I say I love this game and think it's great and I plan on maxing out all the classes.

@Cyrisaurus said:

@Getz said:

@Cyrisaurus said:

During that interview yesterday, I thought Jeff and Ryan were about to team up on the guy and let him know about all the things they don't like about the game. They kinda threw in some light stabs here and there, but no full attack.

Baby steps I guess, one day journalists are going to tell devs to their face "fix this shit it sucks"

And on that day, those journalists are going to look like assholes who don't really understand what it takes to make a video game.

I'm sorry dude, but have you never listened to the Bombcast? These guys straight up talk shit about games all the time, but never have the courage to let devs really know what they think to their face. They don't realize that they have the golden opportunity to let devs know when something in their game is janky or just completely broken and shitty.

If I was a dev, I would much rather be told what was wrong with my game to my face while it was in development and there was time to fix it, instead of being lied to ("hey man this game looks great yeah cant wait for launch") and then hear a podcast where my game gets slammed for all the things they didn't speak up about.

You don't get it: they can say whatever they want. It makes no sense for them to then bring that criticism to a developers face after the fact: you think those developers don't hear the criticism elsewhere? It wouldn't be productive for a journalist to attack some guy who's just there to do PR for the game. There is a time and place for harsh critique, and it's not during an otherwise light interview. Any experienced journalist in any field will tell you the same.