Hoping someone who has played far enough can talk about this:

I played through the tutorial worlds for JC and Smuggler over the weekend. Yeah, top wheel gives light points, bottom wheel dark points, but does it really matter? Are there alignment-specific quests and items? Personally, I'm more of a gray morality dude, so I wouldn't just pick the LS/DS choice all the time, I'd pick what feels right.

More to that point, do my choices matter? If I let person X live or stay hidden (or not), do they come back to haunt/help me later, making new quest lines? I know that for JC, doing some of the early quests without antagonizing the locals makes the last boss fight on the tutorial world slightly easier, but that seems marginal. And you have so many choices with that boss after you defeat him.

Seems to mainly come down to what alignment gear you will aquire, so I'm guessing playing neutral is a bad idea. As for stuff coming back to haunt you and dramatically changing questlines, the people I've spoken to who have played the game quite far seem to have noticed little to no changes.

Played a Dark Side Trooper, a Light Side Sith Warrior, and Dark Side Sith Inquisitor up to 50. As far as the quests everyone will end up doing on Empire side (and I imagine it's the same on Republic), your choices do not matter at all. In fact, some of your choices are actually "voided" due to plot elements and due to the fact that the other faction does a planet at a higher level and/or their faction's overall storyline for the planet takes place later on (example: Republic's Corellia story more or less takes place after the Empire's, meaning the Empire "loses" there no matter what).

As far as your class stuff goes...With the Trooper, I could imagine some of the decisions playing a minor part depending on Light/Dark choices made. With the Sith Warrior, I "compared notes" with someone I befriended in the beta who played a Dark one to 50 and since you can't lose companions anymore, your choices make no difference once you get past Act 1 (though what they do end up affecting in Act 1 is actually kind of cool). With the Sith Inquisitor, nothing jumped out as being something that would really change in any meaningful/semi-meaningful way based on Light/Dark choices.

So basically, Light/Dark might matter for class quests depending on your class and it matters for gear with Light/Dark restrictions, but it doesn't matter for all other quests (basically 95%+ of all the quests). Sure, it wasn't launch build obviously, but yeah, I doubt it'll be any different come launch. I'm sure they'll end up saying a bunch of stuff will matter come the first expansion or whatnot, but I've played Mass Effect and Dragon Age and...yeah...I'm not going to get my hopes up haha (yes, yes, different teams, but still, the same "promises").

@TwoArmed: How long did it take you to go from 1-50 and also how long ago was it? I've heard it's faster now.

@MysteriousFawx said:

Seems to mainly come down to what alignment gear you will aquire, so I'm guessing playing neutral is a bad idea. As for stuff coming back to haunt you and dramatically changing questlines, the people I've spoken to who have played the game quite far seem to have noticed little to no changes.

Points are separate Ala ME which means you can be neutral and just max out both alignments if you feel like it.

@TurkFebruary: The Trooper was probably...one or two builds ago (?) and the Sith Warrior and Sith Inquisitor were both one build before it. I stopped playing it a while ago, so I don't really remember which build was when haha and I can't comment on whether it's faster now or not.

Trying to think how to explain "how long" it took to get to 1-50 haha. I played it the way I played Mass Effect and Dragon when it comes to the conversations: I would read the subtitles and depending on who was talking/what was being said would determine whether I would hit Spacebar and proceed to the next line or wait to hear it, then rinse and repeat (on the class quests I usually listened to them all the way through for the heck of it). Whether you're going to sit through all of the conversations or not and or only sit through them partially if you do it like I did will make things faster or slower, especially when the conversations for some quests are longer than the actual quest. I personally never found most of what was being said to be very interesting or compelling.

For people who have played WoW, it definitely wasn't as slow as WoW used to be when going from 1-60. I'd say it was somewhere between how fast it took to go from 1-60 and how fast it took to go from 60-70 before XP gains were increased (faster than 1-60, certainly slower than 60-70). Someone relatively experienced in the genre, even if they listen to all conversations all the way through, who does the group quests (their XP is usually worth the amount of time they can take) and plays a few to several hours a day (I'm not even going to try to attach numbers to this as people's definitions of "a few" and "several" seem to vary wildly haha) would probably have no problem getting a character to level 50 in a month to two month's time.

I found most of the class quest stuff to not be THAT interesting. None of it was anywhere near how they're trying to market stuff with the class progression trailers as far as how "epic" things are/play out. Usually only the last couple class quests in each Act (of the Trooper, Sith Warrior, and Sith Inquisitor) were interesting/compelling. The Companion quests seemed relatively half-baked. For all three of the classes I got to 50, only the first companion each one gets ended up giving me companion quests (raise their affection to get more) where I actually had to travel somewhere. The rest of the companions' quests consisted of a conversation where I made one or two dialogue choices and then that was it (this occurred even on companions' final companion quests, where, I don't know, I would have thought they would send me somewhere for the last one).

In my opinion, none of the companions were anywhere near as interesting as the characters in Mass Effect or Dragon Age. The easiest way I can describe how talking to companions works is how it worked in Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening and Dragon Age 2, where you can only "really" talk to them if their affection is at a certain point and you can get a conversation quest from them. Companions seemed to have anywhere from 4-8 conversation quests and then after that, they don't want to talk to you ever again basically haha (meaning they will forever deliver their canned response along the lines of, "Let's talk later, ok?). I never played KOTOR 1 or 2 (yes, yes, moving on), so those who have can determine my feelings on the companions for themselves based on what they think of Mass Effect and Dragon Age's characters.

I know that was more than what you asked, but eh, I figure maybe I answered some other questions people who read this topic might have haha.

@TwoArmed: Nice to hear about the timing. I thought the Vanilla WoW grind was WAY too long (Never hit level cap till BC, despite having that game day one.) but current WoW is a joke.

Hm. While I don't think the broader question has really been answered yet, it's good anecdotal info so far. Really if I'm going to be evil I'm going to be evil. I don't plan to be a Chaotic Good bounty hunter like my Commander Shepard. I'd rather be a roguish smuggler if I want to take the morally grey path. I don't see how a finely tuned affinity like that can be expected for each class, when all story choices have to be fully voiced. At some point you just hit a wall of development cost versus player payoff.

Further to OP's question: if I'm a Jedi, why would I *want* dark side gear?

It was the Social XP during the flashpoint that confused the hell out of me. Couldn't see a pattern with how much I was earning based on how often I was speaking...

As far as class quests go, there are times where letting certain people live will result in them showing up later, though I can't really think of any/remember any that might happen for Sith inquisitor and Trooper (well actually, I can think of one for the Trooper). For my Sith Warrior, I spared a group of Republic soldiers and they helped me a little later on during the same quest (though it was just helping me kill someone, which I would have done by myself and did as they bugged out and didn't help fight haha). Some classes could lose out on companions before even actually recruiting them, but that's not the case anymore. For quests other than class quests, kill or spare whoever you want, it doesn't matter as you won't see them again or if you do see people again, they'll be people you couldn't choose to kill or spare to begin with. Maybe stuff will actually matter come the first expansion and you'll see people you spared or face repercussions for killing certain people, but otherwise, most stuff seems to be all story-beat related (meaning everyone's required to do/see it).

One BIG problem I have with this concerns the quest line on Alderaan.

Anyways, back to what I was originally talking about. Yes, you might see some people again, but the overall outcome will ultimately be the same no matter what. So yeah, stay neutral if you want since they plan to add neutral gear or pick Light or Dark and go nuts, you won't really miss much of anything either way if Sith Warrior, Sith Inquisitor, and Trooper are any indication.

@Brackynews: Social Points rewarded is based on who wins the dialogue roll and how many people are in the party. It has nothing to do with how often someone speaks. However, unless they changed it, someone who continuously loses dialogue rolls is eventually given either a much greater chance of winning or is guaranteed to win the next dialogue roll that comes up, at which point whatever is keeping track resets. Unless they changed it again (they increased the amounts given at one point)...With a party size of 4, the winner gets 8 Social Points and the losers get 4 Social Points. With a party size of 3, the winner gets 6 and the losers get 3. With a party size of 2, the winner gets 4 and the loser gets 2. Someone who continuously wins does not get penalized with a lower amount of Social Points rewarded, and someone who continuously loses does not get rewarded with additional Social Points (they just get a "free win" at some point).

It's really hard to craft meaningful repercussions in what is ostensibly a static world designed to be played in forever. Bioware doesn't want a party members to leave a player's party as it would leave that player at a permanent disadvantage in the MMORPG space. They have fairly strong reactionary dialogue to your particular decisions, further, you may gain some minor rewards based on how you complete a quest (helping out a mother's son may beget a heart-warming follow-up email from her with some health potions, for example). But you having a clearly 'better' decision would leave many players min-maxing their dialogue choices. I mean, it wouldn't be long before you saw a guide to maximizing questing profit with planned dialogue decisions mapped out.

One area where decisions have a fair bit of meaning is with their companion affection system. As companions grow to like you, they'll open up new quests, loyalty-like missions, develop feels for you, or they'll reveal some interesting secrets about themselves.

Like, I'm not entirely sure how you'd like them to realistically 'react' to decisions. From what I've seen, you may encounter a character later on that you could have killed twenty levels earlier. And they may thank you for it. And quite a few decisions that I made throughout my Trooper storyline seemed like they would lead to massive story changes later on, but I wasn't able to follow through on them (due to limited beta time).