Figured I'd share some of my experience playing the TOR beta today. If you want the short version: Much, much better than I expected.

First off, and maybe this is redundant, but don't expect this game to reinvent the wheel. It's an MMO as we've come to know them post-WoW, meaning it's a lot like WoW. There's classes, hotkeys, mount vendors, reputation vendors, quest givers, auction houses, all the stuff that's pretty a given. Let me just do a bullet point list because I'm lazy.

• Combat

It's pretty good. Enemies react well to getting hit. As a jedi consular I had an ability that would knock guys back, and they'd do that. As a bounty hunter, you're exploding guys all the time and flying around, which is pretty satisfying. Rolling with 2 bounty hunters we were basically juggling guys up into the air with rockets. The abilities are cool and fun to use. Unlike WoW where you mostly fight one or two mobs at once, you'll be soloing groups of three or more mobs fairly often. There are plenty of abilities in the early game so you aren't just going 1,1,2 for hours on end also. It's solid, if a tad unremarkable.

• Classes

Only tried two, the Bounty hunter and the Jedi Consular. Bounty Hunter is pretty awesome. You've got a blaster, rockets, flamethrowers and a shoryuken-like rocket punch. It's a lot of fun, especially against crowds. Jedi Consular I only played for a few levels. They've got lightsabers and force powers, nothing too fancy early on.

• Quests

This is where the game really shines. Every quest, at least so far, is fully voiced and offers dialogue options, and most of them involved some sort of story development as well, meaning you get to decide on the outcome of the quest. Your character has a voice and if you so choose an actual personality and it makes you that much more attached to your character. You're basically playing your own Shepard. Quests and dialogues are very Mass Effect-y. When playing in a group, both players select a dialogue option and roll is made to determine which character speaks up, which is really cool. I'd ice a guy in a cut scene by shooting him, but when I was rolling with a sith sorceror, she'd zap him with lightning. There are unique dialogue options per class too. It's all really cool. There haven't been any dumb 'collect X of Y' quests yet so far. I did one instance which was also heavily story-driven. Basically you can forget you're playing an MMO if you turn off the chat window, which is possible. But grouping is also a lot of fun because everyone gets to do something in cut scenes. It's kind of the best of both worlds, the storytelling of a Bioware game and the social aspects of an MMO.

Now I've not played that much, this was my first beta weekend, but if I feel like adding anything after some more play tomorrow (if the servers are still up), I will. For now, I need sleep. PEACE

Figured I'd share some of my experience playing the TOR beta today. If you want the short version: Much, much better than I expected.

First off, and maybe this is redundant, but don't expect this game to reinvent the wheel. It's an MMO as we've come to know them post-WoW, meaning it's a lot like WoW. There's classes, hotkeys, mount vendors, reputation vendors, quest givers, auction houses, all the stuff that's pretty a given. Let me just do a bullet point list because I'm lazy.

• Combat

It's pretty good. Enemies react well to getting hit. As a jedi consular I had an ability that would knock guys back, and they'd do that. As a bounty hunter, you're exploding guys all the time and flying around, which is pretty satisfying. Rolling with 2 bounty hunters we were basically juggling guys up into the air with rockets. The abilities are cool and fun to use. Unlike WoW where you mostly fight one or two mobs at once, you'll be soloing groups of three or more mobs fairly often. There are plenty of abilities in the early game so you aren't just going 1,1,2 for hours on end also. It's solid, if a tad unremarkable.

• Classes

Only tried two, the Bounty hunter and the Jedi Consular. Bounty Hunter is pretty awesome. You've got a blaster, rockets, flamethrowers and a shoryuken-like rocket punch. It's a lot of fun, especially against crowds. Jedi Consular I only played for a few levels. They've got lightsabers and force powers, nothing too fancy early on.

• Quests

This is where the game really shines. Every quest, at least so far, is fully voiced and offers dialogue options, and most of them involved some sort of story development as well, meaning you get to decide on the outcome of the quest. Your character has a voice and if you so choose an actual personality and it makes you that much more attached to your character. You're basically playing your own Shepard. Quests and dialogues are very Mass Effect-y. When playing in a group, both players select a dialogue option and roll is made to determine which character speaks up, which is really cool. I'd ice a guy in a cut scene by shooting him, but when I was rolling with a sith sorceror, she'd zap him with lightning. There are unique dialogue options per class too. It's all really cool. There haven't been any dumb 'collect X of Y' quests yet so far. I did one instance which was also heavily story-driven. Basically you can forget you're playing an MMO if you turn off the chat window, which is possible. But grouping is also a lot of fun because everyone gets to do something in cut scenes. It's kind of the best of both worlds, the storytelling of a Bioware game and the social aspects of an MMO.

Now I've not played that much, this was my first beta weekend, but if I feel like adding anything after some more play tomorrow (if the servers are still up), I will. For now, I need sleep. PEACE

@Oni: "There haven't been any dumb 'collect X of Y' quests yet so far."

Lies...

edit: unless you meant you haven't ran into any dumb ones, instead of having any of them altogether.

@tekmojo: I'm pretty sure he's just referencing his own experience thus far. You can basically expect every MMO to have those kinds of quests, no matter how much they claim to the contrary.

Yeah, I haven't personally seen any yet. I mean I've had to collect a few things here and there but it's always disguised pretty well and it's never copious amounts. Quests like just 'kill 16 of these guys', I haven't seen any yet. Those are usually optional bonus objectives for other quests you can do for some extra XP.

Well it was fun when I *censored in compliance with the NDA*.

@mazik765 said:

Well it was fun when I *censored in compliance with the NDA*.

I think that's been lifted.

@Oni: Pretty cool write up! I probably won't try this game though. I eventually got tired of playing MMO's... somehow though, I'm kinda interested in seeing how Guild Wars 2 plays out xD.

@JCTango: I was on the same boat, not really interested in MMO's in general except for GW2. But that being said, I was so pleasantly surprised by the SWTOR beta that I will definitely give it a shot when it comes out. If there's a free trial or whatever, I'd recommend at least trying it out, it feels different for the reasons I mentioned above, even if gameplay-wise it's not groundbreaking.

@Oni: The monthly fee is my biggest problem with the game. I agree with most of your points, it's a pretty average MMO but the story makes it pretty enjoyable. I'd definitely play it, but it's in no way worth paying monthly for, especially with GW2 coming early next year.

Personally this game was filled with mostly collection or killing quests? It didn't vary from the norm. Hey, go collect this dudes brain. Oh hey, btw if you want kill 10 of the small enemies. I agree with most of what you said, but the game is littered with MMO quests they are just disguised better than WoWs.

@emergency said:

Personally this game was filled with mostly collection or killing quests? It didn't vary from the norm. Hey, go collect this dudes brain. Oh hey, btw if you want kill 10 of the small enemies. I agree with most of what you said, but the game is littered with MMO quests they are just disguised better than WoWs.

I think it's fairly difficult given the current standard of MMO design to create compelling quests. Your interaction with the world is so limited that quest objectives almost have to fall under: a) kill a guy, b) loot a thing, c) interact with an object, d) explore a place, or e) talk to a guy. I think SWTOR does a great job hiding this fact under all the voice acting. And if it's trying to live up to the KOTOR namesake, I think it does a really admirable job. After playing a solid 30+ hours of the beta, I really want to go back and play more KOTOR. I think the only thing that truly separates KOTOR from SWTOR with regards to quest design is that KOTOR has far more puzzles. I've encountered probably 2 puzzles in my 30+ hours of beta. But then again, this is a game tailored at all age-ranges, and both RPG and MMORPG genre fans. They sort of have to cater to the masses.

That said, I think anyone who wants a KOTOR 3 will be more than satisfied with this game. Even if they're afraid of a monthly fee. Buy the game, play it for a month, and walk away. It has taken all that KOTOR1/2 were, brought it up to the modern BioWare standard, and packaged a shitload of content into a single game. Everything in the game feels unique, and very few assets feel reused. You're never walking back into the same cave layout. And the environments are so varied, expansive, and breathtaking that it very much feels on-par with what you would want from a KOTOR experience. The first time I walked out of the Starport in Taris, my jaw literally dropped. I even got a bit of that 'Mass Effect 2 Omega feeling' a few times. You know that feeling when you walk into the bar and everything feels so alive and well-realized? There are so many cantinas in this game, and like the rest of the game's design, each one is hand-crafted and completely unique.

I don't know. I'm gushing, and very sorry. I just really love what BioWare does, and this game honestly took all my favourite parts of every post-KOTOR BioWare game and mashes them together into one brilliant package; example: the game has a Dragon Age companion system (with gifts, admiration meters). Hell, if you're a fan of Mass Effect 2, it essentially has the Mass Effect 2 Soldier experience built into SWTOR. That is, the Trooper class has the ammunition mechanic, Jennifer Hale voicing the female, and revolves around a story of you leading a specialized task force across the Galaxy--with the goal of building a patchwork team of specialists from every corner of the Galaxy in hopes of defeating a threat that one else is aware of.

I have this weird feeling towards the cinematics for quests. Don't get me wrong they are a nice change of pace from a floating text block giving another quest to collect x amount of junk, but at the same time...I want those floating text blocks.

As I began playing the beta I thought the cinematics and dialogue choices were great, and they still are, but eventually I just got kind of tired of them. Most of them were just giving a background on why you're now going to kill a bunch of thugs instead of a bunch of rogue aliens.

Aside from that though, I think the game is pretty awesome. I'm still trying to decide whether I want to get it at launch or wait a month or two for the game to come into its own.

It's what any KOTOR/ME co op should have been.
 
When it launches I will leave all chat channels, group up with my 3 friends and do the entire game together.
I did some co op in the weekend beta and I am hooked.
 
And on top of that, my class' story (Trooper) turned out to be awesome too, I'm sold.

I think the gameplay is boring and I think the dialogue system is handled badly when played in co-op.

Too bad though, the whole story angle seems kind of neat.

Really love the game. It takes what makes the great mmo's so good and improves on it. And the Star Wars universe i a pretty sweet one to begin with. Definately a buy for me

EDIT: Which means this will be the first MMO I actually play since the early days of WoW

my fave part is where you can send one of your NPC companions to sell off all your vendor trash with the click of a button. The crafting is done by NPC's too which is rad. I don't like all the walking. Poor choice in making people wait til 25 for a speeder.

@Jayzilla said:

my fave part is where you can send one of your NPC companions to sell off all your vendor trash with the click of a button. The crafting is done by NPC's too which is rad. I don't like all the walking. Poor choice in making people wait til 25 for a speeder.

Yeah this. There is an ungodly amount of walking about in this game, which is the one really negative aspect, as it kills the pace dead and there's little reason for it. There's a lot of empty space in these cities, which I guess gives a sense of scale but when there's nothing there... just don't. Or make movement at lower levels faster.

But yeah I really love that every class has their own storyline going on... Probably the only MMO ever where I'll want to play every single class to see their stories. I've only played Bounty Hunter up to 13 and Jedi Consular up to 11 (and Bounty Hunter was by far the most entertaining, to play as and the story), but I'm curious about the others. Also, most male character voices kind of suck, imo. Male Jedi Consular (Nolan North) is sooo boring. Love the female BH voice though.

@Oni said:

@Jayzilla said:

my fave part is where you can send one of your NPC companions to sell off all your vendor trash with the click of a button. The crafting is done by NPC's too which is rad. I don't like all the walking. Poor choice in making people wait til 25 for a speeder.

Yeah this. There is an ungodly amount of walking about in this game, which is the one really negative aspect, as it kills the pace dead and there's little reason for it. There's a lot of empty space in these cities, which I guess gives a sense of scale but when there's nothing there... just don't. Or make movement at lower levels faster.

But yeah I really love that every class has their own storyline going on... Probably the only MMO ever where I'll want to play every single class to see their stories. I've only played Bounty Hunter up to 13 and Jedi Consular up to 11 (and Bounty Hunter was by far the most entertaining, to play as and the story), but I'm curious about the others. Also, most male character voices kind of suck, imo. Male Jedi Consular (Nolan North) is sooo boring. Love the female BH voice though.

I enjoyed what I played of the Imperial Agent story as well.

@emergency:

The difference is that this game the collect 10 of whatever are optional unlike WOW you can stick to the story quests. And i skipped alot of the kill 10 of this quests.

@PHARAOH said:

@emergency:

The difference is that this game the collect 10 of whatever are optional unlike WOW you can stick to the story quests. And i skipped alot of the kill 10 of this quests.

You'll be a bit underleveled if you continue skipping all of the quests. The nice thing is that the voice acting gives it context and motivates me as the player to get it done. Simply having a decent reason WHY I should do something makes it that much easier to suffer through.

@Artemesia:

I was a armor smith i built better armor than i was getting from quests and Bounty hunters was so OP i was destroying everything. IF there are quests in the same area as the main quests like recovering some guys body or a optional bounty i had to collect i had no problem with those quests i had alot of them. And i did alot of heroic quests that give out better gear. If you stick to the story based quests that require you fight your way into a factory and shut it down thats fine. But alot of those quests of kiling 11 of this only comes up when you kill that type of enemy you dont have to do them. As a bounty hunter my quests usually involved fighting my way into a area to kill my bounty or freeze him and take him alive. I usually took the shoot him option.