The Old Republic Finally Getting PvP Space Battles

Earlier this year, I played up to about level 40 on a Sith Warrior and basically dropped out immediately after getting to Hoth. Weird how closely my experience mirrored Jeff's.

Anyway, the story and character stuff was cool, I just wish the game around it had been at all fun to play. Guild Wars 2 is much more return-friendly just by virtue of its smoothness, with the additional benefit that I don't feel like the game is withholding functionality to get me to spend money. I like supporting developers that do cool things, but paying for any of 90% of their cash shop would've been encouraging poor practices.

@atomicvideohead: You don't need origin to play it. You can go straight through the game launcher on the website. Here

Take it off origin and I'll consider it.

I got into SWTOR again a few months ago and had a great time. The improvements made makes it a better exoerience. So many small changes since launch that make it much more streamlined and fast. For example sprint at lvl 1, using speeders in more places etc.

The Old Republic is a really good game. I don't understand why people complain about paying. If you start now when the game is already free to play, you don't have a sense of what's missing. You can play to level cap without paying anything. On the other hand, what's wrong with paying some money for things in the game that you can use as you wish (without time limit)? It's still better than a $15/mo subscription that makes you feel like you need to play X amount of time per month to get your money's worth. It's a great game and I like the free-to-play setup they have.

That said, Guild Wars 2 is better for its gameplay mechanics. I like the voice acted quests in The Old Republic better though. Character roles seem more important in group quests in The Old Republic also.

hmmm jump back in maybe

Just give me another Rogue Squadron game please.

Do you mean the single group things? Because those were definitely all about simply grinding it out. The only one that my group found particularly difficult was one where they had roaming packs of elite enemies (gold star people) and that was only hard because you had to put out a certain amount of DPS or you would soon get mobbed by the roaming enemies. We never really did any of the multi-group stuff.

PvE was way stronger than PvP. Gear was not everything in PvE but it was (for the most part) in PvP. Which I guess is sorta understandable except a large number of people exploited their way to the top and the rest of us had to depend on random prize boxes to give us the gear we needed. Not fun, just grindy.

Visually it looks a bit worse than SWG: Jump to Lightspeed. Gameplay? I don't know, I only played SWTOR for about an hour at my friends place. Does this make me want to start playing SWTOR? Not really. I think I can speak for most people when I say: "Just make a new Tie Fighter."

@patrickklepek, did'nt notice this was a digital expansion? You have to pay money to get access to this feature. It probably won't be worth it either.

Anyway, if you wanted to try the game, F2P or not it's a heavy grind and I'd say the best time to "jump in" is to wait for a double XP weekend. You can skip a lot of the planets this way and just focus on the story quests, because most of the side quests only serve as a distraction and aren't very good. Skipping planets is a must when you get to badly designed ones like Alderaan and Voss.

Who do I have to make out with to get a stand-alone Star Wars space fighting game?

I'll give it another go, i loved the jump to lightspeed stuff in Galaxies and although this is not quite the same thing, maybe its a step in that direction. I actually really liked the game but it just felt like a single player rpg with social stuff shoehorned in, it didnt have enough mmo stuff to justify the level grind, still, the experiance carries between flight and land missions so might be a way to get away from doing the same old thing.

This game is actually a lot of fun if you want the experience of playing a KOTOR style game in co-op. That's what it felt like to me, going through the stories with two other friends. Apparently the end-game MMO stuff isn't great but if you want a fun time fighting with your friends over dialogue choices and doing jedi/bounty hunter shit, there's plenty of fun to be had here.

Just one big gripe: don't consider this F2P, think of it as a free trial. Past the early few levels you're really going to have to drop at least some money or you're going to have a bad time. And that's a shame, although honestly I think it's worth it.

Kotor 1 and 2 were two of my all time favorite rpg's...

I honestly wasn't a massive star wars fan before those games but they made me one... ToR is basically like all other licences turned MMO, an attempt to make a wow style perpetual money machine. TeSO will be the same, it will be sorta like TES except bad.

The art style of SWTOR is a major bummer. KOTOR had it's own style which was a take on the Star Wars look, but then they made it an MMO and Sith turned from guys in bright silver armour into the Galactic Empire and now they've turned their ships into TIE fighters.

It's really kind of sad a setting as unique within the Star Wars universe as KOTOR is now just being dressed up as a cheap knock-off of the original trilogy.

What bummed me out was the fact that to combine the colors of the armour, you have to pay. Way to go guys.

I'm happy subscriber. It's like 8 KOTOR's in one!

It must still be popular because requests to enter PvP warzones are instantaneous!

I am still subbed to this game. I don't play it for the game part.

I honestly forgot this game existed. And I'm still fascinated by how hard it fell over its own feet out of the gate. I wonder if it's actually in the black yet.

I still subscribe. I like the game a lot.

Just want to say that you should all try this game. I really do enjoy it, and wish it were more popular. It's a great game!

@fox01313: they specifically said that the space pvp is not on rails. You have full control of the ship.

That looks a lot like Rogue Squadron II on the Gamecube... graphically. This looks pretty terrible.

@patman99: Are you sure you remember correctly? The raids had some difficult sections, gear alone wasn´t enough. Not sure how it is now with all the new raids, but the two big the first 4 months of the game were demanding skill wise.

While I had fun for the few months of playing this around launch, the space combat was a rail shooter for the most part. Not sure if this has changed much since then but if not, a pvp rail shooter in Old Republic just sounds a bit silly (beyond my normal dislike of doing much pvp in mmorpgs beyond the odd day every now & then, most time is in pve).

I started playing on a whim about a week ago and I've been sucked right in. Lots of fun as far as I'm concerned, even considering paying the subscription. Hard to think it how it ended up panned.

Kind of a grey area but it's legal.

http://www.swgemu.com/forums/index.php

No JTL support yet though.

I played SWTOR for about 6 months. Ironically, I enjoyed it mostly for the single player RPG aspects like the personal stories, character interactions, leveling/improving your character, etc. I thought the combat felt pretty good too for an MMO. Beyond that, they didn't take a lot of risks and used the same blueprint most every other game in the genre has. Still, it's the closest thing to another KOTOR at the moment.

Just an example for how fucking nickle and dime ToR is, to hide your head slot you have to spend money to unlock the ability to wear a helmet but not have it show up. Fuck those guys.

They've already said this space expansion will be free, though access times will be tiered. (Subs get it first, then preferred, then true f2p).

Furthermore, the dungeons were not challenging beyond "I need better gear." In other words, there were no sort of combat puzzles or strategy that had to be employed to beat a section or boss.

What? You can overgear to overcome strategy sometimes, but there's certainly puzzles and strategy you have to work out for most flashpoints (dungeons) and definitely all the operations (raids).

Nah. It doesn't punish you for not paying, but it's a poorly designed F2P model that shows that BioWare Austin has no clue what they're doing. Most of the content in the game can be unlocked with in-game currency (for relatively cheap prices). The problem is that everything in the game is locked. New players get in there, see all the restrictions and immediately freak out and uninstall because alternative methods of payment are never explained to them.

End result? A really poor new user experience that can be surmounted easily with a little bit of knowledge. Once you unlock everything that you like (which can be done easily), the only real hurdle is the limited weekly dungeon rolls and PVP runs.

Still enjoying Old Republic and they've been great about adding new content. The space battle stuff was cool, though soon repetitive. Wonder how the ship customization will work since its not your character's ship.

While it is free 2 play of course I believe this is a add for the next expansion which will cost money.... :( I'm still subscribed though so I will still be getting it :D

I played SWTOR for a long time with some friends. While we had a blast going to the level cap together, the pvp and end-game stuff just wasn't fun. Furthermore, the dungeons were not challenging beyond "I need better gear." In other words, there were no sort of combat puzzles or strategy that had to be employed to beat a section or boss.

In terms of pvp, we always got our asses kicked because we were on a server that had more in the other faction. We also played around the time when people could exploit their way to top (or near top, I forget) tier gear. So we were essentially always under-powered compared to most of the other people regardless of our team strategy. The difference between a geared max level character and a non-geared max level character was like an equivalent advantage of 10-15 levels. No competition.

Granted, I haven't looked at it in a long while but I doubt anything major has changed. It was really fun while it lasted but it would require a little bit more diversity to make me want to revisit it.

Well, I told myself I wouldn't play any more of this until they added some form of proper space combat, but I was sure that it wouldn't survive long enough to get to that point. I feel betrayed by my own confidence.

Still waiting to be paid to play this before I jump in.

Preferred (which is what you would be since you used to subscribe) can now play 6 characters for free.

"Given that it's free-to-play now, maybe it's not a terrible time to jump in?"

Spoken as someone who has not tried it, both before and after F2P. What a tremendous waste of talent went into this boring game.

@bunkerbuster05: I loved kotor and hated this game

that was trek.

someone should make a swg 2, the open world space combat in that game was pretty damn cool and seems to dwarf whatever this 12v12 thing will be, in terms of scope at least.

Hey guys, The Old Republic is incredible, considering it's free to play. Its the best free MMO out there, and if you liked KotoR, you should give it a try. If you can get over all the restrictions, of course.

Or I could be passive aggressive about MMOs or something.

It wouldn't be shocking to me if the space battle pvp was behind a paywall.

I mean.... I liked Some of what I played when it was new.

and I fucking Love starwars, and Bioware! now that it's free I might actually consider going back to play some, it couldn't hurt right?