The Old Republic

[Frag]

I really think that storyline comes down to personal preference, and that a storyline itself is strong enough reason to play a class that mechanically you're not in love with. That statement itself is a pretty strong recommendation for the game I think. I've heard people comment they love the storyline that others have hated, and I've felt OP on all 8 base classes at various points.

It's not perfect, there are some crushing issues with the game, but I'm chalking that up to unfinalized drivers, the fact I was on during a stress test, and the optimizations that are still being finished. For what was working, it was ridiculously polished for a game at it's stage of development and is obviously set up to be in every way a WoW-killer. I'm terrible at predicting the future, so I won't wager on how successful it will be on that venue, except that anyone who's betting against TOR is probably going to lose on some level.

[Lissa]

It's not perfect, there are some crushing issues with the game, but I'm chalking that up to unfinalized drivers, the fact I was on during a stress test, and the optimizations that are still being finished. For what was working, it was ridiculously polished for a game at it's stage of development and is obviously set up to be in every way a WoW-killer. I'm terrible at predicting the future, so I won't wager on how successful it will be on that venue, except that anyone who's betting against TOR is probably going to lose on some level.

I agree. There are some big bugs still to be crushed, but they're putting out the launch build this week (should see the servers up either Thursday or Friday) and hopefully that will crush some of the major bugs. Overall, I think BioWare was smart on keeping NDA up so long so as to keep as much information from leaking to competitors as possible as Blizzard of late has been grabbing anything that looks good from other games and incorporating it into WoW to try and stave off WoW's demise. WoW had a good run, but lets remember Terenas' line, "no king rules forever."

[Tuftears]

I'd like to add a comment, we should be careful about storyline spoilers for other people. It's natural to want to share it when a plot throws an "OMG" moment at you, but other people won't appreciate it if they haven't yet experienced that moment.

Even reviewing storylines-- X was meh, Y was awesome-- could be something of a spoiler, in setting people's expectations unfairly low or high. And of course, people's tastes will vary; someone will consider X awesome because so-and-so pulls out a total story changer while another person will think X sucked because it was totally implausible and there was no setup and...

[mistique]

Funny, i was just looking at the STO forums about the weekends testing, specifically the bugs people ran into, i had / saw most of the ones reported.
Seems there is a great deal of division about whether the game is ready to play, purely biased on the last test.
Personal, none of the bugs i encountered would stop me in any way from playing the game.
AS an MMO there are going to be bugs that still get through, I'm sure people remember the servers coming down frequently in WOW after each and, it seemed, every patch / update.
If the game started today, I'd be there.......some people are never satisfied.
Still, if they can't handle it that's their problem, more loot for us.

One thing, if early access is 5 days before launch....what about the Guild deployment? will that be even earlier?
Anyone know?

Mistique the Operative........and to stop confusion this time it will be a "She". /sigh

[Frag]

Even reviewing storylines-- X was meh, Y was awesome-- could be something of a spoiler, in setting people's expectations unfairly low or high.

Absolutely not. There is no spoiler in saying you enjoyed something, or applying a metaphor to it. If someone places a expectation on the storyline based on your opinion, then they know it's because they made a choice to accept your opinion.

If this is a real issue, then their would be another issue would like (e.g.) Crusader asking for a Bounty Hunter review from a beta tester, not just the person who showed enough respect to sit down and spend time responding to the question.

Besides if we censor overall storyline impressions and reviews, we're basically going to have nothing to talk about because the the mechanics and talent trees are WoW circ TBC level, nothing new to see here.

P.S. Crusader, forgot to mention, there's no 'pure' classes in regards to the trees. Any AC that is a Tank or Healer also has a DPS tree and a half.

[Lissa]

P.S. Crusader, forgot to mention, there's no 'pure' classes in regards to the trees. Any AC that is a Tank or Healer also has a DPS tree and a half.

Sorta true, it's actually two trees are assigned to DPS and one is assigned to Tank or Heal. For instance, looking at the Sorcerer:

Corruption is all about healing
Lightning is all about DPS
Madness is all about DPS (but the tree is shared with Assassins which changes a couple talents to be specific to the Advanced Class)

Now, there are some talents in the first two tiers of other trees that you should grab if you do follow a Tank or Healing role.

For instance, again using the Sorcerer;
In Lightning, you'll want to take 5 talents in Tier 1 (Electric Induction - 9% reduction in force costs and Reserves - 100 more Force are pretty much must haves) and Subversion will help with your force regeneration (Lightning Strike puts a buff on you that lasts for 10s that increases Force regeneration by up to 30% - normal force regen is 8 per second). Then you'd probably grab Will of the Sith from Madness for the 6% more Willpower.

Pretty much, once you look at the trees it becomes pretty intuitive which talents will help best under what role of healing vs. DPS and PvE vs. PvP.

[Frag]

Sorta true, it's actually two trees are assigned to DPS and one is assigned to Tank or Heal.

You're right, I was counting the shared AC tree (#3, the one on the right) as half and half, and depending on what AC you're looking at, it could be 80% vs 20% instead.

There isn't much to say about the talents, you look at the ones that affect the skills you use, for the situations you put your character into, pick them, and that's it.

[Tuftears]

Frag, I do know some people get a bit more sensitive about others spoiling their game experience than others. Having gone through a few of the stories now, I have my own opinions so I just shrug when someone rates them differently than I would. I think it's possible some people will be irritated, some won't, most people will just go 'dammit, I want to play this thing already.'

On the other paw, I definitely got unhappy about it when someone (who shall not be named) spammed me with minutiae about what they were doing at the end of their character's class story. Talking about what makes a story awesome or meh could very easily lead to discussion of those story points.

[mistique]

I just want to get back in the game, looking forward to doing some things differently, some not so.
I never noticed, but does anyone know how many character slots are allowed on each server?
I know the list screen seemed long when i had 2 characters on one server, but i didn't think to look.
Going to be a long couple of weeks.

[Lissa]

I just want to get back in the game, looking forward to doing some things differently, some not so.
I never noticed, but does anyone know how many character slots are allowed on each server?
I know the list screen seemed long when i had 2 characters on one server, but i didn't think to look.
Going to be a long couple of weeks.

8 from the looks of it.

[mistique]

k, so one of each class from both sides, cool, i just hope that IF in the future there are more classes released that they up the number of slots.
Blizzard adding 2 new races and not increasing the slots was a major part of my quitting WOW.

[mistique]

A lot of discussion about the early access, haven't seen anything about Guild Deployment yet, perhaps it's one and the same.
From what i understand Guilds will be deployed on servers by BW, where possible taking into account realm preferences ie PVE, PVP, RP.
Early access is UP TO 5 days early, depending on when you activated you early access code, so for me i'm thinking 2-3 days before max, if i'm lucky.
A lot of people that have posted seem to be saying things like: does the CE edition give earlier access than the normal or Why are we not all getting 5 days.
Seems to be a lot on whingeing again, imho, early access is early access, i'll take what i can get.

Gimme gimme STO.

[Tacocide]

Let me know where to join for the guild

[Crusader]

My 'main', if you will, was a Bounty Hunter. First thing about them is their conversations and storyline, imo, is the best part of them and better than everyone else (played all 8 classes through their prologue). Bounty Hunter conversations, decisions, and options are just as perfect as J.K. Simmons as J. J. Jameson in Spiderman. Their gameplay out in the the world (as plain BH or Powertech, didn't go Mercenary) is fairly amazing. They have the best (or only?) dual-triple aoe abilities on short or no cooldowns, and thus they can gather and slaughter groups of enemies faster than anyone else. Against single targets they have tons of CC's for weaker enemies and medium single dps and high defense to take them down.

In an instance, as dps, I was just a master of destruction. As a tank, I felt seriously weak. I don't think we've played together before Crusader, but those who know me know I don't like to waste time during instances and usually keep things moving at a high pace, but the class defunct at it because it's just way too easy to get over heated when trying to hold aggro against aggressive Assassins and Marauders. This leads you to being unable to being unable to tank. I heard similar issues from Mercenary's trying to heal. I didn't make it back into the first instance against after picking up your defensive stance, which probably would make holding aggro easy enough to rotate in your free attack and keep your heat from spiraling out of control.

Nah, I'm trapped in Europe, with an European WoW, so I was never able to join the Lurkers, apart from in the closed beta long, long ago.

Thanks for the info. I like what I hear. A question though, can you jetpack around the map?

[Lissa]

My 'main', if you will, was a Bounty Hunter. First thing about them is their conversations and storyline, imo, is the best part of them and better than everyone else (played all 8 classes through their prologue). Bounty Hunter conversations, decisions, and options are just as perfect as J.K. Simmons as J. J. Jameson in Spiderman. Their gameplay out in the the world (as plain BH or Powertech, didn't go Mercenary) is fairly amazing. They have the best (or only?) dual-triple aoe abilities on short or no cooldowns, and thus they can gather and slaughter groups of enemies faster than anyone else. Against single targets they have tons of CC's for weaker enemies and medium single dps and high defense to take them down.

In an instance, as dps, I was just a master of destruction. As a tank, I felt seriously weak. I don't think we've played together before Crusader, but those who know me know I don't like to waste time during instances and usually keep things moving at a high pace, but the class defunct at it because it's just way too easy to get over heated when trying to hold aggro against aggressive Assassins and Marauders. This leads you to being unable to being unable to tank. I heard similar issues from Mercenary's trying to heal. I didn't make it back into the first instance against after picking up your defensive stance, which probably would make holding aggro easy enough to rotate in your free attack and keep your heat from spiraling out of control.

Nah, I'm trapped in Europe, with an European WoW, so I was never able to join the Lurkers, apart from in the closed beta long, long ago.

Thanks for the info. I like what I hear. A question though, can you jetpack around the map?

You can use a speeder or taxis, but no jet pack for BHs. Only jet pack oriented item is Death From Above.

[mistique]

Hey guys,

I'm looking at getting a Razor Naga before STO starts, does anyone use one or know someone that does that can give me info on if it's good, and any tips they might have found?

Thanks.

[Lissa]

Apparently, this weekend is the final beta test weekend for TOR. Not sure if this will kill the beta test completely once this weekend is over or not.

[LochnarITB]

Apparently, this weekend is the final beta test weekend for TOR.

Cool beans!

It's patching - Cool %^&$#$ beans!

The play button is grayed out -

[Lissa]

Not sure Loch, I know some people have made comments on the beta forums about that. Also they specifically took down the servers this morning for some maintenance.

They also introduced a new bug with this build...while everyone finally got their companions back, now recipes are disappearing... >.<

Although the fun bug is still in (and I /bugged it), you can log onto multiple servers with the same account from different computers... >.> You can only be connected to one server at a time with one computer and one account, but you can be connected to any number of servers for any number of computers with the same account... >.>

[LochnarITB]

Not sure Loch, I know some people have made comments on the beta forums about that.

Yeah there are a lot of people that weekend tested that didn't get invites this weekend. I just posted in customer service asking them to stop patching folks that weren't invited. That's the only real fault I can find in it. Even if it is patching to release (which is my understanding of this test *shrug*), that could happen after the test weekend.