1. #1
    Mechagnome the9tail's Avatar
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    Cool SWTOR Beta Experience 27/11/11 - Trooper and Sith Warrior spoilers within.

    Hi having played the Beta 2 days straight, I thought I'd join everyone else in sharing my opinions. Just to put my own experiences into perspective, I have played WoW since vanilla, experienced a short stint of Rift and haunted SWTOR forums for what seems like a year. Straight up, I am going to be <spoiler> about the first 10 levels of both Sith Warrior and Trooper. So if you care - press back now.

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    Logging in:

    Well I run a Windows 7 machine with a Radeon 5870 and couldn't log in without the biggest trouble. The game would immediately crash after pressing login on the splash screen. If you are like me, I figured out a fix:

    Make a new shortcut, go to properties, compatibility tab, run program in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP3, Run in 640x480, disable themes, disable desktop composition, run as administrator.

    What will happen when you run it, well if you have a big screen/resolution - shit will become near impossible to use. The login splash screen is huge and managing to get your login name/password in and pressing login will be a trial. However the game will start up and when it does you can change all your settings back to your norm and be able to play.

    The settings you put on properties only affects the login splash screen, not the game. So if you log out and try to get back in, the login splash will go stupid again but the game settings will be as you left them.

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    Questing:

    First I'd like to join the chorus and say "Yes questing is better in SWTOR" but if I was asked if it was better without the cinematics - I'd be alot more hesitant. The cinematics add alot of feel to the game, it gets you involved with not only choices you make but you characters are more important to you. The Trooper quest line does this better than the Sith Warrior questline, as the Trooper questline exposes you to a team mentality and friends to assist - in retrospect the Sith Warrior is a solo experience and the people you meet feel they are of little consequence apart from your masters.

    The questing in SWTOR appears to work with one major class quest line and optional other quests which you pick up on the way - so the class quest becomes very important to you as its the main story you are following. It enriches the experience and makes you feel like you are in a movie with plot twists making every moment better. There are still kill quests like WoW but they are minor additional quests you don't have to complete. For example your class quest could be to kill somebody but you would have minor quests to kill X henchmen.

    Finding quest targets is reasonably easy by looking at the map and running to the position, and quest targets which aren't alive glow a light noticeable blue. You have a bag for quest items, which I never used as a trooper but used alot when levelling the Sith Warrior.

    Lastly they are a lot of minor instances in the game, areas specific for specific classes/quests. When playing its easy to understand why they exist, but its a welcome addition to the game and makes you feel special and gives you some distinction over the other classes running about.

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    Travel/Death:

    Getting away from questing, the travel system is similar to WoW - with an ability that works the same a a hearthstone and there are flight points. What is most different and appreciated is the death system. Instead of corpse running, you wait a few seconds (which increase with consequent deaths) and then rez yourself. Upon rezzing, you are go invisible and are able to heal to maximum and rebuff - if you do any other action the invisibility breaks.

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    Trooper:

    Playing a trooper is easy. You run around and shoot everything with ya gun or lob a grenade to knock enemies on their ass. I hope they develop alot more depth later in the game because at the start you are basically a god with a machine gun. The story is top notch and recommend everyone to play it through. The starter armor sets you get however are aweful - at one point you are wearing the equivalent of a white tracksuit. The gun sound effects are filled with nostalgia which always occasionally made me smile.

    The starter world I found confusing at one point as they refer to a refugee camp alot and I kept exploring to find it - until I found out it was just the outskirts of the major town and not a town on its own. I decided to choose predominantly dark side options when levelling which did have an impact on later quests but not as much as I hoped.

    Best moment when levelling was grouping up to kill huge behemoth elites on an island. Its an optional quest, but interacting with a group of other Troopers was awesome - felt like a pack of unstoppable wolves, a feeling I'd want to continue when the game goes live. The only similar experience I get in WoW is when I'm playing a rogue in a BG and teaming up with other rogues to obliterate people from stealth - so if you know how that feels, you get the idea

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    Sith Warrior:

    I leveled a Sith Warrior because I know I wouldn't when the game went live. The class didn't seem attractive to me and the story you get playing a Sith Warrior is nothing I didn't expect - you are a loner who rather kills people than anything else. I tried to mix it up by intentionally choosing light side options and choosing not to kill people, but in the end you always fight - but not necessarily kill.

    But disregarding the predictable plot line, the play style is what you expect in a warrior class with no real innovation except for the force shield. The thing you really live for playing a Sith Warrior (in the beginning) is getting an actual light saber. You run around with a fake one, initially a really fake one and then one that glows red but still fake - and being without it you feel like half a class - you yearn for it and was my main motivation for getting through the class quests as soon as possible.

    Though the class quest for Sith was not as good as Trooper, the side quests I found more than interesting by meeting Sith who had motivations that werent to take over the universe. Very distracting when all you want is ya own light saber and you know in the back of your head that helping them doesn't help with that - but they are fun.

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    TLDR:

    Questing is awesome. Trooper is easy and fun. Sith Warrior was a drag in comparion to the trooper. No corpse walking.
    I am glad I pre-ordered this game, cause after I am done with WoW 4.3 - I may not be coming back. The Beta weekend only enforced my opinion this game will be the death of WoW for me. My only worry is end game, but we'll all have to wait and see.

  2. #2
    Trooper combat gets much more depth once you actually, ya know, get more abilities >.>

    Treat the starter worlds as a giant tutorial.
    Actually, Mr. Lennon, I CAN imagine a world with no hatred, religion, war, or violence.
    I can also imagine attacking such a world, because they would never see it coming.

    http://mhkeehn.tripod.com/trashcan.jpg
    http://politicalhumor.about.com/libr...s/carville.jpe

    For once, Carville was a man ahead of his time.

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