A few questions about the old republic.

[Deleted]

Evening all. I've known about TOR for ages but I've sat firmly on the fence on whether to get it or not. I'm in no way a hater by any means but it is fair to call me a sceptic. I've been through more than 1 MMO launch that really grabbed my fancy only to find out it was pretty shite.

TOR looks lovely but I do have a few general questions:

Is the game smooth to play? Gameplay is probably the number 1 thing for me in terms of getting sucked into a game. If it's not smooth then it probably in the long run isn't going to be for me. By smooth its best to talk in WoW terms I guess. The way the camera feels, the smoothness of character animation, collision detection. All that sort of thing.

Hows the lag? I know its beta and early release and so on but My internet is a bit tricky at times and although useable 99% of the time I'm curious about the need for port forwarding etc. Its a real pain in the wotsits on my router although not impossible. Does it run straigh t out the box fairly easily?

I don't have any intentions to raid as such at least not at the moment so how is it on the single player aspect and story aspect? This should be its strong point being Bioware and all.

Is the interface capable? I'm not into custom UIs. I tend to use the default one. If it capable for all roles in the game within a party?

And now on a class question and totaly subjective but feel free to be as biased as you like. Han Solo for me is the best character in Star Wars so I thought I'd follow in the great mans boots and go as a smuggler. They seem cool on youtube but I'm interested in their healing as I hear their specialisation (or one of them) is a semi decent healer. It would be nice to have some gameplay options.

if I don't go down the smuggler route I'll have to be something with a light saber. They're just too cool not to have.

Thanks for any thoughts you guys might have. looking kinda forward to the game if it turns out to be solid. It's a fair amount of money to part with for it to turn out its not to my taste given no free trial (at least as far as I'm aware).

[Moriarty]

1. Have you watched any recent videos of gameplay? Graphics-wise, people have been posting screenshots at max settings if you'd like to take a look at that. Smoothness is really subjective. I'm playing an SI, and it feels fairly similar to playing a caster in WoW. There is no auto-attack, and if you right-click an enemy, it will cast your first ability on the hotbar, which is something that seems to confuse a lot of people on my server at least. "Why does auto-attack activate the GCD?!" But it doesn't, really, because it doesn't exist. Just put your most commonly used skill or your opener on the first hotbar slot and you'll be fine.

2. I'm east coast playing an east coast server, and I get about 30-60 ms latency. I'd say it depends on where you're playing from, but the majority of people I've talked to haven't had any lag issues. Certain high-pop servers already have queues.

3. Yes, very much so. In my opinion, even if you stop playing the game the minute you hit 50, the game is worth the price you pay. However, do not be fooled by all the people claiming that it's a single-player game with chat. SWTOR has considerably more group quests than WoW, and you are rewarded very much so for grouping, so if you plan to go only solo, you'll miss out on a lot of fun stuff.

4. There are a few UI tweaks that I'd like to see (mouseover macros for healing, more customizable hotbars, rescalable UI), but it's very much workable. The main thing I'd like to see is target of target. It feels a bit like I'm playing blind and we've had to make pretty heavy use of markers when we go into elite areas and have to determine a kill order. I'm playing a healer, and I've made a lot of use of the focus macro while soloing with my tanking companion. It does make it easier not to have to switch targets if you're only healing either yourself (no modifier) or your focus target (focus modifier).

5. There's a thread somewhere with a comparison of all the healers on this forum here if you'd like a read. I am loving my SI because it plays very much like a disc/shadow priest mix.

Overall, like I said in #3, if you're a fan of Bioware RPGs, I think it's worth the price of admission just for the leveling process. But honestly, they said that they plan to put out the first update within a month of release and will be very prompt with them. The raids look fairly interesting, and I've really enjoyed the flash points so far. As far as investment-to-return ratio goes, this game is pretty solid.

[Jotab]

Bear in mind that I only played 1 weekend of beta and only reached around lvl 22. However, in my experience:

Gameplay was very smooth. Textures, objects, features all look incredible. Camera angle is great and all flows very nicely. I was quite impressed.

I didn't experience any lag problems using a land line for my laptop. I run through a tricky router as well that I've had to tweak but SWTOR doesn't require port forwarding as far as I know.

It's too early to rate endgame. I've heard PVP at 50 was a blast, and I had a blast PVPing through my levels on my sith warrior. It was amazing. As was my character's story (each class has their own main story, and if I'm not mistaken your choices will lead you in different paths).

UI is also amazing. No addons or junk and, my favorite part, raid frames automatically pop out in a nice box for healers in large groups.

I don't know too much about the non saber wielding classes, but each class seems to have some great utility options. Your advanced class cuts it in half, but it's your choice. Lightsaber or die.

It's all in all an absolutely phenominal game. It's incredibly interactive, with each quest giver having their own dialogue, story, and voice. Also, you can choose social options which change your light-dark side (playing solo or with a group).

P.S. Dec 13th EGA NAOOOO

[Deleted]

Warning: This post contains personal experiences and subjective opinions which may not be shared by all.

Hey, having beta tested this game extensively and receiving my early access today (And then playing for the entirety of the day, that's another story), I'll throw some input out there. Take it as you will.

The game runs absolutely perfect for me in fullscreen on max graphics, my computer is above average, but by no means considered high end these days (2 years old). I did have some FPS issues when putting the game in windowed mode, but this is normal for most games. I've yet to experience a FPS drop, the only "issue" I've had is that inside the capitals, random NPC's that are either chatting about irrelevant things/walking about/browsing wares will take a few seconds to load in as you approach, vendors and other players seem to always load instantly.

Playing on a server that went from medium to heavy loaded with players over the course of an afternoon, I experienced no lag at any times. My MS was swinging between 30-70 at all times. At no point did I have any delays caused by lag.

The story is very engaging and each of the classes has a very different story, even if they're partially mirrored on both sides. There will be times where emotions feel forced or when facial animations are very plain looking when they should be showing emotion, but this is a rare occurrence for me. It has happend 3 times I can remember, out of literally hundreds of conversations.

The interface is fine, nothing more, nothing less. You can customize it with extra bars and I believe you can also scale it to your preference (Don't quote me on that). I would personally like more customization, but it gets the job done just fine and dandy. I have had some issues, however, with certain groupmembers not showing up on the raid-grids during Warzones, making it a tough job to throw those essential heals, but again, this has been a "once-in-a-full-moon" occurrence.

Smugglers are more than semi-decent at healing. They can adapt to any situation and heal just fine, as in any game you will have to manage your resources and heal smart, but I've yet to encounter a situation I could not heal my way through, if not after some practice at least. Other than healing, their ranged tree can dish out some INSANE damage if you are allowed to set up.

The game has its flaws, but the ones I have encountered have been miniscule and in no way gamebreaking. The game offers little "innovative" but rather an extremely polished version of your standard MMORPG, with a great story, great reduction of tediousness (companion crafting is the best thing ever) and just overall fun.