I'm curious. First impressions/Potential/future?

[Chrysia]

First impressions on my end are very solid. It was very fun to play.

I didn't notice the clunkyness that most were complaining about, but then I was having too much fun to care.

Combat felt much more involved on my Sith Juggernaut than my melee characters in WoW. I felt like I had more control over my resources.

I didn't do much PVP, but it felt solid. Keep in mind, this is beta, they were still tweaking numbers in the last build I played in. In response to a lot of the people above, most of the "2-shot" specs/rotations have been killed over time throughout testing. I highly doubt we'll see them on live, or if we do, they will quickly be taken care of.

[Creptius]

How is your first impression? Does it look good? Is this an MMO that could turn into an HIT? Or do you think it will become like so many others? Like a "flavour of the month" mmo.

Unimpressed was my first impression. The game doesn't look all that great and puts a real strain on your machine. I see this having an amazing launch but not an amazing future. Pvp was horrid, flashpoints weren't anything special, the questing was good in some parts but there were still a lot of parts that justified you going out into the world to gather 10 bear asses and i didn't really want to see that.

They could have done a lot more with the resources they had, instead they took the wow formula, added starwars and improved the questing. This game will sell because It's star wars, whether that keeps them playing the game is up to bioware continually pushing out content.

- How is the animations? How does it "feel"? How is it to just walk around, mounts, etc?

Animations are good looking and smooth. walking around feels fine but It's very linear and has little to no exploration. Mounts are alright but don't go as fast as they should. When I'm on a speeder bike i want to feel like I'm flying but i just feel like a grandma on a moped.

- What do you feel about the combat system? How is it to fight?

In Pve the controls are tight, wow like with no auto attack and a queued ability system. In Pvp on the other hand has some problems.

- PvP. How is it? Balance? Etc. Can the PvP in this game become (relativitly) competative?

Balance seems to be alright. It gets better as you level up at the beginning It's dominated by JC/SI. I doubt this will ever become a competitive game to play in pvp It's just not designed for it. The combat in pvp (especially during the weekend test) was unresponsive and delayed. Besides that the battlegrounds are dull and get boring quick. It's somewhat similar to Wow battlegrounds right now but with a lot less variety.


Pros +
Superb questing experience for the most part
Nice Sci-fi theme instead of the usual Medieval fantasy
Tight animations and controls in pve combat

Cons -
Suffers a lot of optimization and stability issues
Pvp and end game is lacking

[Loaf Lord]

[B]
Suffers a lot of optimization and stability issues

Had absolutely NO problem with that at all. You also say end game is lacking, so you've completed both the operations and cleared their hard modes? And all the hard mode versions of the 15 flashpoints?

[TheBeardedOne]

Wow has had a 7 year head start to get things right, and the approval of their new panda xpac is hovering around 50%.
Meanwhile SWTOR approval rating is up around 100%, and the game is still in beta!
So...

These numbers are just not right, if you are going to make something up at least try to be realistic

[Glorious Leader]

[B]
Pvp and end game is lacking

You know every so often someone will say something on one of these forums and it just makes me realize how much of an echo chamber the internet is. Doesn't matter if its even remotely true, people will chant some mantra they heard over and over again. Without evidence or first hand experience mind you. The raids only got opened up to a wide testing audience this week and prior to that literally only a handful of people had seen or had access to them. Yet we can make qualitative definite statements that end game is lacking without actually hitting lvl 50. Good times Good times.

"How is your first impression? Does it look good? Is this an MMO that could turn into an HIT? Or do you think it will become like so many others? Like a "flavour of the month" mmo."

It's great, I had a blast beta testing it. I think it has a bright future so long as Bioware remains commited to the product and keeping content out their. People will naturally hate on it because its not X Y or Z that they expected. Ignore them. Play the game for what it is and enjoy the hell out of it. Or Don't. IMHO its fantastic and you guys will love it.

How is the animations? How does it "feel"? How is it to just walk around, mounts, etc?

Awesome. I never felt so good as when I got Death From Above on my BH and just wasted fools from above. The animations are tremendously well done. I don't see the "clunky" that a handful of clowns are talking about (and I would also add are not willing to describe or explain further than "its clunky") but again see for yourself. The game is vast and to be honest I felt I was walking around a bit to much. You get sprint at lvl 14 or so but its still huge.

What do you feel about the combat system? How is it to fight?

Is also good. It doesn't really break any molds for combat but its engrossing enough that you'll enjoy it. No auto attack is neat and from my perspective with my bounty hunter it becomes a pretty good game of resource management as opposed to spam yellow in between white dmg.


PvP. How is it? Balance? Etc. Can the PvP in this game become (relativitly) competative?

The balance between classes is fine with a few exceptions (I'm looking at you sith assasin/sorc). I did limited pvp and I enjoyed what I did. Huttball was great. Had a few wowtards fighting in mid instead of chasing the ball down so it basically ended up being wsg.

[Loaf Lord]

These numbers are just not right, if you are going to make something up at least try to be realistic

Yeah, I'm eagerly awaiting SWTOR, but I'm certain the approval rate isn't 100% :P

[Deleted]

I'm playing Swtor for some time now ... I can't talk about it ...

Most of swtor audience believes 1 of 2 things :
-Swtor is the worse game ever , and thus try to troll everyone that states that it's good while showing off how biased they are.
-Swtor is the most perfect game ever , and thus try to troll everyone that states that it's bad while showing off how biased they are.

Stating that Swtor has a great system if you play with your friends , that you can take part of their storyline and if you'r the kind of person that likes good story-telling you'll be amazed at the questing storys and outcomes of your decisions will just get ppl to reply questing sucks and that no one cares .

Stating that the game doesn't have a good first impression, has some Quality/fps ratio problems and that some ppl will start to go all crazy on space on some quests to skip dialogue will just get ppl to reply that they never had any problem , over 9000fps and it's the best game ever.

no one is unbiased ... but it doesn't help to try to hide imperfections , or trying to make them look bigger.

To reply to the op :
- How is your first impression? Does it look good? Is this an MMO that could turn into an HIT? Or do you think it will become like so many others? Like a "flavour of the month" mmo.
Does it look good ... sometimes it does look exelent , but sometimes it fails to deliver. When you'r in a dialogue the quality is very good , DoF effects are pretty , but while you start it you see the textures streaming and going from low to high quality .
In open spaces , especially Alderaan it looks awsome , but any model a little further away will go "low fps" mode , sometimes you see flying Thrantas ( I think that's what they are called ) @ what it seems 15 fps mode animation.
In the end ... does it look good ? yes ... but sometimes it breaks it with things that don't belong in any kind of AAA mmo.


Can it be a hit ? don't think so , it will have its audience , die hard SW fans , SW fans , ppl that enjoy mmos and like good storytelling , ppl that like bioware games and many more that I can't think off right now. While I do not think it will be a major mmo, if bioware keeps content it wont go the f2p way.

- How is the animations? How does it "feel"? How is it to just walk around, mounts, etc?
The animations are great ( except for the high distance low fps animation that I told before ) , it fells fluid , wow still fells better in comparison. When I play my smuggler it doesn't fell so good , but probably it's because:
1- my companion is tanking , leaving me completly still shooting , when I play mellee classes or don't have a tank I don't stand still so much time
2- Humanoids are harder to make realistic , if I make a stupid cartoon frog jump and I try to make a realistic 3d model jump , the realistic needs to be perfected , and you will accept the errors on the cartoon , but it will be harder for you to accept the realistic model.

When you are having dialogue or talking they are just great !
Walking around is fluid , mounts look a little slow.

- What do you feel about the combat system? How is it to fight?
PvE - it's nice , melee seems fluid . One of the good things on companions is that you can have a healer companion, but you can also have a tank/dps companion and go healer/support.
PvP - Because I'm low lvl and don't have knowledge of all the other classes, I just run arround kill ppl and then some high lvl comes and kills me ... I didn't do much pvp exept for some random world encounters , but honestly I don't have a clue. It seems to me that it isn't as skill based as wow , as it seems a little clunky , but remember I had little pvp experience in the game & my top lvl char is 32 so basically I don't know and can only guess.

- PvP. How is it? Balance? Etc. Can the PvP in this game become (relativitly) competative?
Already talked about it , competitive is a rather loose term ... competitive meaning you can join with your friends and try to be smarter than the other team ? yes
competitive meaning it will have tournaments and have an e-sports scene ? My guess is that it wont.


The weekend is almost here , in the meanwhile watch some streams ( not mine cause I'm a bad player and have a Lowsy upload so you'll watch mostly pixels but you have some nice ones on the sticky thread ) , play it and see if you like it, comparing to other mmos , it improves in some things, it's worse in others . so you need to see if you like the things they improved.

I can certainly see a lot of ppl falling in love with the storytelling of the quests while I can see others just going crazy on the space key to skip it .

[Uncle Julian]

Wow has had a 7 year head start to get things right, and the approval of their new panda xpac is hovering around 50%.
Meanwhile SWTOR approval rating is up around 100%, and the game is still in beta!
So...

Did you know that 70% of people are right 100% of the time? I like to pull statistics out of nowhere as well. Back up claims like that please.

[Lumicide]

Had absolutely NO problem with that at all. You also say end game is lacking, so you've completed both the operations and cleared their hard modes? And all the hard mode versions of the 15 flashpoints?

My screen flickered a ton, no crashes.. but it just flickers and the game goes 'not responding' for ~1/2 a second unless I'm pressing a key at all times. AMD 5850 with 11.10 drivers at time of the test... Yay AMD..

@Creptius- Unless you're abusing the spacebar, the whole dialogue is supposed to make it seem like there's a reason to do the quests... almost all (if not all) quests in games are pretty mundane and uninteresting when out of context, regardless of the format they're presented in.

eg. ME2:

----Kill stuff, get to end of the level and return to 'me'/'this' location.
----'Final' quest: Enter ship, attack big boss guy, collect plans, return to 'me'.

Rage:

----"I need you to go there, and kill them, plain in simple." No really, it's just that plain and simple, okay... obviously get to the 'end' of the level, then return to 'me'

SW:ToR

----(core)retrieve brain off mob, return it to 'me'.
----(core)put item on corpses, return to 'me'
----(class)Retrieve this information and give it to 'me'

Portal (every level, w/o context)

----Get to the end of the test chamber.

Skyrim:

----Go 'here' and get 'this' for 'me', return with 'it'. GIVE IT A PASS THE GAME IS BRILLIANT /sarcasm.

[jearle]

Wow has had a 7 year head start to get things right, and the approval of their new panda xpac is hovering around 50%.
Meanwhile SWTOR approval rating is up around 100%, and the game is still in beta!
So...

They call it Sex Panther, it is made with bits of real panther.
They've done studies ya know, 60% of the time, it works every time!

But really try not to post ludicrous shit like this, it makes the real supporters of TOR lose credibility.

[Daarksoul]

I like to pull statistics out of nowhere as well. Back up claims like that please.

Ok...

Analyst downgrades Blizzard stock in anticipation of SWTOR launch
http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11...-swtor-launc/3

50% of those who were actively subscribed to World of Warcraft during the time of the survey stated they would be purchasing The Old Republic
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/loadNews/22675

Is It Time to Bail on Activision Blizzard?
Vivendi revealed yesterday that it sold $427 million of Activision Blizzard shares.
http://www.fool.com/investing/genera...-blizzard.aspx

Activision Blizzard Stock Falls in Wake of WoW Decline, EA Stands to Benefit
57% of former Wow players said they had done all there is to do and had grown “bored.” 43% of former players said they’d quit out because their mates had left to pursue other MMOs. http://games.on.net/article/14286/Ac...nds_to_Benefit

Star Wars – The Old Republic: Threatening Blizzard’s WoW Stock
Bagga downgraded Activision Blizzard's stock from "buy" to "neutral."
http://www.gamebandits.com/news/pc/s...w-stock-23394/

etc..... it goes on forever.... L2read?

[Tiev]

See, I don't understand what sort of thing you want the quests to be if not for that.

Because honestly you can dumb down anything to that extent and it will sound boring.

Lord of the Rings: Retrieve ring off mob. Deliver to 'zone'.

Super Bowl: Put ball over end line. Return to middle line.

Business: retrieve profit off enterprise, give it to me.


It's the context and "wrapping" that makes everything interesting.


Although I can understand if you are not very much into theme park mmos. If you are a sandbox player, then you shouldn't be testing swtor. It's a theme park mmo.

[jearle]

- How is your first impression? Does it look good? Is this an MMO that could turn into an HIT? Or do you think it will become like so many others? Like a "flavour of the month" mmo.

- How is the animations? How does it "feel"? How is it to just walk around, mounts, etc?

- What do you feel about the combat system? How is it to fight?

- PvP. How is it? Balance? Etc. Can the PvP in this game become (relativitly) competative?

!

1. Game looks solid, it is a really good single player Star Wars RPG with MMO elements. Game has amazing potential to become something great. Tradiitional MMO formula with the best leveling experience of any MMO on the market. VO quests and storylines are great. Game is extremely linear and striaghtforward.
End game content and development will make or break the future of the game.

2. Combat and animations are good, if you aren't lagging. The game is really stressful on PC and GPUs imo. Some classes don't come into their own until the mid 20s and the rotations can seem clunky. Animations are good for a large majority of abilities, and for some they are not. Fluid combat, almost on par with WoW, but the lack of auto attack makes them still slightly different.

3. See my post here http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...d-and-the-ugly
PvP will need a lot of work to be good, they are aware of this though and hopefully we will see changes before launch.


Overall - The game is going to definitely be a fantastic buy at least for the first 3 months. How end game turns out and whether or not BW will deliver on their post launch promises will be the deciding factor in the lasting of the game.

[Loaf Lord]

My screen flickered a ton, no crashes.. but it just flickers and the game goes 'not responding' for ~1/2 a second unless I'm pressing a key at all times. AMD 5850 with 11.10 drivers at time of the test... Yay AMD..

Sounds like an AMD driver issue then, I'm not familiar with AMD. I had no problem like that.

[Glorious Leader]

. Some classes don't come into their own until the mid 20s and the rotations can seem clunky.

Okay so maybe you can elaborate on this point because I hear it all the time from people but I don't quite understand exactly what they mean. My experience as a bounty hunter was extremely smooth. I'm honestly trying to understand why people say its clunky but I just cant quite fathom what they mean.

[blackblade]

- How is your first impression? Does it look good? Is this an MMO that could turn into an HIT? Or do you think it will become like so many others? Like a "flavour of the month" mmo.

- How is the animations? How does it "feel"? How is it to just walk around, mounts, etc?

- What do you feel about the combat system? How is it to fight?

- PvP. How is it? Balance? Etc. Can the PvP in this game become (relativitly) competative?

(Feel free to compare with other MMOs.)

1) first impressions: Very much like classic wow. everything feels fairly big, getting around takes a little bit of time. you get a sort of "run" ability early on that lets you move a bit faster out of combat. at 25(?) i believe you get your speeder, which is esentailly your fast mount.

2)Animations, especially in combat, are sublime. there's character animations for parrying attacks from all directions that actually connect with enemy blows (you block attacks with your lightsaber) there's also animations for deflecting blaster bolts, and other amazing combat-interaction-type animations.

3) Combat is wow-like. without auto attack, which adds an extra layer of depth on regular mobs. do you burn that short CD or risk trying a regular attack when finishing a regular mob at low health.

Can't speak on pvp. didn't run pvp (might give it a swing this weekend!)