Post by nixilis on Feb 7, 2012 12:16:17 GMT -6
I resisted caring about the game for the 6 yrs or so it was in development so that I didn't get so upset when they kept pushing the release back but in the back of my mind I knew I would be making a return to PC gaming once it released. My nephew pointed me to their website back in the summer of last year to sign up for early beta access when it became available and finally in November I got my invite. I anxiously spent 28 hours downloading the client and software, another 11 hours updating with patches fired up the client and logged in. I perused the choices for character classes and races for each of those on both the empire and republic factions pretending to give each equal consideration before I did what I knew I was going to do all along and created my Bounty Hunter. I chose the Zabrak (think Darth Maul) for my race, chose a few options to ensure that he looked totally kickass and then finalized all the options.
After character creation you are taken to a cinematic cutscene that couldn't possibly pump you up more for some lightsaber and blaster pistol action and when it was over the unthinkable happened............. my graphics card crashed. I never got to experience anything more than the cutscene in the beta but it was enough! I started shopping for a new rig that would meet minimum requirements and that I could upgrade to an extent so that I could get in on the game by release. With my new rig in hand just in time for release I finally got to play my Bounty Hunter(BH), Nixilis.
If you're familiar with MMO's then SWTOR is not gonna be out of your realm, it may be a little rough if you're used to the polish of a long running MMO that has had years of patching and bug fixes. The game is not without its hiccups but EA and Bioware are addressing vital issues pretty quickly and working on inclusions for minor fixes into the weekly server maintenance. Overall, I haven't experienced any game breaking issues nor have I heard from anyone (anyone with half a brain that is) else who has.
I'm gonna do my best to give a breakdown by character level of the content that is available now, the pros and cons when applicable and some of the things that have inspired the "WOW!" (not to be confused with WoW) feeling in me a few times.
LVLS1-10- So you've chosen a class, race and created a character and now you're out into the world(s). There are a couple of starting worlds for both factions, the class you choose will determine what world you start out on. You are stuck on that planet until you hit level 10 but it seems to be over before you know it. Not much happens other than grinding out mobs between lvl1-10 otherwise but don't expect to be bored. Your journey from planet to planet is guided by your class quest which is richly detailed with voice acting and cutscenes complete with ME style character convo options. If you are teamed up with a partner during convos you get social points to add to your social level in the game entitling you to special armors and items that are restricted to players who meet the social lvl requirement. I'll get more into Convo options and the system involved with it more later though.
11-20- When you reach lvl 10 and you get to venture off the homeworld for the first time you go to your factions fleet space station unfortunately your path is still pretty narrow at this point, you have the option of participating in your first FlashPoint while on fleet or going straight on to your next intro planet to start the grind for the next 10 lvls. Flashpoints are your traditional group dungeon. So you have a chance to get some bonus XP and possibly some upgrades to your gear before you go back to the grind. If you skip it and go straight back to the grind you may find you didn't save yourself any time by getting ahead of yourself and either have to go back and run it to gear up or lvl up or go and spend some hard earned credits to get some new gear as these levels move a touch slower and the difficulty raises a notch or two before you know it.
LVL 20-30- By this time you have a space ship of your own and you are free to travel the SW galaxy but your level is gonna keep you from exploring too much right away. For the most part though at this point you could land on all your favorite planets from SW lore and have a look see at what is to come but I would keep my sightseeing to a minimum because PvP is always a factor if you choose a RPpvp or PvP server. (RPpvp=Role Playing, Player vs Player; PvP=Player vsPlayer) PVE servers seem to have a lower population but a much nicer core community, less aggressive and more helpful but not without trolls (does such a place exist?) Between lvls 11-20 you were afforded new gear along with some new abilities; however, the challenge increases even more. You'll get new flashpoints as you level up to give your more opportunities for bonus XP and better gear. And the devs did you a solid and broke up these 10 levels between 3 planets so you don't get bored looking at the same stuff for too long on the grind. You'll be able to choose whether you want to go to Nar Shadaa or Balmorra at first and once you've worked both of them out you should be close to if not level 25 that's when the real fun begins. At lvl 25 your journey carries you to legendary Tatooine! Here are the first opportunities for you to run into random PvP fights in the world and you get your first mount....a personal speeder. You're gonna see everything you would hope to see, everything you would expect to see, and some things you wish you hadn't seen. Level 50 players love to roam the deserts of Tatooine either alone or in mobs killing lower level players just to slow their traverse through the levels so you have to be quick and ever vigilant when working on Tat if you are going it solo, having a friend doesn't help much against level 50's either. But along with them you're going to see womp rats, kill sand people, get beat down by a Bantha, do some deals with some Jawa and more. And that's just the beginning.
LVL 30-40- At this point your toon is starting to feel like you had hoped it would, you can see your power increase at each level and the difference it makes and hopefully you have gotten used to quickly moving between missions without getting ganked or you have found a partner/group to run with so that questing moves twice as fast and you're better prepared when you get jumped. It's also around level 35 that the first leg of your class quest reaches an apex and you gain your legacy status and begin collecting legacy XP along with your regular LVL XP . As of now Legacy doesn't do much but give you the ability to choose a last name for your toon, this last name will apply to all other toons you create on that server. They say this will have more added to it in the future but nothing definitive on what all it entails. Between 35-40 you see a number of planets and you may occasionally travel back to your starting worlds in there too. Alderaan is on the list, you'll visit the ruined Taris and battle tons of Rakghouls, and of course Hoth the frozen wasteland. Hoths only redeeming quality's were Wampas (scary as you would imagine in a fight), Tauntans (can't ride them or make a sleeping bag though ) and the spaceship graveyard.
LVL40-50- The PvP really heats up between these levels, the raid parties with skill run these planets and they still do it in large numbers. I saw a group of 6 sith shut down the spaceport on the Republic side for 4 hours one day. No pubs could get out to go quest without being roasted the second they stepped out, they eventually went to other planets and the fleet and recruited a force large enough to send them packing but you can imagine there were some upset pubs that day. The fun isn't all PvP though, your class quests keep getting more and more in depth putting you more in touch with your character until the final battle. At increments along the way you were afforded more and more FP's to run to collect more XP and gear also and each FP takes about an hour to run if it you don't get wiped in there a few times.
Now to touch on all the in between details I left out that make the game special:
Lightside/Darkside Levels-Each of your toons has a bar that tells you how many lightside points and Darkside points you have. During Convos you will be given choices that will align you to either the Darkside or the Lightside and you will be given appropriate points depending on your choice. You can choose to balance your lightside or Darkside or you can focus on the choices for one or the other. Darkside options make your toon begin to wither and turn white with each level you gain of the darkside but you can choose to hide the effects of your sith corruption if you wish. Lightside characters are said to have an aura glow around them at the higher levels but I haven't seen it and I haven't heard that from an official source. Both sides will have unique armor and equipment options at vendors and on the auction house that will have a DS/LS restriction.
Companions- I think this was a brilliant idea on the part of Bioware, knowing that they would need to attract new MMO players out of SW fans and RPG players they created a companion system. You are given your first companion about midway through your starting world and from there you will eventually gain 5 more, they level as you do and you can change their gear and even have the ability to make spell choices for them. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses and likes and dislikes and will develop affection for you or come to loathe you depending on your convo choices while questing. If one of your companions does come to hate you then you can simply give them some gifts to raise their affection level for you.
Crafting- This ties heavily into the companion system which is a good thing because it frees you up to quest while your companions do your crafting and farming for you. You still have opportunities to farm materials yourself in the environment to supplement your stock that your companions have gathered for you. It works like this: You choose a craft skill from Armormech, Armstech, Cybertech, Artifice, Synthweaving, or Biotech. For each of those craft skills the materials to craft the items will be gathered from (usually)2 different gathering skills associated with each one. So you choose a craft skill and 2 gathering skills, you send your companions out on missions to collect materials during which time they won't be available for your use. (you can set them to gather while you are offline but only one mission at a time, though you can set them to craft up to five items) Each time one of your companions comes back successful from a gathering mission you will receive a random stack of materials based on the mission level. Each time an item is successfully crafted you will get points added to your craft level. Companions have certain craft and gathering bonus' that will affect their ability to perform those types of missions. For instance, My Jawa has an Armormech +10 critical bonus which means he has +10 critical chance to craft an item better than the item I instructed him to craft. As you gain in level for your crafting you can buy new schematics from your trainer to craft new items at higher levels. To make things even more interesting you have the option to Reverse Engineer anything you build which will destroy it giving you back some of the materials and giving you a chance to learn a better version of the schematic with new bonus attributes added to it. And in some cases your companion may create an item with a slot designed to install an augment into it allowing the user to customize the armor further with a bonus attribute of their choice. Custom items have 3(armor) or 4(weapons) slots that will allow you to place the appropriate item modifier in and completely customize the stats of your gear allowing your gear to be effective for longer as you rise through the levels.
Endgame PvP- When you reach LVL 50 the game isn't over and you won't need to keep building new characters until an expansion releases to keep the game interesting if you chose a PvP server. At lvl 50 you travel to Ilum which is a world designed for PvP battles and from there you have the opportunity to earn your upper tiers of gear that will allow you to become a force to be reckoned with. On Ilum nobody travels alone, and if you do you are sure to die at the hands of your enemies again and again. In a group you gain all the buffs of your group members and when coupled together anyone character gets stronger than they would be alone, if you are outnumbered in this instance the result is always the same. Ilum works like a giant game of BF3 there are points on the map that are represented as battle points and you must move to these areas clear them of the enemy and then complete a quick objective to gain control of it. Mostly it doesn't play out like that though. You get a huge mob from both factions who just meet up in the center and fight until one mob gets wiped. Rinse and repeat. I imagine that once more people hit lvl 50 you will see multiple mobs having multiple battles across the map. You're given daily objectives that stipulate you kill 30/30 of the enemy faction, do this and you will be granted a roll case that when opened will have a random item from the upper tier of gear or tokens you can spend for those gear items. The weekly version of this quest gives you a week to kill 150 of them. Optionally if things are slow on the planet you can collect crates with armaments at the center battle location that will count just like a kill. They randomly spawn and it can take some time to find 30 of them even if there are just a few of you there farming them.
Commendations-On each planet you can collect commendations in place of many of your quests rewards which would allow you to choose a possibly better reward from the commendation vendor for that planet. Some vendors have trash items so be sure to check with them before you decide to pass on the quest rewards. There are opportunities to get commendations randomly in the world but much harder to get them to drop when you're alone, playing in a group makes all XP and rewards better ('cept for mission rewards those are the same depending on your class).
Space Missions-There are a number of missions you can do solo on your ship through minigame spacebattle missions. Your ship can be ugraded with better gear just like you and your companions and you will gain more space missions as you rise through the levels. Lots of fun!!! You get XP, credits and fleet commendations for mission rewards which you can use to buy new gear for your ship or your toon.
I'm sure I am forgetting some things but that is just further testament to how much SWTOR brings to the table, and I have no doubt that Bioware will be adding to it as time goes on.
After character creation you are taken to a cinematic cutscene that couldn't possibly pump you up more for some lightsaber and blaster pistol action and when it was over the unthinkable happened............. my graphics card crashed. I never got to experience anything more than the cutscene in the beta but it was enough! I started shopping for a new rig that would meet minimum requirements and that I could upgrade to an extent so that I could get in on the game by release. With my new rig in hand just in time for release I finally got to play my Bounty Hunter(BH), Nixilis.
If you're familiar with MMO's then SWTOR is not gonna be out of your realm, it may be a little rough if you're used to the polish of a long running MMO that has had years of patching and bug fixes. The game is not without its hiccups but EA and Bioware are addressing vital issues pretty quickly and working on inclusions for minor fixes into the weekly server maintenance. Overall, I haven't experienced any game breaking issues nor have I heard from anyone (anyone with half a brain that is) else who has.
I'm gonna do my best to give a breakdown by character level of the content that is available now, the pros and cons when applicable and some of the things that have inspired the "WOW!" (not to be confused with WoW) feeling in me a few times.
LVLS1-10- So you've chosen a class, race and created a character and now you're out into the world(s). There are a couple of starting worlds for both factions, the class you choose will determine what world you start out on. You are stuck on that planet until you hit level 10 but it seems to be over before you know it. Not much happens other than grinding out mobs between lvl1-10 otherwise but don't expect to be bored. Your journey from planet to planet is guided by your class quest which is richly detailed with voice acting and cutscenes complete with ME style character convo options. If you are teamed up with a partner during convos you get social points to add to your social level in the game entitling you to special armors and items that are restricted to players who meet the social lvl requirement. I'll get more into Convo options and the system involved with it more later though.
11-20- When you reach lvl 10 and you get to venture off the homeworld for the first time you go to your factions fleet space station unfortunately your path is still pretty narrow at this point, you have the option of participating in your first FlashPoint while on fleet or going straight on to your next intro planet to start the grind for the next 10 lvls. Flashpoints are your traditional group dungeon. So you have a chance to get some bonus XP and possibly some upgrades to your gear before you go back to the grind. If you skip it and go straight back to the grind you may find you didn't save yourself any time by getting ahead of yourself and either have to go back and run it to gear up or lvl up or go and spend some hard earned credits to get some new gear as these levels move a touch slower and the difficulty raises a notch or two before you know it.
LVL 20-30- By this time you have a space ship of your own and you are free to travel the SW galaxy but your level is gonna keep you from exploring too much right away. For the most part though at this point you could land on all your favorite planets from SW lore and have a look see at what is to come but I would keep my sightseeing to a minimum because PvP is always a factor if you choose a RPpvp or PvP server. (RPpvp=Role Playing, Player vs Player; PvP=Player vsPlayer) PVE servers seem to have a lower population but a much nicer core community, less aggressive and more helpful but not without trolls (does such a place exist?) Between lvls 11-20 you were afforded new gear along with some new abilities; however, the challenge increases even more. You'll get new flashpoints as you level up to give your more opportunities for bonus XP and better gear. And the devs did you a solid and broke up these 10 levels between 3 planets so you don't get bored looking at the same stuff for too long on the grind. You'll be able to choose whether you want to go to Nar Shadaa or Balmorra at first and once you've worked both of them out you should be close to if not level 25 that's when the real fun begins. At lvl 25 your journey carries you to legendary Tatooine! Here are the first opportunities for you to run into random PvP fights in the world and you get your first mount....a personal speeder. You're gonna see everything you would hope to see, everything you would expect to see, and some things you wish you hadn't seen. Level 50 players love to roam the deserts of Tatooine either alone or in mobs killing lower level players just to slow their traverse through the levels so you have to be quick and ever vigilant when working on Tat if you are going it solo, having a friend doesn't help much against level 50's either. But along with them you're going to see womp rats, kill sand people, get beat down by a Bantha, do some deals with some Jawa and more. And that's just the beginning.
LVL 30-40- At this point your toon is starting to feel like you had hoped it would, you can see your power increase at each level and the difference it makes and hopefully you have gotten used to quickly moving between missions without getting ganked or you have found a partner/group to run with so that questing moves twice as fast and you're better prepared when you get jumped. It's also around level 35 that the first leg of your class quest reaches an apex and you gain your legacy status and begin collecting legacy XP along with your regular LVL XP . As of now Legacy doesn't do much but give you the ability to choose a last name for your toon, this last name will apply to all other toons you create on that server. They say this will have more added to it in the future but nothing definitive on what all it entails. Between 35-40 you see a number of planets and you may occasionally travel back to your starting worlds in there too. Alderaan is on the list, you'll visit the ruined Taris and battle tons of Rakghouls, and of course Hoth the frozen wasteland. Hoths only redeeming quality's were Wampas (scary as you would imagine in a fight), Tauntans (can't ride them or make a sleeping bag though ) and the spaceship graveyard.
LVL40-50- The PvP really heats up between these levels, the raid parties with skill run these planets and they still do it in large numbers. I saw a group of 6 sith shut down the spaceport on the Republic side for 4 hours one day. No pubs could get out to go quest without being roasted the second they stepped out, they eventually went to other planets and the fleet and recruited a force large enough to send them packing but you can imagine there were some upset pubs that day. The fun isn't all PvP though, your class quests keep getting more and more in depth putting you more in touch with your character until the final battle. At increments along the way you were afforded more and more FP's to run to collect more XP and gear also and each FP takes about an hour to run if it you don't get wiped in there a few times.
Now to touch on all the in between details I left out that make the game special:
Lightside/Darkside Levels-Each of your toons has a bar that tells you how many lightside points and Darkside points you have. During Convos you will be given choices that will align you to either the Darkside or the Lightside and you will be given appropriate points depending on your choice. You can choose to balance your lightside or Darkside or you can focus on the choices for one or the other. Darkside options make your toon begin to wither and turn white with each level you gain of the darkside but you can choose to hide the effects of your sith corruption if you wish. Lightside characters are said to have an aura glow around them at the higher levels but I haven't seen it and I haven't heard that from an official source. Both sides will have unique armor and equipment options at vendors and on the auction house that will have a DS/LS restriction.
Companions- I think this was a brilliant idea on the part of Bioware, knowing that they would need to attract new MMO players out of SW fans and RPG players they created a companion system. You are given your first companion about midway through your starting world and from there you will eventually gain 5 more, they level as you do and you can change their gear and even have the ability to make spell choices for them. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses and likes and dislikes and will develop affection for you or come to loathe you depending on your convo choices while questing. If one of your companions does come to hate you then you can simply give them some gifts to raise their affection level for you.
Crafting- This ties heavily into the companion system which is a good thing because it frees you up to quest while your companions do your crafting and farming for you. You still have opportunities to farm materials yourself in the environment to supplement your stock that your companions have gathered for you. It works like this: You choose a craft skill from Armormech, Armstech, Cybertech, Artifice, Synthweaving, or Biotech. For each of those craft skills the materials to craft the items will be gathered from (usually)2 different gathering skills associated with each one. So you choose a craft skill and 2 gathering skills, you send your companions out on missions to collect materials during which time they won't be available for your use. (you can set them to gather while you are offline but only one mission at a time, though you can set them to craft up to five items) Each time one of your companions comes back successful from a gathering mission you will receive a random stack of materials based on the mission level. Each time an item is successfully crafted you will get points added to your craft level. Companions have certain craft and gathering bonus' that will affect their ability to perform those types of missions. For instance, My Jawa has an Armormech +10 critical bonus which means he has +10 critical chance to craft an item better than the item I instructed him to craft. As you gain in level for your crafting you can buy new schematics from your trainer to craft new items at higher levels. To make things even more interesting you have the option to Reverse Engineer anything you build which will destroy it giving you back some of the materials and giving you a chance to learn a better version of the schematic with new bonus attributes added to it. And in some cases your companion may create an item with a slot designed to install an augment into it allowing the user to customize the armor further with a bonus attribute of their choice. Custom items have 3(armor) or 4(weapons) slots that will allow you to place the appropriate item modifier in and completely customize the stats of your gear allowing your gear to be effective for longer as you rise through the levels.
Endgame PvP- When you reach LVL 50 the game isn't over and you won't need to keep building new characters until an expansion releases to keep the game interesting if you chose a PvP server. At lvl 50 you travel to Ilum which is a world designed for PvP battles and from there you have the opportunity to earn your upper tiers of gear that will allow you to become a force to be reckoned with. On Ilum nobody travels alone, and if you do you are sure to die at the hands of your enemies again and again. In a group you gain all the buffs of your group members and when coupled together anyone character gets stronger than they would be alone, if you are outnumbered in this instance the result is always the same. Ilum works like a giant game of BF3 there are points on the map that are represented as battle points and you must move to these areas clear them of the enemy and then complete a quick objective to gain control of it. Mostly it doesn't play out like that though. You get a huge mob from both factions who just meet up in the center and fight until one mob gets wiped. Rinse and repeat. I imagine that once more people hit lvl 50 you will see multiple mobs having multiple battles across the map. You're given daily objectives that stipulate you kill 30/30 of the enemy faction, do this and you will be granted a roll case that when opened will have a random item from the upper tier of gear or tokens you can spend for those gear items. The weekly version of this quest gives you a week to kill 150 of them. Optionally if things are slow on the planet you can collect crates with armaments at the center battle location that will count just like a kill. They randomly spawn and it can take some time to find 30 of them even if there are just a few of you there farming them.
Commendations-On each planet you can collect commendations in place of many of your quests rewards which would allow you to choose a possibly better reward from the commendation vendor for that planet. Some vendors have trash items so be sure to check with them before you decide to pass on the quest rewards. There are opportunities to get commendations randomly in the world but much harder to get them to drop when you're alone, playing in a group makes all XP and rewards better ('cept for mission rewards those are the same depending on your class).
Space Missions-There are a number of missions you can do solo on your ship through minigame spacebattle missions. Your ship can be ugraded with better gear just like you and your companions and you will gain more space missions as you rise through the levels. Lots of fun!!! You get XP, credits and fleet commendations for mission rewards which you can use to buy new gear for your ship or your toon.
I'm sure I am forgetting some things but that is just further testament to how much SWTOR brings to the table, and I have no doubt that Bioware will be adding to it as time goes on.