ModernChivalry.org
Miscellaneous => The Sallyport => Topic started by: Ian on 2011-12-14, 00:39:23
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So, those in the first wave of pre-orders are playing now as the servers went live today. Was wondering if anyone here will be playing, then maybe we can pick servers etc. together if anyone wants to go that route. Just thought I would gauge interest! ;D
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I was totally not going to pick up this game, because I need another MMO addiction like I need a hole in the head. But I caved, and pre-ordered this morning. Since it's such a late pre-order, I may not get into the "early activation" until maybe Monday, since it's a phased roll-out.
I'm trying to find out what servers some of my other friends are planning to play on. I know they mentioned these as possibilities:
Corellian Run - PvE
Jung Ma - RP-PvP
I think they wanted to do the RP servers to play with a more mature crowd.
Right now I'm leaning toward playing a Jedi Knight Guardian, but still deciding.
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There's a discussion going on, on the SWTOR forum that has me smiling. They're talking about the pros and cons of playing a light-side or dark-side Jedi.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=2115&page=4 (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=2115&page=4)
I tend to agree with this. If all you do is follow the Code, and take every LS option, you get a stupidly bland, uninteresting, and frankly unrealistic character.
I disagree whole-heartedly. I think it's a common misconception that good, upstanding characters are boring. Straight-laced, good characters can be very rich, compelling, and complex. My favorite example (and also the template for my own character) is Eddard Stark from the Song of Ice and Fire books.
Here we have a man who is so beholden to his own sense of honor that he never wavers from the path of good. No matter what. Not if straying makes his life easier. Not if straying makes the lives of his loved ones easier. Not if straying means saving lives for some greater good. He follows both the letter and the spirit of the law at great personal cost. Imagine the guilt he feels. The frustration. Imagine what his family thinks of him. The resentment they must nurse.
Doing good does not mean you're a grinning boy scout. It means you're doing what is right in every situation at every time regardless of popularity, safety, or outcome.
I think Anders (Justice) said it best in Dragon Age II:
"Who ever said justice was happy? Justice isn't happy. Justice is righteous. Justice is hard."
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That's an interesting discussion. I'm undecided on class, but I don't anticipate being able to play until normal release on Tuesday. I'm currently MMO'less, as I couldn't maintain the level of time required to stay competitive in WoW, nor do I have the patience for the drama of a raiding guild. I have been playing a lot of Skyrim lately, but I'm definitely willing to dip in SWTOR. Keep me posted on where you end up.
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Definitely did not look into getting into this...I kind of got soured on SW games with the KOTOR games. I do so hate the old d&d style of dice rolling to determine things like hits and such. Target reticle could be dead on but you're missing your target nonetheless.
Still, I like the Eddard Stark reference...he would be the epitomical Jedi Knight; fans of the books will know he is a hard man, straight and true. More of an icon than a man...if we lived during the time set forth in the SW universe, I'm pretty certain I'd be a Sith- if only because I tend to lead with the heart than the head and we all know being a Jedi is about mastering your emotions and looking to reason. Never was real good at that.
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BTW, we ended up on Sanctum of the Exalted. It's a RP-PvE server, and doesn't have as much crowding issues right now as some of the others.
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Did you stick with Jedi Knight Guardian? I'm looking at Jedi Consular, not sure which spec yet though, leaning towards Shadow.
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I decided to go Consular Shadow. I watched some videos and read up on various specs. I think the guardian would have been a lot of fun, but I decided I wanted more ranged force attacks and general utility. So I'm going Shadow with a Balance spec. Up to level 15 now (played quite a bit on Friday and Saturday).
One of these evenings I wouldn't mind running the Esseles mission again. We'll need a good team for that. :)
Character name is Torval.
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I decided to go Consular Shadow. I watched some videos and read up on various specs. I think the guardian would have been a lot of fun, but I decided I wanted more ranged force attacks and general utility. So I'm going Shadow with a Balance spec. Up to level 15 now (played quite a bit on Friday and Saturday).
One of these evenings I wouldn't mind running the Esseles mission again. We'll need a good team for that. :)
Character name is Torval.
Oh yeah, forgot to elaborate. The Consulars are pretty cool. I don't know how far ahead you've looked at the skill sets and the like, but the Sage has a healing spec and the Shadow has a Tank spec, and the both have two other DPS specs.
I was thinking of going Balance in either one (the shared talent tree), since it's a DPS/utility tree that builds on the Consular's core abilities.
I wasn't sure that the stealth would be useful since I wasn't sure what your companion character would do, but apparently they get stealthed too, so it's a non-issue. So I'm liking that.
But anyway, choose carefully since it's a permanent choice as to which advanced class to take. All of the classes are supposed to be pretty equivalent in terms of DPS and overall capability, which was good to hear.
So far I know one of my friends is playing a smuggler. Not sure what his brother chose. We're going to try to meet up and do Esseles sometime soon. I ran it once yesterday and it's a pretty decent mission.
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I loaded and patched the client all day yesterday, I think the total was somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 GB which puts WoW to shame! The Jedi Consular seemed a little more complex than the knight, and I was drawn to it. No re-spec option eh... hmm, wonder if they'll patch that in when the community cries about it. I've never played a healer before (my background in WoW is an 85 worgen rogue, played a rogue from vanilla, and also had a pally alt), but the Sage has piqued my interest as well. I really want to start playing! In D&D I always leaned towards the hybrid fighter/wiz type builds because I loved the idea of being a proficient swordsman that could augment his martial abilities with arcane abilities and knowledge, and that's kind of how I look at the Consular.
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Did you get the digital deluxe edition or standard and did you preorder through Origin or somewhere else?
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I pre-ordered on Wednesday through Origin, and downloaded the client while I was at work. :) I didn't get into the early access until Friday afternoon, as a result.
I played a night elf Druid mostly in WoW, starting in vanilla, as a cat-form DPSer. I race-changed him to Worgen as soon as that became available. I like the stealthy "get in, kill things quickly, get out" sort of tactics, and the hybrid caster/fighter classes as well, which is why that worked better for me than going as a straight rogue or mage or something in WoW.
I doubt they'll add respecs for choosing the advanced classes, since that's really the class you're going with, and they just let you get through 10 levels before choosing. But they have WoW-like respecs for the talent trees as you'd expect. No idea how much they cost though.
My impression is that the Knights (both guardians and sentinels) are pretty melee-focused classes, with a little bit of close-range single-target force abilities (and saber-throws as well). But the Consulars are definitely more force heavy. The Sage strikes me as being the true mage class, since it's full of ranged AOE attacks and the like, longer ranged force abilities, plus it has the healer spec, though it still has some melee capability. The Shadow strikes me as more of a hybrid class, with close/medium range force powers, more melee abilities than the Sage, and of course stealth. BTW, you get your first double-bladed saber for free when you pick it.
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Preordered on origin, ran an errand and had my early access waiting when I came back. Created a Jedi Consular on Sanctum of the Exalted, Level 5 right now. Character's name is Trin'thalas.
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Well, I'm waiting in queue right now since today was release day and I guess our server filled up rapidly... anyway, is it weird that I giggled with glee like a little girl when I got my first lightsaber and used my first jedi mind trick?
By the way, I went with a sage, and healed Esseles yesterday, I'm questing through Coruscant right now. What's your character's name so I can find you?
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Awesome, yeah I grinned quite a lot when that first lightsaber went together as well. I'm a Shadow, so we're doing the same storyline. I shouted out "YES!" when I finally got my ship too (level 16, at the end of Coruscant).
Character name is Torval.
I'll try to get some time online tonight. I'm just starting Taris, which is the world you go to next after Coruscant. I really need to hit some questing etc pretty hard. What little cash I had is gone, since I started grinding up my crafting professions to get them caught up, and overshot the mark... And made some bad choices with regards to the trade network and the like, since the economy isn't well established and I'm getting used to the differences from WoW. Still, it's all pennies compared to the money we earn later. :)
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I was in a meeting with the Jedi Council when you pm'd me. I just got my ship so I'm about ready to depart Coruscant. I'm leaving tomorrow morning to visit my parents for Christmas, but I'm scrambling right now to get SWTOR installed on my laptop and see if it's runnable on there. If it is, I'll be playing a bit over the rest of the week, if not, I'll be dormant until I get back from the visit, but I'll still have full internet access so I'll post here to let you know either way.
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OK cool, I was going to ask if you saw the "tell" or the "email' I sent. It looked like you caught up pretty quick. You were ahead of my level at that point. I hit 19 last night before logging out. But in any case, my questing time is limited to evenings when my wife doesn't have me doing other things. Heh. :)
But yeah, once you have the ship, things really open up.
I'm liking this a lot more than WoW right now. I'm getting sufficiently caught up in the story and missions that I'm surprised by the level-ups. In WoW, it felt more like a grind and I was always watching the XP bar.
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Yeah, I remember in WoW there always came a point when I ran out of quests and had to sit there and grind for what felt like an eternity to level. I have had no such experience in SWTOR so for. I just keep going through my story and pick up any side missions I come across and haven't had to 'grind' once.
The first day I played WoW I remember being really impressed and since then I have tried out tons of other MMO's and never quite got that same feeling and in the end I always went back to WoW because nothing could touch it's level of polish, completeness, and fun. SWTOR day 1 had surpassed that 'wow' (not to be confused with WoW) factor I got when playing WoW for the first time. Wow, that's a lot of wow's in once sentence, haha.
Plus it's Star Wars... so how can it get any better than that?
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What's funny is that the storyline we're playing (Jedi Consular) is considered by the community to be the least interesting one. I'm enjoying it. But it does make me curious about the others.
The thing is, I'm not big into playing lots of alts. I usually stick to the class that suits my style the best.
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Well if you guys ever wanna play with me, im on Nadds Sarcophagus :D
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Well, I'm around level 44-45 now. Getting pretty far through the story for the Jedi Consular class. It's pretty good overall.
Something I'm seeing more than in WoW though is the scaling of difficulty. In WoW it was easy to get into a basic class-skill rotation, and even at the higher levels, most of the quests could be done with same tactics.
In SWTOR, there's a sudden increase in difficulty around level 36, and it seems to increase slightly again around 40. It forces you to use the CC and interrupts, and not just faceroll your way through anymore.
Sir Ian, since you're playing a Sage, have you gotten to Lord Vivicar yet? If not, I'll give you a little head's up (not a spoiler). The boss fight itself isn't that bad, but all the stuff you have to get through to get to him is what will kill you. The next patch (today, or this week maybe?) is supposed to fix some of this, but I think it's buggier than they realize. You'd activate a terminal and get immediately aggroed by like half the map. You'll have to let me know how your experience compares.
I hope they improve the crafting at some point. They modeled it (and a lot of the game) off of WoW, and unfortunately they copied the idea of making most of the crafting useless until end-game, and even then, most of it gets out-classed by RAID/PVP award gear. I'm regretting taking on a crafting profession, in a way. I'll probably hold onto it for now in case they make it better, but we'll see. :)
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I'm 36 right now. Yes I've already done the Lord Vivicar fight. I'm spec'd healer so it wasn't too bad, I've got quyzen relatively up to date gear-wise and I can keep him healed and keep my dots up on the boss at the same time. But yeah, I hit that part where you aggro everyone on the level and just got blasted down, I used a lot of med-probes and just widdled away at what I could each time until the numbers were manageable. I'm currently progressing through Chapter 2 of the story, I'm on Balmorra right now trying to oust the Empire.
I do like the necessity to use CC and tactics and not just pull all the trash you see and AoE everything down a'la Wrath of the Lich King. The things that are annoying me right now are 1. the ability delay and ability animation issues that some have brought up, sometimes my interrupts don't go through as a result which get frustrating fast 2. the inability to play with high-res textures, while not a huge deal is kind of a peculiar bug I've never seen in a game before 3. the GTN needs a serious overhall, the interface is pretty much unusable.
Other things I would like to see are custom UI mods or at least tweaks when in party's, and yeah, crafting feels like an afterthought, I just slice on the side to make some extra credits, when crafting becomes more useful I'll worry about it more.
Overall though, SWTOR is a breath of fresh air and has real potential to be a top tier MMO that's around for a long time. I love the story line. I think since the end-game isn't fully developed yet I may look into a shield spec'd trooper as a possible secondary character to level.
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Past 40, as a tanky DPSer Shadow, I started to find some of the boss fights nearly impossible, attempting them at-level or with me one level too low.... until I started switching up the companions to suit the situation. Qyzen has been my favorite all the way through, and has been best for me for most fights, since between my taunts and his tank stance, I can usually ping-pong the aggro back and forth and make use of both of our health pools, and his DPS isn't terrible for a straight tank.
But some of these boss fights are needing a bit more, and my interrupts aren't always enough. With Tharan, even without him being geared up as well, these fights got a lot easier, since the healing is the one part I can't do myself. It made ALL THE DIFFERENCE when I fought Stark (class quest right after Belsavis, roughly around level 43). It went from impossible to almost feeling like I was cheating. :) Just a tip with him, it's all about breaking line of sight on his attacks, and interrupting his heals.
I haven't seen so much of a problem with the ability delay, but I've seen the forum threads. I'm wondering if this affects sages more. Maybe I'm just spending too much time watching my cooldowns instead of the animation to notice the problem? :)
The hi-res thing doesn't bother me so much, in that they can just patch that at some point. I've seen other games limit it at launch and then put out a patch a few weeks later to unlock it. Not sure why that happens.
Agreed on the GTN. It's horrific. Half the features don't work, and it's very limited with what does work. Hopefully they'll fix that up before long.
But yeah, I'm loving the stories, and the cinematics. I'm just starting to experiment with the PVP warzones. Just did one last night to get my feet wet. I scored right in the middle for the overall rankings for the mission, which isn't too bad for a first try. And our team won, which is nice. :)
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Well, I started getting hit with ability delay pretty badly last night. Wow, that was nuts. It seems there was a lot of latency in Voss last night for some reason. I'd hit an interrupt and a couple of seconds later it won't have happened, so I'll hit it again... and then a few seconds later it would actually occur. Crazy.
I'm wondering if it's a server-lag issue.
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It doesn't feel like server lag to me, because it happens regardless of my ping. Mostly I see it with interrupts and heals. With interrupts I'll see an enemy casting bar, hit mind snap, watch the enemy casting bar finish, then watch mind snap fizzle because the mob has already gotten their spell off despite me casting long before they finished their casting time.
With heals, this video I think best displays the problem.
SWTOR vs. WOW, Responsiveness v2. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24nypzuW2bw#ws)
When I cast a spell with say a 2 sec cast time, then move forward at 1 sec, it should cancel the spell, cancel the trigger of the GCD, and then immediately let me re-cast a spell when I stop moving. This happens in WoW perfectly every time regardless of latency. In SWtoR, the spell cancels, the GCD appears to cancel, but it will not let you cast again.
There's also the issue of if I cast, and then move exactly when my casting bar completes, the spell should go off. It works in WoW, but in SWtoR the spell will not be cast. There's a fraction of time that prevents casts from actually going off when they should, that is presumably the next clock cycle after a casting timer finishes or is canceled (provided you're outside the GCD now in the case of a full cast). Works in WoW, not SWtoR... this is why people are so frustrated in PvP, because it's that split second timing that makes or breaks PvP. The limitation should be the player's skill and reflexes, not the game engine.
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Well, server lag and network latency are two separate issues...
But thanks for the explanation and video! NOW I see what you're talking about. You're right, the global cooldown shouldn't continue quietly in the background after something is canceled.
I've noticed something similar with mounting speeders. If you start moving exactly at the end of the animation, you end up back on foot, unlike in WoW where you'd be mounted and moving.
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I've noticed something similar with mounting speeders. If you start moving exactly at the end of the animation, you end up back on foot, unlike in WoW where you'd be mounted and moving.
Yeah, in WoW I would always do that. It would look like you're character is just running super fast for a second, but that was just because the animation hadn't caught up yet. In SWtoR 50% of the time I try to mount my speeder I get dumped on to the ground again and then have to intentionally let the animation finish instead.
I know a lot of people on the forums get all bent out of shape when you compare SWtoR to WoW, but let's face it... there's really only 1 major competitor in the MMO market. If a new cola flavored soda came out today, it's completely fair to compare it to Coke or Pepsi even though they've got quite the head-start. :) I really want SWtoR to succeed, 1. because it's Star Wars and therefore the greatest IP of all time (since LOTRO went and botched up the other greatest IP of all time) 2. it's Bioware, and I've been a fan since I played Baldur's Gate 1 back when things like THAC0 were cool! 3. I love MMO's but can't wrap my head around Pandas... lol
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I realized why I've never really noticed the ability delay-- I rely mostly on instant-cast abilities. The global cooldown affects me more than any single ability's cast-time.
Agreed. WoW simply is the elephant in the room. And not only that, but SWTOR directly emulated WoW's method of gear scaling, talent trees, skill training, and how those things tie to level advancement. Granted, every game is going to have some variations on these themes, but SWTOR took WoW's design philosophy almost 1:1. Comparisons are inevitable.
I think SWTOR will succeed just fine. So far the numbers seem to indicate this. Supposedly over 2 million copies have been sold, and they've hit a peak concurrency of 350,000.
I've started hitting the PVP a bit more, BTW. I'm wishing I had about 20 buttons on my mouse now. Heh. :) I'm still doing the "hunt and peck" with the mouse cursor to hit most of my abilities on the quick-bar, but I'm often ranking somewhere in the middle of my team at the end of the matches.
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I hit 50 over the weekend, but I'm not done with the storyline yet. I'm getting close though. I'm probably about 3/4 of the way through Corellia.
I just bought the rank 3 riding skill, and some of my other skills, and a speeder (that I'm now not as happy with due to clipping issues), and I'm almost broke. I'm regretting trying to be a crafter now. Artifice is pretty useless at level 50, and has been nothing but a money sink all the way up. Unless you're really dedicated to reverse engineering everything to the point of making purple quality items, there's no market for it, and prices have crashed in the past week on most things.
Time to rethink my strategy... even though it's pretty late in the game.
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Grats on 50! I'm running artifice too but haven't zactually worked on it in a while. I was planning on waiting for some updates to the crafting system. I keep my gathering skills up to date for now though.
I have an alt that I rolled yesterday. He's a trooper, going to go tank with him. Just level 11 right now sitting at the republic fleet for the time being. I rolled him because I got my wife to sub over the weekend, and this way she'll have someone to quest with. My sage is working through Belsavis right now and doing some warzones on the side. If you need a personal healbot for pvp let me know.
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Yeah, I'm probably going to hold onto Artifice/Treasure Hunting for now (I'd keep Archeology since it's pure gathering), and not do anything rash. But I'll keep it dormant.
If you need a personal healbot for pvp let me know.
I'll have to take you up on that. :) If I pop "guard" onto you, I can earn a lot of points for that too. I just have to tank half of your incoming damage. :)
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48 now and just arrived on Corellia. I really enjoyed the storyline on Voss. I thought both the class storyline and the planet storyline were above and beyond. Felt like the depth of writing and the story arcs were just a lot deeper than on some of the other planets. I felt a lot more invested in my choices here.
Other than that I've been healing a decent amount in warzones. The people who understand protecting the healer is advantageous make the fights a lot more fun. I should be 50 soon, then we can run some matches together and do some flashpoints.
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Awesome, yeah I liked Voss too, except for all the darned running in that temple. :)
Corellia is pretty impressive. Large city areas. I feel like they did something similar to what they did in Hoth. The quests aren't hugely numerous, but they require you to travel around a bit. Of course, you'll get to finally confront The First Son toward the end of it. It's a tougher class boss, but only a little. He just has an insta-kill ability that you need to interrupt.
I'm having a lot of fun in the warzones, except the other day when I got disconnected three times, all during imminent wins. I usually try to "guard" the Sages when I get a chance to. Having a decent healer often makes or breaks your chances of success. If I can guard them, and they pop heals on me, we can do pretty well.
I got my first piece of 50 PVP gear. Looks like it'll take a while to grind out the rest, especially if all I do is warzones and not Ilum. Ilum PVP looks like it's pretty hit or miss right now, anyway.
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Just saw it on my friends machine a bit tonight and I want to play. I like Bioware's stuff too bad my machine cannot even run KOTR 1.
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Well, I've still been hitting the PVP warzones most days. I'm not always getting the daily done (sometimes it takes two nights depending on how much time I have, and whether we're on a losing streak). Some nights I can get 3 wins in rapid succession, and others it takes 8-12 matches just to get the 3 wins for the daily.
PVPing as a shadow is pretty fun. The Jedi Shadow is still a little squishy, but with a hybrid tanking spec, it mitigates that to some degree and still has decent DPS.
I'm noticing that the real healer classes are sometimes a real pain to kill. It often takes 2 of us to bring one down if they're self-healing and well geared. But I can also see the disadvantage of being a natural target, which makes me glad I'm not a healer, even though it means I'm kinda stuck with trying to just avoid damage (which translates to quick death for me, since I tend to stick to my targets until one of us dies). But the healers are super important, in any case. Often when one team is steamrolling the other, it's because they have 3-4 healers, and the weaker team just was 1. It makes all the difference.
But anyway, still having fun with it. With the recent patch this past week, it's a lot easier to get into the tier-1 PVP gear now, so that helps. I have a mix of T-1 and T-2 gear now.
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Just got to tatooine on my main character >.> dont get to play much or when i do i get bored after a few hours lol
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Big mega-patch, version 1.2 today.
I'll be logging in a bit tonight to rework my gear and so on.
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Well, I was all excited because of the new warzone and mega-content, so I decided to download the patch and log in. While it was downloading I read the patch notes, found out they completely broke my class and made pvp healing useless... hmmm...
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Seriously? That's a bummer. My class hardly changed at all. The one thing I was pretty excited about though was being able to go back to my custom look, and move all the armorings into it from the PVP gear. I did that for 3 items (spending about 100k per piece of gear), but it broke the set bonuses. They promised us the set bonuses would carry over.
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Started playing for free this week cause the update, finally having fun playing cause i finally mad friends and a guild :D
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Honesty I thought the best parts of the game were the opening 3 movies.
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Honesty I thought the best parts of the game were the opening 3 movies.
Lol those were pretty cool. Im assuming you didnt like the game itself?
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As compared to KOTR 1&2, ME1-3, and Jade Empire the game play seemed very repetitive and there was a crap ton of just walking around.
BUT the cinematic's told a great story with great fight scenes! (whose a badass? That old republic trooper thats who!)
Star Wars The Old Republic E3 2011 Opening Cinematic Trailer [HD] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfNhs6sh3_Q#ws)
Star Wars: The Old Republic - E3 2010: Hope Cinematic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-VZjXN5PHY#ws)
HADUKEN!
Star Wars The Old Republic - Deceived Trailer HD (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjhJcm-lpjc#ws)
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I haven't been playing lately, but most of my friends are taking advantage of the free server transfer, and have moved over to The Ebon Hawk. I think I'll go ahead and move my toon over as well, so I can still meet up with them in-game down the line.
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Servers are going great since the server merges. My server (nadds sarcophagus) got merged into The Bastion, our fleet went from 20 to over 400. We now have multiple instances of the fleet. Thats ALOT of people. planets now have 20+ people, when (before the merge) there was a max of about 5 per planet, IF YOUR LUCKY. Its going great though, alot of people playing.
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I got the email notification of the free toon xfer. Still feel overall like EA forced BW's hand and made them release an unfinished product with respect to endgame. The leveling experience was awesome, but there's only so much huttball one can take at max level. Ill keep my char around for a major content release or xpac. Been playing too much Diablo 3 lately anyway :).
I don't like instanced capitals. I loved the hustle and bustle of Ironforge and later Stormwind in WoW because there were always so many people. And 20+ per planet just sounds so desolate still. I'll admit it, I was hoping for WoW caliber, in the Star Wars universe with Bioware's storytelling. Unfortunately EA sucks.
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Yeah, I had a blast til I hit endgame. I did the PVP thing for a while, and then moved on to other things. D3 is where I am these days as well, though I'll be putting more time back into Tribes:Ascend again soon, I'm sure... and I'm looking forward to the Planetside 2 beta.
I did my character transfer, and unfortunately someone took my character name over there already. That stinks, I thought mine was simple and yet completely unique. So now I have to think of something else.
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So, those in the first wave of pre-orders are playing now as the servers went live today. Was wondering if anyone here will be playing, then maybe we can pick servers etc. together if anyone wants to go that route. Just thought I would gauge interest! ;D
I love this game but same thing..if I ordered it, I would never get off my laptop at home.