Star Wars: The Old Republic announced

[ydejin]

One thing kind of annoying me is when you have your companion's character panel tab up, the tooltip "comparisons" when hovering over equipment or loot rewards is still comparing to what YOU have equipped, not your companion. I end up having to do quite a lot of juggling of panels and inventory windows to figure out if something would improve on what my companion's already using. If I'm missing something obvious about that, you guys let me know.  

Check the preferences, there's a setting to compare to both your equipment and your companion's.  Also, not sure, but I think if you've got the companion tab open and the inventory window open, right clicking equips to your companion, not yourself.

[Roguetad]

I read some complaints about the smuggler companion Corso Riggs, but he's been pretty cool so far.  Anyone who names their firearms gets a thumbs up from me, especially after he gave me one of his named blasters.  At level 9 I thought I was running into bad guys with some type of force leap ability, only to discover after closer scrutiny that Corso was harpooning and pulling them over.  Bioware may have screwed up on the marketing for the smuggler by showing the wookie companion first.  Corso is cool so far, but when I pickup the wookie, Corso will be back on the Millennium Dirtybird keeping it safe.    

I think it's hilarious that the gunslinger portable cover has flashing airplane lights on the top left and right corners of the shield.  Just in case the bad guys can't see my big blue glowy shield, check out my flashing lights!  Attention bad guys, I'm the guy standing between the lights.  It's all good, they will be standing in front of Corso after he lassos them.    

[The Grue]

I'm enjoying my trooper story, but I'm not looking forward to swapping out my rifle for an assault cannon. Troopers look kind of dumb lugging those things around  My favorite ability so far is definitely the mortars.

I don't think Vanguards use those...only Commando, so if you don't want an autocannon, go Vanguard.

[Teggy]

I'm enjoying my trooper story, but I'm not looking forward to swapping out my rifle for an assault cannon. Troopers look kind of dumb lugging those things around   My favorite ability so far is definitely the mortars.

I don't think Vanguards use those...only Commando, so if you don't want an autocannon, go Vanguard.

Well yeah, I want to heal, so I am going Commando and will just have to deal with my big ugly gun.

[Blackjack]

I read some complaints about the smuggler companion Corso Riggs, but he's been pretty cool so far.  Anyone who names their firearms gets a thumbs up from me, especially after he gave me one of his named blasters.  At level 9 I thought I was running into bad guys with some type of force leap ability, only to discover after closer scrutiny that Corso was harpooning and pulling them over.  Bioware may have screwed up on the marketing for the smuggler by showing the wookie companion first.  Corso is cool so far, but when I pickup the wookie, Corso will be back on the Millennium Dirtybird keeping it safe.    

You maybe already know all this:
* If you open up your companion's full skills bar (I enable the "right hotkey bar" in options, and then I set the companion "full skills bar" to show up there so it doesn't intrude on my regular hotkey bars), you can toggle on/off any of his skills in case there's any you do/don't like. A tiny indicator light on the button shows whether it's toggled on/off.

The grappling one only shows up on the expanded companion hotkey bar. Click the tiny icon in the upper left corner of his full hotkey bar to toggle back to the smaller companion bar (in the lower left of HUD).
*Corso can wear heavy armor, so upgrade that asap. He can wear any heavy armor if he meets the level requirement.
* I think they maybe improved the customization kits for Corso since I tested. I liked the "close cropped" one.

What kind of perplexes me about the initial companions is I swear I read in interviews that the idea was the initial companion would help make up for your character's weaknesses. I guess given that Corso can wear heavy armor, the idea is he's eventually like a Vanguard (he certainly aggros), but at the levels I've experienced in testing, he's generally just like another glass jawed DPS guy, not someone who'd make up for my weaknesses. 

I think his grappling skill is more useful if you're a scoundrel because it lets you get behind his grappled target easily and shoot him in the back (scattergun skill for bonus damage). When he pulls a target right next to me while I'm blasting away from cover, I feel like Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun movies, blasting away at a bad guy who's on the opposite side of a trashcan from me. Bang, Bang! 

[Roguetad]

When he pulls a target right next to me while I'm blasting away from cover, I feel like Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun movies, blasting away at a bad guy who's on the opposite side of a trashcan from me. Bang, Bang! 

That's awesome.  I had that happen many times last night.  I was shooting at the bad guy standing 2 feet away from me while I'm hiding behind cover.  In some instances, depending on how Corso pulled, I was actually aiming and shooting kind of sideways-backwards while facing forward behind cover lol.

Good tip about moving the companion skills to a side skillbar.  I'll try that.       

[Blackjack]

If you guys don't find looking through the advanced class trees spoiler-ish, you might wanna check out and bookmark fan site TORhead's Skill Calculator:
http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc

*Their calculator does confirm you need 5 points in an advanced class tier (horizontal row of skills) before the one immediately above it becomes available.

That site's main page is very spartan and Google-ish:
http://www.torhead.com/
They have all sorts of cool databases and tools there if you dig around.

[Blackjack]

Hey guys, I'm logging into ... Dreshdae Cantina shortly, so please feel free fellow Republic scum to log in there, send me a tell and we'll try to make Gaming Trend Heroes a less fledgling guild.  

[rshetts2]

Well Im impressed.  Two days of early access and TOR has run remarkably smooth.  No dropped connections, no queues, no lag and only one minor bug that was easily fixed.    I had such a good time in beta with the Imperial Agent and I have a few friends who wanted to go Empire, so I chose the dark side.  The staggered early access is probably going to help a lot on launch day, since it will get a ton of people past the starter worlds.  If the early access is any indication, Bioware may have a fairly smooth launch day.    to Bioware, youve done a great job so far.

[rshetts2]

and for those of you worried about having your physical copies by launch day.  I received an e-mail from Amazon today that the game will arrive on the 16th.  Im sure Bioware has authorized early delivery for all retailers so unless you chose some kind of 7 - 10 day delivery ( and if you did, you get what you paid for ) you should have the game well before release day. 

[Blackjack]

and for those of you worried about having your physical copies by launch day.  I received an e-mail from Amazon today that the game will arrive on the 16th.  Im sure Bioware has authorized early delivery for all retailers so unless you chose some kind of 7 - 10 day delivery ( and if you did, you get what you paid for ) you should have the game well before release day.  

I got the same, it sez:

We have received new release date information related to the order you placed on July 21, 2011. The item(s) listed below will actually ship sooner than we originally expected based on the new release date:
 
   "Star Wars: The Old Republic Collector's Bundle"
    Previous estimated arrival date: December 20, 2011
    New estimated arrival date: December 16, 2011

Although I was pretty lag free yesterday, I did run into some weird connection issues late at night where basically all buttons stopped responding (though I could still move around and stuff). After happening twice, it gave me an excuse not to play til my eyes bled.  

With the Gunslinger one thing truly bothers me about how the couple weapon slots are handled (I think technically primary is the right slot on your character panel screen, which is ostensibly your character's left-hand holster) -- if you mistakenly try to drag a weapon onto your primary weapon slot to swap it, it tells you you can't do that because you always need a primary weapon in place. I think it's something like you have to manually drag the old primary weapon out to inventory, and then put a new one in.

The problem is I did that by mistake during Esseles (had a nice reward pistol), dragging it onto the primary pistol slot, and clicking fast, misread the confirmation prompt. It was asking me if I wanted to DESTROY the weapon, not REPLACE it. So I destroyed it.   I'll have better soon enough, but it really bothered me.

[raydude]

Hey guys, I'm logging into ... Dreshdae Cantina shortly, so please feel free fellow Republic scum to log in there, send me a tell and we'll try to make Gaming Trend Heroes a less fledgling guild.  

I just got my email for early access play, unfortunately have martial arts practice tonight. Will try to take off from work early today and try to play for a bit this afternoon. Otherwise, it won't be till Friday night at the earliest.

[Covenant]

If I preordered the game today and then downlaoded the client, any word on how soon I could expect to start playing?

[TK-421]

If I preordered the game today and then downlaoded the client, any word on how soon I could expect to start playing?

Since today is payday and I start my 10 day vacation soon, this question is relevant to my interests.

[PR_GMR]

If I preordered the game today and then downlaoded the client, any word on how soon I could expect to start playing?

You'll be playing.. on the 20th. I pre-ordered on Nov 27th. Still haven't been let in.

[cheeba]

If I preordered the game today and then downlaoded the client, any word on how soon I could expect to start playing?

Since today is payday and I start my 10 day vacation soon, this question is relevant to my interests.

They said that today would be October to early December for pre-orders. So I would say you could play on Friday.

[PR_GMR]

Cheeba, would you do me a favor? Go to the Bioware boards and cuss them out so they let us in game. And, oh, take jersoc with you. 

[Blackjack]

If I preordered the game today and then downlaoded the client, any word on how soon I could expect to start playing?

You'll be playing.. on the 20th. I pre-ordered on Nov 27th. Still haven't been let in.

Covenant, my understanding is you'll get early access even if you pre-ordered this minute. But more likely on the last day (19th).

Here's some of the dev tracker updates on early access:

[as of this morning, 15th]We're starting to send out more invites for today.

Here's the good news: overnight we decided to send out more invites than we had originally planned. However, we'll be spacing those invites out, which means we'll have more 'waves' than the previous four-per-day. We are inviting more people today than we did during yesterday.

I'll update this thread as we send invites. As a reminder, we're also updating our official Twitter accounts (@SWTOR, @SWTOR_FR and @SWTOR_DE) with the invites as they sent; that'll be more up-to-the-minute than this post.

For anyone who's not yet been invited, remember to have the email address [email protected] in your address book so it doesn't hit spam filters.

Assuming you have the SWTOR client installed, you can also periodically launch it. If you're ready to go your 'play' button will be click-able.

Wave One was sent at 8AM CST (6AM PST / 9AM EST / 2PM GMT / 3PM CET).
...
[From yesterday, DEC. 14]
A quick update on today's invites, and a little preview of tomorrow.

Today, we invited people who had pre-ordered up to the very beginning of October (roughly). Tomorrow [DEC. 15], we're going to be inviting the same number of people again; that will take us up to the last week or so of November. On Friday, we'll be inviting even more, and we'll give you an update on that tomorrow.

You'll see more servers coming online tomorrow, and almost certainly there will be some queuing. That was always expected. As a reminder, our plan here is to maintain healthy server populations post launch, and during the excitement of launch that will mean queues. That said, we'll be working hard to keep those queues reasonable.

PR, sounds like you oughta hear something today (15th) or tomorrow.

I have a job alas (I keep seeing chat from people that [claim to] have been playing this 48 hours straight ), I'm not getting too far or rolling too many alts.   Eager to see some more folks from GT in game.  

I think a third of our 4 GT Heroes guys did log in for a bit yesterday, not sure of Romeo_Echo or the other guy. I've added quite a few strangers to my friends list but haven't heard from anyone else here or the smaller forum I hang out at just yet, hopefully we'll get some more as more early access invites go out.

I again stayed up too late. Gonna get in trouble at work soon at this rate.  

btw, I read they're adding something like 45 (!) servers the rest of this week.

[Teggy]

Maybe other people already knew this, but I realized this morning you can give your companions your cast-off bound equipment to wear.

[Covenant]

Ok, so I preordered, redeemed my preorder code and am downlaoding the client now.  I also went into my account and setup security questions and contact information.  My question is this...

Ther third requirement for everything to be fully set up is to redeem a game code.  Redeeming the preorder code didn't seem to satisfy this, and my order email didn't include any other codes in it.  Is this a code I will receive on release day or something?  Or perhaps in the email inviting to early play?

[Blackjack]

Ok, so I preordered, redeemed my preorder code and am downlaoding the client now.  I also went into my account and setup security questions and contact information.  My question is this...

Ther third requirement for everything to be fully set up is to redeem a game code.  Redeeming the preorder code didn't seem to satisfy this, and my order email didn't include any other codes in it.  Is this a code I will receive on release day or something?  Or perhaps in the email inviting to early play?

You don't need a "game code" for early access (you'll need it starting Dec. 20, launch day).

If you ordered a boxed version of the game, the game code's like the registration key most games have (probably in the manual, or on a slip of paper in the DVD box). If you preorders from Origin, they're supposed to e-mail you a "game code" at some point.

This was maybe the most thorough explanation (pre-order code and game code are different):
http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=171118&postcount=499

There still seems to be confusion about the issue at hand. Let me start by clearing up a few things.

The product registration code is NOT your pre-order code. If you check under My Account, you will see the following message:

If you are a pre-order customer, the following steps are NOT required for Early Game Access. However, in order to play Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ at the official launch of the game on December 20, 2011, 12:01AM EST (Pacific: December 19th, 9:01PM; European: December 20th, 05:01AM GMT, 06:01 CET), you must first answer a series of security questions and provide your contact information. Then you must redeem a Product Registration Code that came with the game, and either subscribe to the game or redeem a Game Time Code. Follow the steps outlined below!

Unless you are one of the Europeans that I mentioned earlier with an actual copy of the game (with dvds and everything), you should NOT have a product registration code registered yet.

If you pre-ordered a digital version of the Game on Origin...the official Game Product Registration Code of your digital edition will be emailed to the email address associated with your pre-order starting on December 16th at 8:00AM PST.

For physical versions of the game, your product registration code will be in the actual game box when you receive it.

Please spread this information, as there seems to be a lot of confusion

[Covenant]

Perfect! I  was hoping it was something they would mail out later. Thanks much.

[raydude]

I think a third of our 4 GT Heroes guys did log in for a bit yesterday, not sure of Romeo_Echo or the other guy. I've added quite a few strangers to my friends list but haven't heard from anyone else here or the smaller forum I hang out at just yet, hopefully we'll get some more as more early access invites go out.

See my post 6 above yours. Romeo_Echo = me.

edited:must..learn..to...count.

[Blackjack]

I think a third of our 4 GT Heroes guys did log in for a bit yesterday, not sure of Romeo_Echo or the other guy. I've added quite a few strangers to my friends list but haven't heard from anyone else here or the smaller forum I hang out at just yet, hopefully we'll get some more as more early access invites go out.

See my post 6 above yours. Romeo_Echo = me.

edited:must..learn..to...count.

OK, i'll definitely scribble a note on your character in the guild roster list in-game just for GTers' reference.

I'm thinking of maybe creating an "SWTOR tips" thread, and then I can re-paste in a lot of things here that people have pointed out, and helpful stuff from fan sites. We have a lot of helpful info in this ocean of a thread but it's kinda tough to find it.  

Another thread might be something like "dev tracker and news articles stuff." And then I'd stop before I got new-thread-crazy. I just think maybe those two being separate might be helpful.   Although Darth Hater and some other fan sites do cover dev tracker stuff, I sometimes have to weed through a lot of chaff there to find it. And ya know, I remember going crazy with an AoC dev tracker thread for quite a few months. I'm a reporter afterall, so I enjoy that kind of stuff although perhaps... I should just play. Or even do my real job!  

[Teggy]

Our long national nightmare is over! Ritt is in!

[PR_GMR]

Well, Oh Shit! I just got the Early Access email.

.
.
.

Too bad I've not pre-loaded the game yet. FAIL!! 

[The Grue]

Maybe other people already knew this, but I realized this morning you can give your companions your cast-off bound equipment to wear.

Yeah, it is pretty awesome.  When I craft armor, it is usually better than what I am currently wearing and so I give a second copy to my companion, who is also a Trooper.

[Covenant]

Client all downloaded and updated/installed.  Now I just need me that e-mail!

[Arkon]

Maybe other people already knew this, but I realized this morning you can give your companions your cast-off bound equipment to wear.

Yeah, it is pretty awesome.  When I craft armor, it is usually better than what I am currently wearing and so I give a second copy to my companion, who is also a Trooper.

Don't forget to reverse engineer your armor to attempt unlocking higher tier versions of the item.

[Blackjack]

48-Hour Grace Period Announced! (in case of any shipping snafus that keep you from receiving your game in time for Dec. 20's launch):
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=301753#edit301753
*I did my usual cut and paste in the news thread, but wanted to point it out here.  

[PR_GMR]

Cleared out my Windows XP SWTOR.exe client install issue by downloading and installing Windows XP Service Pack 3. Game is now downloading... 25GB downloaded. Should be in game... tomorrow night. 

[CeeKay]

ordered a bunch of stuff off of Amazon and failed to notice TOR was in my basket (really should start paying attention to the price at checkout, got yelled at by the fiancee about this the other day after having no clue what I paid at Walmart for some shopping) so it looks like I'll be in sooner than later.  it's already listed as shipping soon, so I might as well keep it.

[Blackjack]

Check out the Server Status page, seeing a few more "fulls" now.
http://www.swtor.com/server-status
Dreshdae Cantina so far seems to be staying in the "Very Heavy" category at least.

I don't see any real trends other than maybe there are a few more full PVP servers, but also there are more PVP servers that don't have a heavy load atm.

[Isgrimnur]

ordered a bunch of stuff off of Amazon and failed to notice TOR was in my basket (really should start paying attention to the price at checkout, got yelled at by the fiancee about this the other day after having no clue what I paid at Walmart for some shopping) so it looks like I'll be in sooner than later.  it's already listed as shipping soon, so I might as well keep it.

Trouble in paradise? 

[PR_GMR]

ordered a bunch of stuff off of Amazon and failed to notice TOR was in my basket (really should start paying attention to the price at checkout, got yelled at by the fiancee about this the other day after having no clue what I paid at Walmart for some shopping) so it looks like I'll be in sooner than later.  it's already listed as shipping soon, so I might as well keep it.

Trouble in paradise? 

That's a really good excuse. 'Oh, Honey, I didn't notice it was there!' 

[ericb]

I'm getting more into it now but I was really a little irritated at the first flashpoint (Esseles).  One, it's not a two person dungeon unless one is a healer.  Two, it is way way way way too long.  I was expecting a nice intro 2 person dungeon/instance...20-30 mins and maybe a nice reward at the end.  No, over an hour into it along with a disconnect, a fall through the floor bug and around 7 deaths I quit in a rage.  And that's with both of us at lvl 12.  I know it's my fault for not looking into it first but I'm trying to avoid reading spoilers to keep everything fresh and it came as a very unpleasant surprise.  Otherwise I'm really liking the Jedi Knight.  Do wish they could have innovated a new dungeon loot system though    I've yet to get a single drop of anything I can use while blasters, willpower and cunning gear and vibroblades drop over and over (and over).

[Teggy]

Someone in chat pointed out that the female children have fully developed bodies. It's kind of disturbing

[USMC Kato]

Got my email finally. Going to let the game download and patch overnight. Would love to join you guys but I have my heart set on a pvp server

[Blackjack]

Sigh, cantina's full, my connection blew just as I was starting a Heroic quest with a group, and now I'm in a 100+ wait que. But there's a plan... right?  

[ericb]

I'm a little worried already...almost every server is Heavy with most being Very Heavy or Full with 15-30 min queues.  And tomorrow's the big day when the majority of people join (pre-order wise).  I really hope they open a load of new servers or we'll all have an hour wait tomorrow night