Star Wars: The Old Republic announced

[Chordian]

Personally I'd rather have BioWare did something about the shadow technology they use. I ran Crysis and Witcher 2 on my computer with almost everything at max, but the shadows in SWTOR did bad things to my framerate so I had to turn them off.

Agree with the respawning in dungeons. Often I just use my 30 minutes teleport at that point. Having to fight the same enemies on my way out is not fun.

I actually like that the game doesn't have day/night cycles. I hated it in LOTRO - made everything too dark and I'm not keen on just turning everything up with gamma. Sometimes when I logged onto LOTRO and discovered that it was nighttime I often groaned.

One thing I really like is the countdown before being PvP flagged. In WoW you were just PvP flagged instantly. Here you actually have a chance to back out and avoid it. (I'm probably the worst anti-PvP carebear in the world.)

[ydejin]

the killing of 3-5 mobs is becoming draining and multiplied by a crazy fast spawn. 5 more levels, but god damn the personal dungeon spawns needs to be halved. most of the time i say fuck it, die and port out. whatever cash is flowing water no loss.

I have not noticed any problems at all with respawning in green personal areas.  AFAICT there is no respawn within personal instances.  Public areas on the other hand, yes, very annoying.  You fight your way in, and then all the bad guys have respawned so you either teleport back out with Quick Travel or you have to fight your way back out of the dungeon.

This is why I'm all for instancing.  There are two sides to spawn rate in public areas.  If you leave the respawn rate low, you can kill all the baddies, get the foozle at the center of the dungeon and then walk out.  But if you're the second person to come to that dungeon you find all the bad guys lying dead on the floor, and it's very unsatisfying walking past all the dead things someone else killed to pickup your foozle.  The clear answer is all dungeon areas should be instanced so each person can kill their own bad guys.

finally started to run into sith, unfortunately it's usually 2 or 3 at a time. so meh.

There are a fair amount of individual sith that you'll run into.  Although for my Jedi Guardian at least they are much, much easier to handle than multiple Sith.  Three strong Sith are a tougher enemy than one elite Sith.  Heck two strong Sith and a trash standard mob are probably tougher than an elite Sith.  For the elite, you just hammer him with an interrupt everytime he tries to do something fancy, otherwise you and your companion just pound the crap out of him.

i really hope bioware makes their planets more alive. we need a day/night cycle and some weather. when wow got weather is vastly changed how stale the world felt. i was on hoth with no snow. i guess that's pretty accurate to the weather in real life, but what? how do you have hoth with no snow? might as well make it rain tattooine!

Day night cycle is almost certainly not going to happen.  Bioware says it's an artistic issue.  Their planets are designed for a particular look which is dependent on the lighting.  

[Blackjack]

Is there a more comprehensive TOR database site out there than TorHead?

I'm trying to track down orange (or moddable blue) gear for my Level 26 Trooper.  TOR shows such gear but doesn't show where it drops or who sells it.  

Exodor, try:

Darth Hater's item database
http://db.darthhater.com/items/

SWTOR Spy's item database
http://www.swtor-spy.com/items-db/

*I don't guarantee either will have what you're looking for, just worth a try.   Commendation Vendors generally have nice orange items that are already modded well for roughly the level you'd be at to play in that zone.

[Teggy]

I'm really engrossed by the game and I'm clearly playing it in a much different manner than Jersoc. I put 500+ hours in Rift, but I feel a lot more drawn in by this, and I'm sure it's due to the story presentation. Not having to read means I absorb the story easier, and there's some great humor and drama that you can't get without the cutscenes.

I now have a lvl 34 Trooper, lvl 16 or so Bounty Hunter and lvl 10-11 Consular and Knight and I haven't even found an auction house terminal, much less used one. I think I looked up the symbol the other day and I still haven't noticed any when I've been questing  I've been leveling up my Armstech on my Trooper and am pretty much max for my level. I got behind but now I'm working on making advanced barrels for myself as I level up. I really enjoy leveling with the trooper. I can take on a ton of mobs, and I've built up M1-4X into a pretty sturdy tank. The one problem with the trooper is that so many of it's abilities have at least some splash damage, that when you play as dps in a group you can get very restricted once there's CC being used.

I guess I'm just not a graphics whore - I enjoy the look of the game. I get some of the green "force field" glitches, the trees on Tython shimmer in a weird way and sometimes I get blocky shadows, but overall I like the character models and animations. I've seen a lot of cool armor as well, especially on the troopers. The only place I really get slowdown is on Carrick station, and right at the point where I am getting off a taxi.

I haven't pvp'd at all and I wouldn't be surprised if I never entered a warfront.

The place I think the game will need work is on the community. Without a capital city that's easy to get to, there's no reason for lvls 10-50 to mingle, and they can't talk to each other easily either. If I'm on Alderaan and I want to get to Carrick station, I need to haul ass back to my hangar and go through all the animations of getting on my ship, picking a destination, traveling, landing, etc. At minimum, I need to find a republic shuttle. In Rift, WoW or any of those other "single world" games, I can just hearth. By having just a single capital city that was easy to get to, Rift did really well with building community. Not that you even have a reason to go to Carrick station anyway - all planets have a full set of trainers and vendors. About the only thing Carrick has is the starship commendations vendor. The primary reason to go back is for flashpoints, which is my other nitpick...

In order to get a flashpoint group you pretty much have to go back to Carrick and spam. But there are probably plenty of people out on other planets who would like to do a flashpoint but won't get that message. They really need a global flashpoint LFG channel.

Other than that I don't have many complaints at this point. Once I got to Tatooine and saw how huge some of the worlds were and how many quests there are I started being in awe of how much work must have gone into this game. Sure, there are bugs, but how can there not be with that much content. I haven't hit a single bug yet that has prevented me from doing a quest.

We'll see what happens when I get to 50. I don't really want to start grinding like I wound up doing in Rift. At minimum I can do alts, which will all have their own stories. I was even impressed that some of the side quests I repeated with my Knight on Tython (after having done them with the Consular) had different stories behind them, even though I was doing the same actions.

[ydejin]

The place I think the game will need work is on the community. Without a capital city that's easy to get to, there's no reason for lvls 10-50 to mingle, and they can't talk to each other easily either. If I'm on Alderaan and I want to get to Carrick station, I need to haul ass back to my hangar and go through all the animations of getting on my ship, picking a destination, traveling, landing, etc. At minimum, I need to find a republic shuttle. In Rift, WoW or any of those other "single world" games, I can just hearth. By having just a single capital city that was easy to get to, Rift did really well with building community. Not that you even have a reason to go to Carrick station anyway - all planets have a full set of trainers and vendors. About the only thing Carrick has is the starship commendations vendor. The primary reason to go back is for flashpoints, which is my other nitpick...

The easiest way to get back to the station for Flashpoints is your 16-hour cooldown "Fleet Pass" ability.  If you've already used that and it's on cooldown, you can also purchase "Quick Passes" to the Fleet for 1k each from a Security Key vendor.

Other than Flashpoints, the main reason I go to Carrick is for the Auction House.  Also Carrick has a full set of Commendation Vendors for every planet except somehow Quesh is missing (there are Quesh Commendation Vendors on Quesh itself).  Also many (most?) planets don't have Crafting Trainers, so sometimes I'll go back for that.

[Blackjack]

My Smugger>Gunslinger's nearing L45 now. Tatooine probably remains my favorite zone. For my tastes, it had the best mix and volume of both regular content and Heroic 2/4 content. Riding around the dunes on my STAP mount was always fun, and I think because the 1977 SW film starts out on Tatooine, it just tugged on my nostalgia strings to run around there despite being in a different era.

Places like Quesh and even Alderaan (which I only know from the original movie as a place our intrepid heroes were trying to get to that blew up) don't really tug at my movie memories that way.

[Soulchilde]

First content update must have been announced at CES SWTOR: Rise of the Rakghoul.  

 http://www.gametrailers.com/video/rise-of-star-wars/725676

[CeeKay]

First content update must have been announced at CES SWTOR: Rise of the Rakghoul.  There's a trailer up at Gamestrailer. Currently typing this from my Kindle Fire so no linky

trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbQWqUm67pQ

[USMC Kato]

My Smugger>Gunslinger's nearing L45 now. Tatooine probably remains my favorite zone. For my tastes, it had the best mix and volume of both regular content and Heroic 2/4 content. Riding around the dunes on my STAP mount was always fun, and I think because the 1977 SW film starts out on Tatooine, it just tugged on my nostalgia strings to run around there despite being in a different era.

Places like Quesh and even Alderaan (which I only know from the original movie as a place our intrepid heroes were trying to get to that blew up) don't really tug at my movie memories that way.

I actually wish Bioware would have left all the iconic worlds from the movies out of the game. This is the Old Republic and IMHO I would have enjoyed them taking a chance with more new worlds.

[CeeKay]

My Smugger>Gunslinger's nearing L45 now. Tatooine probably remains my favorite zone. For my tastes, it had the best mix and volume of both regular content and Heroic 2/4 content. Riding around the dunes on my STAP mount was always fun, and I think because the 1977 SW film starts out on Tatooine, it just tugged on my nostalgia strings to run around there despite being in a different era.

Places like Quesh and even Alderaan (which I only know from the original movie as a place our intrepid heroes were trying to get to that blew up) don't really tug at my movie memories that way.

I actually wish Bioware would have left all the iconic worlds from the movies out of the game. This is the Old Republic and IMHO I would have enjoyed them taking a chance with more new worlds.

this.  did we really need to go back to Tatooine again?  I can see using Alderaan since it was barely featured in the films, same could be argued about Hoth, but fuck we've spent plenty of time with Tatooine already.

[raydude]

My Smugger>Gunslinger's nearing L45 now. Tatooine probably remains my favorite zone. For my tastes, it had the best mix and volume of both regular content and Heroic 2/4 content. Riding around the dunes on my STAP mount was always fun, and I think because the 1977 SW film starts out on Tatooine, it just tugged on my nostalgia strings to run around there despite being in a different era.

Places like Quesh and even Alderaan (which I only know from the original movie as a place our intrepid heroes were trying to get to that blew up) don't really tug at my movie memories that way.

I actually wish Bioware would have left all the iconic worlds from the movies out of the game. This is the Old Republic and IMHO I would have enjoyed them taking a chance with more new worlds.

this.  did we really need to go back to Tatooine again?  I can see using Alderaan since it was barely featured in the films, same could be argued about Hoth, but fuck we've spent plenty of time with Tatooine already.

And I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.

[Roguetad]

I wonder if people will approach swtor more like a single player experience in that after playing through 1 or 2 class storylines they move on.  The mmorpg componenet of the game doesn't seem that well developed.  Not having an easy looking for group feature, or instant flashpoint meeting feature are hard to explain.  

[Roguetad]

My Smugger>Gunslinger's nearing L45 now. Tatooine probably remains my favorite zone. For my tastes, it had the best mix and volume of both regular content and Heroic 2/4 content. Riding around the dunes on my STAP mount was always fun, and I think because the 1977 SW film starts out on Tatooine, it just tugged on my nostalgia strings to run around there despite being in a different era.

Places like Quesh and even Alderaan (which I only know from the original movie as a place our intrepid heroes were trying to get to that blew up) don't really tug at my movie memories that way.

I actually wish Bioware would have left all the iconic worlds from the movies out of the game. This is the Old Republic and IMHO I would have enjoyed them taking a chance with more new worlds.

this.  did we really need to go back to Tatooine again?  I can see using Alderaan since it was barely featured in the films, same could be argued about Hoth, but fuck we've spent plenty of time with Tatooine already.

And I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.

Awesome.  George's best work.

[gellar]

I wonder if people will approach swtor more like a single player experience in that after playing through 1 or 2 class storylines they move on.  The mmorpg componenet of the game doesn't seem that well developed.  Not having an easy looking for group feature, or instant flashpoint meeting feature are hard to explain.   

That's the way I'm playing it.  Basically it's a single player RPG (and a very good one at that, with a large # of distinct storylines) where I can share gear and chat with my friends, do some crafting, and occasionally do a group mission when everyone is available.  The issue with WoW for me was that I play with a small group of guys (there's right now six of us in guild) and unless we tried really hard to make sure everyone was a) of level, and b) on at the same time, there wasn't a lot (or any) compelling content to do otherwise.  SWTOR is seemingly the opposite of that.

I'm not sure if it's surprising, but it turns out I *really* like that structure.

[ydejin]

My Smugger>Gunslinger's nearing L45 now. Tatooine probably remains my favorite zone. For my tastes, it had the best mix and volume of both regular content and Heroic 2/4 content. Riding around the dunes on my STAP mount was always fun, and I think because the 1977 SW film starts out on Tatooine, it just tugged on my nostalgia strings to run around there despite being in a different era.

Places like Quesh and even Alderaan (which I only know from the original movie as a place our intrepid heroes were trying to get to that blew up) don't really tug at my movie memories that way.

I'm with Blackjack.  My favorite planets have been Tatooine and Hoth, undoubtably because of there movie connections.

[Teggy]

Oh, the one graphic pet peeve I forgot to mention is the magically growing grass. So odd.

[Gratch]

I wonder if people will approach swtor more like a single player experience in that after playing through 1 or 2 class storylines they move on.  The mmorpg componenet of the game doesn't seem that well developed.  Not having an easy looking for group feature, or instant flashpoint meeting feature are hard to explain.   

That's the way I'm playing it.  Basically it's a single player RPG (and a very good one at that, with a large # of distinct storylines) where I can share gear and chat with my friends, do some crafting, and occasionally do a group mission when everyone is available.  The issue with WoW for me was that I play with a small group of guys (there's right now six of us in guild) and unless we tried really hard to make sure everyone was a) of level, and b) on at the same time, there wasn't a lot (or any) compelling content to do otherwise.  SWTOR is seemingly the opposite of that.

I'm not sure if it's surprising, but it turns out I *really* like that structure.

Same here.  Not being an MMO guy, the single player story of SWTOR has really hooked me while allowing me to basically ignore the actual MMO bits.  I really like that combination.

[ydejin]

Oh, the one graphic pet peeve I forgot to mention is the magically growing grass. So odd.

LOTRO also has a magical circle of grass that follows you around.  I tried upgrading my video card to get rid of it, but alas no graphic setting or tweaking the draw distance was ever able to get rid of the LOTRO grass circle or put it far enough out that I didn't find it annoying.

[Arclight]

I agree with the ones who really like Tatt. It was my favorite place in SWG as well. Something about the colour palette used, the movie memories, the building types, etc.....Very well done.

[Harkonis]

Oh, the one graphic pet peeve I forgot to mention is the magically growing grass. So odd.

I turn the grass completely off.  I'd rather have it not there than growing.

[Teggy]

Oh, last pet peeve - if you so much as breathe, you lose your focus. Get on your mount - lose focus. Send your companion to sell greys - lose focus. Have a conversation - lose focus. Do something that I'm not even sure what I did - lose focus. So many times I wind up pressing my middle mouse to heal my companion to find out that I no longer have him in focus.

[Chordian]

Oh, last pet peeve - if you so much as breathe, you lose your focus. Get on your mount - lose focus. Send your companion to sell greys - lose focus. Have a conversation - lose focus. Do something that I'm not even sure what I did - lose focus. So many times I wind up pressing my middle mouse to heal my companion to find out that I no longer have him in focus.

It didn't take long before I forgot all about focus. Too much hassle activating it all the time.

Plus, the key to hold down for healing my companion had to be a "real" key like other hotkeys. I couldn't choose ALT or CTRL, for instance, which would have made more sense to me. (I always use the middle mouse button for auto-running in MMORPG.)

[Harkonis]

Oh, last pet peeve - if you so much as breathe, you lose your focus. Get on your mount - lose focus. Send your companion to sell greys - lose focus. Have a conversation - lose focus. Do something that I'm not even sure what I did - lose focus. So many times I wind up pressing my middle mouse to heal my companion to find out that I no longer have him in focus.

if you are out of combat, just mount up and dismount to heal your companion

[CeeKay]

Oh, last pet peeve - if you so much as breathe, you lose your focus. Get on your mount - lose focus. Send your companion to sell greys - lose focus. Have a conversation - lose focus. Do something that I'm not even sure what I did - lose focus. So many times I wind up pressing my middle mouse to heal my companion to find out that I no longer have him in focus.

you always lose focus over time, only attacking can build it up 

[Teggy]

Oh, last pet peeve - if you so much as breathe, you lose your focus. Get on your mount - lose focus. Send your companion to sell greys - lose focus. Have a conversation - lose focus. Do something that I'm not even sure what I did - lose focus. So many times I wind up pressing my middle mouse to heal my companion to find out that I no longer have him in focus.

if you are out of combat, just mount up and dismount to heal your companion

It's not about healing the guy out of combat, it's about getting into combat and finding that the button I need to start healing my tank is suddenly healing me and my tank is dying.

[rittchard]

I wonder if people will approach swtor more like a single player experience in that after playing through 1 or 2 class storylines they move on.  The mmorpg componenet of the game doesn't seem that well developed.  Not having an easy looking for group feature, or instant flashpoint meeting feature are hard to explain.   

That's the way I'm playing it.  Basically it's a single player RPG (and a very good one at that, with a large # of distinct storylines) where I can share gear and chat with my friends, do some crafting, and occasionally do a group mission when everyone is available.  The issue with WoW for me was that I play with a small group of guys (there's right now six of us in guild) and unless we tried really hard to make sure everyone was a) of level, and b) on at the same time, there wasn't a lot (or any) compelling content to do otherwise.  SWTOR is seemingly the opposite of that.

I'm not sure if it's surprising, but it turns out I *really* like that structure.

Same here.  Not being an MMO guy, the single player story of SWTOR has really hooked me while allowing me to basically ignore the actual MMO bits.  I really like that combination.

It's interesting because to me everything you both described is pretty mcuh the antithesis to why people would (originally) play an MMO, or what would make for a good MMO.  At the basic level why have a "massively multiplayer" format when the majority of players just want to avoid those other people?  And yet just like both of you I am truly enjoying the game primarily as a single player experience.  I found Ron's well-written review interesting in that it ended with the sentence:

The Old Republic hasn’t raised the bar for MMOs, it completely reinvents the genre entirely.

I'm still digesting that statement, because while it is certainly true in some sense, I have to wonder if this is good or bad for the genre over the long haul.  The original core appeal of an MMO was all the real people you interacted with - yet in SWTOR they can be more of a distraction than anything else.  So the genre has essentially been reinvented into a single player (with MP chat) format?  I dunno, that's definitely not where I saw/hoped the genre was moving.  

Still, it's impossible to deny what a good job Bioware did overall, merging two disparate genres into one.  I for one, though, will always wonder if there was a better/deeper more personal game to be had if they had stuck with a single player (or small scale MP) RPG.

[Harkonis]

Oh, last pet peeve - if you so much as breathe, you lose your focus. Get on your mount - lose focus. Send your companion to sell greys - lose focus. Have a conversation - lose focus. Do something that I'm not even sure what I did - lose focus. So many times I wind up pressing my middle mouse to heal my companion to find out that I no longer have him in focus.

if you are out of combat, just mount up and dismount to heal your companion

It's not about healing the guy out of combat, it's about getting into combat and finding that the button I need to start healing my tank is suddenly healing me and my tank is dying.

are talking about your target?  not the focus mechanic?  I just bound a key combo (shift-4) to target my companion, and I hit it before hitting heal if I want to heal the companion.  Just never assume your target is what you think it is before you hit a button.  I thought you were talking about something else.  When it takes one button to target something, I'm not sure what there is to complain about.

[Teggy]

Oh, last pet peeve - if you so much as breathe, you lose your focus. Get on your mount - lose focus. Send your companion to sell greys - lose focus. Have a conversation - lose focus. Do something that I'm not even sure what I did - lose focus. So many times I wind up pressing my middle mouse to heal my companion to find out that I no longer have him in focus.

if you are out of combat, just mount up and dismount to heal your companion

It's not about healing the guy out of combat, it's about getting into combat and finding that the button I need to start healing my tank is suddenly healing me and my tank is dying.

are talking about your target?  not the focus mechanic?  I just bound a key combo (shift-4) to target my companion, and I hit it before hitting heal if I want to heal the companion.  Just never assume your target is what you think it is before you hit a button.  I thought you were talking about something else.  When it takes one button to target something, I'm not sure what there is to complain about.

Any focus target - when I am questing it is usually my companion, when I am doing heroics or flashpoints it is usually the tank. The feature is there for that purpose, but it doesn't work very well because it resets way too often and sometimes unexpectedly.

What do you mean "Just never assume your target is what you think it is before you hit a button"? You have to have some faith that the game's mechanics work as intended, or else you're doing work, not playing a game.

[Harkonis]

I got used to focus being a 'flaky' feature a few games ago.  I tend to avoid it.  If I'm not mistaken in swtor isn't your focus target completely invisible too?  You don't even have a portrait?  Maybe there is a way to turn it on.  Either way, I avoid the 'feature' because it has tended to not work.

I did like WAR's offensive and defensive targets, that worked well imo.

[Teggy]

You get a portrait on the bottom right.

[ydejin]

Wait a minute...jersoc doesn't like a game????

yes, i hate aspects of a game, like everyone else. i never said i hated because I don't buy games that are awful. you got a real problem understanding things i can see.

i'm also getting a bit bored of the questing. kill this, collect that. the world just feels so dead too. the server is listed as heavy to full even at 2am and yet i see no one. a pvp server is useless because i've seen a sith 3 times. there's just no sense of danger of having to watch my back. makes questing even more boring. i'm only lvl 34, i assume that's about average for people who play a few hours a day since early access. monday was really the only day i've played for a long stretch since then too. this phasing thing for the world is stupid and needs to go like right now.

I think you're way, way ahead of the curve.  I've been playing since the first 15 minutes of early release and since I'm on Winter Break, I've put in a huge amount of time -- /played says over 7 days! -- and I'm only a few levels over you at 38.  Our 76 person guild shows only 9 players over 30.  

I don't think most of the higher level planets are currently being phased.  Right now, for example, I am in the only Hoth instance and there are only 34 players on.  And that's with a Heavy load on one of the most popular servers out there (The Harbringer) -- it is admittedly early in the morning, but our server load is still Heavy and we are one of the unofficial Oceanic servers.

sure doesn't feel like it. i'm not in a big guild, but there's already 5 people who hit 50. game is pretty easy to level. Still the world feels very dead. Pretty sure republic and imperials have no overlapping quests that bring world pvp to each other. and if they do, guess it doesn't seem like it.

oh, luckily some of the stories are sort of interesting because at times i get pretty bored doing essentially the same quests for the last 37 levels. i can't be bothered to sit and spam for groups all day either. so hopefully bioware gets a real looking for group system and not a 15 year old one that never worked.

A little more data tucked into a developer post on a different topic which came out today:

At the same time, both player feedback and the data gathered from hundreds of servers made it very clear that this issue needed to be dealt with decisively now with only a small minority of players at endgame level and the vast majority of our characters in their 20s to minimize the number of affected players.

[Destructor]

I did like WAR's offensive and defensive targets, that worked well imo.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes did it first.

...I think.

[Chordian]

From Reddit - companions and their voice actors:

Spoiler for Image:

[Blackjack]

I don't recognize any of the voice actors' names at all (which is probably good for Bioware's continuing voice budget  ), which seems to reinforce you don't need "star power" for good voicework.

I think I read about one relatively well known TV actor who was doing a few different voices, though probably not any companions. And there is one voice that sounds so much like Morgan Freeman. It's either him or a heckuva good impersonator.  

On the Smuggler side, Guss Tuno (Gary Schwartz) gets by far the most consistently funny lines, like "My friend is gonna GET YOU!"

He has one content-specific line that surprised me in a funny way. Something like, "Are you sure you wouldn't rather have the wookie here? I think he's better suited to this stuff."

[Roguetad]

Blackjack, what companion do you find yourself using the most as a gunslinger?  I've picked up a few interesting companions as a Powertech, but none of them are as helpful as my very first, Mako.  It's hard to beat a healer companion that can CC and does some damage too.  If I use another companion it's purely for the sake of a different companion experience...even if it makes things harder.   

[Purge]

Lacey Chabert.

[Roguetad]

Lacey Chabert.

Hey, I'm not just a sidekick buster.

[Isgrimnur]

She's no Leelee Sobieski, but I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers.

[CeeKay]

Lacey Chabert.

Debra Kara Unger, Rachael Leigh Cook and Steven Blum also jump out at me.

[Purge]

She's no Leelee Sobieski, but I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers.

Especially if "Crackers" is her pet name for Neve Campbell.