There was really no way around this, was it? Last weekend, Star Wars: The Old Republic had an open beta weekend. The announcement was like candy for the soul: alluring, but bad for the teeth. Of the soul. Yeah, I don’t know where I’m going with this either. Star Wars: The Old Republic is bad for the teeth of the soul, I guess.
Jasper and Jarenth, being the only two massive nerds enough to dive into a Star Wars game, devoted their entire Saturday night to playing this beta. Halfway in they were joined by two mystery people who won’t be named in this introduction segment, save for the tantalizing hint that one of them has already written about SWTOR at length. And they still wanted to play with us. I’m not really sure what that says about us* or them**, but there you have it.
Jasper is a big fan of the KoToR brand.Is the game still fun without the Ko part?
Jarenth compares The Old Republic to soul teeth and cookie cutters. What does that even mean? Maybe nothing at all.
* It means we’re awesome.
** It means they’re awesome, too.
Regarding the class starting areas, it seems to be split between force and non-force users.
So Jedi knights consulars on one planet, Smugglers/Troopers on another, Sith warriors/inquisitors on one, Agents/Bounty Hunters on another. Suppose it makes sense for the game. Since you generally don’t see anyone other than Jedi/Sith on Jedi/Sith training planets. Though then again in Kotor there were quite a few Bounty Hunters on Korriban…
Anyway, I haven’t really tried traveling to other starting zones when I started. Traveling to other planets before you get your ship involves going to the space-port, traveling to you’re faction’s main space station, then traveling to the planet you need to go. This results in quite a bit of long loading screens, which is a pain. And I don’t even think you can do missions in other classes starting planets. During the Agent storyline I had to travel to Korriban, and all missions except one heroic mission was unavailable to me. Might be because I was level 18, but I don’t know for sure.
Honestly, This game seems like it was made for people who want to play alone. Which is fine, and to be fair I’m LOVING the fact that Bioware is catering to me with this game (as an RPG/space sim fan mostly interested in solo-only affairs, I’m not exactly the most important market segment), but I don’t know if it’ll really work in the long run. Especially when the game you’re making kind of has to rely on the social aspect in order to have long-term success.
At from the looks of things, the trooper and agent are pretty much the only “unique” classes in the game. Jedi/Sith are essentially palette swaps, and Bounty Hunter and Smuggler are counterparts. Though I haven’t been able to play a trooper. Or Bounty Hunter. Or Smuggler, so I might be talking out of my ass. But that’s just what I saw while playing as an Agent and Consular.
WALL OF TEXT!
Wall of Truth.
Wall of AWESOME.