Evenin all,
I was lucky enough to get into the early access for SWTOR a couple of days ago, and have put a few early thoughts together. As a background I've played Lotro, (too much) WoW, Rift and EVE over the past 4 or 5 years so that's where some of my references are from. I posted this outside of the other SWTOR thread as I didn't want to hijack the set up of the MLG guild. I've played through the first 11 levels as a Sith Inquisitor (switching to Sith Sorcerer at level 10)
Anyone else got any early thoughts?
Intro
So there's been this low-key MMO Launch this week, well the early access programme for said MMO anyways that a few of you might have heard of.
After years of hype the MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) has arrived (well, arrived to those who pre-ordered early, and there's a wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who didn't order so early and are sulking as they don't yet have early access).
The wide access beta has given a wider range of opinion after the NDA was lifted ranging from fan-bois gushing praise to naysayers sneering 'wow-clone'
My initial observations follow:
Early Access
Before I go onto the game I'll say a few words about the early access programme. Many MMOs these days reward people who pre-order with access to the game a few days ahead of people who buy the game on or after the release date.
Bioware didn't indicate what the early access period would be initially, but did say that players would be let into the game in the order that they'd registered their pre-orders. The first date for pre-orders was 21st July (I registered on 22nd July and was in the 2nd wave of invites on the first day of early access) There were some controversies on the way where some stores that people had pre-ordered through had inadvertently cancelled pre-orders, leading to fears from these customers that they wouldn't get their early access.
A couple of weeks ago Bioware indicated early access would be 5 days prior to release, then changed their minds and extended this by two days. There are plenty of people whining on the forums about not being included in the first couple of days of early access despite having not pre-ordered the game until the last couple of weeks. Well Boo Hoo! It's not as if Bioware weren’t transparent about what order people would be invited in to the early access in. In the long run it's only a few days of play ahead of other people, and if that bothers you so much…. you probably need to take a look at your priorities in life.
(yes, I know it's easy for me to say this as I got in on day one 
Basics
Right then, client downloaded and early access activated it's time to head into the game. The cinematic intro is very impressive. It also follows the typical MMO formula of:
showy graphics + snippets of class mechanics, but it is very polished.
Character creation gives a wider degree of customisation to your appearance, with my Sith pureblood inquisitor, Malevolence, I've decided to rock the skinny Sith punk look.
I choose my race, sex and starter class, and head into the game
Starter Zone
Upon entering the game there's a short cut-scene of me leaving the ship, then I have a popup message regarding the guild I'd registered before launch. All (six, not a mega guild) of the people who signed up to the guild before launch will have messages to be able to join the guild as soon as they log in. I think that's a really nice feature that saves a lot of hassle. Thumbs up from me.
Running into the Sith Academy and a short cut-scene later and I’m about to head out on my first quest. It's standard MMO fare in terms of, find a quest giver (somebody with a quest symbol over their head, complete quest, return to them and so on. I've got to get something from a tomb. There's not a boar in sight at the moment, so much for WoW-clone huh? I look at my ability bar and I've got 3 abilities, 2 melee abilities and one ranged ability. That's right, it's an MMORPG with ability bars, WOW-CLONE!
Until a next gen of MMORPG, probably incorporating the console market, comes into being, I think that this will still be the logical, if unoriginal, way for MMOs to go. There are some centipede like creatures milling around outside of the tomb, minding their own business, so I decide to kill them.
After killing my first one, I suppose they might as well be boars, as I have some text flash up 'bonus mission unlocked kill 6 boa.. erm Centipedes'. This happens often when you're questing, and I don't mind it. It drives levelling from the XP of completing the quests, and there aren't any characters telling you to go kill them for, ostensibly, no reason.
The first couple of quests I've been given have involved cut-scenes with dialogue choices for myself. Despite being Sith, it's possible for me to be a wuss, erm, attuned to the light side, but that's not the way I roll! Sarcasm and evil all the way! The lack of quest text, with wonderful voice acting and the conversation choices, leads to more immersion and a more sedate paced MMO experience, which is a welcome change from the conveyor belt levelling feeling of WoW, and to a lesser extent, Rift
The starter zone itself (Korriban) is wonderful. The desert environment with tall cliffs and orange/red sand looks very impressive.
At the top of the screen is an indicator telling me how many people are in the zone. More on this later when I talk about innovation though, as there's a pretty clever feature at work here.
Combat
As I'd alluded to before, The ability bar system is what drives combat. As soon as level 3 though, I've started to get more interesting abilities. I've now got a channelled ranged DPS ability, which slows or even incapacitates mobs. Even better it's me shooting lightning at a mob, and it's the whole Palapatine style attack that drawn me to the dark side. Then at level 5 I get an attack which is an AoE (area of effect) knockdown, which will throw away all enemies within 5 yards of me, and knock them to the floor as well, sometimes stunning them too. I can even shoot lightning at these stunned mobs on the floor!
My laptop is starting to struggle with the graphics though (it runs WoW on mid-high and Rift on med/low). everything is set low. There’s a helpful suggestion in the general chat channel to turn shadows off to improve graphics performance and it works a treat!
Unlike early levels of other MMOs I often found myself in combat against multiple mobs, necessitating the use of crowd control and/or stuns to make things easier. The lack of auto-attack theoretically makes every decision count, or at least you're accountable for dying from button mashing more!
At early levels, elite mobs feel elite and you might need a medpack to get through some fights before you gain a companion, combat that's a bit more taxing is not a bad thing in my opinion though. One thing I enjoyed very much was using a knockback ability to push an enemy off a high ledge, resulting in their death (although I wasn't able to loot the body of course)
Companion
As you near the end of your starting zone you will obtain your first companion. As well as helping out in combat this companion can be involved in crafting, and has one more nifty feature. you can send your companion away, for about a minute, and they will sell all of the junk items in your inventory, saving you a trip to the closest vendor to empty your bags.
Advanced Classes
When you reach level 10, you make the choice of speciality for your character. this would typically involve you choosing the template (tank, melee DPS, ranged DPS, healer) for your character, and once you've chosen, you can't change to the alternative class. there is some room for manoeuvre with the talent trees, which can be reset. I'm not very far into the trees so far so can't comment to much on them. They look similar to talent trees from other MMOs though.
Crafting
After finishing off the remaining quests on the starter world, my next mission compels me to take a shuttle to another planet. This involves a stopover at the Imperial Fleet. The space station that you are taken to looks fantastic. The music there is a totally different animal to the very serious music of the Sith starting zone. Crafting vendors are found here. you can learn one crafting skill (a production skill that allows you to make items) and two gathering/mission skills which allow you to obtain materials for crafting. You can send your companion on these gathering or mission exercises and can then craft items with the materials that they return. You can then 'reverse engineer' the items that you make for the chance to get materials returned and sometimes get upgraded recipes.
Innovation
There are more than a few ideas that SWTOR has borrowed from other MMOs, but there are some features that I'd not encountered in an MMORPG before. One of the more interesting is one of the measures that Bioware has put in to stop overcrowding. There can be multiple instances of the same zone on each server. Yesterday when I was playing there were 3 instances of Korriban. The plus side of this is that it keeps a zone from overcrowding too much, a downside is that I needed to be in the same instance of the zone as another player to send them a guild invite. All of the instances share the same global chat channel though, so you're not missing out on any general chat whining or trolling. I'm told Age of Conan employed a similar system, but I've not encoutnered this yet.
When mobs drop loot, rather than sparkling bodies indicating dropped loot, there's a vertical beam of light, which varies in colour, depending on what kind of loot (generic loot, uncommon gear, quest items), which makes finding loot more straightforward. Bioware have also included the ability to loot multiple mobs at the same time a la Rift.
Overall
If the game continues to impress me at the rate it has in the first couple of evenings of play, it may become a case of 'World of What?'. A lot may depend on the endgame. The quality of storytelling in Bioware games is something that we often take for granted. That level of narrative hasn’t' been seen before in a MMORPG and the difference is really apparent. Yes, the game has a huge budget, but it really shows. It's the most polished MMORPG that I've seen at launch, and I was very impressed with Rift earlier this year.
The one word that I'd use to describe the game would be 'slick'. It's very smooth for a game at launch, and even for that matter without the 'at launch' caveat. It will have something to prove in delivering enough endgame content, and I'll take a look at this again when I hit max level. To paraphrase the films, it is impressive, most impressive, but not a Jedi yet!
It will be interesting to see how Bioware interact with the game community in the face of dissent from the fan base, or the vocal minority of the fan base at least, and whether the sense of entitlement that seems to pervade WoW will evolve in SWTOR.
I sincerely hope that it doesn't.
Forum
