More on SWTOR

With the extra day BioWare gave us so they could work out more bugs, I was able to explore more of the game, my Smuggler/Gunfighter, recovered her Ship and was able to participate in the space battles, now at her level, there are only 3 available during beta, once you escort an escaping shuttle, the second take you on an assault against a space station, and the last pits you against a souped up fighter, with a heavy escort, designed to make use of your missiles. Now, space combat is pretty scripted at this juncture, you follow a plotted course, with the ability to move enough to target and avoid debris. These mission seem very noobish, and are quite easy, though the XP was nice, got almost an entire level redoing them.

I reached Taris, the site where some of Knights of the Old Republic takes place, rakghouls are everywhere, and there are lots of missions, so while this is a massive theme park, it's gorgeous and pretty fun. Do I want it? Yes....Will I pay to play it for an extended length of time? That remains to be seen...

I need more than a massive railroad with 8 trains, that can take 16 tracks...once you do a class once, I don't see repeatability. I want more mini-games, like Sabaac, and Swoop races. I want more sand box to play in. I want more races to play, the game is currently very human-o-centric, and while there are some alien races, they all look relatively human, even though there are lots of the other alien races present as NPCs. I guess that they want to keep the clothing modeling simple for now...

Let's hope BioWare makes lots of room for expansions, otherwise this could be a real short trip....

Star Wars The Old Republic Online

So, the NDA has been lifted.

I can talk about it now, Old Republic has always been one of my favorite eras for Star Wars gaming. So this game definitely has appeal for me. I had to recreate my Smuggler, since my other one got caught in an old instance during the last beta. So I haven't gotten very far. Just stepping foot onto Coruscant, and I must say, BioWare did a good job, making it look like the Coruscant from KotOR!!

Game play is fairly simple, but not too simple. Jedi Knights leaping into battle, Sith Inquisitors blasting opponents with Force Lightning and Smugglers blasting opponents from cover. The game feels like Star Wars, it feels like Knights of the Old Republic (One of my favorite PC Games). It also has a single player feel to it. While I haven't gotten a ship yet, due to the level of the missions, I feel the shipboard life will be VERY similar to KotOR.

This looks to be a great game once it's released, though without being able to play the end game, I'm not sure how it will fare in the long run.