So I started yet another alt since it’s still practically impossible to get any group going at 50.  I already have a 50 Sith Inquisitor (mage or healer) and a Bounty Hunter (mid-range tank).  I decided to try an Imperial Agent – you know, the suits running the starships?  They have two advanced classes, Sniper (long range DPS) and Operative (mid range DPS or Heals).

First, the play style.  You have a limited energy bar, it regens automatically but at different rates if you have less than 60%.  More = faster.  Bounty Hunter is the same.  This makes it so spamming skills does not work. Which, technically, would make you a horrible emergency healer compared to an Inquisitor.  Anyways, you start off with ranged attacks and 1 melee attack.  Your biggest move requires you to be crouched.  Cool I’m thinking.  I hit 10, take Operative and all of a sudden, I no longer have any worthwhile ranged moves.  I’ve turned into a Rogue, having to be behind the target.  Since most combat is against 3 players, sure does make it hard to live through it!  By far the hardest character to play and survive with.

Story next.  The class quest is probably the best so far.  You actually feel involved as a spy and it makes sense.  Either they patched some stuff out or I wasn’t high enough level but I missed a good half-dozen quests on my way to 16.  I have played a  solid dozen characters to 25 (though most inquisitors during the beta) so it’s weird not having those around.  I’m about 2 levels under where I should be and that’s concerning.  My Bounty Hunter wasn’t 50 when she finished her last quest and I was resting in cantinas for extra experience every log out.

Companion now.  The first one – and the first one for each class is the one you should use forever – is a ranged tank.  A piss-poor ranged tank.  Wears light armor and has no extra shielding, so if I end up against anything tougher than 3 normals, she’s dead.  With other classes, taking an elite was hard but 90% doable.  Now I die about 50% of the time because the tank simply cannot tank.  Plus the character looks cool but has a horribad story.

Cool tidbit, SWTOR emailed me when my character hit 10.  I didn’t get that for the other classes so maybe this one needs explaining to players?  I do know that the only people playing IA are in PvP and that you’d be lucky to find one sniper in 100 players.  A pure class (especially DPS) is dead in 2012.  WoW’s dual classes killed them (Pandas have 3 classes) and Rift’s ability to have 2-3 roles and 5 builds at any given time has changed the landscape of MMOs.

Anyways, it’s an interesting class where the story is better than the playstyle.  A lot better.  Which is pretty much the polar opposite of the Bounty Hunter.  Wonder which one people will want to play at 50 when the story is over?

Here’s an interesting site TORStatus.  I play on Sith Meditation Sphere.

The numbers are basically a scale of 1-5 based on BioWare’s description of server population – Light to Full.  My server is usually Standard with a few spots of Light.  When I started it was full a lot of time time and heavy the rest.  I’m not sure if BW changed the numbers behind the words, perhaps that’s it.  The metrics show that there’s a 5-10% drop in clients since last week and I think that number will increase next week due to subs coming up.

Anyhow, I was on last night in prime time and there were less than 130 people on the Fleet.  It took me a half hour to get a group and it wasn’t a hard mode.  Then it took me 10 minutes to get to the dungeon.  I was on the fleet so I had to Leave Fleet -> Enter Ship Zone -> Enter Ship & Fly to Ilum -> Zone into dock -> Zone into Orbital Station -> Zone into Ilum & run to instance -> Zone into instance.  Each arrow is a loading screen.  Let’s compare to WoW.  I want to group, I press the LFG group and I’m ported to the dungeon.  One loading screen.  In Rift, I press the tool, I’m ported to the dungeon.  In either of them if I didn’t use the tool I would fly (mount or flighpoint) to the dungeon and zone in.

All in, it took nearly an hour from the time I logged on til the time I killed the first bad guy in the zone.  That’s a tad too much.

The Old Republic is out and naturally, I’ve been able to get some time in.  Two guides are up too.  The Sith Sorcerer Guide and the General Strat Guide.  They pay for the game and the monthly sub, which is nice.

I’m playing on the Imperial side, on Sith Meditation Sphere.  Called Asmiroth, naturally.I’m quite ahead of the leveling curve as the planets indicate how many people are playing with you.  Lower planets have 150-200 players while the ones I’m on have 10 or so.  I’ve unlocked my Legacy as well, which gives all your characters the same last name.  You unlock it after Chapter 1, which is around level 32.

The game has improved by leaps and bound from the beta stage.  It’s actually quite surprising how much they improved gameplay in a short period of time.  I was really worried about crafting and mods and they pulled an 11th hour switcheroo which works out pretty well.  From level 10 on up, you can get orange colored gear, which is 100% modifiable.  If you like the look, you can mod it all the way to level 50 and keep the same look.  I’ve had the same helmet for 20 levels now.  This works for all armor but does not work for weapons.  Weapons have a DPS component that is separate from the mods and even for an Inquisitor/Sage, where DPS doesn’t matter, it has Force Power which doesn’t come from mods.  So while you can upgrade your weapon with mods for 5 or so levels, you will eventually be replacing it.

Heroic quests, for 2 or 4 people, are interesting but not required to level.  Getting 2 people together is simple enough, on a populated planet.  Getting 4, especially after level 25 or so where roles are important, is next to impossible.  No one purposefully levels as a healer, so when you need one, it stinks.  Plus, everyone has piles of area effect attacks, making it a pain for a tank to do their job properly, especially if they are geared for DPS instead.

Also, it’s clear that level 35+ content wasn’t tested enough.  There are less things to do and way more bugs.  Sort of like Age of Conan.  Balance is off as well, where some enemy placements are next to impossible to get through unless you get lucky.   Here’s an example.  At level 35 there was a Heroic-2 quest I tried to solo.  Stuns and shields and planning and I was able to complete it without dying.  A level 40, with the same companion and talents, couldn’t get past the first group.  Things are balanced around the harder difficulty by that point.  I do know that Hard Flashpoints were largely broken as were all operations at the last beta.  We’ll see how that goes when I get there.

Leveling pace is decent.  If you skip all the story (spacebar) you can rush to 50 in about 80 hours.  Otherwise, it’s about 1.5-2 hours per level, after level 20 and fairly steady from that point.  There are still some balancing issues to work out (Heroics are not worth the time/experience) but it feels a good pace.

The story aspect is pretty strong.  It really plays like a single player BioWare game.  I won’t spoil anything but the story is quite a bit more solid than anything Lucas has written and you do feel invested in your character.  My questions revolve around what happens after you crush the Republic on a planet.  If you return, are they still there, story-wise?

Fun game, should last a couple months for me.

More info from the beta.

Last weekend was the last massive stress test for beta.  There were about 50 servers, filled to the brim.  Many disconnects, corrupt characters, failed connections.  Exactly what a beta is supposed to find but still concerning at this point in the game.  A high level server was supposed to be launched on the 16th, it finally did on the 25th with no notice.  90% of the people can’t access it.  The game is getting another big patch today, what I expect to be the final one since early access starts in 2 weeks.

I’ll put more thoughts up later but for now a quick rundown of the various systems.

Crafting

A tad more complicated than what we see in other games due to the ability to deconstruct items and learn better version.  You have collection skills and mission skills which also collect items but for the rarer recipes.  And one crafting skill per player.  As simple as the system is, it’s inherently broken in that none of the items are currently upgrades to anyone playing the game up until the mid 30s and then stop being useful at final levels.  One particular skill, Slicing, allows you to pull cash out of boxes in the wild – with zero other use.  It’s essentially an ATM skill – so a requirement if you want to be rich.

Combat

If not for the fact that they send 3-4 enemies against you at once, this would be the same as any other game.  The downside to this is that there are only 2 types of enemies throughout the entire game – humanoids and droids.  They look the same at level 1 as they do at level 50, so it’s insanely boring after you’ve killed a few thousand (by level 15, easily).   The feel is the same as all other games, click a button, watch something happen, click another button.  Also, there is a fair amount of skill bloat, where by level 30 you’ll have 2 bars (at least) full of abilities.  That’s crazy.

Class Balance

Melee classes are insanely gimped.  Since there are always 3 enemies to fight, you need to move between them while the ranged folk just stand there.  Really bad for melee tanks.  So out of 8 possible advanced classes, 3 are an a huge disadvantage. Since TOR is keeping the holy trinity (tank, healer, dps) and keeping group sizes at 4, there is a massive lack of healers in the game.  Theoretically, there should be enough but healers don’t level as fast as tanks, let alone DPS, so good luck finding one.  Classes that fill roles are fairly well balanced between themselves but time will tell which are better, especially in longer lasting fights where Force users are at a disadvantage.

Story

This part is well done.  There are a lot of options, though rarely do they have any impact other than light or dark side points.  Still, it’s fun to see what your actions have as consequences.  Light/Dark side only impact appearance, which is unfortunate.  From 1-20 you’ll have a lot of fun with your class quests.  Past that point, those quests are rare as heck.  If you play another character on the same faction, expect to replay a good 95% of the content and story.

Companions

At first they were horribly broken, now it’s only a little broken.  Tanks no longer have armor so lose their value in the 30s and healers pick up the pace.  Having to equip no only yourself but your companion means that you can’t easily swap companions – they will be heavily undergeared.  It’s a very odd thought. You can give them gifts to get small quests but all of them that I’ve see so far as just clicking text boxes.

Interface

Looks and feels Star Wars.  Clean too.  You can’t modify anything, which is VERY odd and some of the basic UI items such as macros, assists, target of target and mouseovers do not exist.  This currently makes healing about 10x as hard as it should be since DPS can’t help the tank and you need to manually click people to heal – so no moving while healing.   No looking for group feature or dual spec either – the latter of which is again making finding healers a pain.

Overall

If you’ve played a themepark MMO before (WoW, Rift, LOTRO, DDO, EQ, etc..) and are happy with what’s there, stay there.  If the story is old, then moving over could work.  If you dislike the mechanics of your themepark, you will be even more disappointed here.  If you’re looking for depth or polish, come back in 6 months.  Many of the systems that have been refined in the past have been reverted to horrible states or are simply broken.  With next to no developer input on the forums, it doesn’t help.

If you’re somewhat casual or new to the MMO sphere, then there’s stuff to see here and you should have fun for a while.

The game will sell piles of boxes and have a subscriber drop of 50% or more after 6 months.  I do expect it to be profitable but nowhere near what EA and BioWare are hoping for.