New SWTOR Previews and Updates

[Ragnarok]

Last year, I was lucky enough to play BioWare's upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Years in the making, and with probably another year more, my hour-long turn as the Sith Inquisitor, a role that sent me running about the planet of Korriban killing giant scorpions and talking to snotty British people, was an enjoyable play session. However, an hour with the game wasn't much to really dive in, so it was with great anticipation that LucasArts, EA, and BioWare invited me back for a long, six hour session with the game.


I and fellow journalists were split between the Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular on their origin planet of Tython. It's a lush green forested planet with some of the oldest Jedi ruins in the galaxy, making it the perfect place for the Jedi to set themselves up. I was lined up with a brand new Jedi Consular, a character treated as a particularly powerful new member of the Jedi Order. Technically a padawon, I wasn't even given a lightsaber. Instead equipped with a crappy training sword (which the farthest I ever upgraded beyond was a vibrosword, with lightsabers made by the player at a later level), I set out to perform the origin world tasks and make myself familiar with The Old Republic.


These early tasks are typical origin world stuff, and even after six hours, I wasn't even close to unlocking all of the Consular's potential, much less delve into its advance classes, the Jedi Sage and Jedi Shadow. All the same, by the time I was level 8, my Consular was well on his way toward telekinetically flinging rocks and performing powerful stat boosts. Unlike the Knight, the Consular focuses much more on what he can do with the Force, not what the Force can do with him. While a Knight will flip out and wail away at enemy characters with their lightsaber attacks, a Consular is much better at flinging rocks, Force pushing, AoE attacks, and stat buffs. Personally, I found the Consular's play style to be very rewarding, although who can tell how they will play compared to the more ranged-focused classes.

Oddly, one interesting take is how every character has their own healing abilities, which can be used indefinitely, such as my Consular's meditate ability. Additionally, every character has a revive ability to instantly bring back their allies. Coupled with the speeders taking players across the map, as well as a quick travel ability with a thirty minute cooldown, players will be able to get back into action pretty quickly should they die.


Once I got a hand of my character, it became time to complete some tasks. Like any other MMO, missions tend to follow traditional paths: go to this place, kill these things, collect these things, talk to these people, etc. The Old Republic doesn't necessarily break this mold, but it does offer interesting takes on these missions. Almost every mission is integrated into the story, and most offer opportunities for conversations with characters. They often end in either positive or snarky commentary from your character, influencing the light/dark dichotomy.

Many of the early missions for my Consular required me to head out and deal with the problematic Flesh Eaters, pink bulky things that have a taste for padawons. My Master Yuon Parr would see that I performed up to my expectations. Additionally, I would be tasked with finding ancient holograms of the original Jedi founders and even collect the hilt of the very first lightsaber. That alone was enthralling, but assisting a nearby colony of pilgrim Twi'leks with Flesh Eater and disease problems, becoming integrated into their religious culture, assisting new padawans, proved to be a whole lot more interesting. My favorite mission required me to snoop on some romantically-inclined padawons. Lie for them, and they'll pass on a rare lightsaber crystal, as well as send you down the path of the dark side. Rat them out, and besides pissing them off, you'll be rewarded with a boost to the light side of goodie-twoshoes. An easy decision to make, I exploited it for all that it was worth, gaining a crystal, lying to a Jedi, and generally acting like a jerk. It felt great, and many of the missions can be performed like this. For an origin world, Tython is surprisingly large, and the Bioware reps were proud to say that these origin worlds are nowhere near as large as later planets.




By the time I finished with my Consular, I hadn't made much of a dent in his light/dark split. While I was a member of a class known for being paragons of virtue, taking my Consular down the dark path led to some interesting conversations. Talking down to others, disregarding their skills, and generally acting like the greatest thing on Tython, being a giant douchebag is great. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to see how far this approach could go, but knowing BioWare, I'm sure I could have pushed my Consular to the border of the Dark Side.

Like any other MMO, the universe opens up once players leave their starting planet behind. Once most of those early tasks are completed, and players have leveled up a good amount, they can jump on a ship to go to the next area. For those on the light side, this means a trip to Coruscant, where things quickly unravel with an attack upon the traveling vessel, but provides the first opportunity for multiplayer instances. Getting all players to join in is a little buggy at this point, but it's something being worked on ardently by the team. Thankfully, once everyone is together and an instance has started, traditional MMO gameplay takes over, with classes like the Consular providing support and mid-range attacks, while the Jedi Knight tanks, and other classes step up other fairly traditional roles.



The game does branch off from other MMOs in a couple of ways. First of all, the companion characters seem to be more than just pets. There are at least five unique companions to each class, and they will fight alongside players with basic commands dictating how they act. The Consular class, for example, has a large lizard man equivalent to a scaly wookie, but other companions ranged from other humans to R2-D2-esque droid.

Remember, companions are very important to the game. Besides fighting alongside your character, they'll do other menial tasks such as collecting resources, forging items, or going out on diplomatic missions. Even the ones not currently being used on a planet will be based on the player's ship, performing passive duties while the player works on the ground. It's a pretty fantastic way of dealing with many of the classical MMO elements without becoming a drag on the action.



But the companion element of the game is not the only thing unique with The Old Republic. The most fascinating way the game approaches multiplayer has to be the way conversations are had. It plays much like a conversation in Mass Effect, but with numerous people. An NPC will chat away, and every player makes a response. The game applies a random number to each character, and the one with the highest number gets to make the response. I liked to play my Consular like a condescending jerk, and while my fellow journalists stuck to the “straight and narrow,” my hero would use every opportunity to lay down some disdain. With four different voices offering commentary in a conversation, it creates some of the most realistic dialogue I've seen in a game...ever. People can dissent and disagree, while others may be very compliant, and you'll start to become attached to other player characters and their personality quirks players give them. This “group discussion” element is oddly my favorite thing about the game.

PvP wasn't something we were able to play, but there was discussion on how this will play out. Battles will take place in “warzones” with up to 8v8 set-ups, and instead of traditional PvP elements, players will be tasked with attacking or defending points on a map, or in the case of the Alderaan Warzone orient giant guns to take out enemy ships. With experience earned for PvP, as well as tokens earned that can be spent on PvP consumables and equipable items, players can focus solely on PvP should they wish.

As far as planets go, outside of Coruscant and Tython, Bioware was keen on showing off some of the in-game screenshots for future planets players will visit. Planets like Alderaan and Tatooine will provide mostly familiar sights for players accustomed to Star Wars, but they've got wholly different rulers and factions running these planets at this time, so don't expect them to be boring. Even more exciting are areas taking place inside a night club, a flashy and somewhat original place for raids, as well as a derelict world where massive ship ruins dwarf players as they wander about. Clearly, Bioware and co. has spent a long time making sure there are lots to explore in this game. Additionally, each of these worlds are promised to be much larger than the origin planets like Tython, itself a fairly substantial place to explore.




These planets are also incredibly good looking. Even on Tython, different segments of the planet range from the Jedi Temple to the Pilgrim's camp, from the Jedi ruins to the Flesh Eater's region, yet all of them are clearly areas of Tython. Visually, it's one of the most impressive MMOs set for release, with very little in boring stretches of land made up of bland textures. Each area feels like an area, and it's good to see the level design is being paid as much attention as anywhere else. The voice work is probably one area that outshines this all, with every line of dialogue performed by voice actors. Not only that, the lip synch and facial animations are almost as good as BioWare's best console titles, and considering they have the equivalent of eight plot lines (one for each class), it's easy to be impressed with what BioWare has already done.



Coming away from The Old Republic, I'm more than optimistic. It's an incredibly polished game, and even more than that, it's plainly fun. The stories already show a lot of dynamism and charm, and the complexity of the game is already visible. It's a little hard to tell if the combat is going to compete with other successful MMOs, it looks like it does just fine for this early game stuff. End game is impossible to gauge, but it's obvious that BioWare is looking to invest a lot of time in this area of the game, as well as the PvP. Once they make the cooperative elements of the game less buggy, they'll have a title that is already leaps and bounds better than many MMOs on the market, and if they apply the same amount of polish to all areas of the game that they applied to these origin worlds, BioWare, LucasArts, and EA may have the next big MMO on the marketplace.

Courtesy ofmmorpg.com

[Ragnarok]

Last month, Massively was invited to LucasArts for a whole day's experience with BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic. One of the perks of living on the West Coast is that I get to attend all these awesome in-depth Silicon Valley events and really expand on Massively's sessions at various conventions!

For all my enthusiasm, I have to admit I approached this hands-on with no small amount of trepidation. I'm a huge Star Wars fan (I still play Star Wars Galaxies!), but I fell out of "expert" range on the saga a decade ago. Like many of you readers, I've been wary of the hype and even warier of delusions of grandeur on the part of game companies trying to do justice to the IP. I was really afraid that it wouldn't be as good as I'd hoped and that I'd walk away disappointed.

And given the parts I saw, SWTOR's not as good as I'd hoped. It's better.
SWTOR Jedi Immersion Day

Episode I: A first step into a larger world

The first thing I tried to do was throw myself off a cliff.

My demo station was prepped with a premade (sorry, no peek at character creation) Human Jedi Knight character -- well, a Padawan, anyway. He was cute, too! The very first NPC I met informed me that I was on Tython, one of the Jedi Knights' secret training worlds, and that Very Bad Things were happening. I would surely be tested. Right away, I was hit with BioWare's famous dialogue wheel. Ask questions? Commit to heroism? Be a jerk to the only person in the universe I know? The choice was mine. So I decided to throw myself off a cliff.

Of course it didn't work, because the zone designers anticipated my mischief. Instead, I made my way down from platform to platform, randomly clicking on everyone and marveling at how pretty and unique everything looked. The graphics aren't ultra-realistic; they have that chunky-smooth stylized-but-not-too-cartoony BioWare charm that's hard to describe. It's beautiful, and Tython's scenery impressed me at almost every turn.

This was the weakest part of my whole playthrough -- the first 10 minutes. Part of that was because I was a newbie, but part was the way it was laid out -- I felt as if I were stumbling around trying to figure out which NPCs had dialogue for me and which didn't, as it wasn't really obvious. Eventually I broke free of the warren of platforms and hit the questing areas. Relief! I felt back in my element. The early quests were all fairly standard MMO fare, which was just fine with me, especially given the top-notch quest-pointers (standard only in the newest games). I killed my critters, rescued hapless padawans, looted fallen enemies, equipped the good loot and brought the junk back to the vendor NPCs. Occasionally an NPC would contact me remotely and save me the run; I could also hop a speederbike for some on-rails real-time swift-travel (very handy when I needed to visit the trainer NPC, who highlighted on my minimap when he had new skills for me). When I got lost, an NPC terminal could direct me to my destination, or I could thumb through the Codex, a Mass Effect-style database automagically compiled as you adventure. It's comfortable and familiar newbie gameplay nestled in a modernized, intuitive, KOTOR-flavored UI that's easy enough on the eyes that my first urge wasn't to mod it out of existence.

Episode II: Act on instinct

For the people worried that SWTOR is going to be all talking and no fighting, stop worrying. Combat itself was very satisfying. The Jedi Knight is very much a melee class not unlike warrior classes I've played in other games (like WoW or Rift). Smash, slice, spin -- and I am in love with Force-Leap! My Knight even had a focus bar reminiscent of the WoW Warrior's Rage mechanic. I didn't get a lightsaber right off (there's a quest to make one upon leaving Tython and becoming a full Jedi Knight); instead, I wielded a series of melee weapons that sparkled with electricity. The combat sound effects are already fantastic -- very Star Wars. Jumping off of medium heights resulted in my rolling gracefully to my feet. A skill called Introspection allowed me to rest in between fights, replacing a whole tier of regenerative consumables and their predecessors "meditating into a book" and "standing around waiting for your health to come back." Unlike the similar Rest power in City of Heroes, Introspection has no timer, although you must be out of combat to use it and you simply interrupt it when you're healed. Everyone gets a resurrection skill too! And we needed it. Much later, when I was grouped with other players, I found I died a lot. I'd like to blame it on the Sentinel who was meant to be healing me, but we were all new to the game. Presumably, the Knight will toughen up later in the game when he can specialize as a tank.

Overall, it was nice to get to play a Jedi and not feel guilty about it like I would in Star Wars Galaxies. Journeying to Tython's Jedi temple was a similarly iconic treat -- I ran through some Jedi combat trials, met Satele Shan in person, sat in on a council meeting, and was eventually chosen to be the padawan of a grizzled old proponent of the Living Force. All throughout, the music set the tone. Whichever composer tackled Tython, bravo to you sir. On walking into the council hall, I was greeted with a beautiful reblend of John Williams' Yoda theme, not a blend in the unfortunate Shadows of the Empire soundtrack sense, but rather in a "John Williams could have written this" sense. Up until that point I was a little tense about the experience, because the KOTOR era isn't my favorite and it was feeling a bit too Mass Effect to me. The familiar music relaxed me. OK, I thought. This really is Star Wars.

Daniel Erickson insisted that Tython was dense -- and that it was small compared to later non-origin worlds -- but it looked pretty big to me, and several of the areas seemed much larger than necessary. Perhaps I'm trained to expect fairly small, concentrated quest hubs, so a large agricultural/religious village like Kalikori, which had only a few quests (all completable in the same run), seemed a bit weird. Then again, I was relieved I didn't have to linger too long in any one spot. BioWare kept me there just long enough before moving me on. Consequently, I always felt like I was moving forward, rather than like I was doing busywork to pad out my grind at each hub.

Episode III: What kind of talk is that?

And for the people worried that SWTOR is going to be a Star Wars-themed World of Warcraft, you can rest easy too. The dialogue system guarantees that returning to your quest-giver isn't just a mad dash of clicks. Your quest choices actually matter. The NPCs talk to you, and you're going to want to talk back. I never once had the urge to skip the quest text (in fact, I was terrified I'd miss something if I looked away!), and while sometimes I felt as though I were performing menial tasks in between watching a really awesome movie, I didn't care, because it was a really awesome movie (and the menial tasks were amusing too).

When players think of voiceover dialogue, they inevitably think of how it has gone so wrong in past games -- including past BioWare games. But in SWTOR, I knew by the third dialogue session that whatever BioWare spent on this stuff... it was all worth it. The characters are utterly vivid and beautiful, even the "ugly" ones like the requisite tubby Twi'lek dude. They're magnetic. Their eyes in particular just draw you right in. The characters are animated and feel natural; their faces are believably expressive and unique, and the sample I saw drew from both genders and several ethnic groups. The characters don't just stand there woodenly bossing you around -- they interact with you, using their own colorful accents (or translated text, in the case of aliens who didn't speak Basic or droids like T7-01, whose adorable mathematical-equation speech delighted me once I'd quested far enough to acquire him).

The dialogue can be quite funny. More than once, I was given the opportunity to use "You talk stupid" or "You're ugly" as Dark Side responses. At one point, after I'd undertaken a quest to find a missing man, his child asked me, "Where's my father?" to which I was permitted to respond, "In my bag." Gruesome, but I still laughed and wished I hadn't decided to go for Light Side points. If you've played the earlier KOTOR and Mass Effect games, Light Side and Dark Side points are self-explanatory. A red or blue overlay blinks across your UI as you make certain choices, and presumably those choices will have an impact on NPC responses and quests available to you.

One particular quest really impressed me because I was able to change my decision midway through. A pair of Jedi Masters tasked me with determining whether or not their apprentices were involved in an illicit affair. When I confronted the Padawans, I decided to allow them to bribe me to keep my mouth shut about their romance. (I broke character, but I wanted to see what would happen.) The Masters didn't seem to believe me, but they took me at my word. Later when I returned to collect my bribe (a rare lightsaber crystal), I got the option to refuse to accept it, which earned me the loving couple's loyalty. I wish I'd had time to finish the area, because I'd love to see how that turns out (and whether I'd have gotten to use that crystal in my saber). Something tells me it doesn't end happily, except for me as a player. Can you imagine how a quest like that would go in any other game? Click click click auto-complete click next quest. But in SWTOR, I was riveted.

Episode IV: He's the brains, sweetheart

If I was impressed at my experience with solo dialogue, I was blown away by group dialogue. The BioWare folks boosted our characters to level 10 and placed us in groups of four for the Tython-to-Coruscant transition quest. I should say that this part of the game seemed a bit buggy, so much that the team almost didn't let us play it. As Daniel Erickson put it, this area was really a "giant bug with some gameplay elements attached to it." I'm so glad BioWare let us have a go at it, because bugs or not, group dialogue is one of the coolest things I have ever seen in an MMO.

We crowded around the first trigger NPC; once everyone had engaged, we were off and running in a synchronized conversation between her and the group. Your mates don't all respond to the NPC or the event at once; every group member gets to choose his own response, then the game performs a silent roll to determine whose answer is actually used. That part is widely known. But watching it unfold in front of me... that's something else. The interaction is shot like a movie. It's believably cinematic; the camera swings around to focus on whoever's talking, and there's considerable potential to create some tense and amazing scenes (especially when the characters disagree about the correct course of action). I've never really felt like I've been participating in a collaborative movie with my friends before -- PnP and text-based roleplaying just doesn't compare.

I should note here that it is roleplaying on rails. I've got guildmates who would spend their every waking moment free-form roleplaying in a cantina somewhere or playing a true PnP game with a dedicated GM. They're going to see through this three-choice dialogue wheel and realize that they're being limited by what the designers have allowed. It will stifle them, but I don't see a way around it. For all the fun that can be had roleplaying without rules -- by the seat of my pants! -- that kind of play can be pretty exhausting, and generally it's nine parts junk to one part awesome. I'm willing to give up just a bit of my creativity for a professional story that never lets up. I still get to make meaningful choices based on what my character would do, and I'm sure I can find a seedy cantina on Nar Shaddaa stuffed full of hardcore RPers when I just have to play my way. It's worth it when I know that I can return to the main storyline at any time and continue roleplaying rather than take a break from it. In most games, I'd be giving up roleplay experiences for just more of the same combat or one-dimensional questing. Here, I'm seamlessly swapping one form of roleplay for another. BioWare is integrating it right into the core gameplay mechanics and rewarding the roleplayer for doing it. This is what we've been asking for all along!

Episode V: Clear your mind of questions

BioWare's Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid remarked that he could tell me SWTOR wasn't KOTOR 3 but rather KOTOR 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, and he could hold up his hands a foot apart to show how long SWTOR's story is when printed out. Unfortunately, he lamented, no one would believe him. It's one of those things you have to see for yourself. Too many players in this genre have been lied to. They assume such wild claims are merely propaganda.

In general, I don't think that's true of SWTOR. The team obviously has a long way to go to color in the lines of the structure it's laid out (and consequently, I think the game is a lot further away than most of us imagined), but the foundation is in place for this to be a revolutionary MMO -- note that I said MMO, not game. I think Blizzard and BioWare have a lot in common on this front. What Blizzard did so brilliantly with World of Warcraft was replace the "grind mobs to level" trope with something from the single-player RPG genre: quests. BioWare is taking that a step further and replacing the "silent questing" model with a truly interactive quest system, the kind popularized by (and now expected in) modern single-player games. That doesn't mean SWTOR is a single-player game that just happens to be online (especially given how much cooler quest dialogue is alongside your mates), but rather that SWTOR is employing beloved single-player mechanics to fill gaping holes in MMORPGs, holes that formed naturally when the very first designers tried stuffing thousands of people into a MUD/RPG hybrid. It wasn't truly possible to create an amazing MMORPG back then... but SWTOR is one giant step closer.

Courtesy of massively.com

[Ragnarok]

TOROCAST

Brandon's journey from Tython to Coruscant

As many of you have already figured out, our playtime with the game was with either the Consular or the Knight on their journey through Tython. Well our own Brandon Miletta made it further than any other player did that day, he made it all the way to Republic center of Coruscant. Join him and read his amazing journey!

Interview with Daniel Erickson

Many of you saw parts of this interview a month ago when we talked with Daniel a bit about crafting and some other details. Well with the embargo lifted we can show you now what we couldn't before!

Don't feel like reading? Well then listen!

We wouldn't be TOROcast without a podcast, right? Samm and I sat down to rack Brandon's brains about everything he saw that day. Tune in to this special report and get all of the days details, right to your ears.

What you will fight!

Brandon took some amazingly detailed notes and part of those included a listing of the enemies he encountered. Check out the details on some of the enemies you can expect to encounter on Tython!


Min/Maxxers, start salivating
In standard "musco" fashion, I forced Brandon to take every note he could on the stats of his character during the progression of the day. I put my min/maxxer hat on and went to work. I was able to combine the information he gave me, along with a little math to give you what might be the most in depth stat analysis we have yet seen for SWTOR.

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Eurogamer Article

We get to play through most of the starter area for Jedi characters – of both the Knight and Consular classes – on the planet of Tython. We also try a "Flashpoint", which in some ways is The Old Republic's equivalent of a dungeon; an intense, scaling multiplayer experience that blends heavy combat with narrative drama.

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Darth Hater
on November 10th we were lucky enough to visit the LucasArts campus for a special Jedi Immersion Day. After being excluded from the entire 2010 convention season, it was time for the Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular to show what they had to offer. During this event we received a great deal of information on the Crew Skill system and the Alderaan Warzone, but the real fun came from over six hours of hands on time with the two classes. Be sure to check out all of our extensive coverage of this event!

DH Jedi Immersion Day Content:

General Information Learned
Jedi Knight Impressions
Jedi Consular Impressions
Daniel Erickson Interview
Gabe Amatangelo Interview
*new*Jedi Immersion Day Live Q&A Audio
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IGN.com

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Gamespot Hands-on preview

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Videogamer.com

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G4

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mmorpg.com
Daniel-Erickson-Interview
PVP
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NowGamer interview

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TenTonHammer
Star Wars: The Old Republic – Crew Skills and Jedi Classes Q&A with Daniel Erickson

*new*The Jedi Homeworld Revealed - A Star Wars: The Old Republic Preview

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GamesRadar

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1up.com

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*new*Curse.com

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*new*Gamespy

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*new*Machinima Realm

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For those of you that can read Foreign languages:

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/articles/0001/00013766-star-wars-the-old-republic-preview.htm -French

http://www.buffed.de/Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic-PC-218697/News/Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic-Preview-auf-das-Jedi-Startgebiet-und-Details-zum-Crafting-804106/ -German

http://multiplayer.it/articoli/83048-star-wars-the-old-republic-training-day.html -Italian


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(reserved for more updates)

[NoCry]

nice one ragnarok.

[Ragnarok]

*UPDATED WITH GAMESRADAR AND 1UP.COM*

[Tbone]

Thanks for all of this! Lots of information here!

[Ragnarok]

It was my pleasure no need to thank me. For those that did your welcome.

*UPDATED WITH CURSE ARTICLE*

[Tbone]

I'm really optimistic after reading all of these impressions. Up until now, most articles from those who had gotten to play it was kind of lackluster. They basically said "there's a lot that's being promised, but I just don't see any of it yet".

These same people, after spending an extended amount of time playing, are coming back surprisingly impressed. They're even saying it was well-polished. If you can imagine most MMOs when they are in early beta stages, I would hardly ever use the term "polished".

It does sound like they still have a long way to go, as apparently once they got off Tython, they started entering "really buggy" territory. Still, that's to be expected. I'm just wondering how reliable Spring 2011 is going to end up being.

Another interesting tidbit I found - I was always suspicious as to why the Jedi Knight and Consular hadn't been available before. For a long time they didn't give out details on those classes, and they've yet to be playable. I thought maybe they were purposely trying to redirect the attention to other classes in order to spread out the interest a bit. It turns out they just weren't satisfied with what they had done with those classes, so they completely redid it. That's another good sign that they refuse to put out anything that isn't up to snuff. The death of most MMOs is in their initial impressions, so it's refreshing that SWTOR will most likely be of the best quality when it is given over to the public.

[Ragnarok]

*NEW UPDATES FROM DH, TENTON, GAMESPY, AND MACHINIMA REALM*

Make sure to watch Machinima Realm  it shows in-game footage.

[Ragnarok]

Added the IGN article that I posted before so it all can be found in one place.