The little things

Instead of working on Landscape Genetics today, I kept playing SWTOR's beta.


My parents would be so proud.


Anyway, I've now leveled the following characters to the following levels:


Trooper 11
Conselor 10
Bounty Hunter 7


I loved the Trooper storyline.  Its got a great twist at the end of it that I can only assume sets up the REST OF THE GAME for the class.  Its great, and I won't ruin it for anyone who wants to play.


The play on the Bounty Hunter was a blast.  Literally.  One of your initial abilities is the classic Fett "wrist rocket".  When you hit a standard enemy, it can blow them over, knock them down, and stun them momentarily.  If you KILL someone with it, their limp body/chassis/bits fly 3 to 5 meters.


IT. IS. GLORIOUS.  The play style is endlessly entertaining.  The story line there is solid, too.  It also has some good twists you'd expect from the typical scum and villiany that inhabits Nal Hutta.


The Counselor play style is good, by comparison I suppose its a little bland compared to the others, but that not saying much, considering how flashy Troopers and Bounty Hunters are.  The big push back ability is fun, but with limited use without a lot of big damage ranged abilities to take advantage of it.  The end of the Tython story line was very satisfying, and the twist that came afterward I actually expected sooner.  


There are a few other points I want to touch on here tonight.


The Legacy system


I actually stumbled on this, and it sounds like its old news.  Your "Legacy" will basically be your character's last name or family/clan/house/whatever identifier.  From what I read, it will be unique, self-chosen, and game wide (Across any and all servers).  The name you choose can be listed as a last name, below your name, as "the xyz legacy", or hidden.  So apparently you CAN choose a last name in the game, and my previous post was wrong.  You have to finish the first story tier.  I'm looking forward to this.  This SHOULD allow an anonymous method for cross server, User-to-user communication, a proxy for what the "RealID system" provided us in WoW.  


The Social hub


This was very well designed.  The social hub for the Republic (and, I assume, Sith) is a large space station.  To speak in terms of WoW, This will be the Stormwind/Ironforge for the Republic.  Initially speaking, its VERY well designed.  The social "hub" is literally just that.  The entire station is laid out as a large wheel, with most of the utility areas (Crew skills, class training, auction house, transit) along the rim, connected in the center by a cantina: literally, a "social hub".  The layout should make it very convenient and accessible.  


Sharding servers


Apparently, all the zones are instanced, or "sharded".  Even within the servers.  This was used by STO to allow all users to play on the same super-server.  I was NOT expecting this.  The good news is this means that zones can be kept to reasonable populations by adding more instances to the zone ad hoc to support the population.  The bad news is this sharding can separate players and friends.  You can still communicate between shards with general chat and whispers, but actually joining your friends' instance requires an entire reload of the zone.  Personally, I have found these loads to be fairly lengthy.  In the long term, I worry that random grouping may be discouraged across shards due to the time involved in the load for the new players.  Time will tell how this plays out.


Group quests and world bosses


I simultaneously loved and loathed the group quests in WoW.  They were a pain in the ass during leveling, but I was surprisingly disappointed to see them go in Cataclysm.  In SWTOR, they called "Heroic" quests, and they seem to provide bonus gear, but haven't yet been required to move the story forward. 


I'm also pleased to see that world bosses have been added.  They're scattered around, and I've found some as early as level 6.  Get a group together, and these can be fun.




Well, I think that's it for now.  I believe we'll be running a flash point tomorrow, we'll see how things go.


-Tris