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[Giolon]

This. People on the official forums are dumber than a sack of bricks and fail reading comprehension.

No, the devs said specifically @ Comic-Con, with further clarification afterwards that you'll be able to change between ACs early on, but that it will get prohibitively expensive, with the latest communication being that it probably won't even be possible after Level 20. That's not talking about just talent tree respecs.

 

[Moaradin]

I think the game will have more than enough content at launch. What really matters is how they decide to take post-release content.

 

[Morn]

I think the game will have more than enough content at launch. What really matters is how they decide to take post-release content.

Four dungeons is far from "more than enough" content.

 

[DrBo42]

It's not SOE's fault that SCEA's patch process for the PS3 is completely incompatible with a MMO. The only reason patches were delayed was because they had to get in line at SCEA and the clueless monkeys working QA there don't realize that MMO patches need to be timely.

To be fair I doubt people working QA there are at all responsible for it. I'd say it's a matter of SCEA policy.

 

[gatti-man]

No, the devs said specifically @ Comic-Con, with further clarification afterwards that you'll be able to change between ACs early on, but that it will get prohibitively expensive, with the latest communication being that it probably won't even be possible after Level 20. That's not talking about just talent tree respecs.

Thats kindof sad. I wish it was atleast possible. Im not in favor of AC rebuilds all the time but it would be nice to have the ability.

Four dungeons is far from "more than enough" content.

Is that total or at end game?

 

[HotHamWater]

Thats kindof sad. I wish it was atleast possible. Im not in favor of AC rebuilds all the time but it would be nice to have the ability.



Is that total or at end game?

Total.

 

[Jomjom]

I was just looking at the CE on Amazon and in the product description it states that with the CE you get a bunch of digital items two of which are the Exclusive Mouse Droid and the Exclusive store. Does that mean all the other items that you get aren't exclusive and you can get them with any version of the game?

I'm not that interested in the Mouse Droid or the store and I have no interest at all in the physical items in the CE, so this would make my decision regarding which version to buy if it is as I interpreted it. Anyone know?

 

[gatti-man]

Total.

That is troubling. But its really 8 since 4 per side correct? That is still about 10 too few per side imo.

 

[HarryDemeanor]

I was just looking at the CE on Amazon and in the product description it states that with the CE you get a bunch of digital items two of which are the Exclusive Mouse Droid and the Exclusive store. Does that mean all the other items that you get aren't exclusive and you can get them with any version of the game?

I'm not that interested in the Mouse Droid or the store and I have no interest at all in the physical items in the CE, so this would make my decision regarding which version to buy if it is as I interpreted it. Anyone know?

If you don't care about the CE perks then the best choice would be the Digital Deluxe Edition off of Origin.

 

[Speculator]

That is troubling. But its really 8 since 4 per side correct? That is still about 10 too few per side imo.

Wait till launch for a final number

 

[Rad-]

Towns are persistent like in GW1. The rest of the world isn't. That's how it was when it was playable at SDCC.

No... Everything else except the personal story areas and dungeons are persistent.

 

[steadfast]

I was just looking at the CE on Amazon and in the product description it states that with the CE you get a bunch of digital items two of which are the Exclusive Mouse Droid and the Exclusive store. Does that mean all the other items that you get aren't exclusive and you can get them with any version of the game?

I'm not that interested in the Mouse Droid or the store and I have no interest at all in the physical items in the CE, so this would make my decision regarding which version to buy if it is as I interpreted it. Anyone know?

The Digital Deluxe Edition has the other 6 virtual items. Standard only has color stone. Theres a link on the front page of swtor.com that compares all three.

 

[DimmuBurgerKing]

Wait till launch for a final number

<3

 

[Jomjom]

If you don't care about the CE perks then the best choice would be the Digital Deluxe Edition off of Origin.

Oooh it is discounted as well. However, I do have an irrational preference for a box on my shelf, so I think I may go for the physical standard edition. Tough choice...

The Digital Deluxe Edition has the other 6 virtual items. Standard only has color stone. Theres a link on the front page of swtor.com that compares all three.

But for those 6 virtual items, can you get them in the game somehow? They don't say that those items are exclusive to the CE. If they aren't exclusive, I'd rather just earn them through playing the game somehow.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Wait till launch for a final number

So not all flashpoints are in the beta?

 

[ampere]

Wait till launch for a final number

Andddd here's a non-speculative reason to stop crying about 4 on beta.

Wait until the full game goes live before worrying about content, people.

 

[Pat]

Four dungeons is far from "more than enough" content.

Stop being an ass. Wait and see.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Nope. No rap battles or unique quest mechanics. The core questing is pretty old compared to newer games like Rift or Cataclysm that introduced new quest mechanics.

What new quest mechanics were added in RIFT and such? It was all the same standard MMO fare when it came to questing, even the "dynamic" events where nothing more than "kill X creatures", but in a public setting.

 

[Kem0sabe]

At least there is the option of rolling another class or faction and get completely diferent story lines/quests. WoW had that to some degree, between factions, but once you rolled Horde and then Alliance, that was pretty much it... except for the dungeons that is, those were what added longevity and value to the game.

Lets see how bioware handles the content updates, considering the amount of voice-work involved and associated costs. If those mean bigger turnover periods between content updates, then they could be in trouble.

 

[BattleMonkey]

At least there is the option of rolling another class or faction and get completely diferent story lines/quests. WoW had that to some degree, between factions, but once you rolled Horde and then Alliance, that was pretty much it... except for the dungeons that is, those were what added longevity and value to the game.

Lets see how bioware handles the content updates, considering the amount of voice-work involved and associated costs. If those mean bigger turnover periods between content updates, then they could be in trouble.

or they go EQ2 and dump voice acting completely with content updates.... hopefully not though. No doubt lot of the content for the first 6 months is probably already in the works as it usually is with many MMOs... lot of stuff tends to get held back for polish and content updates post launch.

 

[FieryBalrog]

Nope. No rap battles or unique quest mechanics. The core questing is pretty old compared to newer games like Rift or Cataclysm that introduced new quest mechanics.

I'd be pretty surprised if there were NO unique quest mechanics

For people in the beta, how is the input latency and crispness of animations and controls? Does it feel really tight and crisp or is it more like, uh, Warhammer Online & LotRO? This is one of the biggest make-or-break things for me that I find people don't talk about in reviews and such.

Edit: Assuming you can talk about this of course, but it seems everyone is talking about way bigger "leak" stuff than this.

 

[Morn]

or they go EQ2 and dump voice acting completely with content updates.... hopefully not though. No doubt lot of the content for the first 6 months is probably already in the works as it usually is with many MMOs... lot of stuff tends to get held back for polish and content updates post launch.

SOE learned really fast how expensive, time consuming, and bandwidth intensive it was do continue voice acting with content updates.

 

[gatti-man]

Wait till launch for a final number

Oh Im in this for the long haul. Ce preordered. If you guys had a lifetime sub id buy that too. I love star wars and most everything bioware makes. Cant wait for me3 and DA3 if the pc version isnt a let down like da2.

What new quest mechanics were added in RIFT and such? It was all the same standard MMO fare when it came to questing, even the "dynamic" events where nothing more than "kill X creatures", but in a public setting.

Right but rifts take on its dynamic events were freaking awesome and something I hope swtor takes into account. Imagine planets where at any time a sith ship could land and attack a main city or town.

 

[Morn]

Oh Im in this for the long haul. Ce preordered. If you guys had a lifetime sub id buy that too. I love star wars and most everything bioware makes. Cant wait for me3 and DA3 if the pc version isnt a let down like da2.

Got you beat. I have a Digital CE, physical CE, and standard retail copy pre-ordered.

 

[Jbird34]

Got you beat. I have a Digital CE, physical CE, and standard retail copy pre-ordered.

you win the internets!

 

[Weenerz]

Don't know why Morn is such a downer, and where he is getting his definitive information, but he does seem to be very much anti-SWTOR even him pre-ordering so many versions of the game.

 

[gatti-man]

Got you beat. I have a Digital CE, physical CE, and standard retail copy pre-ordered.

Damn you! (I actually have the retail se pre-orderd too to give to a friend)

Id buy more copies if more of my friends gamed on the PC. They all play gears and halo.

They were interesting the first couple times and then you realize it was the same shit over and over again. GW2 dynamic events sound like they might be a bit more interesting than RIFT's system.

I agree, its the idea itself Im excited about.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Right but rifts take on its dynamic events were freaking awesome and something I hope swtor takes into account. Imagine planets where at any time a sith ship could land and attack a main city or town.

They were interesting the first couple times and then you realize it was the same shit over and over again. GW2 dynamic events sound like they might be a bit more interesting than RIFT's system.

 

[Jbird34]

Don't know why Morn is such a downer, and where he is getting his definitive information, but he does seem to be very much anti-SWTOR even him pre-ordering so many versions of the game.

Well he is in the beta so he does have some 1st hand information

 

[border]

Does anybody really care about having every little dialogue in this game voice acted? Most people in WoW could barely be bothered to read quest text; they sure as hell aren't going to sit through some cheesy, tedious dialogue to find out that they need to collect 10 wamprat heads.

It seems like the drive for more voice acting is just a bullet point that nobody is really interested in. I wouldn't care except that it sounds as though it will really hamper their ability to do post-launch content.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Does anybody really care about having every little dialogue in this game voice acted? .

Obviously to many here it does matter. It's also not just voice acting, but interactive dialogue with cutscenes. Some will also affect what happens in a quest as well as character alignment which does have an impact on somethings like what kind of gear you can have.

I'm sure lot of MMO vets are going to want to just skip through shit as fast as possible to just get to the grinding as soon as possible.... but really if thats what a person is going to do.... why bother with TOR?

 

[gatti-man]

Does anybody really care about having every little dialogue in this game voice acted? Most people in WoW could barely be bothered to read quest text; they sure as hell aren't going to sit through some cheesy, tedious dialogue to find out that they need to collect 10 wamprat heads.

It seems like the drive for more voice acting is just a bullet point that nobody is really interested in. I wouldn't care except that it sounds as though it will really hamper their ability to do post-launch content.

I do bc I hope its a sign we will have real story. Wows plot is a sad tired joke.

 

[Spire]

Does anybody really care about having every little dialogue in this game voice acted? Most people in WoW could barely be bothered to read quest text; they sure as hell aren't going to sit through some cheesy, tedious dialogue to find out that they need to collect 10 wamprat heads.

It seems like the drive for more voice acting is just a bullet point that nobody is really interested in. I wouldn't care except that it sounds as though it will really hamper their ability to do post-launch content.

Actually it's one of the only things I care about. Pretty much every aspect of this game is the same formula that I'm really tired of, getting immersed in the story and exploring the universe and characters is what I'm primarily excited about in this game. Voice acting is a huge part of that.

 

[vitaminwateryum]

Dude is selling his beta account on Reddit.

I hope people really aren't willing to pay to test a game for a month...

 

[Giolon]

Well he is in the beta so he does have some 1st hand information

Despite being in beta, he sure spouts a lot of incorrect nonsense.

Does anybody really care about having every little dialogue in this game voice acted? Most people in WoW could barely be bothered to read quest text; they sure as hell aren't going to sit through some cheesy, tedious dialogue to find out that they need to collect 10 wamprat heads.

It seems like the drive for more voice acting is just a bullet point that nobody is really interested in. I wouldn't care except that it sounds as though it will really hamper their ability to do post-launch content.

I care. Unfortunately, I can't say anything more (damn NDA). I do worry about how it will affect adding new content - especially adding a new class for an expansion or something.

 

[border]

I don't think there's really that much correlation between good story and voice acting. Plenty of games that use text have great stories, there are games that use audio that have awful stories.

At the end of the day though, the commitment to "Voice Acting for EVERYTHING" sounds as though it's ultimately going to result in less story for the people who like narrative, and less questing for the people that like mechanics/gameplay. It's going to be harder and more expensive to produce both story and quest content.

While I think people might like the voice acting on the first playthrough with their first character, I gotta imagine people are going to be hammering the "Skip" button on subsequent characters that share the same or similar quest lines.

I do worry about how it will affect adding new content - especially adding a new class for an expansion or something.

Just make a hero class like WoW's Death Knight that starts out at an advanced level. That way there's no need to re-do cutscenes for all the low-level stuff.

 

[Baller. PhD]

Does anybody really care about having every little dialogue in this game voice acted? Most people in WoW could barely be bothered to read quest text; they sure as hell aren't going to sit through some cheesy, tedious dialogue to find out that they need to collect 10 wamprat heads.

It seems like the drive for more voice acting is just a bullet point that nobody is really interested in. I wouldn't care except that it sounds as though it will really hamper their ability to do post-launch content.

The thing is, in WoW people want to skip to the grinding so they can max out and start their raid progression. As of right now TOR doesn't really have any of that. So it's not a matter of maxing out and getting to the "real" game... the "real" game IS the leveling.

I know TOR will have raids, but only two will be available at launch. Hopefully BioWare has some sort of Ace up their sleeve for the endgame.

 

[gatti-man]

I don't think there's really that much correlation between good story and voice acting. Plenty of games that use text have great stories, there are games that use audio that have awful stories.

At the end of the day though, the commitment to "Voice Acting for EVERYTHING" sounds as though it's ultimately going to result in less story for the people who like narrative, and less questing for the people that like mechanics/gameplay. It's going to be harder and more expensive to produce both story and quest content.

While I think people might like the voice acting on the first playthrough with their first character, I gotta imagine people are going to be hammering the "Skip" button on subsequent characters that share the same or similar quest lines.


Just make a hero class like WoW's Death Knight that starts out at an advanced level. That way there's no need to re-do cutscenes for all the low-level stuff.

It may be more expensive but I disagree that it will limit quality content.

 

[BattleMonkey]

I don't think there's really that much correlation between good story and voice acting. Plenty of games that use text have great stories, there are games that use audio that have awful stories..

Difference is they went into this game with the point being that each class was going to have an actual story, unlike pretty much majority of MMO's which are completely generic story lines and such. As a result most questing you do has no story attachment, it's just a bunch of text majority that a person is not going to read as they skip to the quest summary at the bottom. Players also now have to actively care about what is going on with all dialogue as it does affect outcome of the quest or if not, it will often have an impact on their character alignment scores. And then each class has it's own unique quests as well with actual unique story as well. The interactive nature of the dialogue is meant to give it a bit more meaning unlike most MMO's where there really is no story outside of global events that you basically witness.

Is there potential that story sucks? Well of course, but how is that different from any game and the possiblity of it sucking in it's writing?

Again I think it's targetting a different crowd in many respects, lot of the hardcore MMO folks and WoW peeps are not going to care at all about the dialogue and story and just want to grind and skip to get to endgame as that is how they have been programmed to play MMOs. With TOR they seem to be trying to target more of those into single player RPGs by putting in stuff to make players care more about their character than just having leet loots.

 

[jogarrr]

Does anybody really care about having every little dialogue in this game voice acted? Most people in WoW could barely be bothered to read quest text; they sure as hell aren't going to sit through some cheesy, tedious dialogue to find out that they need to collect 10 wamprat heads.

It seems like the drive for more voice acting is just a bullet point that nobody is really interested in. I wouldn't care except that it sounds as though it will really hamper their ability to do post-launch content.

I care. It really does make a major difference in getting into the story of the game. Of course after I've run a Flashpoint a few times I'm willing to skip the dialog to finish it quicker but aside from that I listen to it all.

 

[border]

Dude is selling his beta account on Reddit.

I hope people really aren't willing to pay to test a game for a month...

Wouldn't someone with a beta account be able to play pretty much until launch?

I would gladly pay $30-50 for a beta account. I'd get 5 times more gameplay out of it than most retail games so it seems like a good proposition. Just a quick Google search reveals people demanding $100-200 for beta accounts.....which is probably a bit absurd.

 

[Iadien]

It's not SOE's fault that SCEA's patch process for the PS3 is completely incompatible with a MMO. The only reason patches were delayed was because they had to get in line at SCEA and the clueless monkeys working QA there don't realize that MMO patches need to be timely.

Yep, John Smedley mentioned that the green lantern update was supposed to come out with the movie, but the PS3 patch process delayed it.

 

[Sophia]

The thing is, in WoW people want to skip to the grinding so they can max out and start their raid progression. As of right now TOR doesn't really have any of that. So it's not a matter of maxing out and getting to the "real" game... the "real" game IS the leveling.

I know TOR will have raids, but only two will be available at launch. Hopefully BioWare has some sort of Ace up their sleeve for the endgame.

The real trick will be how they handle the content. WoW has done a poor job of adding in quality alternatives to raiding. There's absolutely no reason to take your time leveling when all the best stuff is at 85 in a raid. =P

 

[Morn]

Wouldn't someone with a beta account be able to play pretty much until launch?

I would gladly pay $30-50 for a beta account. I'd get 5 times more gameplay out of it than most retail games so it seems like a good proposition. Just a quick Google search reveals people demanding $100-200 for beta accounts.....which is probably a bit absurd.

Not all beta accounts are on-going. A lot who just got in are part of the Magid focus tests that only last a month or less.

 

[vitaminwateryum]

Wouldn't someone with a beta account be able to play pretty much until launch?

I would gladly pay $30-50 for a beta account. I'd get 5 times more gameplay out of it than most retail games so it seems like a good proposition. Just a quick Google search reveals people demanding $100-200 for beta accounts.....which is probably a bit absurd.

Err, yeah, I meant that they're going to be ramping up invite soon, so why not just wait. Wrong phrasing, my bad.

 

[EhrgeizVII]

I'd be pretty surprised if there were NO unique quest mechanics

For people in the beta, how is the input latency and crispness of animations and controls? Does it feel really tight and crisp or is it more like, uh, Warhammer Online & LotRO? This is one of the biggest make-or-break things for me that I find people don't talk about in reviews and such.

Edit: Assuming you can talk about this of course, but it seems everyone is talking about way bigger "leak" stuff than this.

This is pretty much the only thing I'm worried about. I know the story, voice-acting, graphics and content will be great.. But how's the actual gameplay? Man, wish I could just log in and try for myself.

 

[MaddenNFL64]

Does anybody really care about having every little dialogue in this game voice acted? Most people in WoW could barely be bothered to read quest text; they sure as hell aren't going to sit through some cheesy, tedious dialogue to find out that they need to collect 10 wamprat heads.

It seems like the drive for more voice acting is just a bullet point that nobody is really interested in. I wouldn't care except that it sounds as though it will really hamper their ability to do post-launch content.

I do. It's the fucking KOTOR MMO. If it wasn't voice acted up the ying yang, it wouldn't be that. I couldn't even imagine a modern Bioware game that wasn't voiced up like crazy.

And here's the secret. VO is cheap as shit if you're not hiring Carrie Ann Moss, or Keith David.

 

[CAW]

It taunts me!

 

[Interfectum]

I got an email from EA yesterday that had "The Old Republic" in the title... I almost shit my pants until I realized it was spam asking me to pre-order. /wrist

 

[Lombax]

Does anybody really care about having every little dialogue in this game voice acted? Most people in WoW could barely be bothered to read quest text; they sure as hell aren't going to sit through some cheesy, tedious dialogue to find out that they need to collect 10 wamprat heads.

It seems like the drive for more voice acting is just a bullet point that nobody is really interested in. I wouldn't care except that it sounds as though it will really hamper their ability to do post-launch content.

If the voice acting was not incorporated as much as they claim it will be I would be far less interested. In my head this is KotOR III, IV, V...