A SW:TOR Beta Impression

SW:TOR had a beta test weekend this past holiday weekend and I got a chance to explore a small taste of what this highly anticipated MMO has to offer. And this is my first impression of the game thus far…

Grinder Quests, A fresh approach.

First off, I’d like to say that the game so far has a very fresh approach to the “kill x mobs” quest in that they actually made sense to me from a story point of view. I never actually got a quest to go kill x number of mobs ever, but did get bonus quests while completing my main quests to kill x mobs. And upon fulfilling the requirement, I was immediately rewarded the bonus, which was typically just extra experience. I liked this approach far better than how other MMOs have tackled this type of grind.

Storyline, yes it’s that good!

Next up, the actual storyline of the characters I tried were absolutely phenomenal. The character that I spent the most time on was that of a Sith Inquisitor and fell into the story from the beginning with this guy. The early storyline is compelling and you feel like you are really a part of the story as you play through the trials. I was more then happy to make those dark-side choices for appropriate responses when faced with dealing with the characters in the story. I have to say, this is by far the best aspect of the game for me thus far.

Combat Mechanics, nothing really new here, or is there?

OK, next up is the combat mechanics and overall game play. I can really say that this doesn’t give you anything really new over any other MMO experience as far as real-time combat goes. It works pretty much just like any other one does. Don’t get me wrong here, there isn’t anything wrong with it, it just isn’t anything really innovative or new. You have some more character stats to work with, but overall it’s still target stuff, hit stuff, kill stuff. The one thing that is a little different, at least from say WoW, is that there isn’t an auto-attack feature in this game. You have to press the button to do damage. I tried out two different classes, the Inquisitor that I already mentioned, and a Jedi Knight as well.

Sith Inquisitor

The Inquisitor is a little squishy, but for a light armor wearing character you can’t expect anything but to be squishy. And when you get your companion, you get a tanking class style character. So it pans out well. This class gets some nice crowd control abilities and can do damage pretty well, though once you hit level 10 you get to decide just what kind of play-style you want to do. And I will say I was surprised here by the choices that I had before me. I chose the Inquisitor to play because it isn’t going to be the character that I intend on playing once the game goes live (though playing the Inquisitor might have changed my mind on this…), and was expecting primarily a spell caster to play. While this guy has spells that he casts, it was pretty evenly divided among spells and melee attacks. And the level 10 specialization handed me a choice between a caster/healer style of play (which I expected) and a rogue/tank style of play. This actually floored me. So I had to go the rogue/tank style and try it out. You get stealth, an attack that requires you to be behind the mob your fighting, and a few other nice little skills. This style of play really reminded me of taking a WoW hybrid of an Enhancement Shaman and Rogue, with a resource pretty much exactly like the Rogue’s energy. It was exciting to play. I did experience a little bit of lag though, but that has to be expected during a beta test.

Jedi Knight

The Jedi Knight was pretty much exactly like what I would expect from a warrior. As you attack, you build up force energy (think rage from the WoW Warrior) and that opens up more powerful attacks that consume the force energy. You also have a quick way to get to the mob, which is really nice. This guy just layed waste to anything in front of him with little trouble. Though I did not get to play this character as much as the Inquisitor, he was far less squishy and is a character I could see myself being happy to play. To story behind this guy was also very appropriate to the class.

Interface and other thoughts.

Now the last bit I would like to touch on is the user interface. It is very much like a default UI for a MMO and I have both praise and complaints on it. I like that your character and who your attacking and both at the bottom of the screen. Your eyes can naturally see what it needs to see as your making your choices for attacks. And you can add more button slots as needed, lock the buttons so you don’t accidentally drag stuff off during combat (for you mouse clickers out there), and even combine your companions bar into your own. The map felt really odd to me at first, but once I got use to it, it made sense. If you have the map open and start moving, then the map becomes transparent so you can see both it and what you are doing at the same time. My biggest complaint is that during movement you (or at least I) have a tendency to look around, and you have to manually look back straight ahead, else you can quickly be looking and going somewhere you did not intend to. This caught me off guard more than once. It took a bit to get use to, and I am still not a fan of it.

Overall I enjoyed my little taste of the beta, and can’t wait to play it once it goes live.

Till next time,

Onslaught