Force Junkies Lets Us See Lightsaber Colors in SWTOR Beta

"Recently we had a few articles, like this one, discussing the color of lightsabers in the game and whether or not they should be used with Sith or Jedi."

Head on over to ForceJunkies to check it all out!

Star Wars The Old Republic SWTOR Preview on SWTORFace.com

Before we start, let's make it very clear that this preview is based on the Beta and not on a finished product. The second thing you need to be aware of is that I am a massive Star Wars fan boy, so I may be biased. Whilst I won't sugar-coat any negatives I've found, I am of course immediately engrossed in just the very idea of playing in a Star Wars universe. Hell, I survived five years in Star Wars Galaxies (a Sony MMO game that in the end had a lot of gameplay issues).

Setting

Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) is set three thousand years before the Star Wars time line that most of us know from the six George Lucas movies. It is set three hundred years after the BioWare game called Knights of the Old Republic. There is a lot of expanded universe content based around this time including comics and novels.

Opening scenes

Starting the game, you are presented with the gorgeous cinematic videos that we've all grown to love; and depending on the faction you choose, you are presented with either the Sith invading the Jedi Temple or the Troopers fighting the Sith on Alderaan.

Read on!

SWTOR Beta A Tour of Coruscant Video

Disclaimer: information is currently from a pre-release build of the game and is subject to change at any time.

This is one of the first tours of a planet from SWTOR. This shows you what the planet Coruscant looks like from the main paths. No story spoilers are featured in this video.

Star Wars The Old Republic SWTOR Preview

Before we start, let's make it very clear that this preview is based on the Beta and not on a finished product. The second thing you need to be aware of is that I am a massive Star Wars fan boy, so I may be biased. Whilst I won't sugar-coat any negatives I've found, I am of course immediately engrossed in just the very idea of playing in a Star Wars universe. Hell, I survived five years in Star Wars Galaxies (a Sony MMO game that in the end had a lot of gameplay issues).

Setting

Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) is set three thousand years before the Star Wars time line that most of us know from the six George Lucas movies. It is set three hundred years after the BioWare game called Knights of the Old Republic. There is a lot of expanded universe content based around this time including comics and novels.

Opening scenes

Starting the game, you are presented with the gorgeous cinematic videos that we've all grown to love; and depending on the faction you choose, you are presented with either the Sith invading the Jedi Temple or the Troopers fighting the Sith on Alderaan. 

Character creation

When you choose your faction (either Sith or Republic) you are then presented with four class choices (four choices for Sith and four for Republic). To see the class choices go here. As I've touched on in previous posts, choosing Sith does not mean you have chosen to develop a dark side of the force character and choosing Republic doesn't mean you have to be a goody two shoes. The choice of Sith or Republic is just a faction. The light side and dark side affiliation is based on choices you make as you play. You can be a dark side Jedi Knight or a light side Sith Warrior. But regardless of your choices, your faction is fixed at the beginning. I think this is a good move by BioWare. The class choices in both factions are very similar and this will allow players to be good or evil and still be able to play with their friends of choice. I know I have got people in my guild who want to play the bad boy, dark side Jedi and I am happy that they'll be able to do so in our Republic guild.

Character creation is no where near as in depth as some other MMOs have been. The characters are stylised and you get a selection of 10-15 face variances like hair, tatoo, beards, etc etc. Depending on what class you have chosen you get a choice of about 4 different races. Over the next week I will upload videos of the character creation process for each class, to show you what options are available and allow you to prepare for the upcoming Beta opportunity next weekend.

There was a lot of excitement when news of a cybernetic race was leaked and then confirmed by BioWare. Cybernetic is a choice you get as a Trooper or Smuggler and it's really just face decorations for humans. Just like all race choices, it's purely cosmetic. Your race choice does not affect any ability ingame, apart from appearance. This allows BioWare to keep a variety of different races viable, unlike other MMOs where picking a certain race for a certain class is required if you want to maximize a certain skill (like DPS).

Advanced Classes

Even though you pick your class when you first start the game, it does not finish there. You get introduced to your class on a world set up for that class introduction called an Origin world. On that world you get to play through the first ten levels. This will give you a fairly good idea of what your character is capable of and what the gameplay style is like. You finish your quests on that world on around level ten and at that stage you get to make your true choices on what class you want to play. The advanced class system is introduced at this stage. 

Every advanced class has three separate talent trees (like a lot of other games). So if you choose to be a Shadow Jedi Counselor, you can play as a Balanced Shadow Jedi Counselor, a Tank Shadow Jedi Counselor, or a DPS Shadow Jedi Counselor. If you choose Sage as your Advanced Class, you can be Ranged DPS, Healer, or Balanced. To see all these options, check out our Class pages which have full listings and breakdowns of all the Advanced Classes.

You can re-spec your talent trees within your advanced class and at higher levels you'll be able to pick up a re-spec option, allowing you to swap between two separate talent tree specs on the fly.So, for example, you can be DPS while questing and swap to Tank when entering a flashpoint.

Story and Voice Acting
I've had in excess of 100 hours of gameplay in SWTOR now. I've played through three separate class lines, to levels between 20-30 for each. I must say that BioWare can sit back and be relaxed because they have created a worthy successor to their role playing series. I have no doubt that what I have seen so far will impress MMO players. Every major story line is the game is completely voiced. Not only are the MPCs speaking in a cinematic style interface, but your characters reply. It is like a movie choose your won adventure.

Warning: this screenshot may contain story line spoilers ...

Like a great novel, I found myself wanting more and struggling to keep my eyes open some nights, just to get to the next part in the story. Not only are the major quest lines fully voiced, but the majority of the side quests are also fully voiced. This really blew my mind; there must be hundreds of hours of voice footage in this game. 

If story line isn't your thing, with a simple tap of your space bar you can skip through all the cinematic scenes and go straight through to start the quests.

Weapons and equipment

Unlike traditional MMOs, the way in which you interface with a lot of your weapons is a little different. Things like the lightsaber you see being crafted in the above screenshot, give you the ability to open them. Most weapons give you three upgrade options and by adding the three separate mods to the weapon you can upgrade its total DPS and stats, and keep it with you as you play through the story. The thought of throwing away your first lightsaber that you create is heart-renching, but with the latest patch this system has allowed me to keep my initial lightsaber which now features epic level components. 

This doesn't mean that you are limited to one particular look or style for your lightsaber or any other piece of equipment. Throughout the world, and on every planet, you are given options for weapons and armor that have socketed upgradability. Just like a lightsaber, if you find a cloak that you love, you can continuously upgrade its components to make it comparable to your current playing level. This doesn't mean that standard drops are not available. The world is full of green, blue and purple level items that might be better equipment for your character, at least for a time. 

Companions

During the initial stages of gameplay you are introduced to your first companion and throughout the story you will meet a variety of five companions that do DPS, tanking, healing and support. Every class' companions are different. Just like other BioWare games, you have to build a relationship with your companion. They will either like or dislike decisions you make in quests. Other ways to build up reputation are to give them gifts or spend quality time with them.

Just like your own equipment, your companions have a unique set of items. These items can also be upgraded with components. I personally made a crucial mistake of deleting one of my companions primary weapons, before I discovered the upgrade system. The poor guy was stuck with a green level vibro sword for a long time!

Space

At around level 20 you get access to your first spaceship. The ship is given to you at the end of your class' story line on the second planet that you're sent to. Ships give you access to a bank and the ability to travel to new planets. It also unlocks space combat missions. 

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed with the space combat. I've played every Star Wars space sim since X-Wing was released on the PC 15 years ago. Space combat in SWTOR is nothing more than an arcade click and shoot. If you're expecting any more from it you will be severely disappointed. 

Like your own, and your companion's inventory, your ship also has the ability to be upgraded and I'll put a video online in the next couple of days that shows both space combat and how to upgrade your ship. 

Over time I have found that space is actually a relaxing break from the ground world. I usually do a couple of space missions while I have my coffee in the morning. You can do a space mission using just one hand on the mouse.

Exploring

Adventuring through the different planets, you'll be presented with lots of familiar places and sights. Cantinas on some of the worlds have exotic holographic dancers.

 Other have the real thing (although some of their poses might seems a little strange)!

At level 25 you get to spend 40 000 credits on your speeder ability. This will allow you to purchase 90% speed speeders for around 8000 credits each. If you're lucky enough to have purchased the Collector's Edition of the game, you will get your speeder for free, but you'll still need to fork out the 40 000 credits for speeder training.

Conclusion
To say that overall I am impressed with Star Wars: The Old Republic, is an understatement; but at this stage I haven't seen end game. If the quality of the story and gameplay and the quality of the immersive Star Wars experience is anything to go by, I know we will all be in for a treat at level fifty.

I just want to make it clear that you understand that every single class has a completely unique story line. This is going to encourage me to want to play all eight classes. It's like being able to read a novel from eight different perspectives.

For MMO gamers who are not big Star Wars fans, you will find that the gameplay and the voice acting makes this MMO a cut above those that have come before it, setting a new benchmark for immersion. Flashpoints (or Dungeons as they are known in WoW) are also available throughout the world, but I'll talk about them in another post.

We'll leave you with a Video and a tonne of screenshots of some items, characters, creatures and places you haven't seen as yet.

I've got 6+ videos from the Beta that I'll be uploading to YouTube in the coming days and tonnes more footage to prepare, so stay tuned!

[H]ard | Gaming Community Goes Live

HardOCP is a site I always have in my bookmark bar top center! Now they have a gaming site! This is one site I will be watching closely! If Hard Gaming is a shadow of HardOCP it will kick ass, this is one gaming revolution I want to be apart of!

From HardOCP
[H]ard | Gaming Community is now launched. You can check it out here at [H]ard | Gaming Community Website . This website is fully decked out with everything we need. We can keep track of our competition scrimmages and matches for any game, we can stream our gaming live straight to the website, easy means of contacting management and specific division leaders, advertising, sponsorship and affiliate capable, downloads section, and a active news feed. This website was designed by our very own [H] member DDigital. He did an astonishing job and it looks excellent. Keep in mind we are still adding content and fixing things daily. If you see any errors or bugs please use the contact form on the site.

The Gaming community management has been working closely with one of the best gaming service providers in the business End of Reality closely the passed couple of weeks and we have decided it would be best for [H]ard|OCP, [H]ard | Gaming Community, and End of Reality that we work together. End of Reality is now the main sponsor of [H]ard | Gaming community. We would like to extend a very heart felt thanks to Robby @ End of Reality who is a [H]ard Forum member himself. We are very proud to be powered by End of Reality and will wear his logo proudly like we do the [H].

We promised you all day 1 servers and we have not failed you. We will be launching Battlefield 3 with 2 servers online waiting for you to get home from the midnight release. News is still fairly scarce with MW3 but we plan to have a server for it on launch day as well. We know some of you may hate BF3 or MW2 or both. We however do not. We are not playing sides as we are here to provide as many of you with a Gaming home that we can. We also have 2 Counter Strike Source servers up and running. These are still very incomplete as time hasnt permitted us to configure them fully. For a full list of our servers please check here.

We have teamed up with the [H]ardcraft team. We now have adopted their server and management to manage the [H]ard | Gaming Minecraft division. If you play minecraft and are looking for a server that protects your builds and has a very high quality server then please check out our site for more info.

We also have our own section here on the forums for discussion. We use this to talk to everyone and as a way for a medium for [H] members to interact with each other out of game. We also discuss all types of gaming from FPS, RTS, MMOs, and even consoles are welcome.You can check out our section here .

We are very excited about this much like when it started. The motivation and determination has only escalated since the original idea. We have a very level headed crew with a lot of experience in management and the server infrastructure. All of these things show and it matters. Kyle Bennett @ [H]ardOCP, Robby Hicks @ EoReality, and the [H]ardcraft team all believe in us and what we are doing. We have made so many connections and relationships thus far and its only the beginning. There are a lot of communities out there like [H] with gaming organizations. I think its time we put [H] back on the map in gaming. Do you want to be apart of the revolution?

SWTOR Beta Testing Weekend date 25-28th November

Thanksgiving with SWTOR

From BioWare on Facebook:
We are targeting November 25-28 for our upcoming Beta Testing Weekend – our biggest testing weekend yet! If you haven’t got your code already, pick one up from the sites listed in this news article!
Beta Test Weekend Announced
Our largest Game Testing weekend yet is coming. Find out how you can get involved!



Have question you must?
Read FAQ's you will!

Will this be the final Beta Testing Weekend?

Currently, we expect it to be.

Will I be able to download the game client in advance of the weekend?

Yes, we will be sending out invites to download the game client in advance of the weekend.


I have previously tested Star Wars: The Old Republic. Will I get invited to the upcoming Beta Testing Weekend?

Yes, you will. Every person that is signed up and opted in for Game Testing before November 11th will be invited to this Beta Testing Weekend.

What if I do not live in a launch country for Star Wars: The Old Republic?

As long as you are signed up and opted in for testing, you will be invited to test.

What if I have not signed up, or opted in for testing by November 11th?

We are partnering with a number of games media sites worldwide to give away Beta Test Weekend Codes. They are listed in this article. If you receive a code from any of these sites, you will need to sign up on StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com to redeem that code. Further instructions are listed in the post directly below this one.

Should I try and get a key from a media partner, just in case?

If you were already signed up for testing before November 11th, you do not need an additional key. By taking a key, you'll deny someone else a chance to test the game - so please do not apply for a key you will not need!

If you have further questions, please ask them in this thread and we'll try to answer them.



For North America:

IGN

Curse.com

Massively

MMORPG

Ten Ton Hammer

ZAM




For United Kingdom:

CVG

Nowgamer

PC Gamer

Videogamer




For Nordic Regions (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden):

Daily Rush

FZ.se

Gamereactor

Spill.no




For Germany:

Buffed

GameStar

Onlinewelten.com




For France:

Gamekult

JeuxOnline

JeuxVideo

JeuxVideo.fr

Millenium




From SWTOR.com

SWTORFace In SWTOR, Will The Force Influence You?

We've all seen the video demonstrations from Star Wars The Old Republic where the developers have talked about Light side and Dark side options in the SWTOR. When you set up a character, remember that you don't choose Light or Dark side at the same time that you choose the class, faction, race and look. You choose to act Light or Dark as you make decisions. A character is not simply either Light or Dark.

So in SWTOR will you choose the Light or Dark side for the sole purpose of achieving certain levels in Light or Dark that then open up your access to certain weapons and equipment (according to the developers)? Or will your decision be based on morals and the type of character you want to play? Would you, for example, take out a camp of children in order to get Dark reputation that might earn you an uber cloak?!

Read on

In SWTOR, Will The Force Influence You?

We've all seen the video demonstrations from Star Wars The Old Republic where the developers have talked about Light side and Dark side options in the SWTOR. When you set up a character, remember that you don't choose Light or Dark side at the same time that you choose the class, faction, race and look. You choose to act Light or Dark as you make decisions. A character is not simply either Light or Dark.

So in SWTOR will you choose the Light or Dark side for the sole purpose of achieving certain levels in Light or Dark that then open up your access to certain weapons and equipment (according to the developers)? Or will your decision be based on morals and the type of character you want to play? Would you, for example, take out a camp of children in order to get Dark reputation that might earn you an uber cloak?!

The SWTOR developers have also said that if you build up enough Dark Alignment your character can actually change appearance if you choose to enable that option.

From what they've shown so far in the videos, my concern is that your decisions are highlighted as either light or dark. So if you're having  conversation with an ingame character you might be given three possible responses to choose from. Sometimes they are actually tagged as either Light or Dark as we have seen in the Flashpoint videos. I just wonder if this takes away some of the fun of it. Not all decisions can be as obviously Dark as slaying children. In Dragon Age, when attempting to build reputation with your companions, you have to guess what they may or may not like. Having the Light and Dark decision outlined makes it less realistic (and yes I know it's just a game, but it's role-playing isn't it!?).

What do you think? Are the highlighted selections just there for players who want to space-skip through conversations maybe?

TOR Hangout 8 - SWTOR Beta Weekend Withdrawals Video

I jumped in TOR Hangout this week and had lots of fun trying not to break NDA's!!!

TOR Hangout is a weekly round table discussion held on Google+ We use the G+ Hangout feature to get together and talk about Star Wars The Old Republic. TOR Hangout is also streamed live each week on Twitch.tv for those who cant fit into the hangout.

THIS WEEKS SHOW NOTES:

News
-Beta test signup pre 11/11? Your in!!! For a future beta test weekend (in the next few weeks). FAQ states "we're expecting this future weekend to be the last Beta Testing Weekend."

-Stress test Beta keys hitting gaming sites

David Bass says

"Just a reminder that if you were a registered member of our website on or before November 11th, 2011, you will be invited to the future weekend test. Regardless of whether you received an email last week or not, please do not take beta keys off of any external websites if you are already a registered member of our site. Let's leave them for the more needy, please."

STAR WARS: The Old Republic - Choose Your Side: Trooper vs. Sith Inquisitor

If you are not heads down Bum up in Beta then check this out.. Back to SWTOR for me!!

From the moment we announced the eight classes in Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ fans have been pitting them against each other, arguing who would have the advantage in a one-on-one fight. The hallways of BioWare echo this debate, with the writers, combat designers and other developers all chiming in on which classes they feel will have the upper hand.

In the video series "Choose Your Side," members of the Star Wars: The Old Republic team plead their cases, highlighting some of the many skills and abilities that set each class apart from the rest. In the second video of the four-part series, two of the most iconic classes in the Star Wars™ universe face off as the Force-wielding Sith Inquisitor battles the stalwart Republic Trooper.