Beta impressions: Star Wars: The Old Republic

Beta impressions: Star Wars: The Old Republic (PC)

One of the most anticipated games of 2011 PC-gamers are looking forward to is the massive multiplayer online role- playing game  “Star Wars: The Old Republic”. After three years of development, the game is almost ready to lift off in the overwhelming and destructive galaxy of the MMORPG- universe. We got a chance to test  this game during the beta-weekend of 26th till the 28th of November and these are our beta-impressions…

The story of the game takes place long before Darth Vader enters the stage. It’s an age where conflict between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire divides the Galaxy. It’s about a world where a lot of things happen and you are one of the heroes who fight alongside the republic or the empire. 

During the beta I joined forces with good and evil : The bounty hunter of the Sith Empire and the Jedi Consular of the Galactic republic. I chose to be part of both factions for two reasons:

• First of all, factions in most MMORPG’s have different starter area’s and other storylines . I wanted to get a view on these principles to see if it’s worth playing the different factions. If this MMORPG has a good “replay”  value or not.
• Secondly, a lot of people just want to play Star Wars: The old republic because of the glowing stick of death namely “ the lightsaber”. People are wondering if there’s a good balance between the classes like the “Jedi Knight” or the “ Sith Inquisitor”, who can wield lightsabers and use other abilities like “ The Force” and the other classes like “ The Imperial Agent” and the “ Trooper” who focuses mainly on Guns and gadgets.

In this “ beta impression”, I’ll talk about the technical aspects like graphics, interface and options but I’ll also be talking about the game itself like character creation, storyline, keypoints, and much more. Let’s get started!

Technical aspects

Graphics and audio

For those who have seen videos of the old republic or played the beta themselves, there’s no doubt that Star Wars: The old republic looks stunning. It has cartoony but realistic shaped-like graphics that’s certainly a sight for sore eyes. It reminds me of the cartoon series “ Star Wars: Clone Wars”. I played the beta on my  7 year old computer and it runs the game smoothly with a refresh rate of 75hz. My computer specs are the following:    All my settings were on high except the “anti- analyzing”. This option was switched off during beta but I hope I can test it in the next beta. The only minor thing was the loading time. It takes a long time before all textures are fully loaded but once loaded, you’ll be enjoying some high class graphics.

The audio in Star Wars: the old republic is definitely one of its strong features. The voice acting is good and the sound effects from concussion rifles to force fields, all the effects fits the Star Wars universe. You’ll be confronted with different alien languages and you will enjoy all of the cinematic conversations.

Interface

In each MMORPG, you have a couple of things on your screen like a chat- option, health bar, stamina/mana bar, target icon, skill bar, map, menu screen, … Star Wars: the old republic is no different but uses another organization of these elements. For example, your chat bar is in the left top corner of the screen. The chat area can’t be moved but you can choose to switch it off or not. You can use presets of emotions, you can choose your “way of chatting” like shouting, whispering, …

Next to the chat- area, you have your menu bar with different categories like character, inventory, abilities panel, log book, social window, guild menu, game menu and customer service help. On your character- tab, you get an overview of your personal stats, light/ dark points, equipment and companion characters. The inventory shows all your items but the developers  divided this into 2 tabs like looted items and quest items.

 The ability panel speaks for itself, it gives you a view of which abilities you already learned. You have access to general abilities , class abilities and vehicle abilities. The general abilities depend on which race you play and the class abilities are the abilities you get for playing a certain class. Log book is a collection of all your quests and the background information you collect during your gaming experience. Social window is a collection of your friends but it gives you the opportunity to send personal messages. Guild menu gives you an overview of all your guild members. It tells you which class and at which level they play but it also shows you where they are at that moment.

The game menu is the tab where you can set your preferences like key bindings, graphic, audio and game options. The customer service tab is a section where you can report bugs and find solutions for certain hardware/ software related problems.

Next to the menu bar you have your mission log that provides information about certain quests. It gives you information about the tracked quests. Below this mission log you have your tutorial window. You can choose to show tips or not. Under the tutorial window you have a small map that shows you where you are, gives you a direction where to search for your mission objectives and NPC’s. At the bottom of the screen you have your skill bar, health bar and stamina/ force bar. You can choose to lock your skill bar or not. If you don’t lock your bar, you’ll have a good chance to delete or misplace certain skills. But it gives you the opportunity to organize your skills as you wish. At the left side of the skill bar you’ll see the face of your character but on the right side of your skill bar you’ll see the health bar and the conditions ( poison, bleeding, … ) of your target.

Like all other standard MMORPG’s, you get access to a couple of options to organize your interface. You can’t make your interface bigger or smaller but you can insert more skill bars. Next to interface options, you can also adjust your game options like looting, targeting, … A cool feature of the old republic is the following: area looting. When you defeat certain enemies, you have to loot each body separately but with the area looting- option you can gather the loot of the surrounding bodies. It’s quick and easy.

Of course, this is all the technical aspects of the game in a nutshell. Things may change when the game will officially be released  but we can speak with certainty that the game used a lot of the technical features of other MMORPG’s. The game takes into account that every gamer has its own settings and they have to get the opportunity to adjust certain settings for an enjoyable gaming experience. They also implement new things that other standard MMORPG’s didn’t think off like the area looting option. It’s a small change but a big change! Now let’s take a look at the game itself.

Character creation

Character creation gives you the choice to play for the Sith Empire or the Galactic Empire, in other words you can choose to be part of the “Bad guys” or the “Good Guys”. Whatever side you choose, they all have 4 classes. At the Sith Empire, you can choose to be a Bounty Hunter, Sith Inquisitor, Sith Warrior or an Imperial Agent.  At the Galactic Republic you can choose between a Trooper, Smuggler, Jedi Knight or a Jedi Consular.

The game gives you a lot of information about the role of the “chosen” class and Star Wars: The Old Republic also gives you a view of your “future” role as well. At level 10 you have to choose between two more specialized classes. Each advanced class has a range of abilities but they also their specific role in the game.

After deciding which class you want to be, you can create the look of your character. You can make your own individual character or if you don’t have the time to spend a lot of minutes in creating your character, you can just click ‘random’ and the computer generates an unique character for you. You can still modify physical aspects of your character. I found it very positive that you have this ‘Random’ button because not everyone wants to spend minutes on creating their character. There’s also a “Name generator” which I find very inventive! You get a lot of options in creating your character but I wasn’t very pleased with the fact that you couldn’t choose your voice. 

Story progression

The story is all about you being one of the heroes in the war between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire. It all starts with you being the talented “Force” kid or the head of your class that has the chance to be something “Great” in this terrible war. The two classes with guns in both factions start in the same starting zone. The Galactic Republic has their starting zone for the smuggler and the trooper on their world and the Sith Empire has their starting zone for the Bounty Hunter and the imperial agent. This also counts for the classes with lightsabers. Each class has their own main story quests and different side quests. The main story quests that are divided into area’s intended for a certain class. This means that an imperial agent can’t enter a certain area because that area is intended for a Bounty hunter. Each conversation you have with a NPC is a cinematic scene that gives you the feeling that you’re actually part of a story into this MMORPG- world. Above that, you’ll be given the opportunity to make certain decisions. You’ll always be able to choose one of the 3 given responses. Each response shows another emotion and most of the decisions you make are linked with light/ dark side points. These points are important for achieving certain items. Some items may have the stat “ Must have 75 light points to equip this item”. If you don’t have that many points you won’t be able to equip this item. What I like about the cinematic conversations and the decision making , is that you really have the intention to follow your story progression. In most of the MMORPG’s I played, I didn’t even read most my quests. I only read what I had to do but Star Wars: the old republic manages to keep my attention during these main story quests because most of the decisions you make have an impact on your main story.

Combat

I played with the Jedi Consular and the Bounty Hunter and I have to say that they were both fun to play. There is a good balance between the different classes and like any other MMORPG’s , each class is mainly focused on one of these things: DPS, healing, tanking, ranged, …  so you have a variety of choices. It’s up to you to choose the class that fits you the most and like I mentioned before, each class has their role to play and has abilities to overcome each situation. During PVE, you can play with whatever you want because you don’t have to take into account other persons playing the game. The role of the different classes come to play when you join a party then all classes start to make sense. The Jedi knight for example is quite slow but is very good when it’s 1vs1 however when you play with this class during a party, it makes a lot of sense that you don’t do a lot of DPS because your role is to keep the attention of the enemy off your party members. Each class has also abilities to stun enemies, to keep them at a distance, damaging multiple enemies …

 Now there isn’t anything new about the combat in Star Wars: The Old Republic. You target an enemy and you use your abilities to annihilate your opponent. What I do want to mention is the fact that there’s no auto- attack. You have to keep your mind on the game or else you will lose. Your character wont attack unless you tell him to attack. Another fun fact is the companion system. Some of the MMORPG’s have classes like the ranger to warlock that have abilities to summon a pet that can fight for you. In Star Wars: the old republic you can get a companion for free or by paying an NPC. It doesn’t matter which class you are, you can have a companion to fight alongside you.  You can configure the behavior of your companion too, you can choose for it to be aggressive and attack everything in its sight or you can set it on passive mode to give it a more defensive role. Each companion can also be equipped with items and they also level up during the game.

I also want to mention that they gave every character a couple of very useful abilities: a resting ability that recovers health and stamina/ force. Each character can also revive his companion or another player. The last ability that’s pretty useful is the home- ability that teleports your character and companion to the place that you set as “home”. When you discover new places, you can always modify this ability.

Miscellaneous

In a lot of MMORPG’s , a lot of subscribers cancel their subscription because of the long duration of grinding.  For those who don’t know the word “ grinding”, grinding is about constantly killing mobs for just leveling up because there aren’t any quests that gives you enough challenge and experience. I’m not saying that there won’t be grinding in Star Wars: the old republic but I do want to tell you that they did take this idea into account. You have your main quests, besides that you have different other things that give you bonus experience like exploring the planet and the alien species on that planet. You’ll also be given bonus objectives like “ Kill 15 rebels” to give you extra experience.

There are a couple of ways to get from place to place. Some characters get abilities like “ Force speed” that give you an extra amount of speed to travel. But for those who can’t use “the force” , don’t panic! All over  the planet there are “hover bike stations”. These are stations where you can “rent” a hover bike to get to a certain area much faster than walk the whole road. This is very handful. Later on the game you’ll also be able to buy certain mounts like hovercrafts and speed bikes. But best of all, you’ll be getting a personal spaceship to fly from one planet to the other while fighting the enemy. I do have tell you that this “flying” is more of an arcade style mode.

Conclusion

After a lot of hyping and years of development, Star Wars: the old republic is almost being released. The game will definitely please a lot of Star Wars fans because it gives the player the ability to forge his/her own story into the Star Wars saga. Keep in mind that players who are searching for a new kind of MMORPG could be disappointed. Star Wars: the old republic can be seen as your standard MMO in a Star Wars skin with a few inventive things. During my Beta weekend, I still saw a couple of bugs and glitches but the game looks already very polished. I hope they’ll have a good release!

The game releases on PC on the 20^th of December. For those who can’t wait to play the game, you can try by making an account on www.swtor.com and signing up for a testing weekend. There’s still a couple of weeks before release so they will be announcing a couple of more beta’s. For more information about the game go to the above link. For questions, leave a response, I’ll be glad to answer.