SWTOR

[Falconeer]

This game looks and plays too much like Anarchy Online. 9 years too late and with less originality.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I would happily pay to play AO done right.  I'll find out soon enough if this is the case.

Yes you are right. I totally would too. But seriously, as much as I LOVE the original Star Wars trilogy, it's a franchise that lost most of its appeal to me over time due to the remixes and the unrecoverable mess of the new trilogy, while on the other hand Anarchy Online had a very unique feeling thanks to inspired music, a fascinating colour palette and the cool political turmoil. Star Wars these days feels too much like a kids thing, where Anarchy Online was harsher and somewhat more adult oriented. Which I prefer.

[Miasma]

Still stuck in call centre hell, 1hr 30mins again to be dropped and now the call centre is "all our agents are busy".

Don't forget your secret question or you will lock your account and be trapped.

This has come up a few times so I want to make sure - they are only asking secret question crap if you forget your password right?  I usually enter gibberish in those fields so that any idiot who knows what high school I went to can't reset my password, if they are asking that as a routine question just to log in I'm going to be in trouble.

[proudft]

No, it asks em whenever you log in from a 'new' computer.  So, yeah, something you will remember would be best. 

[Sky]

Did they reduce avatar textures? I know they're not the sharpest in the world, and of course Skyrim is destroying my enjoyment of graphics for a while...but when I rolled a Consular his robe was straight out of 2002 with super blurry textures. I would've remembered something that jarringly out of place, I think. My initial thought on the 367 beta weekend was that it was a bit medium res but nicely stylistic. This looked pretty bad, with everything on max @ 1080p (the textures, the models seemed fine though I didn't have any time to run around).

I know some people went nuts over the pop-in during conversations, but I hope the solution isn't to make everything super low res.

[Lantyssa]

Please note, 'new' computer means you logged completely out of the game.  I get asked about half the time I try to log in.

[Lucas]

Beside any individual problems some people may surely experience, wow, performance (both client and server) wise this has been quite a smooth ride so far, way above average :). Messed around a bit with the trooper. As I personally expected, I don't find much appeal in playing a story and class like that (at least for now), but hey, I don't complain :)

[Wolf]

Since i don't feel like waiting or speaking french tonight i'm filling up a yank server :) hope lag is not that bad

[Hawkbit]

I realize they aren't remotely in the same genre to compare, but I find it interesting that my 4yr old PC plays Skyrim decently on high settings, yet this I'm getting maybe 10fps with the lowest possible settings.  "Beta" or not, when you invite everyone to see the game it is a demo of sorts.  For me, this demo is most definitely keeping me from a purchase until at least a few months pass after launch and I might even wait to get a new PC before trying it again. 

I'm hoping they loosen some of this up a bit as the beta wears on.  I'll try again tonight, I suppose.

Also:  hire some animators.  The character running models are straight out of 2002. 

[Horik]

I'm getting in without issue as well but somehow skipping server select screen and going right into character select from the server I was on two weeks ago. This happening to anyone else?

[MuffinMan]

I'm getting in without issue as well but somehow skipping server select screen and going right into character select from the server I was on two weeks ago. This happening to anyone else?

Don't most MMO's do this?

[Horik]

It didn't last testing weekend, I probably just missed something .

[Lucas]

On a german PvP server, there is an est. waiting time of 24 hours 

[Montague]

I realize they aren't remotely in the same genre to compare, but I find it interesting that my 4yr old PC plays Skyrim decently on high settings, yet this I'm getting maybe 10fps with the lowest possible settings.  "Beta" or not, when you invite everyone to see the game it is a demo of sorts.  For me, this demo is most definitely keeping me from a purchase until at least a few months pass after launch and I might even wait to get a new PC before trying it again. 

I'm hoping they loosen some of this up a bit as the beta wears on.  I'll try again tonight, I suppose.

Also:  hire some animators.  The character running models are straight out of 2002. 

Once the initial crush of characters get out of the starting area or logout the FPS improves. My 5 year old setup with a modest GPU upgrade was getting around 20-25 FPS when I waited a few hours last test, but right at the start it was a stuttering mess.

[tmp]

Did they reduce avatar textures? I know they're not the sharpest in the world, and of course Skyrim is destroying my enjoyment of graphics for a while...but when I rolled a Consular his robe was straight out of 2002 with super blurry textures. I would've remembered something that jarringly out of place, I think.

Possibly the client loads smaller versions of the textures to cope with overall amount, a result of million characters milling around, or smth?

[Lucas]

settings to make the game look better (yeah well, beside texture pop in and detail, of course):

AntiAliasingLevel = 2
enableadvenvirolighting = true
DebugAdvEnviroLighting = true

in AppData-->Local-->SWTOR-->betatest-->settings-->clientsettings.ini ("Renderer" section)

Works with my graphic card (Nvidia GTX 560).

[proudft]

I have a random stray pink pixel near the chat window - it's bizarre, it looks like a monitor dead pixel but dragging windows over it covers it up.   But yeah, 10 minutes of test was enough to convince me to be done with this until release, it seems pretty sweet and I'd like to take my time with it with my 'real' guy.

[Amaron]

Best Bounty Hunter nostalgia moment so far:

 

I realize they aren't remotely in the same genre to compare, but I find it interesting that my 4yr old PC plays Skyrim decently on high settings, yet this I'm getting maybe 10fps with the lowest possible settings. 

That's definitely some sort of driver problem or bug.   Most people run the game smoothly.   The question is how many people is it going to affect.

[Fordel]

Try turning off shadows, that's what seems to kill my frame rate.

Shadows on, I get like 10-20 fps, shadows off, I get like 60.

[eldaec]

I realize they aren't remotely in the same genre to compare, but I find it interesting that my 4yr old PC plays Skyrim decently on high settings, yet this I'm getting maybe 10fps with the lowest possible settings. 

From the perspective of things that affect graphics performance, they are in exactly the same genre.

EA's servers are not rendering over the interwebs.

[MuffinMan]

I'm sure the miracle patch will fix it.

[Amaron]

I'm pretty amazed.   It's now getting to be later in the day and there's still no noticeable problems for them.   Looks like it's going to be an excellent launch.

[CmdrSlack]

So after I patched the client, I was in by about 10:45 CST. All of the U.S. servers were full. I swapped over to the EU servers, and there was one that spoke English that was open. The rest? Full.

I played from about 11 am CST to 5pm CST. I played the Jedi Knight story to 7. The lag didn't get awful until later in the day. When I tried to log out, I ultimately had to force quit the program via the task manager to do so.

Some of the voice acting wasn't 100% synched with the mouths in the animation -- for those who have been in beta before, is that due to lag or is that just par for the course?

On the whole, I had a lot of fun. I was a bit annoyed that the game didn't give me more early tooltips/nudging about what did what. I dismissed the info tips on the right side of the UI early on because I didn't realize that while objects, NPCS, and everything else needed a right-click, those tips needed a left click to actually fucking read them.

I played till about lv 4 before annoyedly discovering that I had to go back to the training area to find my trainer. At the same time, I did an assload of content without ever dying and only using the lv 1 jedi knight powers.

Even if I don't have time to play the rest of the weekend (or if I go back to Skyrim), I feel that I spent my pre-order money wisely.

[Fordel]

The De-sync sounds like lag/load or whatever. I haven't experienced that.


You not figuring out how to left click, I can't help you with that 

[DraconianOne]

So after I patched the client, I was in by about 10:45 CST. All of the U.S. servers were full. I swapped over to the EU servers, and there was one that spoke English that was open. The rest? Full.

Do you remember the server name at all?

[TripleDES]

Great launcher. After logging it, it shows some error message, that quickly scrolls off-screen before I even get a chance to read it. It said "something something unavailable..."

Clearly not really thought through.

[Amaron]

That usually only happens when you aren't in the test.   Did you forget to RSVP?

[Evildrider]

That usually only happens when you aren't in the test.   Did you forget to RSVP?

Or are you on a Sat. or Sun. start time?

[Sky]

Must have had to reboot the client to fix that blurry texture thing I had. Runs great now, no lag at all on Canderous.

[murdoc]

It didn't last testing weekend, I probably just missed something .

Chars weren't deleted and it just puts you to whatever server you played on last. There's a small button in the lower left corner to go back to server selection screen.

[Wolf]

that first flashpoint is a bitch to solo  :/

Admiral Ackbar is kicking my ass :(

[CmdrSlack]

So after I patched the client, I was in by about 10:45 CST. All of the U.S. servers were full. I swapped over to the EU servers, and there was one that spoke English that was open. The rest? Full.

Do you remember the server name at all?

It was the one at the top of the list.  No idea on name. I saw that it wasn't full and hit select.

[fuser]

1hr 20mins to get a real person. They flat out told me my security question answer and said my account would be unlocked in upto an hour. That was three hours ago and still locked.

I know account hacking is prevalent but this has gone over the deep end.

edit: for something scary my CDR report shows 204mins on hold over this locked account issue

[CmdrSlack]

The De-sync sounds like lag/load or whatever. I haven't experienced that.


You not figuring out how to left click, I can't help you with that 

I figured out the left click situation, it just seems like 90% of the world interaction is right clicking. As someone who hasn't played an MMO since COX (never even demoed WoW), it was a bit odd to have that one aspect of the interface be a left click.

I was pretty impressed with the rest of it. Even playing on a Euro server, the load of people caused the lag, not the distance.

Now I have to try other classes that are not the one I want to play at headstart/launch. Once I finally get out of noob story on this knight, that is.

[tmp]

that first flashpoint is a bitch to solo  :/

Admiral Ackbar is kicking my ass :(

It'a s trap, obv.

[Merusk]

Played the trooper up to 7 and was totally uninspired.  I really felt like I was dragging my way from one quest to another.  I was beginning to despair, particularly since so many of his dark/ light side choices were obvious "kick the puppy/ pat the puppy" choices and you felt like a dick or a traitor picking the dark side ones.  It felt like a real step backwards from the ME and ME2 choices that felt more like "the mission is the focus, screw your protocols."  I was beginning to despair so I quit out and decided to try a Sith.

Wow, what a difference.  Yeah the BH had the exact same gameplay but I liked the story a lot more.  Only got up to level 4 but I didn't feel as bad making the dark-side choices.  You're supposed to be a selfish Sith Empire dude. Even the light side choices presented felt more in-character with needing to get-along.  You didn't feel like you were screwing your character making either one. 

Maybe it's just my perception of things, but I just didn't find the Republic side as fulfilling.  I'm going to try some of the Jedi and Sith later and see if I run into the same problem.  It could just be the parallel story of corruption in the army that caused the Trooper story to go that route.