[MMORPG] SW: The Old Republic #24 - Server status: UP

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 00:34 schreef Morthill het volgende:

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 00:03 schreef Morthill het volgende:
Eindelijk Sith Lord wat is het toch heerlijk om good guy te spelen Tier IV Light Side.

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 02:56 schreef Verbodsbord het volgende:
Pvp is voor mij echt niet te spelen, puur lage framerate. De game zelf loopt redelijk, maar ook niet spectaculair. Een game als WoW kon ik op bijna alles ultra spelen, en dat werkte prima, zelfs in battlegrounds met 30 man bij elkaar.
Erg jammer dat het grafisch zo zwaar is zonder dat het er super goed uitziet

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I've currently logged over 150 hours played time on my primary (and only!) character. I'm just a few short levels away from the level cap, and I figure I'll probably hit it this week. With all of that in mind, I'd say I'm ready to finally give Star Wars: The Old Republic a review.

…But that's coming this Friday (I need time to write the thing as well as put together a spiffy video review, and I want to try to hit the level cap before I give it a score). Now, I've been maintaining this review in progress for about three weeks, so if you're a regular reader you might have a sense of what I think of The Old Republic. If you're not, I'll give you the skinny. Think of this as Review-Lite.

The Old Republic is really solid. While there may be nothing truly new or innovative in the combat department, combat is still interesting thanks to the class skills and the way two separate Advanced Class branches use those skills.

The new and innovative stuff has all been saved for the beginnings and ends (and frequently a little of the middle) of almost every quest in SWTOR. BioWare said they were going to deliver a compelling single-player-style storyline in an MMO, and that's exactly what they've done. Every choice I make leaves me wondering what would have happened if I had chosen one of the other two options. Sometimes my decisions come back to haunt me quite far down the line, reflecting a very clever and complex story system that leaves a lot of incentive to play new characters.

Quest objectives aren't the most exciting and don't really steer away from kill and fetch quests, but the dialogue and options that bookend each quest make them quite enjoyable. Plus, many of the quests are designed like mini-dungeons, which give you a sense of progress while you're pushing towards the end by making you face mini boss-encounters at the end of a linear series of rooms.

The crafting system is highly enjoyable and virtually grind-free. The chance that you'll get some sort of bonus each time you send a companion off, or learn a new recipe each time you reverse-engineer an item makes crafting – often repetitive in other games – feel like some sort of awesome loot slot-machine. Having the companions do the work for you means most of the crafting happens in the background. You don't have to stand there for five minutes creating cheap gear, you can go kill monsters while your companion does that!

Companions as combat pets are also pretty impressive. While they'll occasionally get in the way and do more harm than good, the AI seems to be stronger than any other pet AI I've seen to date, and the opportunity to learn more about each companion through the affection system is a bonus.

Player versus Player Warzones provide an outlet for more competitive players. The particular highlight here is Huttball, which introduces a new PvP ruleset and puts a heavy emphasis on teamwork, positioning and clever use of crowd control to take advantage of myriad environmental hazards. It doesn't put a huge amount of focus on raw combat though. For that, the capture-point map Alderaan Civil War is your best bet. I felt that Alderaan's simplicity was its biggest downside, however.

If you'd rather work with other players than against them, Flashpoints – scripted and structured instances complete with bosses and loot – are what you're looking for. The first Flashpoint for both Republic and Empire factions are really impressive, and while later ones don't cause the same impact they still provide a solid dungeon-crawling experience.

Despite all the things TOR does right, bugs hamper much of the game after about level 20. Many are silly graphical errors, but some are more egregious. I've suffered a whole bunch, including being stuck in place indefinitely (even after using the unstuck command), becoming unable to use the user-interface at all, and instantly dying for no reason when entering a new area.

If you're new to MMOs you may be more forgiving of some of the aged mechanics that The Old Republic uses, but you may also be slowed by the lack of structured tutorial. If you're an MMO veteran, the class-based story thread and forking options at every turn may still be enough to keep you enticed. Regardless of experience, however, The Old Republic has enough content to engage you for at least a couple months. The rate at which BioWare pumps more content out will determine how much longer – patches and bug fixes have been relatively slow to launch, but maybe now that it's not Christmas/New Year's things will speed up.

Whether or not it can take World of Warcraft's crown, we'll have to wait and see. Either way, it's a really good game. Check back Friday for the full review and score.

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 03:21 schreef Rivalo het volgende:

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Jullie vragen er ook gewoon om. En trouwens ik boos?

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 06:37 schreef Ceased2Be het volgende:
IGN is bijna klaar met hun review na 150 uur spelen, mooi overzichtje van de plussen en minnen.

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 03:21 schreef Rivalo het volgende:

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Jullie vragen er ook gewoon om. En trouwens ik boos?

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 00:03 schreef Morthill het volgende:
Eindelijk Sith Lord wat is het toch heerlijk om good guy te spelen Tier IV Light Side.

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 10:52 schreef Cara het volgende:
ik neem aan dat het klopt dat alles plat ligt en ik niet op de forums kan posten?

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 10:52 schreef RickoKun het volgende:
Hij zou gewoon pvp perm enabled moeten zijn, ook voor de sith wtf morthill echt kom dan jong baklap

-edit-

Ja cara alles ligt plat

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 10:57 schreef Cara het volgende:

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Even tinfoil hat op. Zou het zo maar kunnen dat ze zonder wat te zeggen de maintenance gesplitst hebben en nu gewoon de rest doen? Vond het al zo kort gisteren.

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Earlier today, we deployed patch 1.0.2. You can read the full list of updates that the patch brought here.

We are working on getting a patch deployed to address the issues that some players are still experiencing after 1.0.2 including:

•Fixing an issue that causes in-game chat channels to stop functioning for some players.
•Preventing social emotes (like /getdown) from interfering with combat.
We’re currently testing this patch, and we hope to have it deploy sometime in the early hours of the morning tomorrow (CST), but if we experience any issues with this patch, we may hold off its deployment until tomorrow night.

There will be notifications that the servers will be going down before the patch is put in place, so please keep an eye out for these.

In addition, earlier today we deployed a patch (1.0.2a) that resolved a client crash upon character selection that some users were experiencing. The full patch note reads:

•Fixed an issue that could cause players to crash to desktop after selecting a character.
Thank you for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 10:52 schreef RickoKun het volgende:
Hij zou gewoon pvp perm enabled moeten zijn, ook voor de sith wtf morthill echt kom dan jong baklap

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 11:00 schreef Ceased2Be het volgende:
Die noodpatch was vanochtend toch al? tenminste ik heb een paar Mb download gehad vanochtend om 06:00

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In addition, earlier today we deployed a patch (1.0.2a) that resolved a client crash upon character selection that some users were experiencing. The full patch note reads:

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•Fixing an issue that causes in-game chat channels to stop functioning for some players.
•Preventing social emotes (like /getdown) from interfering with combat.
We’re currently testing this patch, and we hope to have it deploy sometime in the early hours of the morning tomorrow (CST), but if we experience any issues with this patch, we may hold off its deployment until tomorrow night.

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 02:40 schreef JediSimons het volgende:

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Ik heb ook veel meer plezier op m'n LS BH dan m'n DS Inq.

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 11:10 schreef Intronic het volgende:
Heb ik eens tijd om te spelen.. .

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 11:05 schreef TheoddDutchGuy het volgende:

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Mijn BH is compleet neutraal xD wat gek genoeg best nog makkelijk te doen is.
(ik deed het niet expres zeg maar)

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 10:56 schreef pjats het volgende:

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Ik zit gewoon op de forums te lezen. Ik kan niet posten, aangezien ik op werk niet kan inloggen ivm security check.

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Op donderdag 5 januari 2012 11:26 schreef Satex het volgende:
Als er een patch is en de servers gaan offline zetten ze de post functie uit op het forum. Waarschijnlijk om de spam van "I can't login wtf?" tegen te gaan.

Wat ik wel raar vind is dat ze totaal geen ETA geven hoe lang dit gaat duren, echt zeer slecht.