Star Wars: The Old Republic

Here have all this content!
*breaks your legs*

More suggestions for free-player limitations:
Resolution limited to 1024x768
Audio in mono only; no stereo
Can't remap controls
Must play and win a space mission between every travel point

I really like that last one - since you're limited in how many space missions you can do that would really provide incentive for people to sub. The first one is a bit harsh - maybe if you just limited the aspect ratio to only allow 4:3 resolutions - widescreen is a privelege, not a right.

They sent me a mailer telling me I got free CARTEL COINZ but I had to resubscribe to get them... derp.

More details:

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/22284-bioware-press-q-a-reveals-free-to-play-launching

I might actually give it a shot now that it's going free-to-play. I played my one month when I got the game back in like April and then dropped it; but without a sub I might be tempted to keep it around on the ol' HDD. Any idea if it has a Mac client?

I don't know if it is accurate.. but the low rumor is Nov 15 is the same day NGE launched and the laughter is loud.

It's accurate.

It does not.

I can see how this would be funny, considering how they're completely similar events and the gameplay of SWTOR is going to be changed in a way that alienates all current subscribers.

I'm not sure how you can understand sarcasm so well and irony so little.

Well, I guess all bets are off on what they can or can't deem to be monetizable, but you'll be able to pay money to have your lightsaber be an ax.

This seems pretty comprehensive:

http://www.swtor-spy.com/guides/swtor-cartel-market-calculator/2769/

My general feeling is that things are mostly priced a little too high. Subscribing is just a miles better value than trying to screw around with the store, which I suppose is intentional, but I can't help but think they'd make more money if everything was about 20% less.

The SWTORSpy site that Ingmar linked indicates that there are unlocks you can buy that are account-wide, but I didn't see anything like that in the store. Which means if I want more quickslots for each character, I need to buy one for EACH CHARACTER.

I had been playing on the free trial system -- where you could play for free up to level 15 -- and interestingly all four of my characters are available and appear playable despite the fact that some of them are races that are not allowed to free players, and that I'm only supposed to have two character slots. It did indicate that I was using 4 of 2 available slots, meaning if I want to create a new character I'd need to buy 3 more slots, not 1 more. If I'd been clever I would have created one character of each class on this account prior to the changeover!

I haven't been in game yet to see but I'm guessing they're hiding on a separate tab or something.

On the character slots, they said they were giving all the F2P people a grace period on their extra characters - presumably until they get additional slots into the store, you can't buy those yet.

Oh, I see. What will they do when the grace period ends? Will I have to select which characters to use my slots on, sort of like what City of Heroes did when it went F2P?

That's my understanding, yeah.

The party Jawa is my BEST FRIEND.

Yes, while it's annoying that after seven months of development they didn't add a speeder to drop you after Zorn and Toth in NiEC (you know, the way they for the first boss in the actual new raid), the upshot is that the Jawa is ready for most every pull on the tanks, so that's not so bad.

Pro tip if you find the Cartel Icon annoyingly glaring (like I did when I first logged in):
In interface editor set alpha to lowest setting, and set scale to smallest scale.
I hardly noticed it aftwards.

I THINK you can still use interface editor without subscribing, just can't use quickbars without purchase.

PS: found it funny (humorus) that "Hide Head Slot" had to be purchased if you're not a subscriber.

Does the game support UI mods yet?

Helmets are like pieces of flair to they make the F2P noobs wear.

If I haven't played before, want to screw around a bit and check out F2P, don't expect to play much but would like the option of hooking up with BF'ers occasionally, what server should I be on?

The Harbinger, guild is Tatooine Royal Navy. I think everyone has /ginvite rights, so just ask anyone you see online.

Maybe I'll make someone over there, but I'd miss my legacy stuff so...

Neopythia and I think one other (maybe more?) are on an East Coast RP server. No idea where Ingmar is.

Ebon Hawk! Which is I think the same East Coast RP server.

Yeah, Ing and I were on Shien and got merged on over to Ebon Hawk. I'd list all my names, but there are a lot of them. :P

I think I'm over it already. It's just so, so WoW-like. The story sequences aren't carrying it for me like I thought they would, and the gameplay is just incredibly bland.

It works out that in order to play through your story you actually have to spend 95% of the time doing things that have nothing to do with your story at all. Of the 5% of the game that is your actual story quest, I'd say 80% of it is filler designed to slow your progress. So the good part of the game, the part I think works fabulously well, is only 1% of the game as presented. That works for some people - if anything the drudgery you spend most of your time doing makes those little tidbids of awesome stand out even more.

The funny thing, to me at least, is that it's a game that probably has 2,000 hours worth of content spread across the eight classes. Take the 1% of distilled awesome out of it and you'd still have 20 hours of pure awesome. They could have diluted the pool maybe 3-5x and had a solid 60-100 hours worth of game here that would feel like it was wall-to-wall amazing in spite of the WoW-ness and lack of originality in the gameplay. Instead it's a homeopathic remedy that has about the same degree of efficacy (which isn't to say some folks don't swear by it).

Consular, and I didn't get very far at all. I guess I was hoping for more of an exciting single player RPG style kind of opening, when instead you get a conversation with your master followed by talking to Jedi holograms about your school curriculum. I got to the Jedi Temple, just wasn't feeling it at all, and stopped. It was just all so bog standard MMO, and I was expecting some more flashy scripted sequences, if that makes sense.

How's Secret World in that way? It sounds super interesting with its hunting the web, etc, but SWTOR sounded super interesting with its Bioware RPG trappings too.

I'm with you on the WoWness and bland. Add into that several times running into the non-subscriber penalties in the first ten levels buzz kill. You'd think they'd want the beginning of the game to be as hassle free as possible and then slam on the brakes and make you cough up some dough. I'm seriously considering subbing for a couple of months (which for EA is mission accomplished I guess) just to burn through the stories then deleting the game. But I won't feel good about it.

The consular is often considered one of the worst, and I can tell you it doesn't get any better over the course of the first act. The Imperial Agent was a vast improvement and the early level stuff was quite fun before enemies started getting high levels of HP again and every mob became a tedious grind.

The consular story is super slow-burn, and tries to set you up as an important character to the setting in your own right (as compared to the smuggler, bounty hunter, and inquisitor storylines, which are much more self-contained). The problem is that you're offered all of these sweeping, setting-changing decisions that can't possibly be reflected in the game. Decide to kill off a third of the Jedi Order to contain an unstoppable evil? The entire acknowledgement of this is a mail from an NPC. You get a special title that has apparently only ever been awarded twice before... except for every other Consular you see on the fleet.

It's a shame that the Consular story sucks so hard, because Shadow is the most fun I had with any class in the game.

I was having a lot of fun with Trooper, because it at least offered distinct villains you could give a shit about, until about level 35ish, when you just win. The third act is about some Imperial guy I'm supposed to care about I guess because he's a general? It doesn't even segue, it's just "You beat them, here's your promotion, on to new business." I don't even know.