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Since 6.0 ruined WoW for me (I'm sure other people like it) I decided to give SWTOR another try, especially since if you preorder the expansion you get 12x XP when completing class missions. This allows you to reach level cap in less than a day of /played time and allows you to reach cap by only doing class quests (or Makeb/Illium). It costs about $37 US to unlock that bonus (subscription+preorder).

I haven't played since opening month. As far as leveling goes the game is great, but apparently it is still lacking in endgame. The biggest issue I have with it is that each class I've played feels like it has 1-2 too many primary damage dealing abilities that clutter up the rotation. Aside from that playing a Sith Juggernaut and Powertech to 55 were really good fun. The Sith Warrior class chain is great fun and the Bounty Hunter one is slightly less interesting (but the gameplay of the Powertech is more fun for me). Currently working on Jedi Sentinel and in Chapter 2. Does anyone else play at all?

No class has a better class story than the Imperial Operative. That could have been a standalone, single player game.

Anyway, yeah, I have a 55 Sith Sorcerer, 52 Operative, 53 Jedi Sentinel, 50 Gunslinger, 35 Mercenary and am currently leveling a 20-something Trooper. Being able to skip over all the planet missions is awesome, since hunting Rakgouls for the 10th time was starting to drive me crazy.

Frelling rakgouls.

I have a 55 of every Imperial class, and a 51 Jedi Consular. Story-wise, I'm torn between the Operative and Sith Warrior. Both are good, but they are good in very different ways.

As far as endgame, it depends on how invested and deep you want to go into it. The operations have enough scale in difficulty to allow people to pug it to see the story content, but it also has the hard and nightmare modes for those wanting to push the pve limits.

streamdragon wrote:No class has a better class story than the Imperial Operative. That could have been a standalone, single player game.

The Agent's storyline is great. Lots of 007 meets Mission Impossible.
That being said, the Smuggler has a great story, too, if only for the wacky humour and the dialogues. The Jedi Knight is pretty much KotOR III, lots of epic stuff happening there.

I've got a character for every class except for the two casters (Sorcerer + Counsellor), but my two mains are a Sith Marauder and a Sniper. The former due to style and feeling, the latter because I find sniping to be an incredibly fun gameplay.

As for the endgame, I'd say it depends on what you expect of it. By now there's a lot of stuff to do if you reach L55, though most of it is the usual grind that you have in any MMO where you just run the same instances all day long. They have recently added new content in the form of the Forged Alliances storyline (featuring three new and well-made dungeons that also bridge the gap to the upcoming expansion) and the mini-planet Oricon. SWTOR operations also only require teams of 8, which are occasionally formed as pick-up groups on the Fleet, although you are expected to farm suitable gear.

And then of course there are the minigames of Galactic Starfighter, and of decking out your home in Galactic Strongholds. The latter can be rather addictive once you've started, at least if you enjoy customising and building stuff. Lastly, you've got various events getting kicked off every now and then. I think these days it's Bounty Week again?

 Lynata wrote:

streamdragon wrote:No class has a better class story than the Imperial Operative. That could have been a standalone, single player game.

The Agent's storyline is great. Lots of 007 meets Mission Impossible.
That being said, the Smuggler has a great story, too, if only for the wacky humour and the dialogues. The Jedi Knight is pretty much KotOR III, lots of epic stuff happening there.

>snip<

And then of course there are the minigames of Galactic Starfighter, and of decking out your home in Galactic Strongholds. The latter can be rather addictive once you've started, at least if you enjoy customising and building stuff. Lastly, you've got various events getting kicked off every now and then. I think these days it's Bounty Week again?

Having just finished the Smuggler story line, I'm a bit embarassed I forgot it. I did do the Jedi Knight story (Jedi Sentinel was my first character at launch; nightmare that was...), but frankly Doc's existence wipes out any positive aspect about that story. Okay, not entirely true. The part on Correlia where was pretty awesome.

Fun story: A friend and I were playing Sith Warrior (him) and Sith Inquisitor (me). We started from level 1 together. The background for the Sith Warrior is that you're basically a standout among the usual apprentices; the Inquisitor on the other hand, starts out as a slave. Complete trash until your force power is noticed.

At the very first quest giver, he refers to the Warrior and mentions something about him being the Sith he's heard so much about. My character's chat response was "Hey, I'm a great sith also!"

Think about that. They bothered to write and voice, a response that would ONLY occur when two sith started playing from level 1 while grouped together! That sort of attention to detail really blew me away.

I just got to Hoth on my Jedi Sentinel and I deeply hate this world now. The travel time in this game is really atrocious and is the number one problem I have with it. Taking 10 minutes of flying to get anywhere is not remotely fun and the world setting isn't beautiful enough to make up for it. To be perfectly honest, I haven't seen a zone yet that is comparable to anything in WoW in terms of "damn, they really did an amazing job on this." I guess cartoonish graphics don't really lend themselves well to awe inspiring scenery.

I wouldn't say that. I would say though that yes, the further you go into the game, the more rushed and boring the environments become, and barring Korriban, Dromund Kass, and Tython, there's just nothing of interest to really see. And yes. Hoth is horrible. I hated it there.

I was partial to Voss for appearances in the later worlds. My personal bane was Alderaan.

Alderaan wasn't ugly, Alderaan just dragged on and on and on for so damn long and everything was fighting giant ants. Kilik's sucked in the EU and they sucked in SWTOR too.

Frankly, the Empire was completely justified in blowing up Alderaan. I mean, if I told you there was a planet full of mind controlling ant people, you would want that rock blown up yesterday.

#EmpireWasRight
#DownWithAnts

 curran12 wrote:
Frankly, the Empire was completely justified in blowing up Alderaan. I mean, if I told you there was a planet full of mind controlling ant people, you would want that rock blown up yesterday.

#EmpireWasRight
#DownWithAnts

After having Vector try to get into my operative's pants, I'm inclined to agree.

LordofHats wrote:I wouldn't say that. I would say though that yes, the further you go into the game, the more rushed and boring the environments become, and barring Korriban, Dromund Kass, and Tython, there's just nothing of interest to really see. And yes. Hoth is horrible. I hated it there.

Personally, I thought Corellia was pretty impressive. You rarely see urban environments in an MMO that actually look and feel like a huge actual city.

I haven't been there with my Jedi yet, though. Now I'm a bit worried after reading streamdragon's post.

curran12 wrote:Frankly, the Empire was completely justified in blowing up Alderaan. I mean, if I told you there was a planet full of mind controlling ant people, you would want that rock blown up yesterday.

And besides, Alderaan totally kept a secret stash of weapons, not to mention financial and logistical support for the Rebellion. :p

 Lynata wrote:

I haven't been there with my Jedi yet, though. Now I'm a bit worried after reading streamdragon's post.

Don't be. There have been several pretty key changes to Jedi Sentinels since I played one at launch. Being able to go into combat with full Centering stacks, for instance, if you go Ataru build.

Mainly the issue with the sentinel was that you were in medium armor, but didn't get a healer companion until Balmorra (mid 40s). So going through Taris, with Rakgouls frelling shredding armor AND percentage HP was a nightmare.

Oooohhh, I thought that was referring to the story!

Alright. I'm playing in a party of four, so I've got the healing covered anyways.

Gotta echo your earlier comment regarding the dialogues, by the way. And simply having your character chime in to drop a cool line during a multiplayer conversation is like a game all by itself. Really feels like you're part of a movie.

I think my least favorite planet is Corellia. As far as going places it is like Hoth, but worse.

Well the one time I've been to Corellia I actually didn't mind it at all. They did a good job with the layout.

Corellia is cut up into a few large parts, each of which is separated by a train. There are few QT spots, all of which are the train stations, and there are no speeders at all either. The way to move through each area is on foot or mount and many of the quests are "go to the NE corner and sneeze, now go back to the SW corner and tell someone about it". Unlike Hoth, which is wide open, Corellia is a maze of buildings keeping you from going a direct route to almost any location. I didn't dislike any planet the first time either, but the tediousness of Corellia grew on me. I'd rather go just about anywhere else.

Lynata wrote:Oooohhh, I thought that was referring to the story!

Alright. I'm playing in a party of four, so I've got the healing covered anyways.

Gotta echo your earlier comment regarding the dialogues, by the way. And simply having your character chime in to drop a cool line during a multiplayer conversation is like a game all by itself. Really feels like you're part of a movie.

Oh, no! The Jedi Knight story is pretty good. It's your typical heroic journey stop the bad guy thing. The not-quite-ending on Corellia is a fantastic throwback to everything you've done during your leveling career. Trying not to be spoilery, sorry, but it's pretty good. It doesn't stand out the way that the Operative or Smuggler stories do though, is all.

I just really don't like Doc.

trexmeyer wrote:Well the one time I've been to Corellia I actually didn't mind it at all. They did a good job with the layout.

Of all the planets in SWTOR, Corellia's layout is the worst to me. Sure, you have all the individual areas separated by trains, but the road from one place to another within an area is often the most ludicrous layout imaginable. Want to go from middle right to bottom right? Straight line? Bahaha, no, try going up, through the center, back around that one building (because someone collapsed a building through the path) and then down and right. So many cut backs, switchbacks and roundabout ways of getting place to place there. Hated it. At least Hoth I can generally point myself in a direction, hit auto-run and go get a sandwhich.

Thanks, I feel better now.

Anyone here as crazy about the housing as I am, by the way? Spending way too much time, credits and cartel coins on decoration.

 Lynata wrote:
Thanks, I feel better now.

Anyone here as crazy about the housing as I am, by the way? Spending way too much time, credits and cartel coins on decoration.

I may be addicted to this. Been trying to quit, or at least get my monkey back under control, so I haven't been on as much lately. I have all four houses, though my DK house has the most work done on it (its for my main character). I bought the Tatooine house and was really disappointed to see just how frelling huge that place is. I'm never going to get enough stuff to fill that place.

I won't say how much I've spent on cartel coins to get stronghold packs. We'll leave it at "a lot". I'm not really part of a working guild (just me and my previously mentioned friend), so I can't easily get any of the raid drops or anything.

That said, my Dromund Kass apartment is also the best decorated. Haven't unlocked any of the other rooms, and only the main entry is really "decorated" in the truest sense.

I frelling LOVE the Tatooine place though. I love the layout, love the outdoor areas, and just the general feel. Like squidhills said though, that is going to be a PAIN to decorate.

 streamdragon wrote:
I frelling LOVE the Tatooine place though. I love the layout, love the outdoor areas, and just the general feel.

Yeah, Tatooine is amazing, but it is also amazingly expensive, so I have not gotten it. I have Dromund Kaas for my Imperial chars and Nar Shaddaa for my Republic characters. I wasn't orignally going to get the Kaas City one but I just loved the aesthetic to much.

 Lynata wrote:
The Jedi Knight is pretty much KotOR III

This is true IME but only if you assume absolutely no progress in game design since 2003, which really sums up the tragedy of trotting out a MMO with this license instead of a proper RPG. Sorry if this seems like beating a dead horse but your comparison vividly triggered the original sting when SWTOR was announced and the avalanche of disappointment while I played it.

I think Star Wars is perfect for MMOs. Issue is that both the Star Wars MMOs have been kind of gakky. Galaxies had the open sand box that was just great for the setting, and definitely the game's highlight, but on an overall was just a bad version of Ever Quest (In Space). SWTOR had a lot of neat stuff, but to me, SWTOR was horribly executed. Its like they put all their time and effort into the story lines and voice acting, and that part of the game is really hit and miss. The rest of it just seems to suffer from lackadaisical development.

I have a 55 Assassin. And all I have to say is feth guardians/warriors.

I try playing SWTOR every now and then, usually finish a planet, and then stop.

The class stories are genuinely good, for the most part, and there's usually a couple good sidequests per planet, but between huge travel times, way too much grind and uninspired game mechanics, I just can't be bothered after a while.

SWTOR's big flaw is the lack of something new, it relies, like most MMOs since WoW on grind for the sake of grind to get money out of the player. If that grind isn't enjoyable, however, one can only get so far without shedding players. Consider, for instance, F2P games like World of Tanks or Planetside 2; they're grindy like any MMO, but the grind is actually fun, and what you do to grind is the core, well designed part of the game, not gak you've got to do between interesting things. EA seems to have realized this fact with their current promotion, just play the class quests to advance for X price (which by F2P games is actually not unreasonable) , but I've yet to find an MMO I can really stick with because, at the end of the day, they force you to spend too much time doing boring gak when I could be doing something else.

I loved the story (once upon a time) and got bored with actual
leveling. The game was its best with partying with npcs and
advancing the storyline through class quests.

Good news, right now class quests are all you need!

 streamdragon wrote:
Good news, right now class quests are all you need!

What happens after?

 malfred wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:
Good news, right now class quests are all you need!

What happens after?

You hang out on the Fleet and RP, duh.