SWTOR: Space Combat Preview

Space Combat is probably one of the more underrated features of Star Wars The Old Republic. Yes, it certainly is not innovative gameplay by any stretch of the imagination, but it really is quite fun. 

Of course, fun is relative and many will probably not look past the fact that it is a rail shooter. Admittedly, i did have trouble when I first tried to play, not really knowing what to expect. Controls were simple, but tend to be sluggish so that took a while to get used to. 


Gearing the ship is very expensive so you should not expect to buy all the upgrades at the same time. Since missions can be repeated even if you fail, you can decide which upgrade will be the most beneficial if you cannot afford them all. Mission ends with you alive but targets not getting destroyed in time? Just get the cannon upgrades and perhaps one for the missiles too. 


It certainly is a very pleasant diversion from the normal MMO game. You can certainly play the game without ever doing a space combat mission, but i think this gives players a better feel of being part of a larger game world...or galaxy. 

SWTOR: Tanking Alderaan PvP

I have to say I am definitely having more fun doing PvP in Star Wars: The Old Republic than any other game I've played. Heck, even League of Legends did not keep me for very long, as great a game as it is. I suppose a huge part in SWTOR's favour is the fact that PvP is very accessible. The bolstering mechanic allows even a level 10 to go toe to toe with a level 50 and potentially win. However, it does not give any talents or skills so that is already a huge disadvantage. Bolster also does not scale down, so those with top pvp gear will still overpower those just jumping in as soon as they can queue for warzones.

Mind you, I've never been one-shot. Or 2-shot for that matter. I went up against a level 40 Jedi Guardian a few times and it was apparent we were both in tank spec. However, the gearing and ability differences were very obvious and I was clearly outmatched. But even then, the fight did take a while before I ran away like the coward I am.

Alderaan is not exactly perfect for a tanking class. With the lower damage, you can't expect to go solo and kill someone. However, because of high survivability, you are suited to being able to protect the objectives for a long time. Sure, it can be boring, but SWTOR actually makes it clear that it rewards people more for objective play than how many people you killed. In this Alderaan vid, I cut out several minutes because nothing happened while defending the center node but I ended up 3rd on the leaderboard, particularly with the medal count and objective points.

The match shown was really really close - pretty much down the wire, but we were able to pull it off in the end. Pretty good for a PUG group actually.

Highlights of the match:

• Some really terrible goofs from yours truly. Learn from my mistake and NEVER leave the objective for a long time.
• The nodes interfere with line of sight and smaller characters can effectively hide themselves. You may never know that they are there until it is too late.
• Line of sight also makes stopping a node capper from range a bit harder. If you are range, make sure to move around the node to take shots at them.
• Keeping a friendly shielded and his opponent taunted ensures his victory. After the taunt, I go back to guard my node.
• 11k Objective points! I honestly have no idea how and which points factor in to your rewards. Unfortunately, the leaderboard does not show the rewards given to even your teammates.

SWTOR: More Tank Hutball

Over the weekend I focused on getting my Sith Juggernaut to a level where I get more tools to play with. I stopped at level 26 and this gave me access to Force Choke and Force Push. The former is a nice crowd control ability limited only to the fact that it is channeled. It lasts for 3s but that is usually enough to keep someone away from an objective.

Force Push is just a fantastic ability. All day I have denied goals and killed opponents with this ability and made PvP even more fun. The knockback distance is actually quite long, perhaps 15 meters and it can stun opponents unlike other class' knockbacks. The one minute cooldown is very limiting however and knowing when to use or save it for later can make a difference.

Some highlights of the video:

• Good use of ball passing for both sides.
• Using Force Push to knock people off ledges and into hazards. In one case, I pushed the enemy ball carrier into the poison hazard and rooted him with a charge to make sure he dies. I died too, but that was fun.
• Using Taunt when I can to make sure the ball carrier takes less damage. A Powertech was also doing very well shielding the ball carriers.
• A lot of good group play in protecting the ball carrier. The opposing group were a little disorganized, but they didn't lack in effort and had been trying to score.
• A teammate going the wrong way! It was a little confusing at first before we realized what was happening. We were ahead 3-0 though so everyone had a laugh. That same ball carrier also seemed inexperienced with ball passing.

Sadly beta is over, but I'll have more vids coming out during the week, as well as commentary. With early access coming in just over a week, I am very eager to play and get more SWTOR PvP action.

SWTOR: Sith Juggernaut PvP - Huttball

On the last day of the beta weekend, I decided to give PvP a whirl. I decided to stick with my tank spec particularly because of one talent - Intimidation. This allowed Chilling Scream to be cast without any rage cost. While Chilling Scream is governed by the global cooldown, it does not have a cooldown of it's own. And having a free, almost spammable AoE snare is incredibly valuable. Sadly, I wasn't able to get high enough level to get other great abilities for PvP, but I figured I'd still give it a go.

Huttball is actually a great warzone for a Sith Juggernaut or Jedi Guardian. While PvP is always about killing other people, control is far more powerful in a game like Huttball. Killing opponents would actually make things harder as they spawn behind the goal line.

In this particular game, I decided to play very aggressively and see if I can draw the attention of multiple players. My first skirmish did just that and 4-5 opposing players decided to beat on me. A deficit of half their team locked in a useless battle. It did take them 24s to kill me which was more than enough time for the ball carrier to score by the time I respawned. I decided to use this strategy a lot as my opponents did not seem to really care about the objectives and decided to farm kills (or they gave up early). I did make a mistake at one point when I created a 3-1 deficit created in favour of the opponents when I decided to take on a smuggler. Not that I didn't appreciate the healing or the extra shooter, but it was an unnecessary fight.

One of the better abilities of a Juggernaut at this level is Guard and Taunt. These make Juggernauts and Guardians excellent bodyguards for ball carriers and healers and actually makes tanking useful in PvP. I have to hand it to Bioware that they decided to make all specs useful for PvP and it made the game significantly more fun.

Other highlights of the match:

• A 3-1 situation where I was able to take one trooper down before I died
• Force Scream is a really powerful finisher ability. It should be able to deal far more damage than seen in the vid if I was able to gear up more
• Force Charge is a ton of fun
• The Juggernaut's resilience is shown very well on that last goal. Taking focus fire and having one healer, I was able to slowly make my way to the goal line. Also, charging through fire is fun, if dangerous (my health went down to almost 30%)
• Another show of durability of the class is when I decided to run through the poison hazard. Took some damage but it was not significant and allowed me to save my charge in case other opponents don't take their attention from the ball carrier.

In any case, I have now cemented my decision to make the Sith Juggernaut as my main class. While I was sad to not have the time to level and get more abilities, I welcome the challenge of learning how to use a higher level tank in PvP.

Diablo 3 Beta: Initial Impressions

With some shock, I received a beta invite to Diablo 3 in my email earlier this week. Of course, the first thing I had to think was "it's a fake!" and logged in to the Battle.Net site. Surprise, surprise, Diablo 3 Beta is actually in my games list. Sadly, I had to wait a few days to download since I didn't really have the time to play it.

**Important Aside - always, always go to the official site to validate beta invites whenever possible. Sometimes clicking links is the only option emails give you, but you have to be very careful to check where that link is really taking you to.

It has been a very long time since I played a Diablo game. I totally loved the original game and would play it when I could. Diablo 2 on the other hand, not so much. The second game did not catch me with it's story and, as a result, it felt very grindy. Could be my fault for skipping stuff, but to further the story, I had to get to a certain level and going through the same dungeons over and over just became too tedious.

So how is Diablo 3? One word sums it up nicely: fun.

The beta is actually quite small - only 13 levels out of what looks like 30, maybe more. It only shows the very first part of the game, up until the fight with the Skeleton King which only gets you to level 8 or 9. There are no cinematics yet and, partially because of that, the story is quite lacking. It does look like they are testing mostly mechanics, gameplay, and perhaps loot drops and leveling numbers.

What? I still need to kill stuff! And find breakable things!

So what the heck made it fun? I think I have spent hours killing the same kind of mobs over and over again, but it has not grown old. Between 2 characters, i've finished the beta at least 10 times. And yet I still am compelled to log on and play some more.

Part of the fun is that everything you do had some cool effect. The level 1 abilities may seem simple, but they still killed monsters in 1-2 hits. Some even knock away enemies off to the outside of the playable area. There are also so many destructable objects, even those that cannot be directly targetted. There's just so much primal joy from using an ability and watching tables, chairs, even walls smash and break. Yes, these are shallow reasons, but when you can't get enough of finding things to break and kill, it is reason enough.

Take that you fearsome furniture!

Sometimes killing and breaking things do get old, but then there's also the loot. Certainly not ultra powerfull stuff (although some of those drop too), but scrolls, gold, and training pages to improve your crafting drop frequently as well. The training pages actually may end up the more valuable drop as the crafted gear looks pretty strong. Gold drops do seem to scale with the player's level as my level 10 barbarian can get 20g from a level 1 monster. That may be a bug though.

The other part of the fun is the sense of discovery. Like other Diablo games, the map has some randomness to it. Not completely new maps though. Rooms and corridors are liberally copy/pasted in, but the actual layout of the dungeon maps are changed from game to game. You can log out after exploring a dungeon and come back to the same dungeon with a different map layout. This can also be an annoying feature if you get disconnected and need to spend several more minutes finding the entrance to the next dungeon level.

That leads to one of Diablo 3's flaws - the game only works when the servers are online. There is no option to play offline. Then again, a fully offline client can lead to exploits and hacks that can interfere with online play. It would not be hard for some enterprising person to run exploits like duplicating items or gold if the game is available offline. This kind of thing would be very bad especially for the auction house.

Speaking of which, the auction house in beta does not have the real money option enabled yet and works passably when selling and buying gear. I was able to make some decent gold, but since there aren't that many people in the beta, demand drops off pretty quick. I do find it interesting that you can sell items that are stored in the shared stash chest, each character's inventory, and even what each character is wearing. Convenient for sure, but I smell a mobile app on the way.

Since the game is always online, each game session has it's own "instance" which can be joined by other players. By default, your game is set to "invite only" where you can find a friend and invite him/her into your game. Other modes allow others to jump into your game either by finding your Real ID or using the game finder to locate others who are in the same quest as you. Monsters do increase in power when others join so it provides a nice challenge, but the loot is currently a little broken with the end boss giving me only low quality items. Not sure if that is intended or i was victimized by poor RNG.

There is still a lot for me to find out and do in Diablo 3. There are still other classes I haven't played to a higher level and there are certainly more updates to come. Apparently, the game files already include models and maps for later levels, so I really look forward to testing those when they are made available.

SWTOR: The Last Beta

So this is it, the (very likely) last of the weekend beta tests for Star Wars: The Old Republic. And boy this is going to be a whopper. There's no official estimate as to how many people have been invited or have accepted the beta test, but we can probably give a good guess at it. Bioware did indicate that there are around 1.4 million registered accounts on their site, but that number is inflated due to those with multiple accounts, including yours truly. Still, given that there are over 800k retail box pre-orders in the US alone, plus the fact that around 200k+ codes were given away through media partners, that number may indeed be reached. However, given the test is on a US holiday weekend, there is a huge chunk of people who won't be able to play so the number may be closer to 700k, which is still a lot.

Will the game experience problems on day 1? It certainly would not be a stress test if it didn't. However, Stephen Reid did mention that they intended to use this test to determine how they deal with Early Game Access. I would not be surprised if people would be given a set time they are allowed to log on during the day that the beta starts. Doing this gives me high confidence that they are really committed in a smooth release. Not high confidence that release will be smooth? Of course not. You can't plan enough for events like this, especially with the numbers they will be expecting. Can they pull it off? I belive so. But, at the same time, I will not be surprised if things do go wrong.

As long as "things do go wrong" does not include deleting the whole game. *cough*

One thing I did find interesting is how excited I ended up being for the game. Earlier this year, I was lamenting on how long Bioware was taking to even give a release date and that my interest in the game was waning. It was to the point that I was almost ready to give up waiting. But then the large scale betas happened. Getting my hands on the game did so much to alleviate a lot of my concerns about the game and brought back to life that little dying spark of excitement I had. I was happy to send in bugs I found and provided my feedback. Now, I just can't wait to test it again or play it when it goes live.

See ya'll in beta!

DING! Leveling Up and Pacing

With Star Wars: The Old Republic releasing very soon (hopefully I get in on Dec. 15, but I don't mind waiting for release), I have thought quite a bit about how this game, or future games, can keep me playing past that first month. So many aspects of SWTOR is still unknown thanks to the Non-Disclosure Agreement for most people and one of them is the leveling curve. After quite a bit of thought, it is that leveling curve that played a major part of why I still play World of Warcraft.

Now why would the leveling curve be important? Surely one would like to get to max level as soon as possible to be able to "fully enjoy the game". It was certainly a train of thought I had years ago. I remember when The Burning Crusade expansion went live, I hadn't slept much over the course of 4 days to be one of the first to 70. After which I promised myself never to do that ever again and, so far, I've kept to that promise.

World of Warcraft's current pace of leveling is certainly not a good point of reference. With so many expansions since it's release, the game pretty much just wants you to blow through the low levels to get the the relevant content. Even without heirloom gear (+xp) or guild leveling perks (more +xp), you can easily skip several zones you've never seen because you can outlevel them by just completing the current zone you are in.

No, if WoW is going to be a point of reference, we will have to go back to the 1-60 game almost 7 years ago. I had started playing March of 2005 and it took me around 5 months to get my first 60. Granted, I've spent time to try a few classes and server types (the RP servers back then were waaaay out of my league and they still are), but during all that time, I have always enjoyed the game and the pace allowed me to get immersed with the world and my chosen character at the time. It felt that my character was growing and learning and that the world (of warcraft) was alive even without dynamic content.

Azeroth just feels to me now like it is a virtual home.

In contrast, leveling in RIFT was just way too fast. I hit level 50 in just 3 weeks and I wasn't even trying that hard. I had split my time between 2 games and still made it to max level in less time than it took for me to find a character I want to level in WoW. I loved the rich environments, but the pace just would not allow me to stay still long enough to be immersed in it. Heck, even now I don't know what the deal is between the rivalry between the Defiants and Guardians. Their emnity always seemed rather petty and arbitrary to me. The titular rifts did spice things up a bit, but a lot of them made them feel grindy, and the randomness of some events made me miss out on the more interesting invasions when they were relevant (eg: I never saw a werewolf invasion while I was questing in Gloamwood).

In the end, while RIFT may be the better game in many respects, I went back to World of Warcraft. It's not even about the time invested in the game, but RIFT simply did not give me the sense of really knowing my character. A lot of the questing is generic and there is nothing that helps define your niche in the world. It's just "get to 50 and grind for your gear". While that pretty much sums up ALL MMOs, having gone through 1-49 so quickly just made it the whole lot more obvious. Grinds just don't feel like grinds when there is an actual objective to reach that is more than an in-game item. 

Perhaps SWTOR's "story driven" gameplay can drive things up several notches when it comes to pace. Without really knowing how fast levelling is, I can only guess that focusing on the story would slow things down significantly. I can certainly tell from the released videos that a lot of time will be spent just watching what goes on during conversations. If the quality of story is similar to Bioware's single player games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age (or even older games like Baldur's Gate for that matter), and if the game paces itself where I get to care about my character and the game world around him, then WoW will have some serious competetion for my time. Perhaps my new home will be in a galaxy far, far away.

Or maybe I'll be running around as an Asura in Guild Wars 2. Or sharing the skies with panda people on dragons. Only time will tell.