Star Wars: The Old Republic

[Jaysin]

I'm having somewhat of a problem that's causing the game to be borderline unplayable for me. The game runs fine and I don't lag at all until I got to the Imperial Fleet place for the first time. This was the first time I've been in a heavily populated area and it's insanely laggy and things won't load properly. The beginning area had no lag issues and there wasn't many people there.

Is it because of how many people are there or is it just a coincidence?

Pretty sure the name of the server I am on is The Fatman.

[Purple Cowboy]

If the fleet is full there's apparently a way to access other instances of the fleet as well but I'm not positive on how. If anyone else knows that would be useful.

Ah, yes. Quite easy as it turns out. When you're on the Fleet and hit M for the map look at the bottom right under World Map. If there are multiple instances of the Fleet available there will be a drop-down there and you can jump over to the less crowded one. But once you do, you're stuck there bc there's a 30 min cooldown on switching instances.

[Purple Cowboy]

Originally Posted by Purple Cowboy

Ah, yes. Quite easy as it turns out. When you're on the Fleet and hit M for the map look at the bottom right under World Map. If there are multiple instances of the Fleet available there will be a drop-down there and you can jump over to the less crowded one. But once you do, you're stuck there bc there's a 30 min cooldown on switching instances.

Apparently I was editing the above post & not replying to it. Apologies.

[Purple Cowboy]

Well... they've announced SWTOR is going free-to-play in the fall. Will still need a subscription for Operations, but you can play 1-50 for free.

A change like this so early in the life cycle of the game just seems depressing to me. Didn't EA similarly pull the plug early on Warhammer Online or am I confusing myself?

But I shouldn't be completely negative, some games like LOTRO seem to have rebounded nicely thanks to FTP. So, for some reason, I'm going to stick it out a bit longer.

[Remianen]

Originally Posted by Purple Cowboy

Well... they've announced SWTOR is going free-to-play in the fall. Will still need a subscription for Operations, but you can play 1-50 for free.

A change like this so early in the life cycle of the game just seems depressing to me. Didn't EA similarly pull the plug early on Warhammer Online or am I confusing myself?

But I shouldn't be completely negative, some games like LOTRO seem to have rebounded nicely thanks to FTP. So, for some reason, I'm going to stick it out a bit longer.

Just a correction. It was Dungeons & Dragons Online that "rebounded nicely thanks to F2P". LOTRO was doing fine. Turbine converted it to make it make MORE money (and because supporting multiple different payment models is costly).

TOR's problem is its linearity. The class stories encourage solo play and player behavior (SPACEBAR!!!) reinforces it. They were banking on a large number of people wanting to play every AC twice (dark and light) and that's just not realistic in this day and age. If TOR had launched five years ago, it would've done awesome. Today, the market is flooded so it's exceedingly difficult to establish that first month 'stickiness' that leads to initial retention. People seem to want five years worth of content, at launch.

[panix04]

I agree, as a single player game it is all right. I think it's only held back from greatness by not putting in enough fluff. It lacks any real non-combat activity. If they implemented a more robust crafting system and made flying good (x-wing vs tie fighter can run on a 486 - just paste it on!) Plus added more stuff like pazaak and pod racing, they would have a great MMO. Basically I want them to take the good bits and paste them into SWG

I also think they should have gone with realistic graphics. stupidly they went with stylised realism to make it useable on lower systems. I have two GTX570's in a SLI setup and occasionally I get the odd issue! I sometimes look at it and compare the graphics to something like skyrim (which I can play maxed) and think - why exactly are the hardware requirements on this so high? I guess it must run differently than an offline game, but having said that LOTRO looked quite pretty on my PC.

The storylines have to stay though in my opinion. I love the voice over work, I think it's ace. Although some of the stories are a bit bland.

[Remianen]

As an aside, how do you like the SLI setup? I haven't done it in YEARS and it's always been overkill for the games I play (most of which can't even challenge ONE card, much less two). If I can get a pair of 690s to fall off the back of a truck, I might try building a system around them.

Originally Posted by panix04

The storylines have to stay though in my opinion. I love the voice over work, I think it's ace. Although some of the stories are a bit bland.

Jedi Consular story = *yawn*

I love the voiceover work too. In fact, I like the voiceovers more than I like most of the gameplay (which is essentially 'more of the same'). The writing was great at times ("I don't appreciate dramatic pauses...").

Some friends and I were talking about this generation of MMOs a few weeks back. One of them (who happens to be working on WildStar) predicted SWTOR wouldn't make it to the end of the year before it would have to go free to play. Yeah, we all sent him $20 yesterday ("That's crazy talk!"). Basically, no one is creating 'sticky' games anymore. In the rush to make everything soloable, they forgot the one thing that made EverQuest 'EverCrack': other people. Also, the speed of leveling makes every character essentially disposable so who cares if you ruin your reputation? Reroll and in a week, you'll be back to where your "ruined" character was. It was a paradigm shift that even many of the people who are supposed to know this stuff, didn't take into consideration. The subtle underpinnings of what features make a game's final feature list and what features wind up as 'focus cuts' is fascinating, but also demoralizing.

EDIT: There also seems to be a rather large contingent of a-hats on Canderous, at least in the Tatooine bracket, Republic side. I resubbed Friday (credit card I used when I signed up was replaced and I didn't remember to change it) and ever since, I get these dorks (mainly from the Entropic guild) who like to try to block my view in combat using their humongous speeders. Doesn't work of course (I've had 17 years to learn MMO griefer tactics), but it is annoying. I've always found these folks tend to be of the ADD variety (they bore easily). Log out for a few minutes and come back and they've moved on to some other idiotic activity.

[Trell]

Does anyone still play this? I've been playing on the trial and am having trouble finding people to do missions with. willing to team to do anything

[Remianen]

I still play from time to time (couple times a week). What server and side are you on?

[Trell]

Originally Posted by Remianen

I still play from time to time (couple times a week). What server and side are you on?

Right now I'm on the Razor Server, I am thinking of transfering but i'm not totally sure which server has a good amount of people on it


also I have the following people made


LIGHT
Level 11(13 now) Jedi Sentinel -Trell
Level 11(14 now) Trooper - Dogeda

Dark
Level 3 Bounty Hunter - Heelix
Level 2(8 Now) Sith Warrior - Terraspawn

the only problem is that my people will cap out at 15, so I'll probably try another race once i get them to 15

[Trell]

I take back my last statement, I saw they were having a sale on the digital edition so I bought it and subscribed for a month :-).

[Trell]

Switched to the shadowlands server, a lot of people but it seems like no one wants to team up to do missions, I miss the old days when people in MMO's actually liked to team up instead of playing it as a Solo game


also added my player names incase anyone wants to team up at some point

[Purple Cowboy]

I have an Imperial sniper on Shadowlands that's up around 38 or 39, rolled there to play with the good people from the Old Timers Guild. Have a few lowbies there too that I haven't yet touched. I'm sticking with the game for now. Despite the hate/frustration surrounding it, I like it.

[Trell]

Finally got my ship with my trooper, I felt like I was going to be level 14 forever , starting to really enjoy the story, also been working on a bounty hunter and Sith Inquisitor

[Hive]

This may be a dumb question, but... does this require Origin?