This is my subjective opinion. Nevertheless, as rather experienced MMO player, I'd like to share this with you.

Pros:
1. High resolution graphics and textures - SWTOR engine is good but requires really powerful machine with good graphic card and lots of memory to run it smoothly. I want to see the same or better 3D quality in the future Blizzard games.
2. Good design of the environment - it is matches what I have in mind for Star Wars Universe.
3. Story quest line - very detailed and absolutely different for different classes. I've been watching some movies there as if it is new SW episode.
4. "Pets" are fun and very enjoyable thru the game.
5. Gear look and unify colors approach.
6. Datacron hunting is great. Sometimes it reminded me Mario Bros with all that jumps but that was fun.

Cons:
1. Same as Pros 1 - if you can't afford good PC you will be disappointed with low frame rate, lag and long loading. It won't run on the average laptop...
2. Game direction - BioWare wants players to level up all classes (alts), patch 1.2 is a clear evidence of that. Yes, I'd like to see story line quest for all of them but repeating again and again the same zone quests to level up a character is a dull wasting of time.
3. Travelling between the planets is terribly boring.
4. Char leveling was "too fast and too easy" for me.
5. Huge class unbalance, especially visible in PvP.
6. Not enough content for solo play.
7. Closed APIs - no macros/addons.
8. Unexplored opportunities that I was hoping to see in game, e.g. free space flights and quests in space (not those boring repeatable missions), PvP in space, even raids there... Controlling robots and fight with it, as quests or even PvP...

All in all, I was hoping SWTOR would be a good alternative to WoW and I played it for like 3 month with fun... But in 6 month it became so boring that I quit and came back to Blizzard shop... And enjoy WoW again. See you there then. :)

It happened - I've cancelled my SWTOR subscription. It wasn't a sudden decision, start of Diablo III just helped me sort it out. 6 months of Star Wars was worth every penny I paid for. Unfortunately I have nothing to do in game anymore. End game content reminded me WoW - different pictures but the same game mechanic - stay here, move out of there, avoid red thingy, group up etc. Been there done that 7 years ago, no fun. Nevertheless my big ty to Orlem for letting me see it.

SWTOR disappointed me after patch 1.2. Legacy is a joke - BioW wants player to level up all 8 classes but this is the most boring part of the game. Story line is great but you have to go thru the same zones again and again... Class unbalance is even more visible after 1.2 in PvP. I got my valor lvl 70 and lost motivation to go on. Interesting that as soon as I cancelled my account BioW robot sent me a letter with questions why I left the game. Why didn't you ask me those while I was playing?!

Bottom line - SWTOR started to be very boring and it is time to leave this game. I had a lot of fun there with all my game friends but enough is enough.

I'm playing D3 atm with fun - Blizzard does make great games. It won't last long - I need like 1 or 2 more days to reach lvl 30, kill Diablo and I'm done (not going to play hardmode).

BTW - I've restored my WoW subscription and was really happy to log there and discover that I need to learn how to play again. That would be great fun. As a side note - SW has hundreds of players while SWTOR fleet is almost empty. Long live Blizzard!

Kinda weird graphic engine bug... Should we change SWTOR rating to R or even NC-17?!

Seems like my major question - what happens with my 800+ Centurion Commendations and 200+ Champion Commendations - has been answered. Seems like I will be able to spend them buying these things (info taken from here):

Centurion Commendations

• 12 Centurion - Ancient Premium Storage Box (Green Level 50 Item)
• 30 Centurion - Ancient Prototype Storage Box (Blue Level 50 Item)
• 45 Centurion - Grade 6 Crafting PVP Box (Random Crafting Material)
• 1 Centurion - Standard Small Credit Case (Class 2 Lockbox)

Champion Commendations

• 7 Champion - Ancient Premium Storage Box (Green Level 50 Item)
• 20 Champion - Ancient Prototype Storage Box (Blue Level 50 Item)
• 30 Champion - Grade 6 Crafting PVP Box (Random Crafting Material)
• 1 Champion - Heavy Small Credit Box (Class 3 Lockbox)

To me this is a pure BS compared to the efforts that were spent on getting them for gear. So instead of some rational exchange of those to new WZ tokens (the way Blizzard did it in WoW), BW literally ganked us.

Shame on you, BW...

If you are interested what is new PvP gear I recommend you to read this article.

I still do not know how that happened but our brave guildmate went to Republic Fleet the other day, using his ship :) To address some doubts, like "screencap it or it never happened", here is screencapture:

I did it on my main char and thought I did record it but FRAPS somehow didn't do it that time. So I ran again on my alt as I think this is the most spectacular view in the game...
The hard part of this run is to jump on the roof of that "bus stop" since as soon as you hit the surface of the roof you start to fall down. Right after you jump turn your ass fast to face the roof and jump often until you are on top of it... It took me about 5-8 attempts before I understood how to do it.

I just read about upcoming changes in patch 1.2 here.
I do hope PvP will be reviewed thoroughly because, as of today, this is the most unbalanced part of the game.

Let me explain why.
As Powertech with 31 point in Shield (real tanking tree) I'm useless in PvP. You may say why the hell I've chosen that class and spec for PvP?! The answer is obvious, my priority is PvE while the game doesn't provide dualspec, at least for now.

I didn't complain much until I found PvP gear with tanking stats, like defense etc. So BW thought that tanks, actually, may play PvP and need tanking stats there. It assumes that, as in PvE, tank needs heals. However in real game environment you play PvP mostly in PuGs where chances to get heals are almost zero... So in 99.99% of Warzones I'm playing PvP on my own.

That is where troubles start.

Tanking spec has low DPS. I have no chance to outDPS any primary healing class. I have very low chances to kill a class/spec that could heal in emergency situation as my own self-healing is a joke - 15% of my total HP as a DoT every 2 min (lololololol). I have no chances against high DPS classes/specs without healing as they simply do more damage than me. And there is no way out. I'll try to buy non-tanking PvP gear (gear with much lower endurance and without defensive stats but with higher DPS stats) and see if it helps. In any case this just proves my statement - BW didn't think much about PvP.
What a shame... but I'm not surprised - it took about 3 years for Blizzard to set up PvP properly (though even in today's WoW there are certain unbalances between certain classes).

However I really want to see emergency changes to Powertech Tanks (or any other low DPS/no self-healing classes/specs):
1. Give us Mortal Strike or alike - that will be fair against healers.
2. Give us real "bubble", which will make us immune to immobilization/slowing but may prohibit our damage.
3. Give us anti-push back (might be very well the same bubble).
4. Give us fast run in the battle OR give us slowing AoE.
Without those changes 2 out of 3 Warzones will remain beneficial to "Jedi/Sith" classes that could push back and run fast... and which makes me very explicit about BioWare :)

While playing WoW I've been reading MMO Champion on daily basis - I found that this site gave me what I was looking for. Couldn't find the equivalent for SWTOR until yesterday. I followed the path MMO Champ -> Curse -> and then search for SWTOR alike sites and viola! - Darth Hater... Has all I'm usually looking for playing MMO, including database.
Recommended, reference added to the left box "Useful links".

As you know the changes in the way of how to "enchant" custom gear ("orange" gear with open item modification slots) have been made just before the launch of SWTOR. Even explained on official site it was unclear to me what is all that jazz about. After playing around a little bit I should admit that BW probably overdid it.

Let me explain why with the following scenario - let's assume you got a drop of orange gear with 44 level requirements and 3 opens slots which you filled with certain item modifications. Then you craft an orange gear with 50 level requirements and filled its 3 open slots with the same modifications...

See it yourself and compare:

Bottom line - NO DIFFERENCE. If no difference why the hell you need to change it to the higher level requirement?!

The negative outcome of it how I see it:
1. No need to learn higher crafting orange schematics, as soon as you got (or crafted) custom gear with 3 open slots - stick to it, just replace item modifications that fit your level.
2. I put the best available for me epic item modifications into opens slots of my own gear. After that my "orange" gear became better than any epics from GTM. Meaning no need to learn epic crafting for these type of gear (Head, Chest, Hands, Legs and Feet) where open slots are available.
3. All in all - that means gear crafting is very much f.ed up for these types.

Perhaps I do not know something. Perhaps there will be epic crafting schematics drops in Operations to teach me how to craft items that will be better than "orange gear with epic modifications". But as of today the logical scheme of gradual gear improvement by changing it while leveling up is broken for major type of gear.

I was wondering what are the sources of all those "epic" crafted items. Yes, some are available from crafting vendor but those are just a few... Unfortunately and as of today TORHEAD database is incomplete (this is very polite expression for what is available there). E.g. many craftable items simply do not exist there and, in most cases, source for epic crafting schematics is unknown.

While leveling up my Armormech profession I often was using "Reverse Engineering" to reuse crafting mats. This is a tiny little box in your inventory top right corner. When you check it you are able to, well, "disassemble" an item you crafted. Item disappears from your inventory but you get a part of the mats you've been using to craft it. Reminds me mostly disenchant from WoW with one important distinction - yes, you get back some mats but I've noticed that you actually could learn to craft better item that shows resemblance to the original name of initially crafted item.

I didn't care much until I reach lvl 50 and brought Armormeach to max. But then I decided to shed some light on this process and see what happens.

I bought a schematic from my profession vendor to craft "Powered Ultramech Belt":

Then I've started to craft it one by one and "reverse engineering" each of it. As you probably know crafting could "proc" and give you better item. For greens and blues it is open Augment, might be something else but I do not know. I also do not know if you get the same schematics or it could be slightly different by stats and name. It took me less than 10 "reversing" to learn the blue crafting schematics out of reverse engineering. In other words, "dissassembling" crafted item is the way to get new crafting chematics of the "same" item but better quality. The path is "green"-> "blue"-> "epic".

Please notice that learning new schematics from "reversing" could be easily missed - it has no flashing or colored message - it is just a plain text in your chat window. I'd like to see it as announcement...

So "reversing" green Powered Ultramech Belts I've got blue "Overkill Powered Ultramech Belt":

The next step was rather long as crafting blue item takes at least 20 mins each. Nevertheless, after 20+ iterations I've finally learned the epic crafting schematics - "Expert Powered Ultramech Belt (Superior)":

I saw epic items on SWTOR "AH" with "Prototype" word in their names. They have open Augment slot. Again, I do not know if it is crafting proc or different schematics. I crafted 5 epic Belts so far, it never procs.

To sum up - you need up to 10 "reversing" to learn blue schematics from green crafted items and up to 30 to learn epic schematics from blue crafted items. The numbers are based upon my own experience, so far I've learned 2 epics that way.

I'm sure this is not the only source of epic crafted schematics. Hopefully there will drops from bosses and other sources. But, at least, now I know that "Reverse Engineering" could be useful :)

As I wrote before my most SWTOR enjoyment comes from Datacron hunting. There are some that require Super Mario jumps, some - precision and persistance and some - special tools.

One of these tools is MGGS. You must buy it from Lain-Ricie - vendor @ Alderaan (see my topic here) as you need it for more than one Datacron. This tool works (well, should work) as magnetic rope - if MGGS is in your bag you could target special areas on the walls (usually located very high on the buildings), they call it something like "magnets". You click on that magnet and then you see the appearence of the rope between that magnet and yourself. In a second you will be pulled by this rope and travel through the open air to the destination (magnet). It might be rather far distance and that why you need MGGS - there is no other way to reach that place.

Now sad part of the story - as of today MGGS is bugged. You could select the magnet, click on that, travel to the destination... but then you immediately placed back to your starting point...

I've searched for solution, found a few and tried them all.

On my system with my videocard, screen resolution, Internet speed etc etc etc the following "solutions" (that were claimed to work fine) do NOT work:
1. Double click on the magnet - it causes error message and just the second move from initial point to magnet and back.
2. Click on a rope when it shows up - you need to be fast to be able to put your mouse over... but it didn't change a thing.

The only solution that works for me and allows to use MGGS as designed (meaning you could travel from your destination to the magnet) is the following:
Click on the magnet and start to jump often (press space bar on your keyboard often and real fast). Do it right after you click and keep jumping while and until you travel to the magnet. It took me 2 or 3 attempts but finally I've reached the destination.

I do hope BioWare will fix it rather soon. It is important toy as there is the "final" Datacron that gives +10 to all stats. You need to be lvl 50 to get it and that includes the necessity to use MGGS.

P.S. I wasn't able to get to Presence +4 Datacron at Corellia due to another bug - if your char's body is fat (type 3 or 4) you simply can't squeeze in between the walls... :((( Will wait until our guildmates level up to 50 - there is an option how to get to the location though. Tricky but doable...

Leveling up from 1 to 50 took me 1 month sharp (but I'm playing a lot). I've FRAPS'ed "crafting" my lvl 50 "trinket", Matrix Cube, from 3 Yellow Matrix Shards. They were collected from Datacrons in Nar Shaddaa, Dromund Kaas and Ilum.

Custom (orange) gear was unclear to me. I did understand the concept and read explanation on SWTOR official site but still was confused. A few days ago I've got schematics for Mercenary Elite Chestguard (from Underworld mission) and crafted it. I was really shocked how low are the stats for lvl 43 heavy armor:

I didn't pay much attention to the different "modifications" items before but this time I've started to look thoroughly into them. I've noticed that for armor Armoring (Item Modification) is changing Armor rating substantially (for weapons Weapon Damage/Power rating change is done by Barrel). So I bought the best Armoring for lvl 43 from GTM (aka AH for SWTOR, stands for Galactic Trade Market):

and... viola! from 25 Armor (rating 6) my orange chest became 642 Armor (rating 104):

Aparently Armoring is not upgrading but replacing original item Rating and, as item Rating defines the value of the Armor, it does huge upgrade. Indeed you could fill the rest of open Modification slots to your desire. The only question remains - with all possible future upgrades with Armoring - will those orange gear items be on par with epics at lvl 50?

I'll find it out soon enough :)

I had a problem with Ventrilo client while playing SWTOR - my hotkey didn't work. I had to switch to voice activation. I'm used to left Ctrl since early WoW days so inability to use it that way was rather frustrating. Terrapin found kinda obvious solution - start Vent under Windows as Adminisrator, then you could use it in old fashion way. I've checked FRAPS and AutoHotKey if started as Administrator and they work fine as well. Enjoy!

Slowly we are progressing through the game. I'm disappointed with the information Torhead.com provides on may items.. E.g. there is very limited info on shards and datacrons while using them gives you very nice "trinket". More to say, the epic item I bought a few days ago (see my "Discovery" section) has real value. I'll write about it a bit later. So I decided to publish more in "Useful links" box on specific activities in SWTOR and today's addition is about shards and datacrons...

I'm opening new section on our site - SWTOR Discovery. This is about interesting things that require some search in game, then some www search and finally some persistance to discover. In most cases this is about some non-common rewards.

There is a new box in the left column, each link opens in a new window...

Game launch has shown how bad server workload was planned - we became the hostages of Early Game access. The server, where our guild has been assigned, is full with more than 30 mins wait time. The reason is quite obvious - when BioWare assigned guilds they probably didn't count "normal" people who didn't preorder SWTOR but were a part of the guild. Today most of them got their key and logged... but they can't choose another server as they are assigned to the one where their guilds are. The result is kinda disaster. We can't play and can't transfer us and the guild to another server (there are like 10 servers atm with "light" population). Actually BioWare dropped the same brick as Blizzard 7 years ago. What a shame...

On a positive side - I got first impressions of SWTOR after a week of playing. Let me share some with you.

Game is huge. 3 planets I was playing at are like a half of a continent in WoW and there are many more yet unvisited planets. Tons of dialogs for each quest, at least 3 different ones depending on your answers. In fact, that becomes an issue for me because is started to be boring. But I should applaud the titanic work made by BioWare, voices and accents are brilliant. In certain areas walking/riding is also boring since it is too long street or road...

Planets are different but landscape designers are also different from the ones from Blizzard. I do understand they follow the concept of Star Wars but personally I want more diversity. Perhaps I just need to see all planets...

Game is sometimes very difficult, which is very good. That reminds me my best days in vanilla WoW - in the beginning 2 packs of trash mobs will kill you easily. And so does SWTOR trash. ;) Heroic areas are, in fact, heroic. You need a company or should be a Molten Core veteran and run the class which could heal him/herself...

Besides inappropriate server workload allocation I should admit that BioWare staff has been watching WoW very closely and corrected many "errors" in ideology and game mechanics like your own quest zones where in WoW there was a hard competition for quest mob that required to be killed. In SWTOR it is your own small "instance".

Unfortunately, there are some design flaws that are so obviuos... E.g. some quest items cannot be looted with one click - you need to, say, open a chest (one click), then kill spawned mobs, then loot an item from that chest (second click). Indeed some kids loot it while you are killing trash... Also, the number of quest object you need to click on or loot are to low for certain areas.

Personally I have troubles with orientation... Well, I'm old man but still. I'm lost in spaceports/docking areas and alikes.

First instances (flashpoints) we've been visiting with Dun are jokes. Well, we do have "some" WoW experience. But just 2 of us (with 2 pets) instead of 4 did two of them without a single wipe...

All in all, SWTOR looks like good alternative to WoW. Not sure this game will last that long but for the time being I'm having fun in there. Join me and OSG there!

Well, SWTOR started and since Dunmer and myself preordered this game at the first day of announcement we got early game access from the first batch of e-mails (mean in like 15 mins after it started).

You will see everything yourself sooner or later :) What I wanted to do though is to correct some of my mystakes on Crew Skills made during open beta testing.

Here we go:

Important - collecting missions are real money suckers!

P.S. I'm not going to tell you but there is a huge surprise for you as soon as you get your ship (lvl 16-18)... :)

I've spent most of the last beta test weekend to understand how SWTOR "professions" work. In fact you should chose them carefully as I didn't find the way how to re-train it.

Anyway, as I'm going to play tanking Bounty Hunter (may I use "BH" or it will remind famous WoW hunter's build? ;) ) and will be in need for heavy armor gear, I decided to find appropriate crew skills combo and that is what I've got:

For Heavy Armor you take Armormech as your only available crafting skill, and 2 gathering skills - Scavenging and Underworld Trading. This selection will allow you to level Armormech without additional resources because you will be able to collect all you need by yourself. Crafted Heavy Armor requires combination of the following materials: Scavenged Metal, Scavenged Compound and Underworld Metal (1, 2 or all 3). Some, in addition, require Crafting Material but that is what you buy from a vendor. So you send your pet (from Crew Skills menu, or "N") to get Scavenged Metals and Compounds with Scavenging Missions and to get Underworld Metals with Underworld Trading Missions. Please notice - Missions cost money, sometimes a lot! Also you cannot deplete the mission list - there always be one or two you may need to do.

Scavenging needs to be explained a bit more. Besides missions you send your pet to (to get metals and compounds) there is more "classic" way of getting metals. It is very close to WoW mining with one exception - it is not you who will mine but your pet. You will see "nodes" on your minimap, they look like a small "star". You come closer, find it (they call it Pile), move your cursor over and it will change to a sign I have no name for yet :) (and FRAPS which I used for screen capture removes mouse cursor). You right click on this node and...

...and your pet starts to use kinda strange device which "scans" that pile... and you get Scavenging Metal. You also could do the same over Droids NPCs (not all of them though). It reminds me engineers in WoW who could get some of their stuff from robots and alike.

All in all, I was able to level up Armormech to 40 (out of 400) without any special efforts. Noticed that it was leveling up by 2 points until lvl 40. However I totally disagree with a statement (I read it in one of early SWTOR reviews) that this game will have no grinding... This is wrong statement. You do not grind the way you did/do it in WoW - endless hours, say, killing a mob for mats drop. But you will spend endless hours here sending your pet(s) to perform missions for the mats. Indeed you as a player can do something else in game but time spent on leveling up skills will be tremendous. E.g. crafting green Heavy Armor item takes 1 minute, blue - 3 minutes etc. Scavenging/Underworld Trading missions are 3/6 minutes. Will not be surprised if at higher levels it takes even more time. So be ready to spend a lot of time on your skills leveling...

That is all for today. As a side note - I probably will not write about SWTOR per se here any more. I expect Early Access to begin at Dec 15 and our guildmates will show up in game... So I'll be writing more on our forum. Cheers!

P.S. There is a website, dedicated to Crew Skills - http://www.swtorcrewskills.com/. It is unfinished though but I found nice drawing there with all skills and connections between them. There are some disputable statements there (e.g. I disagree on using Armortech with Investigation) but you'll get the idea...

As in WoW itnes in SWTOR have slots for stats improvement. SWTOR name for that is "Upgrade". I saw 4 different slots for weapons - Barrel, Mod, Enchancement and Color Crystal. There is a quest that teaches how to do this. Also you need a special "machine" to be able to put appropriate items into these slots (like a stone for inscriptions in WoW when this profession has been initially announced). I've been using this machine in noobs zone but I'm sure there are many.

Seems like besides Crew mission (that is a "quest" you send your pet to) you could get crafting mats by, actually, "scavenging" areas or killed NPCs by your pet. Not sure about this and din't try it myself. Also, at least for those who took arm(smth) profession there is an icon in your inventory, Reverse Engineering. It works like disenchant. So you select this icon and right-click on, say, your weapon. Weapon will be destroyed, you get crafting mat instead. It is confirmed, I did it myself.

That all for now.

I wrote a bit about SWTOR professions in the previous news. My plan for this news was to compare WoW and SWTOR professions one by one but this plan failed. The reason is simple - they do not match by the concept and by the design. In fact, the way professions are implemented into SWTOR might be one of the major differences between this game and WoW.

First of, it is not you but your "pet" who will craft and collect mats for the item.
Second of, since you will get 5 pets (or even more?) you could have all possible professions available in game or (perhaps) use several "pets" with the same profession(s) to speed up collection of the necessary mats. (Remember that you may need more than one attempt to complete a quest by your pet to get it done - it may fail). So for some extend classical WoW grinding should be gone, but you, as a player, still should spend quite some time (single quests I saw had 3 and 6 minutes durations) to get your pets leveled up in professions and get your epics crafted...

Now, look what SWTOR has in the list (list is taken fron official site):

As you might see Mission skills is brand new area and, tbh, I have no clue why it is so important to, say, have 400 skills in Diplomacy to kill a boss in 16 man instance...

We'll see what it is rather soon, my guess is that Early Access starts on Dec 15th...

It was really busy testing weekend with some tears caused by huge waiting to log on a server. Hopefully BioWare will learn this lesson and fix it at time of game launch.

A single screenshot I'm publishing here is about stats and their meaning. Molten Core veterans like myself need some time to adopt to them:

The major difference between WoW and SWTOR I found so far is the way you do crafting/collecting tasks. It will not be you who will "mine" or "harvest" but your paper doll (you may call it "pet"). So instead of searching for a flower you open a tab and give "an order" to your doll... He or she disappears for the duration of this order (or a quest) and then returns with required mat or even craft an item for you. It takes time though but you can do something else while you wait, e.g. check AH or even do a quest - your doll comes to you when order is fulfilled. It may fail though... Meaning it should be started again... and again :)

Important! Do not make a mistake when selecting your professions at lvl 10, you could have 1 crafting and 2 non-crafting ones - there is no way to unlearn it atm (or I didn't find it). Same goes to your spec selection at lvl 10 and talents (same WoW-like old system - 3 trees, 41 talent points).

I'm going to post SWTOR profession composition a bit later. Cheers!

Aparently there was no time for screencaps during this weekend beta test. I have a mixed feeling about the game. Pretty much a "clone" of WoW with some lessons learned. Will see when real game starts. My major disappointment is about graphics. Not quality but style. Looks kiddish' and cartoonish' (like Star Wars cartoon series) to me. Nevertheless, I've got real good touch and feel of a game and brought one char to lvl 10 (that was a goal).

In the mean time Dunmer found "wowhead" for SWTOR, which is (guess...), yes! TORHEAD!. The link is to your left.

C ya in game around Dec 15th...

Hi folks!

As you might see I've made a new site to reflect the upcoming game we'll be playing.
There is also our guild forum up and running. It requires activation by admin, so please use your real emails. As OSG has now 4 registered members with preordered keys redeemed guild should be invited to early game access. Have no idea what it is, will let you know. Stay tuned!

Long live OSG!