Star Wars: The Old Republic Beta Review

So after a protracted silence we have. . . My review of the Star Wars: The Old Republic Beta Test. First some preliminaries. I’ve been waiting for this game since it was first announced in 2008. Yes, I’m that guy. I heard “Bioware” (MAKERS OF KOTOR AND KOTOR 2!?!!???) and Star Wars RPG (KOTOR AND KOTOR 2!?!!???) and was sold. I signed up for the news letter, I read everything. In February, I signed up to be a beta tester and was scheduled to buy a new computer the weekend after I found out I was getting fired. That stopped that on both matters, or so I thought. Then in early November, I got an e-mail saying, wonder of wonders, angels singing, and harps strumming, I, yes I, was invited to be a beta tester. After borrowing a friend’s internet, I was set to go. What follows was three days (Including one overnight, and one partial overnight) of well. . .You’ll see.

The part in which I explain my background.

I have never played an MMO. They, those who do, are nerds. What’s more they are the nerds *I* make fun of. Take a moment to goggle at that. Add to that after being a fan of the Guild (for more than just watching Felicia Day light up the screen [Oh, Felicia Day. . .sooooo cute. *sigh*]) I learned the fact that MMO players. . .well, I spent a long time trying to come up with a polite way to say “psychotic” and this is what I came up with. This was a stereotype confirmed after reading the open forums on the game’s site and seeing the nerd rage at “Noob” (read casual) gamers. Add all of that together, serve well shaken with a bottle of antacid and you have where I started the game, but where did I finish it?

The part in which I talk about character creation.

Character creation wasn’t bad. As anyone who has been following the games development knows there are four different classes for each faction (Sith Empire and Republic). I decided to game the Republic as I would should I buy the game, but not the character class I wanted to do. So out of the four Republic options, Jedi Consular (offensive magic user, healer, or rogue), Jedi Knight (offensive or defensive Warrior), Trooper (ranged offensive or defensive warrior), or Smuggler (healer or rogue) I decided on Jedi consular healer, which was a mistake (more on that later) so as to avoid the Jedi Knight I would play after release. I booted up and viewed one of the FMVs which was VERY, VERY impressive and began to create my character. Each class has four species available to it for the Jedi consular the options were Human, Twi’lek, Miraluka, and Iradonian. You can also select the sex for each. And of course, there’s the naming, which can be typed out or can be forgone by clicking the helpful “Random Name” button should you not want to go to the hassle. Pros: Loved the auto naming, cause while I have a game name picked out if I want to create an alt it will be a pain to come up with new names but, Con: Four races and who cares? Human, sure. Twi’lek nice. Miraluka?! Irodian?! (Having no deep seated urge to live out some Darth Maul fantasy, I was underwhelmed.) No Bothan. No Mon Calamari. No Wookie. NO WOOKIE. Gyp. Still. . . I chose a Human male and started my quest to be the best darn Jedi healer a weekend of testing would allow.

The part in which I talk about game play.

The game play was pretty instantly familiar to me from my hours, upon hours (upon, let’s face it, hours) of playing KOTOR and KOTOR 2 with the exception that you couldn’t turn your character with mouse alone. As for the rest of the controls, after talking with a friend who played WOW for a while we decided they were pretty comparable to WOW.

Game play progressed, as in any RPG, by speaking to NPCs and getting missions. Places to go, things to get, people (and animals, droids, monsters, etc.) to kill. Many missions had a bonus objective that could be completed or ignored at the player’s discretion for the accumulation of extra XP (life in an RPG, the very air you [virtually] breath in an MMORPG). Most of the missions could be done singly, but some required “grouping up” (see below), and were amusing enough. All were voice acted, quite well, unsurprisingly (this is, after all, a Bioware product).

Battle was accomplished by a standard cool down process familiar to MMO players. Say you wanted to hit someone across the screen with a large piece of droid, you put the power on a hotkey, or a handy little toolbar and clicked it. Then you decided what to do while you waited for the cooldown timer to recycle (hit them with a light saber? Play a buff on yourself? An ally? It’s up to you) allowing you to do it again. Pretty fun, and led to some tense moments as I used my favorite battle offensive force power or heal and then had to find something to do till it came around again.

Near the end of my time I got my ship. Every class gets one and allows you to complete space missions that feel quite a bit like the old Star Wars trilogy arcade game, actually. Your ship is flying forward on the screen on a pre-determined path and you can move anywhere within that screen that you want. It was amusing but, honesty to on. . .I think it will get old, real, real fast.

The part in which I talk about missions and the MMO portion of MMORPG.

Kay, so the multiplayer portion. As I mentioned, the player is assigned missions to conduct, but some of these are designed to be completed in groups. Such missions inform the player of just how many players are suggested (Minimum 2 [or else it’s not “multiplayer”, duh] maximum 4) and even what level the players’ characters should be at. Some of these missions, called flashpoints, were even, if I understand the system correctly, part of the ongoing story (Certainly they dropped the best loot). When I got my first “Flashpoint” it was with no small amount of trepidation that I decided to “group up”.

Result: Totally, worth it.

After a couple of minutes of broadcasting in general game chat (“Jedi consular looking to do Flashpoint” or some such) I got my first invite to a group. There were already two of the four suggested for the mission, but they wanted a healer (a notion that perked my ears right up, because I had yet to get my first healing power). The fact it took us a good 10 to 15 minutes of repeated broadcasting to get a healer speaks to both their rarity and import, in my opinion. When we got one, well, the mission awaited. After all of us began a conversation with an NPC the mission began. Group conversations are conducted by selecting the general “gist” of what you want to convey, but the actual words are chosen by the computer. Example, so your option says, “Jedi help. I’m a Jedi.” The actual dialogue comes out, “All Jedi are trained to help those in need. We will protect you in the coming crisis.” Get it? This, I’d guess, is because each avatar in our group was individually voice acted with each of us getting to have our avatar’s moment in the spotlight based on the roll of an automatic die which assigned a random number between 1-100 to each team member when their conversation option was chosen. The highest number spoke (Or so they claimed. I found that one person spoke the majority of the time, more than a pure statistical analysis would suggest should happen. And later, when I began automatically picking the first option without reading it, as quickly as I could, I became the spokesmen, for the most part. If speed was the key I hope it’s a quirk of the beta, cause I couldn’t read it and continue to be the “spokesperson” for my group at the same time.)

After the fighting began, the game proceeded much the way KOTOR had. You went in, light saber swinging, depending on your boys and healer to have your back. You had to find people to talk to, things to fight, all pretty standard.

Dividing the loot. Loot was dropped and gathered occasionally and was gathered by anyone who was close to it. Credits were evenly split including “commendations” (a form of planet or mission specific currency that lets you pick up some of the most powerful weapons and armor in the game. As long as you are on that planet, otherwise you must trade in the commendations at a 2/1 deficit). Weapons and armor are divided by a system of random rolling to collect the item. There are two buttons, one marked “need” and one marked “greed” or you can pass by minimizing the drop screen. My guess is that clicking “need” gets you some form of bonus (it also drew my harshest criticism, as one of my companions inquired of me, “Why do you keep clicking, ‘need’?” Ehh, oops?) Over all, grouping up became one of my favorite things to do in the end and I even did a few ordinary missions in a group because it was fun.

The part in which I give my final verdict.

I wasn’t allowed to speak about the beta until recently, so when I was asked how it went, this was my standard reply, “Bioware is conducting a beta test of their new Star Wars MMO. I am a participant in that test. On an unrelated topic, I will be purchasing a new computer capable of playing the new Bioware Star Wars MMO.” I found I loved being a healer. Everyone was always happy to see me, and I found it was fairly easy to keep up with what needed doing. Thus, I will be playing a Jedi Consular after the release. On the next testing weekend I can get into, I think I’ll try an Imperial agent. My least interested class. Yet, I still expect it to be epic.

Letting My Geek Flag Fly. . .The Star Wars post

First, allow the Lost One to apologize for what is really a rather self indulgent little piece of fluff. On the other hand...It is his blog so...

So the Lost One recently read Star Wars on Trial, which was an interesting piece of (semi) academic discourse on the impact of 40 plus years of *Star Wars* on our world and culture.
What was most fascinating (besides the reams, and reams of actual Venom that was produced against *Star Wars*[Who knew that many hated it, that much?]) was the "testimony" of defense counsel, Matthew Stover (Yes, yes, procedure Monkeys, the Lost One knows Counsel is not supposed to give testimony. However, the Lost One has reason to believe...wait for it...it wasn't an actual trial.) Mr. Stover was hired by Lucas Arts Limited to do the novelization of *Revenge of the Sith* which apparently required many, long conversations about George Lucas' vision of what the *Star Wars* saga should have been. Huh.

Jedi Prophesies, Or "was Anakin chosen to do that?!!??!!!"

Turns out, the answer is yes, yes he was. The interesting thing about the prophesy in *Star Wars* was that it was actually kind of obviously bad, if you just looked at it with clear eyes. "The chosen one will be born of the Force, and bring balance to the Force." The first part of the prophesy is easily dispelled. Virgin birth, boom, done. It's the second part that's interesting. Balance to the Force. Did it never occur to any of the Jedi, that when the Jedi outnumber the Sith Hundreds to 2, balance is the last thing you want?

Of course, the actual reason behind the epic fail with the prophesy had to do with the whole Eastern Philosophy that pervades the films. It is this belief that life is to be a balance of both good and evil forces that so puzzles, and confuses those of us with a Christian worldview. See, in the Christian world view evil is to be avoided, we call it sin. But in the Eastern world view, good and evil must be balanced in one person. This leads to some obvious contradictions (like when Obi-wan says only a Sith speaks in absolutes...Well, I guess he hasn't been trying to kill every Sith he came into contact with since the first film...), but it also leads to an unexpected out come: the Jedi are evil.

Overly good = bad, or "Why I learned to stop worrying and love the pain."

Well, not evil, just too good. As the series intimates, the Jedi have been losing their power for centuries. The implication that Lucas wanted to create was that the Jedi's very attempt to resist the dark side, by cutting themselves off from the lives of family and permanent relationships, has left them de-powered and vulnerable to the dark side. They are so weakened that the Force needed to create Anakin, to kill them, kill the most powerful Sith, and leave his son a clean field to restart the Jedi.

Which is interesting. If you look back at the films, some strange things begin to pop out. First, is the character of Qui-gon Jin, a character that sees the potential in Anakin, but is a bit of a trouble maker. The first to see the danger and the potential of Anakin, but his rebellion from Jedi Orthodoxy has left him outside the group's power structure. The only one who sees clearly is the bad boy of the Order. In the second, we have the very creation of the Clone army, though the Republic has never needed a standing army to maintain peace, the loss of Jedi power have necessitated its creation. (On a side note, isn't their an argument to be made that had the Republic had a standing army, when Order 66 came down, a non-clone trooper would have told the chancellor were to go and what to do upon arriving, rather then gun down his general, but I digress. . .)

Seeing the films from Lucas point of view actually makes them better. *Phantom Menace* becomes a watchable film, "Attack of the Clones" becomes a decent movie, and "Revenge of the Sith" is a crime against nature. Still, that's up from a crime against God, so...

Until next time friends.