Played on and off all day today (while watching sc2 of course), some thoughts... Played as a Jedi Consular, got to 11 so far:
Pros:
1. I was more focused on the story than the leveling. I'm not a huge story fan but if it's told right, I'll listen and enjoy (bioshock, skyrim, dragon age 1, etc I've enjoyed a lot story-line wise). The Jedi Consular storyline was fun enough to really be able to get into it. I felt like I was playing a single player quality game in a multiplayer world, and that was new to me (and a good thing IMO, but I'm not hugely social in MMOs typically).
2. The skill set I got to use for the first 11 levels so far has been a lot of fun. Ripping something out of the ground, tossing it at a mob, and rushing up to slash it in the face with a lightsaber is fun for me, along with an aoe damaging push and some other fun toys to play with (just got stealth, haven't done much pve with it yet, but hopefully fun).
3. Bioware style choices. I like conversation choices. They didn't seem to have the hugest impact but at least they were there. I gained a sense of personality from my character from them. One time I choose something accidentally and it totally threw it out of wack because it just didn't sound like who my character was anymore. I like that.
4. Solid networking. There was some lag right at the beginning with everyone in the same zone, but soon enough, it was mostly lag free for me, even with seeing a lot of people coming and going.
5. Polish. Reminds me of WoW beta. Felt polished, but doesn't compare to today's standards WoW has set (not that any new mmo ever will). I think it feels a bit more polished than Rift did in beta. I'm confident if they get a good subscriber base it'll become extremely well polished.
6. Crafting. This part kind of blew me away. I'm not a huge crafter, but the idea of letting your followers go out and do stuff for you, then they get back and you can craft things with what they found... love it. Gotta get up and go afk for a few? Send your followers out, they might be back by the time you get back. I was able to turn my lightsaber from green to blue with some blue rocks my follower found me. Might not be great for the hardcore crafters but for me it was a perfect solution.
Cons:
1. PvP. I don't know if there are other modes but I played a round of this "soccer-like" pvp. I consider myself a PvPer in that I always lean towards PvPing over PvEing when I can. This was a HUGE disappointment for me. I thought it was pretty terrible. I hope I just haven't gotten a chance to play some hidden good pvp mode but this one was terrible.
2. Graphics. If they release higher res textures, this complaint will go away 100%. Everything besides the textures is pretty nice, especially for mmo standards. The textures though feel like late ps2 / early 360/ps3. Maybe the wii would rival them. It's hard to get immersed in a game wish such visually poor textures when you've been playing the likes of skyrim maxed on a PC.
3. Bugs. Beta beta. Hope they're all squashed. The mouse sensitivity can't be changed it seems. I even found the ini file and tried to change it there, nothing. It's super high for me when holding right/left click and turning, but correct when just moving the mouse around, so I can't just lower the sensitivity of my mouse or i'll throw off my sc2 game. Big complaint here but I'll assume it'll be fixed.
4. In game community. I hope this fixes itself quickly. I know beta brings out the worst people but at least in the Rift beta people weren't WoW-bad. Lots of kiddies and trolls spamming chat here. I'm afraid the game will be fun/accessible enough to keep them around
5. Atmosphere. Most places have been pretty awesome. A few had uninspired music constantly playing... like in New Hope where Luke steps into that bar for the first time (been a while since I saw it, going on memory)... there's this silly/cool sounding music that sets the tone for it being a rough bounty hunter type bar. Well, they tried to replicate that in a few different places I've been too, and it feels uninspired and annoying. Loved it in the movie, hate it here.
Anyway, going to try out bounty hunter tomorrow and maybe some other class.
EPT
) but loving everything else.
