Star Wars Galaxies

[Guest Jobber of the Week]

So I got my cds, did patching which took approx 50 mins on DSL. Never could get a character to fully create last time, so I tried again.

 

Once the game loaded I was presented with a server selection screen, there were 3 servers there but only 1 available so I selected it. Next I was presented with a character selection screen, since I had no characters my only option was to create a new one. On the next screen I could choose my race, I scrolled through the races and went with human. On this screen I could choose my sex also, I chose male. Also on this screen is about a page of information about each race, I didn't bother to read it because I'm impatient.

 

On the next screen you can customize your character, and I was met with a plethora of options which annoyed me at first, until I realised that I could basically make my character look however I wanted. I could customize (using slider bars) weight, height, muscles, eye size, eye shape, eye angle, eye color, nose width, nose length, cheeks, chin, jawline, lip fullness, lip width, freckles, eyebrow style, hair style (many to choose from) hair color, eyebrow color, skin color, facial hair, age (gives you wrinkles) and ear size. All the while my character pulls different poses appropriate to whatever you're changing, for example when changing the eyes my character winked at me, and scared the fuck out of me. Also other races have their own specific customizations, for example Twi'leks can change the size and shape of their head protrusion thingy.

 

Then on the next screen I chose my starting class, this really is kind of pointless since it uses a skill system and you can easily just go learn any other skills you like. You get a set of clothes appropriate to whichever class you choose also. I chose scout because he had cool camo pants and a vest. Also because I could make camps and I figured that would be useful.

 

On the next screen I chose my name (first and an optional last, and a name generator will give you a Star Warsy name if you're REALLY uncreative) and put skipped making a bio because, truth be told, I'm not really THAT deep into roleplaying. There is also a character overview here where you can view your base stats and such. There's also a box to tick to select to go through the tutorial, which I left ticked.

 

On the next screen I found myself standing in a spaceish looking room (I was in a space station apparently) and the tutorial began, both with text on the screen and in the chat box, as well as with voice. The tutorial began with explaining how to walk (arrow keys) and how to look around (mouse). It also explains that you press ALT to toggle between mouselook mode (move the mouse and you move the view) to mouse cursor mode (you can move the mouse independantly so as to click on menu items etc). You can also use the mousewheel to zoom in and out of your char, and when you're zoomed right in you're in first person mode.

 

Then you walk into the next room and talk to an imperial officer guy, by clicking on him and holding down the mouse until a radial menu comes up and then selecting "converse". From here you have his conversation on the left, the npc in the middle, and your responses to select from on the right. The npc goes into some story about how me and a whole bunch of other people were on a starship and the imperials shot us down because they accidently thought we were rebels or something, and they are very sorry (not) and to collect my stuff from that crate and basically piss off. So I grabbed my stuff out of the crate and then the game tells you how to open your inventory and shows you how to use stuff. I ate a melon, yummy. Also in my inventory was a whole bunch of other weird things like mineral surveying tools and crafting tools and also a pistol. I also had 300 credits.

 

So anyway in the next few rooms it takes you through how to use bank terminals, mission terminals, travel terminals, item dispenser terminals, insurance terminals, cloning terminals and whatever the fuck else terminals. They have terminals for everything in this game, although I think some are being replaced before the release. I am accompanied by a droid who looks like C3PO who explains everything. Also walking around the spaceship at one point I came to a large glass window and I could look out into space, the graphics are VERY pretty. I have a nice pc so everything was very smooth, although playing with the options can kill everything.

 

Then at the end you hear a loud explosion down the corridor and a bunch of people come running out screaming about some guy having a bomb. Oh I forgot to mention when people talk it comes up in your chat box, as well as in little bubbles above their head which is so cool. So anyway I talk to another guy and he tells me another member from my ship has gone nuts and is attacking people in the next room. I agree to go and investigate, and so this is the part where the game tells you about combat.

 

I walked down the corridor and turned the corner and my enemy was in sight, and then the game tells me about how im supposed to equip my weapon and shoot etc, but I must have gotten too close because before the game can even finish talking the npc just runs up and begins shooting the fuck out of me. So I tried running away so I can learn about combat but before I could die a little droid (looked like a little robot dog) came out of nowhere and shot the guy. Yay, I'm a uh.. hero.

 

So I go over and loot the body and then go to the next room where I used a travel terminal to choose where I wanted to land. Since its beta I could choose Tattooine, Naboo and Corellia. I chose corellia, and then I had to choose which city. I chose Coronet city. Each planet/city option has a full description and pictures, it's laid out like a travel brochure etc.

 

So anyway I got my ticket and went over and gave it to the ticket collector and handed him the ticket, and then it's a "LOADING" screen and then next thing im in a similar looking room, but my map tells me i'm at a space port in Coronet City. Ok then.

 

I walk out of the space port into the open (after disturbingly noticing about 5 player skeletons on the ground) and the first thing I notice is the sky. It looks amazing. I then run around looking for some other players, and end up trying to talk to NPCS instead. Eventually I found a couple of players sitting by some trainer npcs and got to practice my chatting and stuff. To chat to other players you just type, you dont have to press anything first, which I like. It makes it much easier to communicate. Also there's the chat bubbles like I said, which are also very cool because you dont spend 50% of your time looking at the box at the bottom of your screen when you play. One other cool thing I noticed is that when you type, the game picks up on things you say and makes your character react appropriately. For example the /tell function was down at the time and I was testing it with another player and it wouldnt work, so I said to him, "It's no use, it won't work". and to my amazement my character made a dismayed face and shook his head and gestured appropriately. And then the other guy said "Hmmmm." and so his character rubbed his chin and frowned thoughtfully. Also when you say "lol" in a sentence your character will laugh, and if you do a smiley your character also smiles. I'm yet to find other things like this but im sure there's lots. There's a full list of emotions and animations and stuff in the manual but there's a bazillion of them and only the most hardcore will probably remember them all. Still cute to see the more common ones used automatically in chat.

 

So anyway after going through all my menu options and working out what everything was and going around to a few of the trainers and learning some newbie skills (brawler novice, marksman novice, scout novice) I decided to hit up a mission terminal. I took a "delivery" mission which entailed delivering some legal documents somewhere. You accept the mission from a terminal which gives you the details and loads them into your datapad. It then sets a waypoint (which looks in the 3D world just to you as a giant shining shaft of light in the sky) to where you have to go and then you're off. First you always have to go to the npc who made the mission and pick up the stuff you need, and then once you've done that it changes the waypoint to your destination. So after getting the documents from the npc I set off toward the flashing arrow (no shaft of light yet I was too far away). Running around the city is SLOWWWW. I can tell this is going to be a problem in the full release if they dont fix it. I literally ran for 45 mins and got barely anywhere. Apparently there is a /burstrun feature that everyone used constantly, but now they have changed it so you can only use it every 20 mins or something. Anyway, after running out of the city into the open I was surrounded by a field of wildflowers and Corellian Butterflies (giant alien looking things) as well as random npcs just standing around doing nothing it seems. Deciding not to pick a fight just yet and stick to my mission I kept running toward my waypoint... and running.. and running... and running. Eventually I checked my world map to see just exactly where I was running to, and saw that my destination was halfway across the other side of the planet. Shit. So I ran back to the city. Oh and also on the way I saw a couple of lakes, which have shiny water ripples. I also got attacked by these giant zebra things and so I took a quick swim to get away from them. Also on the way I passed a few mining facilities, with structures like "Gas Mine" and "Fauna Farm" which I couldn't enter but emitted appropriate factory sounds. I wonder if these things had been setup by players? I think so because in my inventory I have a few schematics for such buildings.

 

Back in the city I decided to cancel that mission, and just go with what everyone else was doing which was just killing the butterflies and npcs outside of the city - usually mmorpg newbie stuff. So I grouped up with a couple of other people and went around slaughtering everything.

 

First let me explain something about experience, you get experience of all different kinds in this game depending on what you do. Combat experience, marksman experience, medic experience etc etc. All of which can be spent on various skills within their appropriate skill tree. So for killing something with my blaster I got 80 combat XP and 25 pistol XP. For doing /harvest on a butterfly corpse and extracting the hide and meat, I got 80 scout experience.

 

I made a macro to do both /loot and /harvest and called it "Loot" and then bound it to a key and then after each kill I hit this key

Combat works nicely, as you go up in certain skill trees you get certain abilities, for example when I trained in novice marksman I got /overchargedshot and /pointblankshot both of which are automatically set to keys for you in your quickbar for easy use. Some may think there's just too many abilities in this game though. And shouldn't walking to an enemy and pointing your gun right in the face technically be a point blank shot? Ah well. When in combat (which you initiate from the radial menu, or from a hotkey) you can throw in any of these extra commands to spice things up. And the overcharge shot produces a small delay between shots, and charges up a more powerful blaster shot. Also you can change your stance for more accuracy - standing, crouching and laying down (prone). There's probably an overdose of combat options in this game, but after seeing the standard attack animation 1.2 billion times in Asheron's Call, maybe variety is a good thing.

 

After about 45 mins of killing stuff with my group I checked my inventory - it was packed with stuff! The game doesnt list what you've looted when you do /loot (yet - its a beta) and so I didnt know I was picking up truckloads of clothes, food, and weapons. I had picked up a fair bit of XP so I decided to head back into town and see if I could increase my skill levels a bit and sell some stuff.

 

Back in town I went through my inventory and picked out all the stuff I wanted to wear, namely all the things that said "armor" in the name. I decked myself out in some pretty ugly looking stuff and decided I looked too much like a raver (pink gumboots and lime colored vest and blue gloves) and so I just put on whatever looked the coolest. AFAIK armor doesn't mean much in this game anyway. I believe someone said everything costs five credits right now, which kind of kills the mood of having a rare expensive item, but ah well. Again, tis beta.

 

I went over to the marksman trainer and he informed me I had enough XP to go up one level in pistols, and so I selected to do that, paid the 5 credit fee and some music played and voila, im better at pistols. I also got a new ability: /legshot

 

I had taken some wounds (in this game you have your health bars which refill on their own, but if you get wounded the health bars capacity gets shorter and so you have to get healed to restore it) so I decided to go to the hospital and get healed, but when I got there, there was nobody to heal me and so I left (to encourage player co-operation I think you can only get healed by other players or by yourself, npcs wont do it). A quick explaination, some classes can only use certain skills in certain buildings, so Doctors can only do certain kinds of healing in hospitals, entertainers can only do their stuff in Cantinas and so forth. This helps get people to use the buildings and not all just sit around in the middle of the town square and lag up the joint.

 

So after that I went to the Cantina and found a Wookie and a Twi'lek playing some music so I made my character listen to them (via the radial menu) and then sat down and watched my shock wounds dissapear. I asked the Twi'lek where I could sell my loot and he said you can't, and you either have to destroy the stuff you don't want or sell it to other players. Strange, im guessing this is because it's a beta or its there to promote player activity again. Who knows.

 

My impressions: If they do it right, this could best MMORPG ever. I'm not saying this from a Star Wars Geek perspective, it's just very obviously everything all the other games should have been. The complexity is overwhelming, the graphics rock and the sound is amazing (walking past a cantina you can hear the hum of conversation coming from inside, bursts of authentic star wars music play at different times etc). The skill system shows a lot of promise, and definitely won't be a tedious endless quest for levelling like EQ. However, if they rush things, then it will be a sad day indeed, and the fact that they've decided to leave certain things out until after launch is rather a shame.

 

The downsides:

* It's very slow getting anywhere. As I mentioned earlier it takes forever to run anywhere. Hopefully they will fix this soon.

* No people = no fun. When I played there were only 200 people on, and while I know this is a beta, a lot of things depend on other players. And so if you can't find some other people to heal you, buy stuff from you, group with you or play music for you or whatever then you aren't going to have much fun. Grouping is not forced like EQ, but rather the whole game has been built with the focus on the players interacting. This is a good thing but I can see some problems arising from it once the uberguilds start up and nobody wants to talk to you unless you have "KOR - ^_______^" written over your head or something.

 

Summary: This is just the tip of the iceberg, this account is from 3 hours of play and there's loads more things to talk about that I havent. For example the player matching system, the intricate world of crafting and craft skills like mining and surveying, PvP and the Galactic Civil War, Factions and Faction perks, other planets, "theme parks" like Jabbas Palace, player houses (I have a deed for a house in my inventory), all the other classes like Artisian, and Medic, and all the elite classes like bounty hunter etc that nobody is even up to yet, Jedi and force powers... the list goes on.

This is THE most comprehensive MMORPG game on the market and if you're going to be shelling out cash each week to play an online game it better be this one because it's the only one i've played that actually seems worth the subscription fee.

 

Personally I don't think i'll buy it - I just don't have enough spare time to donate to MMORPGs. So it goes.

[Guest Flyboy]

That rocked the house, JotW. I pretty know I HAVE to get this now, it's just a matter of time.

 

Just a question.. can males have braids?!

[Guest Jobber of the Week]

Yessir

 

Pictures removed because they stretch table boundaries plus I'm being an NDA ninja.

[Guest areacode212]

Man, that sounds so awesome, with all those different classes, emotions, etc. But I waste enough time on games as it is, plus I don't want to pay the fee.

[Guest Flyboy]

It's only going to be $10-$15 a month.

 

I mean, OMG~ BLAK JEDEYE WIT BRAIDS~!

[Guest GeneMean]

Sold American!

 

Great account of the beta experience so far. Keep it up.

[Guest Jobber of the Week]

Great account of the beta experience so far.  Keep it up.

Maybe, but I doubt it. I have the beta for Planetside too, and I like that a lot more. I just generally don't like MMORPGs, I guess.

 

 

Also, starting with beta 3, they give you a second registration number to give to a friend to use ala WarCraft 3 in the later stages. Unfortunately, they don't give you another set of CDs or anything like that, and they have mysterious protection that keeps me from making copies, but I guess they just assume you'll invite a friend you know in real life or something. I spend too much time playing games to go outside and meet people.

 

EDIT: Oh, by the way. You can only have one character per server. No mules (secondary characters who serve no purpose except to hold onto good stuff to keep inventory burden off the main character) can be used. Although that sounds pretty crappy at first, the reason is quite obvious. Due to Faction Combat, it would suck to have one character in the Empire and the other with the Rebels, then when someone pisses one character off he logs in the other one to hunt him down and kill him.

[Guest GeneMean]

I've followed the SCS/MCS debates on the discussion forums for awhile. I'm all for single char slots for faction purposes. It also helps out with people having mult toons in diff. guilds, a problem that plagued my old EQ guild. "Where is are damn cleric?!?, oh he's off raiding with BZ playing as his monk."

 

Lemme ask you this: You said you have a decent comp to test with. Specs? And what do you think the minimum will be to enjoy? I'm teetering close to the upgrade stage 800/GE364MB so I'm curious. The devs seem to be ignoring this question since it's still testing and I'm sure things are always being tweaked.

[Guest Jobber of the Week]

P4 1.8Ghz

512MB RAM

GF4 Ti4600

 

Playing with the shadow options turns everything into a slideshow though.