Star Wars: The Old Republic - Now Free to Play

[Stark]

Is the punch line 'all those good MMOs you could just play'?

[Marko Dash]

i took a look into it but it wants 25GB of harddrive space. my drive is only 148GB total and i don't have that kind of room to spare, even games like fallout 3 don't use half that.

[Vendetta]

Welcome to MMOs? They all use hilarious quantities of storage because of the amount of gameworld and seperate instances they have to store, and the fact that updates change everything every patch.

[bilateralrope]

Welcome to MMOs? They all use hilarious quantities of storage because of the amount of gameworld and seperate instances they have to store, and the fact that updates change everything every patch.

25GB still seems rather excessive when Guild Wars 2 is only taking 15GB on my hard drive. How much space do other MMOs take up ?

[Marko Dash]

neither STO or world of tanks is anywhere near as large

[RogueIce]

So this broken Unify Colors for companions bug is kinda pissing me off. Seriously Bioware, how did you manage to fuck that up? It still works for the main character even! Well, sort of: you can unify the colors but you can't deunify them unless you unequip and reequip the item.

But I don't know why I'd ever bother taking off the unified colors so it's not a big deal. Still makes me wonder how they broke it entirely for companions.

[Losonti Tokash]

neither STO or world of tanks is anywhere near as large

They also don't have 8 fully voiced storylines, with two different voice actors per class.

[Darksider]

But I don't know why I'd ever bother taking off the unified colors so it's not a big deal. Still makes me wonder how they broke it entirely for companions.

Sometimes I think the only fun thing left to do in TOR is wait and see what Bioware fucks up next. Seriously, I know bioware games are usually buggy as fuck but it seems like there's a new one in TOR with every single update.

[Stark]

Could just stop playing?

I wonder how big GW2 is (I mean its around 15gb) cause it has plenty of terrible VA. Crazy old Conan was 25gb years ago, despite looking like crap and having normal levels of VA.

[Darksider]

I'll probably quit once I finish all the class storylines. They're petty much the only thing interesting about the game, and the only thing that some other game doesn't do way better.

[Mr Bean]

I wonder how big GW2 is (I mean its around 15gb) cause it has plenty of terrible VA. Crazy old Conan was 25gb years ago, despite looking like crap and having normal levels of VA.

Conan had a bad texture setup so the install files were something like three times bigger than they needed to be because of the engine not handling compressed textures well supposedly.

As for Voice acting if interviews are to be believed Guild Wars 2 had 80,000 lines of voiced dialog to The Old Republics 200,000+ lines. We don't know how much +but we do know pre-launch the game was quoted as being "over" 200,000 and that's what Guinness quotes them as having.

Of course part of that is duplication as every quest NPC has to be able to address classes differently specifically some Imperial NPC needs to be able to say My Lord to Sith and Mercenary to the Bounty Hunters and Agents to the...Agents. I don't remember how often GW2 NPC acknowledge your class and race but in The Old Republic almost every npc says different things to different combos so once simple go hear kill thirty space rabbits might have fifty lines recorded.

[RogueIce]

But I don't know why I'd ever bother taking off the unified colors so it's not a big deal. Still makes me wonder how they broke it entirely for companions.

Sometimes I think the only fun thing left to do in TOR is wait and see what Bioware fucks up next. Seriously, I know bioware games are usually buggy as fuck but it seems like there's a new one in TOR with every single update.

To be fair that seems to be par for the course with every MMO.

Of course part of that is duplication as every quest NPC has to be able to address classes differently specifically some Imperial NPC needs to be able to say My Lord to Sith and Mercenary to the Bounty Hunters and Agents to the...Agents. I don't remember how often GW2 NPC acknowledge your class and race but in The Old Republic almost every npc says different things to different combos so once simple go hear kill thirty space rabbits might have fifty lines recorded.

That and the choices which A) make the PC say something and B) get a different line from the NPC, though after that they continue as normal.

Which for quite a bit seems like useless padding because some of those options don't really amount to much. And I'm not even talking about not giving LS/DS points or stuff like "no credits please" or "pay up motherfucker" which affects your rewards. But pointless shit like the choice between "Of course I'll help you!" or "I'll help you."

As an RP whore I can live with some of that as subtle differences in my character's persona. But there are those that not even I can defend as anything but BW making sure they had three dialogue choices come Hell or high water.

[Cykeisme]

Like Mr Bean said, usually huge game installation directory size is due to uncompressed textures. 3D geometry of all sorts, audio and binaries are comparatively small compared to textures.

Thus, they are usually compressed; in modern games they're so big it's rare to not compress them on the installation dir, unless for some reason their loading times are already too long, and they need to reduce them by eliminating the time taken for decompressing the textures (by not compressing them at all).

[zman]

Just tried the new expansion on the test server and I fell back in love with the game.

[Darksider]

Seriously? It's like one planet. Does it even have separate storylines for each character or is it the same one?

[TheFeniX]

I read a bit on the forums. Something about them fixing Ilum by making it a group PvP thing rather than just faction based. Doesn't really fit, but at least they're attempting something to fix Ilums PvP. Unfortunately, I also read people are just kill farming again.

[zman]

we havne't even seen the new planet yet. However the new planet is supposed to be HUGE. I fell in love with all the changes such as the new achievment system the new armor, new abilities and so on.

As for Ilum they also did a great job on that. They redid the entire PVP area it's not big and open any more There are more places to hide and ambush. Yes the middle is now a group pvp area which is a lot of fun. The new live event is also really cool with the Gree.

Overall they have been doing a great job these last few patches. If they keep this up and they finish the Super Secret Space Project then this game will have made a complete 180

[RogueIce]

I read a bit on the forums. Something about them fixing Ilum by making it a group PvP thing rather than just faction based. Doesn't really fit, but at least they're attempting something to fix Ilums PvP. Unfortunately, I also read people are just kill farming again.

Yeah I've heard that's a big complaint of the new Gree event: now you can get griefed by anybody instead of just the other faction.

Pretty much the advice is, if you're not a PvPer, do not use AoE abilities. Ever.

[TheFeniX]

The griefing potential in SWTOR has always been horrifically high. The easiest bit is to just stand near an unflagged character's companion. At some point, they will AOE or do some kind of debuff that, while not affecting the opposite player, will still flag you. Some guy found out a way through buffing/healing/debuffing whatever his factions NPCs (or even some hostile NPCs), he could force a player to flag. Something about how, if you debuff an NPC while flagged, and it's attacked by a non-flagged player, he gets flagged. I still don't think it's fixed, which is good because the forum posts are hilarious:

"Some guy griefed me by X"
"GG scrub, PvP server!"
"I'm on a PvE Server."
"lol carebear scrub, pvp is part of the game. Re-roll on PvP server."

[Stark]

It sounds like it uses a pretty old fashioned PvP system.

[Darksider]

A lot of the mechanics of this game really do make it look like they took a look at WoW circa 2005-2006 and copied that without any of the subsequent improvements or refinements to the MMO genre.

The only thing worth a damn in this game is the story.

EDIT: And maybe the space combat minigame which is fun for like a half an hour.

[RogueIce]

The griefing potential in SWTOR has always been horrifically high. The easiest bit is to just stand near an unflagged character's companion. At some point, they will AOE or do some kind of debuff that, while not affecting the opposite player, will still flag you. Some guy found out a way through buffing/healing/debuffing whatever his factions NPCs (or even some hostile NPCs), he could force a player to flag. Something about how, if you debuff an NPC while flagged, and it's attacked by a non-flagged player, he gets flagged. I still don't think it's fixed, which is good because the forum posts are hilarious:

"Some guy griefed me by X"
"GG scrub, PvP server!"
"I'm on a PvE Server."
"lol carebear scrub, pvp is part of the game. Re-roll on PvP server."

This is why I will never group with a flagged PvPer on Heroics. Because I don't want to go hide in a cantina on Tatooine for five minutes afterward because I tried to heal him, used an AoE, or did pretty much anything else and got myself flagged.

Granted I have not yet done a "LFG {Whatever Heroic} Non-PvP flagged only plz" message. I wonder how many people will call me scrub if/when I do.

And yes, PvE server.

[Darksider]

Hey rogue are you and Los still interested in starting a group sith playthrough on Jedi Covenant?

I've been busy as fuck replacing my car, but I think I can finally get a Sith Warrior up and running through the intro planet this weekend.

[Stark]

Los found an actual good MMO to play. :V

[Darksider]

What did he switch to?