Adventures in The Old Republic
Editor-in-Chief Chris "Pwyff" Tom writes about SWTOR's opening days and how the past week was for this game's launch.
Tomorrow marks the official launch day of Star Wars: The Old Republic, but chances are high that many of you have already had your invites come during early access, which ran from December 13th to the 20th. While I did manage to write extensively about my SWTOR closed beta experiences here and here, some of you might still be hesitant about committing to another MMORPG. So, with those of you in mind, ZAM Staff Writer Mike "Krelumian" Schaffnit and I decided to hop into SWTOR's early game access to document our "official" preview experiences with SWTOR's launch day client.
Prior to SWTOR's official early game launch, I had spent an enormous amount of time planning who I should play with and what servers I should play on. While I certainly feel very sorry for the customer support teams of BioWare & EA, and the hours they'll have to pull over the winter holidays, SWTOR's launch date couldn't have fallen on a better week. With the sheen of World of Warcraft's patch 4.3 wearing off and Skyrim fatigue setting in, almost all of my gaming buddies have found the time to get into the Old Republic. Ultimately, I decided on two separate servers: Warriors of Shadow, as Pwyff the Powertech, to play with my good friend Matticus and his raiding guild, Conquest, and Rakata Mind Prison, as Pwyff the Jedi Sage, to do some PvP with ZAM's Director of Content, Cody "Micajah" Bye, and his PvP guild, Force Plus One.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that Star Wars: The Old Republic is having one of the smoothest launches I've seen thus far. With that incredible stress test that BioWare ran two weeks ago that pulled in more than 750,000 players, SWTOR is more than prepared to face the hordes of Jedi-wannabes coming on for the holidays. The longest queues I've hit so far were on Warriors of Shadow, when I popped in on a Saturday night to find a 600-person queue waiting for me. I've heard there were some servers that got hit really hard. I believe The Harbinger was sporting queues when other servers were only under medium stress, but I haven't run into the incredible 3-hour waits that plagued the big weekend beta test, so, as far as I'm concerned, things are good.
My early access kicked off during the second day of invites but, since my designated Empire leveling buddy preordered in December (lazy…), I could only get my Powertech to level 10 before I decided to wait. I had no such obligations on Rakata Mind Prison, so my Jedi Sage quickly found herself floundering about in the PvP Warzones at level 10, being absolutely useless with only Benevolence to heal with. As a class, the Jedi Sage is a lot of fun and offers a great balance of healing and damage, regardless of spec, so I found myself being able to consistently snag both the 75,000 damage dealt medal as well as the 75,000 healing dealt medal in each warzone (averaging about 6-7 medals per match). I am, however, still very bothered by the aesthetics of the Jedi Sage's core "channeled" ability, Telekinetic Throw, as it is one of the most harmless looking abilities I've seen in quite some time. Some players have taken to affectionately calling it "Force Pebbles," and I don't think this description is very far off. Channeling small rocks and wind at someone just doesn't feel as heroic as, say, channeling lightning bolts.