Star Wars: The Old Republic

Must say I'm a tad surprised no one has made a post about it yet, but I guess since the game isn't out for another 3(-ish) weeks. Yeah. Well..

SWTOR has been holding a stress test in the beta this weekend and I was lucky enough to get a spot and even luckier to get a spot from Friday, rather than Saturday or Sunday as some people have gotten. Stress test Beta ends at 6am GMT but with me working tonight I won't have the time to play any more, sadly.

So, what can be said about SWTOR. I'll be completely honest, I'm both a bit amazed and really excited about the launch. I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan, must confess that outside of the KotOR games I really don't care much at all about the franchise but I am really hyped about this game.

They've managed to get a really good MMO out of this and I was not expecting that. The game is heavily instanced which keeps the areas from being too over-flooded with other players while you're out there plundering/destroying/saving things. They've managed to eliminate a lot of the boring runtime with filler-bonus quests, ie, most often, kill 10 of these things while you're on the way to your main objective. It's a nice bonus xp boost and keeps from driving you nuts as you trek around.

They've also instanced pretty much all of the major plot things, so you'll never have ten people standing around your main quest giver while you're handing in/getting your quests. And all the quests, hell, all the people you talk to are all voiced and I have to say I like what they've done with the voice acting. It doesn't seem like much but it adds such a nice level of immersion to the game.

You can tell quite clearly that it is a bioware game when it comes to the conversations, given that it does have almost the same dialog build up as ME2 and DA2 has, with clear indication if your choice response will give you dark side or light side points.

I really wish I could have more time to explore the higher levels of the game but I've been too preoccupied trying out the various starting areas. Must confess I prefer the Smuggler/Trooper and Bounty Hunter/Agent starting areas over the Jedi & Sith ones.

So, is anyone else pre-ordering this? If so, what's your hopes and fears for release? Well, outside of the possible cue that might occur once everyone tries to log in at once on release.