The force is strong with this one....

I spent my Thanksgiving weekend participating in the 3rd and final beta weekend for Star Wars: The Old Republic. The nice thing about this test session is that now that the game is in open beta, I can talk about my experiences in public. I actually tested over a year ago. I can't discuss that test because I signed a non-disclosure form, but I can say that the work that has been done in a year is amazing. This is going to be a great game. This weekend's test was a stress test, so I didn't get to play as much as I would have liked. The servers were so full there were wait times as long as 10-15 hours. There was a ton of Lag. Apparently a lot of people were getting booted to the desktop, which was the plan. I didn't actually get booted to the desktop. But I didn't sit there for 15 hours at a stretch playing either. Regardless, I came away with some good insight into what the finished product is going to be like.

Character creation is good and very user friendly. If you've played Bioware games at all, you'll recognize the format. First you choose an alignment, then a class, race, gender and finally look. The looks are all slider-oriented like with most other Bioware RPG's.

I was impressed with the story. Generally, MMO's aren't story-rich. But this is Bioware we are talking about. I also liked that it was set up so that playing with a group is totally optional. It is completely possible to play this as a single-player RPG. I like that because I don't play well with others. I mean, I can be honest with myself. The dialogue wheel works pretty much like the dialogue wheel in Mass Effect. You generally have three options for responses: super nice, super asshole and more or less neutral. There's even some flirt options with the right characters. And occasionally, you have the option to make a bold light side/dark side choice that will affect your alignment. These are clearly marked so there's no confusion. I found they generally come at the end of important missions.

At certain points in the game you gain companions. They can be pulled out and used at will, kind of like Dog in Dragon Age II. You can send your companions on missions or errands and it gives you a timer as to when they will return and be ready for use again. I like this feature. It means that you don't have to do a lot of the inane errands yourself, freeing you up to concentrate on the big missions.

I played through Bounty Hunter and Sith Inquisitor both to level 4. I discovered that I prefer blaster characters. I've always preferred long range abilities to short range ones. I don't like up close combat. I'd prefer to pick off enemies from a distance. The Bounty Hunter is a great class for that. Also, I was informed by a group of vets I fell in with that Bounty Hunter is a good DPS character and DPS characters are good for people who want minimal responsiblity within a group. Guilds generally look for a good mix of each type of character and from what I've gathered, tanks and healers carry the most responsibility in a raid or mission. They are generally the ones who get blamed when things go bad. The DPS characters less so.

Which leads me to the human element of the game. I met a LOT of timmies, even ones who were supposedly adults. Many were full-time testers who were miffed at all the weekend n00bs taking over their servers and causing them headaches and lag. I got reamed a lot for asking rookie questions. But I did manage to meet some really helpful veterans who gave me a lot of good advice re: what type of characters I'd like and be good at, what all the jargon means and what it means to play as a group. I found a guild called Free Empires that is made up of 12 or so casual adult players. They aren't going to have set raiding nights or make you play a certain role. The leader, who PM'd me with a lot of really good answers to my questions, is a family man. I joined up. If you are planning on getting the game, you might check them out. They are imperial though, so if you plan to play republic you'll have to find a different guild.

Anyway, the game is releasing December 20th. I feel good about it and am actually looking forward to getting to play it for real. Between now and then I'm going to hook up with Free Empires if I can and get to know the members better. Its always good to have friends to play with. I'll post my characters and server when it launches so I can friend any 2o2p peeps who get into it.