Having played the game for a bit now, I’m noticing some things more and more that have started flecking that new MMO paint off here and there.

Bugs:

• A player’s companions each have a place to be when you’re all in your ship.   Corso stands next to me at the helm, Bowdaar is in the galley, Risha is in the engine room, etc.   But I’ve noticed that, depending on which planet my ship is over, the NPCs don’t always appear the way they should.  Over some planets, Risha is still in the engine room but also back at her old station in the cargo bay.  Bowdaar disappeared on me once.  And there’s also a strange dude hanging out in my medical bay.  I’m assuming he’s a future NPC helper … or maybe he’s a stowaway.  It’s sort of like operating a ghost ship with the Ghosts of NPCs Past haunting their old stomping grounds until their horrible deaths – being forced to stand stock-still while handing out missions, no doubt – are avenged.
• There are some mob balance issues that I’ve noticed.  Like the bugs in Balmorra – most elites I can take down at even level with just me and my companion.  These elites con green and they’re still exceptionally difficult.  Either the bugs need a nerf or the quest needs to be a group quest.
• Some quests cannot be abandoned.  I have stuff in my log from Tatooine that I have no intention of completing and yet I can’t get rid of the stupid quest.

Look, buddy: pay me for the ride or start swabbing decks.

Grumbles:

In addition to stuff I think is broken, there are some issues I have with various aspects of the game.

• The chat wheel choices, while often done well enough, sometimes make no sense.  Sometimes they’re even non-choices.
• Like too many MMOs, there is nothing underwater.  In fact all waterways are filled in so they are only knee-deep.  This is one thing WoW did exactly right: water has various depths and sometimes you can even swim underneath the surface!
• Less encouragement towards grouping.  The game allows grouping, of course.  But other than heroics and the other odd instance, there’s really no reason to.  The single-player nature of the game is fine, especially for me – a casual player, but I would like to see more group-based activities here and there.  In a game based on stories, it would be nice to see group stories (for small play groups) or guild stories for a whole guild.
• Tunnel-vision: at times I feel like I’m being driven down a tunnel (the class storyline) which contains a few off-branches here and there but follows it’s own line from level one to the end of the class leveling process.   On one hand, the primacy of the class quest is good: it provides a central point of all the character’s actions and forms the major story thread around which all other narrative threads weave.  On the other hand, it’s giving me some worries.  Particularly: what happens when I hit the cap and the story stops?  Is that it?  Do I cancel my subscription and go back to something else?  I suspect that Bioware (and its financiers) would prefer I didn’t.  So what’s next?  Grinding for gear?  Pointless re-runs of the same old instances?  I’ve asked some friends of mine who are at the cap and that’s basically what they’re doing.  This does not bode well.

And I’ll wrap up with some more about that last bullet point.  Some of the best game play I’ve encountered in MMOs is free and open in the sense that the players are creating something for themselves.   There are unscripted events that can happen when you have large groups of players gathering to do something or a large, open game world to play in.  In spite of its failings, the tower sieges in WAR were a blast.  Large numbers of players swarming keeps and battling across map after map were loads of fun.  (Getting those kinds of battles to start was a sticking point, but once they got rolling, it was on.)  Discovery is another fun thing to many people in games.  With a surplus of game space, discovery of the unique can be a real booster to the fun of a game.  When I located the Weathered Hills ruins in LotRO part of the fun was that those ruins were in a place that no one goes.  They served no purpose.  They just were and I found them and sneaked around in them as a lowbie burglar.  Sadly, they are now a quest hub and are less special as a result.

In spite of the bugs and issues I see with the game, I’m still having fun with it.  I think the next six to twelve months will be telling for SWTOR.  Can they implement new content in a timely manner (especially with the voice-acting)?  Can they fix the issues with the game?  Can they add content to spur wonder and allow players to create something for themselves?  Time will tell.

The primary role of a companion in SWTOR isn’t that much different.  They fight alongside your toon and act as tanking,healing or damage to help you take down baddies.  But they do a lot more than just fight beside you.

While I could wax poetic about the coolness of Bioware’s companions, they have already waxed poetically in pixel form for you.

I won’t go into too much detail about companions here then, I’ll just mention some of the highlights I like.

Selling Junk:

Like most games, SWTOR has junk in it: stuff you pick up by looting corpses which is good only for selling to vendors to make extra coin.  In most games, you’d have to wait to get back to town to sell off this stuff and free up bag space.   Not in SWTOR.  Left-click the companion so they appear as the selected target, right-click on their portrait and choose “sell grey items.”  In the wave of a hand, they will vanish along with all the grayed-out junk clogging your bags.  In a minute or so, they’ll return with your money.  And you can do this from anywhere.  Two caveats: 1) it appears that companions vanish in groups so you’d have to wait to un-group before doing this and 2) when your companion is selling stuff, they aren’t helping you fight.

Crafting:

One of the best uses of companions is crafting.  Most of us, I think, are familiar with the typical MMO crafting session.  You, the player, will park your toon in front of an animated something-or-other which is supposed to be a forge or a campfire or a leather-working bench and then, with reagents in your bags, churn out one thing after another to raise the level of your crafting.   Typically, much laundry, TV-watching, Internet browsing or chatting occurs during these gaming interludes because, frankly, they’re not that interesting.  EQ2 had a neat system which turned crafting into a mini-game but it still didn’t interest me much because the payoff wasn’t there.

The crafting system in SWTOR has many similarities with the crafting systems of other MMOS, but several key differences.  Players of other MMOs will recognize the trainers and recipe-based skill-ups in SWTOR crafting.  The big difference is that you don’t craft in SWTOR, your companions do.  The crafting skills are called crew skills in The Old Republic because your crew is doing them.

Clicking “N” will show your available crew members and the crafting skills you can send them on.  Click the skill under the crew mate you want to send and then select a mission for them to run to get that item.

And then run along on your merry way doing whatever it was you wanted.  Crafting is asynchronous to what your toon is doing so while you’re storming the gates of the Fortress of Doom, your crew mate can be creating something for you at the same time.  You can also, in later levels, have more than one companion doing a different mission at the same time.  At level 28, I have three companions.  While Corso Riggs (my tanking companion) and I are off shooting things with lasers, Bowdaar (my Wookie crew mate) can be scavenging for materials and my droid can be making a piece of armor I want.

Each crafting mission, except the item-creation ones, has costs associated with them and the companion on that mission will be unable to help you as they run it so plan accordingly.  Missions can be cancelled though I am not sure if the money or items are gone or if they get returned.  Also, something I found out the other day: you can send them on a mission and queue them up for another by selecting the same companion and a different mission.  I’m not sure how deep they stack, but a companion can have a current mission and then one set up to run right after that.

I have three companions and can send all three on missions at once.  While I’m running around town training or selling, each member of my crew can be doing something else.

Advancing Narrative:

Companions get involved with your character through a story line and each companion’s story is different.  My first companion, for example, was a worker at a warehouse I was doing a smuggling run for in the opening zone of the smuggler class.  My second was the result of some misadventures on Nar Shaddaa.

There will also be points along the way where a companion might take you aside and ask for some help with something of interest to them.  For example, Corso Riggs is looking for surviving family members and one quest involved me helping him find some.

Companions not only have their stories, they advance yours as well; they’re not just some animated critter that shoots mobs for you.

Random observations:

Each companion gets armed and armored independently of your main toon.  Their armor type may also vary.  For example, my smuggler wears medium armor.  My tank, Corso, uses heavy armor with aim and endurance and my dps tank, Bowdaar, wears heavy armor with strength and endurance.  You need to keep track of each companion’s armor needs (as well as weapon needs) and provide for them accordingly.  Since Corso is proving the most versatile and useful companion, I’m keeping him geared up while poor Bowdaar is getting under-geared.

Also, when getting quest rewards, mousing over an item will only display the potential stat upgrades for your main toon.  Any comparisons to determine whether an item is an upgrade for a companion have to happen with your inventory open and the character sheet open to the companion page.  This is a minor annoyance and I found you can close the quest window and do the comparison later – pending rewards will appear at the top-right hand side of your screen in a flashing notice.  Figure out what you want and then click that icon to see your choices again.

Companions are a lot more useful than pets in other games and work like a ship’s crew – adding an interesting twist to the concept of a pet class.  Companions also add characters to advance story lines – a necessity in a game emphasizing story.

I spend a long time tootling around in LotRO and WoW‘s latest expansion (Cataclysm) and while the time was fun, I could think of nothing interesting to write about.  Grinding is grinding and while it can sometimes be enjoyable, it’s fairly unimaginative game play and doesn’t do much to inspire me to writing.

This past Christmas, I had some time off from work and, with no family commitments or other stuff in the way; I picked up a copy of the Old Republic and got playing it.

It’s wonderful!

The Good:

Players can choose from a number of interesting classes to play.  There are two different kinds of Jedi one can play (with corresponding types in the Sith) as well as smugglers, bounty hunters and commandos among others.  Like WoW or LotRO, players can begin adding specification points (LotRO calls these traits) in one of several trees to make the character more unique.  Also, each base class has two specifications a player can choose from.  The smuggler, for example, can become a gunslinger, with an emphasis on ranged damage, or a scoundrel, with a focus on melee combat along with some healing.

Another great point to the game is the story.  Everything is a story.  From the moment a player enters the world, they are setting up a plot for themselves.  Their choices effect the way things turn out for them, how attuned to the Light side / Dark side they are as well as the attitude their companion’s have towards them.  (The companion system in the game is amazing and one of its best features – I’m going to set up a post just about them.)

The Ok:

The game just launched so there are bound to be a few things here and there that aren’t quite up to snuff.  The spaceships in the game function as personal mission areas.  Much of a character’s activity after level 15 or so will be based around their spacecraft.  That part I like.  The space combat isn’t that good.  Unlike SWG’s old fly-where-you-please model, The Old Republic uses a tunnel flying system.  You fly where the rails say you can fly and at the speed they say.  There is some maneuverability, like dodging asteroids and debris, but for the most part you’re just along for the ride.

The armor in the game looks decent, but I really miss LotRO’s appearance slots.  I tend to like to have my character’s looking the part which often means selecting stuff they wear all the time instead of wearing whatever the vicissitudes of the loot system allow.

Also, there are no chat bubbles.  Chat bubbles, even among non-RP types, are a good clue as to who is talking.  Without them, I find myself looking around for a nameplate that matches the name next to the thing I was just told.  It gets old fast.

And lastly, I’m not wild about the skills UI set up.  It’s not horrible, but I’d like to have some more options about how my skills get arranged, especially when there are a lot of skills and there doesn’t seem to be a way to set up command key / number combinations outside controlling the companions.

The Bad:

There have been log-in queues on several servers.  Given the IP and the buzz surrounding the game, that’s not really surprising.  I guess that’s a good problem to have.  Bioware has opened several more servers and new players can see the server status beside it when they first create a character.

Star Wars: The Old Republic had a solid launch.  It’s a well-done game that I will be playing for the foreseeable future.

While I could find some things to babble about to fill up page spaces, it’s really nothing that hasn’t been said before and nothing I feel like proof-reading (and publishing, and realizing all the stuff I still screwed up, and going back and fixing it, and getting comments on the stuff I fixed because I didn’t save it right the first time … and well, you get the idea) again.

So rather than close up shop, I’ll be mentioning more of my out-of-MMO-land interests and having fewer posts related to WoW or LotRO or whatever other MMOs I may bumble into from time to time.

Happy Yulemas

The Yule Festival is here in LotRO!  There are many returning quests and deeds, like gathering apples in the Shire or picking up boughs for the elves.  There’s lots of new stuff as well.  There is a new zone called Winter-home that players can visit.  It features a town area with quests such as an eating contest or a quest to restock the party kegs.

My favorite new quest area (in Winter-home) has to be the theater: three players are chosen randomly to play a character on stage.  The chosen players will say their lines by using the emote system.  If they get their line wrong, the audience throws rotten fruit.  If they get it right, the audience throws flower petals.  It’s a good time and it shows how Turbine, when the put their mind to it, can create some really fun, innovative stuff.

As usual, there are also a lot of new cosmetic items, a new festival mount and other goodies for players.  (New zone screen shot of my burglar wearing his new festival duds below the fold.)

Also, check out A Casual Stroll to Mordor’s Yule Festival Guide!

Boo!

The latest Fall Festival is underway in LotRO.  There are new rewards, a new festival horse and lots of fun to be had.

See A Casual Stroll to Mordor’s great guide.

After a long time without the Internet, I couldn’t wait to see all the stuff I missed in LotRO while I was traveling, recuperating, or getting to know my new home.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Volume 3, Book 2: The Ride of the Grey Company has players following Aragorn’s Rangers as a continuation of the epic storyline.  The whole thing is soloable and a lot of fun.  Following on the heels of getting the Rangers to the new zone of Endewaith, players are encouraged to help the cause of the Free Peoples by securing allies (including Hobbits!) and hindering the forces of Angmar in the area.

The new zone

Endewaith is a landscape like the moors in places with some deep and scary woodlands and desolate ruins for adventurers to explore.  Amid the sparse hills and wilds, players will be assisting the Grey Company in their attempt to get through the place to help Aragorn in the War of the Ring.  Quests focus on getting the locals to side with the Free Peoples over the forces of Angmar*.  And Angmar’s* goons are also out in force along with local wights, ruffians and other standard fair.  (And yes, there are boars.)

As someone that appreciates geographical eye-candy, I really like the new zone.  It’s put together well with plenty of mobs and quests and some interesting story lines as well.  Turbine has changed a their quest structure a little bit.  There are many first-kill-trinket type quests which I think are kind of neat.  The player kills their first wight, for example, and discovers an ancient rune she should show to a nearby ranger.  The wights are part of other quest lines for the locals but many of them lead back to gathering information for the rangers and the player is constantly reminded of their mission with the trinket drops.

Other than that, it’s pretty much the standard kill-ten-x, click-the-glowy type stuff with a few escort missions thrown in for good measure.  Though I will say that the Huntsman quest line was a lot of fun.

Classic Instances

Ever look back fondly on the old instances you loved leveling up sad in the knowledge that you’d never see them as fun or challenging again?  Then classic instances are for you!  Classic Instances are available in the same section under your regular skirmishes but on a different tab.  Just like skirmishes, you can group up and join one from wherever you are in the world.  There are classic raids like Helegrod and instances like the Great Barrows.  I did a number of these over the weekend and they bring back the old maps and adversaries along with some new fights and challenges along the way.  You can even get supreme tokens for another radiance armor set.

The Store

Store (see the guide for info on using it)  Some neat items.  Note: There are a lot of items, particularly cosmetic items, that are available in game.  Don’t burn yourself out of valuable points for something you could get in game.  You can choose “store exclusive” to see items that are only available from the store.  Of course, it’s all about time and what your time is worth so if you see something in-game but would rather buy it, that’s understandable, but figure out your options first.

And for folks that want to see what stuff looks like before they get it, check out Seekingerin’s guide on the LotRO forums.  She’s done a great job of showing all the new cosmetic items available.

I got a buffs package and a shared storage slot expansion in addition to the hood (very burglary) and new cook’s pack (very hobbity).

F2P and Dynamic Layers

LotRO’s new free-to-play option hasn’t effected me much.  They have added a new feature called Dynamic Layering to cut down on lag a bit.  The idea is that you enter a high-traffic area and get split off into a layer with an optimal number of players on it.  You could be in Bree in proximity of other players that you cannot see because they are on a different layer than you are.  Ideally, if you group with your friends, you can move to the same layer as the group leader by clicking the DL icon in the bottom-right hand side of your screen.  Ideally, that is.  I’ve been following some reports that there are problems with the DL technology.  I haven’t had to use it yet so it hasn’t effected me much.

Another caveat: for folks that like to put on large, public events, dealing with the layering will probably be a challenge for you.  I think it’s probably possible to set up a raid of the people that want to be in the event or possibly even a simple group: person sets up group where the event will occur; person invites people so they can get pulled to the layer of the event; people leave group once they’re there.  That’s my idea, anyway.  I have yet to see it into practice and since I’m not in charge of any large events, it’s unlikely I’ll have the chance.

There have been other odd bugs with the DL stuff.  In one case a kinship member was farming when, due to server load in his area, the dynamic layers kicked in and he found himself in a different layer than the field he had just planted.

* As Thallian notes in the comments, it’s actually Isengard’s forces in this zone, not Angmar.

Well, they have them!  Woo!  There’s only info about two ships available right now but it looks like they’ll be offering more.