The Secret World Surprised Me

Being the MMO junkie that I am, I have been following the development of The Secret World with some interest for the past few years, despite the fact that it seemed in many ways to be the polar opposite of the kind of MMO I thought I’d enjoy. I mean, it’s set in the present day when I love medieval fantasy settings, it’s got a horror theme when I avoid the horror genre like the plague, it’s an ARG when I dislike having to look up sources outside a game to progress, it’s gear-based when I’d rather bring my wits to a battle, and it’s got a raiding endgame when I’d rather gnaw off my own arm than partake. Oh, and it’ll have a monthly subscription fee, and I’ve all but sworn those off.

Still, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the ideas being put out there by Funcom, and I’ll be the first to admit that the first 30 or so levels of Age of Conan (yes, even the first few post-Tortage levels) were some of the best story and most memorable times I’ve had in an MMO. A level-less system appeals to the part of me that hates self-enforced leveling pacts, and Funcom’s eye for scenery, and gorgeously replicating such, can’t really be denied. So while I haven’t pre-ordered, I did get on over to Gamespot and nab a weekend beta key to try this out for myself. And even though I’d seen a ton of footage and read up on many of the game’s systems, I was still pleasantly surprised at how much I liked what I saw when I got to take the reins.

First, the bad, or maybe the “meh.” Character customization is limited. There weren’t very many female faces (or combinations of features) I could choose that made me feel I was looking at a real human, nevermind whether I felt they straddled a believable range of attractiveness. Skin color was inexplicably tied to base face shape. There were no varying ethnic hairstyles to correspond with the diverse (thank you!) ethnic facial features on display. No sliders makes a sad Randomessa. And I couldn’t see a way to alter my body size or shape, even to the degree that Age of Conan allowed it.

Let me choose this old lady face, Funcom!

Character animations are… not very good, in my opinion.  Running is pretty bad; jumping is quite awful. In-combat animations have no “oomph” to them; I never feel like I’m really hitting anything, just swinging my arms through mush. I couldn’t figure out how to emote, though in the case that I didn’t miss something obvious, beta is beta and that’s one thing I’m sure will be added in prior to launch. Quests, whenever they more closely resembled typical MMO quests, suffered from the same problems I have with them elsewhere: waiting in line for spawns, competing for interactable nodes, etc.

However:

Quests, whenever they did not closely resemble typical MMO quests, were a delight. Being able to put a random bit of knowledge to use in cracking a password was amusing. Having to decipher notes and apply recipes and talk to all manner of crazy people really mixed things up for me, and having quest icons let me know right off the bat if what I’d be asked to do involved wholesale slaughter or investigative work of some sort was just the kind of quest hint I appreciate. As with Age of Conan, NPCs are fun to talk to about a wide range of subjects, and they all are injected with quirky personalities that make them memorable after the fact (I still remember the guy in Tortage who hid the pearl in his… hidey place, for example, and I’ll remember Kingsmouth’s Deputy Andy for a long time as well). I greatly enjoyed all the voice acting and the varied accents involved (being neither a New or Old Englander, I have no idea how cringe-worthy they might have been for one from those regions. I did guffaw with recognition at the fortune-teller’s southern Californian nasal drawl, though).

Once I actually got down to fighting, I quickly stopped minding the combat animations so much. This is not to let Funcom off the hook for not making them more impressive, but I did find myself more interested in the effects I could apply and exploit, and combining the skills of two weapons to be more effective. There were plenty of circles of doom to step out of, and big monster wind-up tells, which meant that animations or no, I felt I constantly had to be on the move to get out of hairy situations alive.

Getting out of combat mode is hard!

Scenery-wise, I couldn’t have asked for more, and I did muse aloud that I think The Secret World may have the best-rendered trees I’ve seen in an MMO yet. Having the in-game clock displayed as a cell-phone HUD is ever so fitting, and made me use the in-game clock more readily than I have in other MMOs that provide the same – it probably helps that sunrise and sunset are done so well here, with the light playing off structures in a really believable way. I’m reminded of LOTRO and Fallen Earth, but I feel TSW takes it just that bit farther, which makes sense given the release year.

Not outdoor scenery, but I love this shot all the same.

Finally, I wasn’t sure how the “level-less” system was going to feel in practice, and I think it’s clear that you are still gated, in a sense, by how many skill/anima points you can put into building your skill trees; I’m sure you’ll need skills more than 2 points deep (and so on) to beat certain bosses in missions, etc. But from what I could tell, there was one very big gate missing for me as I progressed through the overarching storyline missions: at no time was it “suggested” to me that I be of a certain capability before proceeding, and I actually did skip most side missions just to see if I would be able to. Not only was I allowed to do this, I could also still keep pace with the monsters the game threw at me, even within story instances, which is more than I can say for the previous two heavily story-based MMOs I recently beta tested. I don’t know if this is indicative of the rest of the game or just a case of beta trying to make it easy on us, but I could not have been happier.

Oh, I’ll do the side missions – I have nothing against them – but being the story fiend that I am, if I had a common complaint to lodge against both SW:TOR and Guild Wars 2, it was that my major storyline was spread out over levels such that I had to engage in other activities before I could feasibly continue, and I hate being restricted in that way. Not having levels meant both that the early zombies were not quite trivialized, while still allowing me to see progress in my ability to take down harder enemies. Later I look forward to not facing down an exponential XP curve to acquire that next SP or AP (dare I hope?).

One  riddle I can’t seem to crack about The Secret World is that of audience; that is, what is the audience Funcom is going for, and how big is it? On the one hand, I welcome the changes from the standard MMO, both genre-, mechanics- and content-wise, and I think this could be a really strong niche title with an amazing, helpful, tight-knit community if it gets all the technical issues ironed out before launch. On the other hand, with EA backing it, how happy would they be with a “strong niche title?” I just don’t see this going over well with a lot of crowds, from the open-PvPers to the action combat fans to the sandbox aficionados to the rush-to-endgame crowd. Yet it has the raiding and the gear progression and a subscription fee that seems to imply they expect more than a few folks to cross over from other games and make a home here. I can’t quite figure it out. What would constitute a success for The Secret World?

So now I find myself wondering whether the things I feel TSW does so well – story, interesting world and characters, variety and complexity in gameplay, stunning graphics – really do trump the things that bug me like the odd old-school resource competition, a raiding end-game with gear progression, subscription fee, and my qualms about the audience and success it may or may not achieve. I don’t have an answer yet, but prior to this weekend, I thought there was no question at all. I’m not convinced there isn’t some Illuminati mind control involved.

Illuminati mind control and a soft-focus lens.

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I Played a Trooper (and I liked it)*

*With regards to Katy Perry (though I prefer Karen Gillian‘s version myself).

When one of my Guild Wars alliance mates offered up a SW:TOR buddy key a few weeks ago, I took her up on it since I have been curious about how things would play out given more time to explore other storylines in the world. Since I discovered during the SW:TOR beta weekends that I liked the Bounty Hunter playstyle best (but didn’t care for the story), I rolled a Trooper this time, and had a better time of it. Something about the fact that I was a soldier made it easier to accept the game’s conceits (and most quests) and “just go along” with whatever was going on – I have orders, after all – rather than playing a civilian where I always wonder why they don’t just decide to up and leave. This is true of most MMOs I play, by the way – I like my grunt status, thanks.

Look at Aric checking me out, there.

I liked playing a Trooper enough to get past many of the other niggling things that I already noted rub me the wrong way about Bioware and traditional MMO style games, and the sad fact is that since Mr. Randomessa refused to join me on this experiment, leveling was easier because I never had to wait on or catch up with him either. So it was with regret that I reached level 15 on my Trooper and the game informed me that I would no longer be able to progress, nor would I be able to continue my storyline to the point of getting to ride in the ship I’d just acquired, or travel to another planet. I’d have known that if I’d read all the fine print, of course. Well played, Bioware.

I then rolled a Jedi Consular and an Imperial Agent and hated the gameplay, and further ran into the complication of my Consular being sent to the same planet as my Trooper and therefore running into the exact same quests I’d just completed a day earlier. I also had the frustrating experience of my Consular outright stating in her quest dialogue that she would try to find a peaceable solution to the quests my Trooper had previously solved by “lighting it up,” only to be faced with the same sea of red names that my Trooper had. I think I got the option to use Force Persuade at one point, which I guess is the game’s way of letting you have a peaceable solution, but I was kind of hoping I could do things with actual diplomacy rather than Jedi Mind Tricks. I know, I know, I was asking for too much.

At any rate, I liked playing the Trooper the most, but I didn’t like it “price of the box at launch cost for 30 days of play” much. If and when there’s a nifty discount on the box price of SW:TOR I’d like to free up her leveling path and see where I can get her, but in the meantime, she’ll remain in the hangar, ineffectually trying to board and re-board her brand new ship. For what it’s worth – which is not much – I would have bought the game at full launch cost in a heartbeat if I could play my Trooper at my leisure, instead of trying to get her as far as possible in a month’s time. But it was not meant to be. This is much more an indictment of the subscription model than Bioware’s game at this point, so I feel I’ve come a long way since that beta weekend so many months ago.

In a week’s time I expect to be very very busy, but it would have been nice to at least see if I could put the moves on Aric in the meantime.

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Reflections on a Bioware MMO

While I’m sure it will not surprise anyone given my silence on the subject following one hopeful post nearly two years ago, I will not be playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. I have given a lot of thought about what I’d say about the game only if and when I had the opportunity to play it, and I was given that opportunity last weekend. It was probably not the best timing, given what it had to compete with, but it solidified a lot of things for me, culminating in my final decision on the fate of its purchase in our household.

Although I did note several similarities to WoW in the gameplay I sampled (rest areas being the most glaring one for me right off the bat), it was the Bioware traits that I ended up having most of my problems with. That’s right, I realized I don’t like Bioware games. I could have come to that conclusion when I never got farther than 10 hours into either Dragon Age: Origins or either KOTOR, but instead I figured I just didn’t like single-player RPGs. With dozens of blissful hours of Skyrim firmly behind me, I can kiss that notion goodbye, so it must be something that Bioware does that doesn’t sit well with me.

Considering where I left each of my prior attempts at Bioware games, I think I can safely say that that “thing” mainly is: trapping me.

[Beware spoilers below if you don’t know much about the first 10 hours of DA:O, KOTOR, or KOTOR2]

I left DA:O the night I arrived in that town that is being besieged by darkspawn every night – the one you can opt to help or leave to their fate. I quit because prior to making my decision, I tried to leave and return to the town I’d been doing errands in earlier in the day, only to find that it had been destroyed and was no longer accessible. That left me with nowhere else to go. Sure, I could have denied my help to the townspeople, or chosen one of the other two story paths set out for me, but frankly what I wanted was something, almost anything else. I wanted to be able to go places in the world, even at my own peril, and DA:O said I could not. So I quit.

I left KOTOR in the sewers, after collecting Mission and her Wookiee friend and killing what felt like a bazillion gang members in as many rooms. I simply grew tired of sewers; I wanted to leave the sewers, and with my options being “continue fighting in the sewers” or “go dueling” I chose “none of the above.”

So, I thought, finally, maybe KOTOR2 would be more enjoyable? And this one seemed to be breaking the mold! No sewers! And I made it off the starting planet, and the second one, too! But I ultimately accepted my fate on Nar Shadaa, after cozying up to everyone imaginable and destroying a yacht just to get my ship back, only to remember that there was a Jedi to find and train with, and by that time I realized to my dismay that I no longer cared about any of the whole mess at all. Whatever juice Bioware uses to make so many others feel immersed and invested in their games, I must have been dosed with the antidote.

[end spoilers, if you were watching for that sort of thing]

It turns out that I simply do not have the patience for staying in one environment that Bioware demands of me. I have never fancied myself a sandbox lover (especially given the MMO interpretation thereof), and I love me some well-crafted and portrayed lore and cutscenes, but at least in most MMOs I’ve played I have a variety of locales I can move through in a relatively brisk manner, or, barring that, a variety of activities I can undertake to advance, even within the same environment. Side quests in Bioware never seemed to satisfy me the way they do in other games with main story threads like Guild Wars or LOTRO. Playing pazzak or swoop racing was not a substitute for tasty alternate story content, in my view.

So I tried to keep an open mind when I played SW:TOR last weekend. I wanted to like SW:TOR badly. I was raised on Star Wars  (feel free to insert childhood anecdotes that many will have also experienced) – we share a birth year and everything. It’s fate! But in the end, I was a little surprised by how much SW:TOR did not gel with me, though in hindsight the experiences I detailed above make it a no-brainer. I played a Bounty Hunter, a Smuggler, and a Sith Inquisitor, and it wasn’t until the third that I started to feel a bit immersed in the world, since it was the first story where I didn’t feel I was trapped in the environment by a stolen ship or a contest I needed to gain rep to participate in. Also, Seethe is the best power of any character or race in any MMO ever to exist. But by then the beta weekend was ending and I didn’t get to cash in the interest that had just started to build up.

I also had a huge problem with the way Bioware morality is assigned. More than once I boggled at the choices that led to Light Side points over Dark Side, and felt like I had to choose between “staying good” and doing what I felt would give my character internal consistency. I saw replies on various forums saying that these choices ultimately did not matter, since you could “grind out” LS/DS points of your choosing doing flashpoints, but since gaming the system is a playstyle I don’t participate in, I didn’t find the notion very comforting.

I also had a problem with the options for multiplayer that SW:TOR offers. I’m tired of people scoffing at Warhammer’s open groups or Rift’s public groups as though they are such unoriginal and failed ideas, when they are the only two games I can think of that offer such a seamless way to join with more than 3 or 4 people in the open world (and content that can be easily found and tackled with groups of such large sizes to boot). There are heroic areas with elite mobs in SW:TOR, but they are just as static as the non-heroic areas (or, they were on the level 1-10 planet). I could have grouped, but there was nothing compelling me to. By this I don’t mean that I would only group if forced to by content that would kill me; I mean there was no overarching area threat that could have benefitted from players banding together to deal with it, nor a mechanic to allow that to happen organically. And I get that that’s not what Bioware is going for with SW:TOR, and more’s the pity for it.

As for the stories themselves as presented, I thought they were all right, my favorite of the three being the Sith Inquisitor story. In fact, I wish now that I’d started with it, but that brings me to another problem I’ve always had with Bioware’s take on SW:TOR, which is to tie gameplay style with story. I didn’t want to be a mage, I wanted to be a heavily-armored rocket-shooting crowd-controller, but it turns out that that story didn’t interest me as much, so it was off to be a mage I went. I played as a purely Light-Sided Sith, which amused me although my dialogue options tended to be boring. I’d have thought it’d be more interesting to play against type, but it didn’t play that way, so I ended up making up my own interesting quips in my head, and when you’re doing that in a Bioware game, I think you’ve missed the plot.

I think that rather sums up my experience playing this and other Bioware games rather succinctly. I’ve missed the plot. I wanted to like it, I’ve heard such excellent things about it, and I’m not terribly opposed to the traditional MMO-ness of it (I am still playing LOTRO, after all). I’m just out of phase or something, stubbornly immune to, or incapable of appreciating, Bioware’s charms. I’m sure that every one of the negatives I listed above have made their way onto someone else’s “must have” list, and so, with something like a kajillion pre-orders, I’m sure Bioware can do just fine without my support.

I do, genuinely, wonder if the sales will sustain themselves into ongoing subs six months or a year down the line, and think it will really depend on how quickly and robustly Bioware adds content (no mean feat, with voiceovers to add for everything). Tying gameplay to story means that I don’t think everyone will play through every storyline just to see how the story goes, there’s bound to be repeated content across factions, and as it stands it’s easy to see the fallout from your various dialogue choices by escaping out, so curiousity won’t drive that bus too far, methinks (and locking people into their dialogue choices without a means to back out would summon a hue and cry that could be heard from Alderaan).

I don’t think SW:TOR has anything to fear from other upcoming MMOs coming down the pike, except from people who have already admitted that SW:TOR is only a stopgap on the way to another anticipated game (and I wouldn’t bet there are terribly many of them). The only people who would leave other than that are those who have no particular attachment for the IP or company loyalty, but rather will play anything with “MMO” and “new” written on the tin. People who are playing because “it’s Star Wars” or “it’s Bioware” aren’t going to go anywhere, because, well, it is what’s written on the tin. They are its target audience, and they are well loved.

In closing: enjoy, target audience! I’d be pretty excited right now, if I were you.

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In the “looking a gift horse in the mouth” category…

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. Really, I don’t. The Catacombs dungeon cinematic was a thing of glory, and I reveled in watching 8 minutes of dungeon combat, artfully filmed by ArenaNet and showing off a dazzling array of abilities.

But one thing I’d really, really love for ArenaNet to do is a dungeon walkthrough, much akin to the way they first presented the Thief, and introduced underwater combat. Having seen the Alderaan flashpoint video for Star Wars: The Old Republic, and now the menace lurking in the Savage Coast of The Secret World, I think it would go a long way to demonstrating just how this non-trinity kind of combat works, and actually show off the mobility required in a way that the existing dungeon footage does not. A nice developer voiceover explaining what everyone is doing would put a bow around the whole thing.

Pretty please, ArenaNet? Just one dungeon walkthrough? It doesn’t even have to be through the spoilery bits! Maybe we’ll get it at Comic-Con, or PAX….

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DCUO: Avoiding Past Pitfalls

Now that SOE seems to actually be stepping up the exposure of DC Universe Online since they are on the final stretch to opening their beta to all customers who pre-order on either the PC or PS3, I’m finding even more footage and coverage and my excitement level continues to grow. DCUO has a great podcast devoted to the title, in DCUO-Unlimited (their site is unfortunately a bit FUBAR while they do some database mojo, but backups of all but their latest issue can be found at Blubrry here). There you can find snippets of interviews with the dev team and bits of information I’m not sure even gaming sites have reported on (like the bit about secret identities being a key part of the game, not that you heard it from them, of course).

As excited as I am to have a new game to sink my gaming talons into, not to mention one that Mr. Randomessa wants to play with me – a rare combination of events – I look back upon my gaming history and wonder how DCUO might avoid becoming one of those games I used to play. Conversely, I might find signs pointing to DCUO being precisely one of those games. We’ll see!

• We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto, and we like it that way: It just might be the case that I can’t quite immerse myself in a game that isn’t high fantasy, or at least swords and sorcery. I couldn’t get into Fallen Earth for long, I’ve already expressed my difficulty in watching my ship do things in Star Trek Online, and even Star Wars: The Old Republic isn’t helping me shake the feeling that I just won’t enjoy being a Jedi all that much, Wizard-like as they are. I did enjoy my time in both City of Heroes and Champions online, despite other issues, but my time with them was so brief that I can’t say I would have stayed on even if all else was perfect. Maybe the presence of sorcery in DCUO, and characters like Circe, will make all the difference… maybe not.
• Something to play while the Spouse is away: Big problems with Champions Online and Star Trek Online were that there was really only one path of advancement (10 levels in the Desert/Canada and Klingon PvP notwithstanding), and this meant that if I adhered to the Spousal Leveling Contract, I didn’t have anything to do if Mr. Randomessa latched onto a single-player game for a week or two, or wanted to PvP when I wasn’t in the mood, etc. With DCUO there are both hero and villain paths of advancement, and each side has three mentors to choose from who provide completely different storylines. This worked for us with Warhammer Online where I had an array of alts and was still able to play with my partner when we had the time for it.
• PvP is more than stun-locking or cage-fighting: PvP is one of the activities Mr. Randomessa and I enjoy, but we prefer either the balanced arena type, such as scenarios if you’re Warhammer-minded, or objective-based, such as keep raids. DCUO appears to promise both, with the added bonus of iconic PvP taking gear out of the equation and making the whole affair entirely skill-based, something like Guild Wars’ Costume Brawl. I plan to stink up the place with my lack of aptitude, but appreciate the option nonetheless. As long as we don’t spend the entire match stun-locked, as occurred in certain Ettenmoors that shall not be named, this should provide us with several evenings’ worth of entertainment.
• Crafting isn’t done AFK: I appear to be part of a strange non-audience who simultaneously looks forward to games that are casual-friendly with ease of travel, low death penalties, and heavy story-based formats, while still enjoying activities typically considered mundane such as crafting. The recent revelation that crafting in SW:TOR will be done entirely by one’s companions left a sour taste in my mouth, not because I enjoy being a merchant or career crafter, but because crafting is a non-combat, non-questing activity that doesn’t require me to log out of the game when I tire of one or the other. In games like Everquest II where crafting is a minigame, I rather liked making rush orders as an opportunity to stay in one place and yet have a chance to actively participate in something.

  DC Universe Online, too, has indicated that crafting will not be a part of the game, yet I feel SOE speaks to my condition a bit more closely when MMORPG.com notes that there will be a system that provides players with the chance to participate in something that is not combat or questing. I hope I am not just hanging my dreams on a cloud, here. If there isn’t something satisfying and peaceful for me to do at the end of a killing spree, I’m going to be a sad superhero.

With these points on file, it becomes more apparent why other games have failed to stick with me (or, in the case of unreleased games, why certain ones have failed to interest me more). I will have to watch my beta time carefully to see how “sticky” DC Universe Online proves to be in the long run.

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Rifts and Wars – Dynamic Content for All Wot Needs Em

It’s been very interesting watching the new footage and information that have been coming out from E3 about Rift: Planes of Telara. I have been half-watching this game since it was called Heroes of Telara and only had a tech demo to its name a year ago. Then, as now, I am impressed by the graphics – among the closest to my idealized fantasy style as I’ve seen to date – and the notion of events that change the world around you, villages that can be destroyed, rifts that send different enemies out into the world each time and whose rewards grow greater with every warrior that steps up to fight the threats involved.

Of course, a year ago ArenaNet was executing some radio silence on Guild Wars 2, and has since resurfaced with a fairly comprehensive description of their own dynamic events (among other things). While I am still very interested in R:PoT, it has fierce competition for my heart in GW2, in which I have a fair amount of commitment invested in the lore and inhabitants of that MMO universe. Neither game has revealed a release date, though it is probably safe to say we won’t see either until 2011. I can only hope that with both games promising a new kill-ten-rats-free game mechanic that gamers have been craving for some time now, there is enough room in the MMO-verse for both to satisfy their respective fans, and perhaps get more than a few to cross over between the two (an easier accomplishment than with other games since GW2 will not require a subscription).

Surprisingly, I feel that Rift is not getting the magnitude of exposure that it seems GW2 has drawn, and I do wonder why that is, since Rift does have some impressive names to call from its roster, including Scott Hartsman. I often hear comparisons drawn between GW2 and SW:TOR, but we may be looking at a Power Trio to hit the MMO world in 2011 rather than the duo folks have been discussing. At any rate, I look forward to seeing more of Rift in the months to come. It certainly is a gorgeous game, and due to its fantasy setting is easily my second choice for MMO investment before the sci-fi Old Republic.

*I have corrected the game title for Rift: Planes of Telara; as pointed out to me, it is the Planes that are plural, not the Rifts.

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Two Space MMOs Enter, One Leaves

I am having one heck of a time trying to navigate my inner hype-meter regarding BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic and Cryptic’s Star Trek Online. Several months ago my excitement was purely along Trek lines as Cryptic showed off the range of character looks you could create and gave tantalizing glimpses of the final frontier as they envisioned it. In contrast, all I knew about TOR was that it was going to be like the KOTOR games, neither of which had snagged my interest (but then again, see my lack of fondness for single player games).

Months later, we have a wealth of further information on each upcoming game, and the more I learn, the more I lean towards TOR and away from STO. I’ve always been more interested in the human side of Star Trek, yet all I’ve seen of the avatars out-of-ship is some combat that looks like it could use some improvement. The space battles Cryptic has shown have been very pretty and impressive, but I don’t want to be a ship, and I don’t want the most interesting things in the game to happen to me while I’m a ship, nor do I want my only options when assuming a bodily presence to be “combat” or “role-playing”. I guess this is where my bias for fantasy games rears its ugly head; I do want to boldly go where no one has gone before, but I’d like to walk around for a while once I get there. I’d probably be the crazy Ensign who “goes native” and decides to stay on an exploration planet, making it my home.

On the other hand, the main thing that kept me from playing both KOTOR and Dragon Age: Origins for longer than an hour was that I couldn’t play it with anyone else, so on the surface of it, a game from BioWare that I can play with someone else sounds like precisely something I’d want to try. The first images of the Jedi Consular have me swooning, and companions sound deliciously like Guild Wars’ heroes, just as the mentions of heavy instancing to enable better storytelling reminds me of that game. Why, it’ll be like getting to play Guild Wars 2 in space! My only concern is that I’ve not quite come around on the artistic style of the game; it’s a bit too Clone Wars-y for me sometimes, as I didn’t care for the look of the series or movie, either.

My current position is that I’d like to wait until Star Trek Online releases and see what others have to say about it before I make my final decision; however, my better half has watched the latest video on Fleet Actions and declared it necessary to buy the game on launch day. As for The Old Republic… well… my last pre-order was Warhammer and that didn’t turn out as well as I’d have liked, but I think I may have to set aside a fiver to reserve this one for myself.

Here’s hoping that a Jedi Consular can party up with an Empire Bounty Hunter, since we’ve each called dibs!

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