Star Wars: The Old Republic

[Nen Lev'i]

I played a Chiss Agent all the way to level forty-something. The cover system can be a little difficult to get the hang of: I'd suggest shifting around your key bindings, and making sure that you favour the "cover in place" key (rather than the "dive for cover", or whatever they call it) as much as you can, especially if you plan on going with a Sniper. As you level up Sniper, you'll get various abilities that effectively allow you to erect a cover forcefield wherever you are, which makes life a lot easier.

The thing I found most problematic with the Sniper was close proximity stuff. It's a fantastically useful class if you can have a companion (or fellow players) playing keep-away with the mobs, but if any of them get up close and personal with you, you're largely screwed. You'll get a companion on Alderaan who is a melee DPS guy: you'll have to really gear him out though, because while he's pretty good for damage he's a little squishy.

A word of warning: Act 2 of the Imperial Agent story is a bit weird. It gets much better towards the end, but parts of it felt really weird.

If you're planning to let your subscription lapse, I'd recommend at least starting out either a Trooper or a Bounty Hunter. The Bounty Hunter has a plethora of gadgets and gizmos that are incredibly fun to play... that said, it begins on Nal Hutta, so you'll have a lot of overlap with things you've already played as the Agent. The Trooper meanwhile has largely the same abilities as the Hunter (albeit with different names and animations), but it starts off on Ord Mantell (which was my favourite starting world), and up until level 35 at least, it had what was for me the most enjoyable story.

[Atreyu]

I'll have to double-check for the 'cover in place' option - I've just been using the standard cover option which works for both diving for cover and covering whilst in place.

I chose Sniper as my preferred class back at Level 10, so I've actually had 12 levels of upgraded abilities. Close-proximity enemies don't give me much trouble actually - between flashbangs, shock prod plus a couple of other abilities which I rarely have to use I manage it quite well.

The frustrations with the class thus far are more along the lines of:
1. Going into cover ... and having my character dive off to an spot offscreen that I didn't see and aggroing a nearby mob unintentionally (your suggestion above though might be the perfect fix for this - I'll have a look).
2. Some opponents (especially Jedi) yanking me out of cover from afar without me realising, resulting in me taking 5-10 secs to realise I'm not shooting anything since I've lost cover and nothing is working (and Kaliyo is getting toasted).
3. My personal hate - taking cover when I'm in range of an opponent ... only to be informed I now can't see them due to a rock/log/branch/whatever now being in the way (all the while I've already had Kaliyo begin attacking so I have to frantically move around and find another spot to take cover again - sigh).

Re: other classes - in addition to the agent and Jedi Knight I have a trooper at Level 11 already (currently doing bank alt duty) and I had a brief go at the bounty hunter (up to around level 5) however I was a bit bored by him to be honest. I also have a Sith Warrior (Juggernaut) gathering dust at Level 11 as well (was originally going to be my Empire character, but I got a bit bored since he played identically to my Jedi Knight - though that would have changed eventually since I went Juggernaut whereas my Jedi is a Sentinel).

[Captain Untouchable]

Sentinel is great if you spec it for DPS. As Sarah can confirm, I had a ridiculous amount of fun randomly charging at things and slashing them with my sabers, while she stood back and lobbed rocks at them. The animation was very twirly and ninja-esque. My Juggernaut on the other hand did a lot more powerful slashes and was generally more vicious... I didn't pursue the character all that far, but it was interesting just to see how different the animation was.

If you haven't tried one of the alternate Jedi/Sith classes, I'd suggest Jedi Consular (specifically Jedi Sage) over the Sith alternatives. I found the telekinetic rocks more interesting visually than the lightning attacks; plucking a random object - which occasionally was an astromech droid - out of the ground to throw at your opponent was always fun to watch.

With Bounty Hunter, it all depends on the advanced class you pick. There's one which adds an Optimus Prime sword, and all manner of jet pack assisted uppercuts and things. The area of effect ability where you Jango Fett up on your rocket pack and rain blaster fire down on the ground is pretty snazzy, too. For me, the core story felt weaker than the Trooper, but having a bounty hunter in red armour, shot rockets from his wrists while flying, and looked like Tony Stark? That led to some pretty entertaining gits and shiggles.

Are you leaning towards Commando or Vanguard with your Trooper? I went Commando, and had tremendous fun with the giant cannon those guys run around with.

With the Sniper, you'll want to be careful with your confidence level. The Sniper seems to become awesome very quickly, but it peaks early. By the time you reach Taris and onwards - where there is a lot of wild life that will charge at you - it got a little tedious, because *everything* came into close proximity. Getting mobbed by Rakghouls was a consistent nightmare, so watch out for that. Admittedly, I did a sizeable chunk of Taris running around with three other players: the amount of time it took me to get into advantageous cover and then back out of cover again meant I was frequently trailing behind. As long as you make sure you're ahead of the "suggested level" for each planet you should be okay, but that gets harder to do without grinding as you get towards the endgame with a Sniper.

[Atreyu]

My trooper is a commando, however as mentioned earlier he's serving bank alt duty. I doubt I'm going to play him further.

I'll probably setup one character from each class eventually (especially if I intend to let the sub lapse, so at least I can play them all as I won't be able to make any others with the F2P restrictions in place) just so I can play out the opening planet but I can't see myself leveling up anything apart from my current Agent and Jedi Knight - the storylines are fun but the MMO grind can get tedious after a little while and I can't imagine attempting to do it all over again with other characters.

[Dasquian Belargic]

..so people are playing this again?

[Vince]

..so people are playing this again?

Aye. Jace, Droo, and myself, though I haven't yet managed to play with them.

[Captain Untouchable]

It took over a day to install the entire game, so I've been stuck on starter worlds. I decided to delete my Agent and Trooper in the end, so that I could re-play the storylines and get back into the swing of things with them. I kept my Bounty Hunter though, because I didn't want to have to do Hutta twice. I've completed the noob worlds for my Smuggler and new Agent... probably going to run through the first world with a Jedi or Sith next, just so I don't have to do Ord Mantell again so swiftly.

Also, good news, Sarah: I FOUND FLASH. He was hiding on The Harbinger, and he's still wearing his space bandit bandana.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I had a go at re-installing, to try out the free sections on the starter planets, but the launcher doesn't actually launch the game for me

[Droo]

That's odd. And it's definately not updating at the bottom of the launcher? Is the play button lit up and clickable?

I'll be around for the best part of today, so if anyone wants to contact me in game, look for Malekav or Latombe. Also, to answer your question from last night*, Jace, yes, I'm subscribed and yes, I bought the expansion. Although, as of the 12th, those things are now one and the same: subscribers get the expansion free.

*Sorry about that, I woke up this morning with my phone hanging limp in my hand, and a few missed messages.

[Dasquian Belargic]

The play button lights up. Once I click it, though the program launches for a second before crashing without an error message.

[Crusader]

^^So that was the flashing thing in my lower right corner while I was playing BF3. You should have joined my game now that you own the humble bundle

[Captain Untouchable]

Oh snap guys - looks like the next SWTOR expansion is going to be a Jump to Lightspeed style one. I can't tell if it's on rails or not (some of those turns were a little twitchy, so maybe it isn't), but anything that involves Bioware taking inspiration from Star Wars Galaxies and factoring it into the game is a-okay with me.



That said, I really did not expect "Kuat" to be pronounced that way. I always thought it was "Kuait", not "Koo-at". #learnsomethingneweveryday