OTHER SCIENCE FICTION SERIES

STAR WARS: the Old Republic...Anyone Playing?

POSTED BY: HKCAVALIER
UPDATED: Sunday, April 22, 2012 15:53
SHORT URL: http://bit.ly/vThk8I
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Friday, December 23, 2011 8:13 PM

HKCAVALIER


Just got it for a Solstice Present. More fun than I was expecting. Forgot how much time everything takes in MMO land--gonna have to be very disciplined not to let days go by without working on my book. Anyway, anyone else get this in their stocking?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Friday, December 23, 2011 8:29 PM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.


I tried. I thought I could get into it because I like Star Wars. I can't deal with it, though; the controls are so alien that I ended up wanting to throw the computer. I could never get myself in a good position fast enough, and low-level monsters handed me my ass several times. Aside from that frustration, there was also the teeth-grinding repetitiveness of it, even in the short time I played. (I now find it even harder to believe that these sorts of games have eaten so many lives.)
As far as I know, my significant other has been playing it daily. He loves that sort of crap. Especially now that he has a starship, which I'll admit is pretty badass. It's too bad all the mechanics of the game drive me so batty, because it can be very pretty to look at.


What reason had proved best ceased to look absurd to the eye, which shows how idle it is to think anything ridiculous except what is wrong.

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Friday, December 23, 2011 9:35 PM

BYTEMITE


Me! My brother and I preordered.

I've got the same thing, have to balance it with everything else demanding my attention. But, I got used to World of Warcraft, playing only a little at a time. I should be all right.

PR: The servers are a little laggy, and the controls aren't so crisp as I'm used to in world of warcraft. I mostly move in jerking stops so as I don't end up running into a wall or blundering into an ambush of enemies. The animations aren't so smooth, too, which makes it harder to stop right when you want to.

It's not too bad. The gameplay between races and classes don't have quite so different feel as do the races and classes in WoW, but I've found at least some mechanic that I like in most of the classes. Races at this point seem largely cosmetic though.

The Sith doesn't seem all evil and the Republic doesn't seem all good, which is also a nice change because I think both philosophies have their points and their flaws. But I just started a sith character and already most of the people in command seem like jerks and a few don't, so we'll see how long I can stomach it.

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Saturday, December 24, 2011 1:12 AM

HKCAVALIER


Heya Phoenix,

I'm curious: what class did you attempt to play? The learning curve seems pretty different from class to class. Smuggler/Agent, these are the toughest I'd say, cover can be pretty counter intuitive. The most straight forward, non-ass-handing classes I've played are the Trooper/Bounty Hunter, I'd recommend those if you're having trouble with getting into the way these games play. The Jedi/Sith play kinda in the middle, melee can be tricky. If you've not played an MMO before, this one should take some getting used to. I'm not saying it's an acquired taste, just that it takes a while to figure out the controls before you can start enjoying the game on its own terms. YMMV.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Saturday, December 24, 2011 1:15 AM

HKCAVALIER


Quote:

Originally posted by Bytemite:
...most of the people in command seem like jerks and a few don't...

Good gravy, you've found a Sith that isn't a raving psychopath? Which, where, how??? I find them uniformly despicable--not at all hard to find my motivation when called upon to betray/kill them later on...

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Saturday, December 24, 2011 6:12 AM

BYTEMITE


Well, there's one red-headed girl right at the beginning who tries to be nice, unless that's an act, but her reaction to my neutral reply indicated it's not.

I suspect she's going to be killed by the instructors for weakness, I'm wondering if there's a way to prevent it.

My plan is to attempt to roleplay the initial non-evil and non-pathetic definition of a nihilist: "we're all going to die, so let's live life to the fullest." We'll see if that's possible, I may have to adjust as I go, the game will probably shoehorn me into judgmental good instead of chaotic good.

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Saturday, December 24, 2011 9:47 AM

HKCAVALIER


From what I've seen over on youtube the light side Sith story is all about anti-authoritarianism and making friends and stickin' it to the Emperor--without giving too much away there should be plenty of CG shenanigans you can get up to.

What I haven't been able to find (and I don't want to look too hard--don't want to ruin the whole story before I've even played) is a dark side Jedi story more interesting than hookin' up with your padawan and being a Class "A" jerk. Not very inspiring...

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Sunday, December 25, 2011 9:20 PM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.


Quote:

Originally posted by HKCavalier:
I'm curious: what class did you attempt to play?


Sith warrior. (if I can't have a lightsaber, I don't really give a crap.)
I like joysticks or other things that allow for easy movement without having to adjust the camera all the time to see where I'm going. Also like being able to attack something that's trying to kick my ass without having to take time to click and target it. There's no good reason for a game to be that much of a pain in the ass. Games should be fun. Especially if they're going to be that expensive and time-consuming.


What reason had proved best ceased to look absurd to the eye, which shows how idle it is to think anything ridiculous except what is wrong.

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Monday, December 26, 2011 7:11 AM

BYTEMITE


Most MMOs have an auto target function, some work better than others. SWTOR has a somewhat bothersome autotarget, it doesn't always work, and sometimes that causes me to get hammered because I'm expecting the reliable targeting system from another game.

On the other hand, you don't necessarily have to be facing an enemy to fight them or dodge and parry attacks, which is handled with some realism animation-wise.

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Tuesday, December 27, 2011 12:14 AM

HKCAVALIER


Hey Byte,

Just an FYI: no auto attack at all. Every attack needs keying, or right clicking. With lag, sometimes they get queued up and it looks like auto attack, but it ain't.

Animation-wise, I've pulled off some hilariously convincing fights. The smuggler is really good running and gunning from cover point to cover point. And the Bounty Hunter gets into some outrageous scrapes. He'll burn down several goons in front of him and then turn on a dime to take out the guy right behind him with a blaster to the face.

Also, I have a confession. See, I have a hugely difficult time coming up with names for video game characters. If the name isn't right--or say if I get the hair wrong during character customization, I gotta scrap it and start over. So, a friend of mine got the game and he was playing a Bounty Hunter, so I hadda make up an Imperial Agent on the spot and stole the name and (albeit blurry) likeness of our own dear Frem. I was terribly amused when the woman who was going to be his first "companion" is described as "...an anarchist" by his stuffy British handler. Good times.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Tuesday, December 27, 2011 12:25 PM

BYTEMITE


Huh. I thought I responded to this...

Well, auto-attack is not the same thing as auto-target. I think that there's technically an auto-target in SWTOR, but it doesn't always work as intended, because in a fight sometimes it'll jump to a friendly target after an enemy is killed, which prevents further smack down of enemy targets.

Though, I am tempted sometimes to smack some of my allies... (Dark side points gained)

Rolling into cover is lots of fun, but as I've gotten around I find useful cover less often, so I often end up just crouching down in the open. But that works okay because it's creating a low profile.

Also, I am very fond of the groin kick.

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Tuesday, December 27, 2011 12:49 PM

HKCAVALIER


Oh, sorry, shouldn't post in the middle of the night--coulda sworn ya said "auto attack." My bad.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Tuesday, December 27, 2011 1:24 PM

BYTEMITE


That's okay, you were only posting in the middle of the night because you were (probably?) playing.

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Tuesday, December 27, 2011 8:20 PM

BYTEMITE


I finished the first quest series on Coruscant and was sent back to the Senate Tower, and not only can i not figure out how to assign ability points (left click? right click? Neither works), but I don't know where to go. I wonder if I'm underleveled, looking around the internet apparently most people are level 11, not level 10 when they're where I am.

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Friday, December 30, 2011 4:03 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important


Hello,

I was gifted the game and will begin playing tonight on one of the RP servers.

--Anthony



_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner


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Friday, December 30, 2011 5:07 PM

BYTEMITE


Have fun! You'll have to post back with some of your impressions.

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Friday, December 30, 2011 11:21 PM

HKCAVALIER


I'm really enjoying the game so far. Haven't gotten off any of the beginner planets, taking my time, played through all the starter area quests with everything except the inquisitor and the trooper. What I'm enjoying most is that all the stories are pretty great, but all for very different reasons. Hard to pick a favorite (though Jedi Knight was prolly the least memorable of these very memorable stories).

The most morally complex storyline I've played so far is the Bounty Hunter. I really found myself pushed and pulled in all directions with that one. And there's a real sense of sinking into this depraved world. There was a point when my Bounty Hunter just started hating everyone and doing everything he could to get himself off world.

Looks like I'll be playing this game for a while.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Saturday, December 31, 2011 6:52 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important


Hello,

I have played my character to level 10, which is the point where the starter missions finish and you are ready to head offworld.

I played a Sith Warrior, and was impressed at how the game lets you make varied moral choices. (Usually three choices in a pivotal moment, with one being 'good', one gray, and one 'evil.')

In one portion of the game, I let a man live, having faked an assassination. Later, his daughter and two of her lackeys confront me for the 'murder.' I wanted to tell her that her father was alive (which was an option) but didn't want to say anything in front of her lackeys for fear of them telling my Master that I'd actually failed the mission.

So she attacked me, and I was forced to kill her. I saved the father, but murdered his daughter. It was a little piece of tragedy, and I was surprised that an online game could make me feel the sad irony of it all.

I wonder if someday the father might not come to kill me for murdering his daughter? Is the game sophisticated enough to factor in such consequences?

It's at least sophisticated enough to make me think it might.

So far, I am enjoying it. It has the feel of a single player game with a story that feels personal to my character, but placed in a shared world. Not quite like other MMORPG's I've tried.

I am playing on an RP server called 'Lord Adrass' with the hope that I will be able to find roleplaying groups to share player-driven RP with between actual game missions.

--Anthony





_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner


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Sunday, January 15, 2012 7:38 AM

BYTEMITE


I just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying playing a Sith ex-slave who figures she's going to die anyway and doesn't care what the Sith think, so she's cheerful and nice to normal people and snarky to the jerks just as a big "screw you guys" to their value system.

It works surprisingly well within the dialogue choices. I thought it was hilarious that I was able to greet a fellow student who had just been introduced with a speech about how we were worms to him and he would crush us, with a "Hello! I hope your trainers treat you better than ours do!" Right in front of said trainer, no less.

For context, this was just after the main jerk trainer killed off the only other nice student, which would have been more upsetting if it wasn't totally obvious that was about to happen.

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Sunday, January 15, 2012 5:45 PM

HKCAVALIER


Yeah, I'm slowly progressing through the game with half a dozen characters in play. It's impressive how coherent the world is across storylines, feels almost like reading Game of Thrones, only I'm playing through the various POV's and not just reading along.

If you haven't yet, I'd highly recommend going through some "flashpoints." Random people in the game are still nice and friendly and excited, so it's an ideal time for this sort of casual socializing. They really ramp up the moral dilemma schtick and it gets kinda volatile when there are 3 or 4 of you making these life & death decisions. The stories play VERY differently depending on the choices you make.

I was playing earlier today with a friend, watching him go through the "darkside" Jedi Knight story and it held together surprisingly well. His Jedi didn't go over to the Sith, but instead became involved with a kind of secret Jedi civil war in the making. From a certain angle, as y'all know, Jedism can look pretty effed up and the game plays into all that ambivalence nicely. Very cool.

I've played all the classes in the game up through 12 (finished the first planet) and all the stories have their particular charms. If I had to pick a favorite it would be a tie between the Bounty Hunter and the Jedi Consular, but the Imperial Agent and the Sith Warrior are pretty neat. Of all of them, the Trooper and Jedi Knight stories take the longest to get into unexpected territory, but by the end of the first planet narrative, serious shit goes down, as it were. Betrayal is a great plot element for a video game--you get to feel unexpectedly engaged in ways you didn't even realize previously. Fun, fun, fun.

I'm finding myself playing a lot of the game, but I don't feel the same kind of "empty calory" hangover that I associate with o.d.ing on other computer games. WoW would definitely hit me like that after an evening's play. Even something as engaging as Oblivion, still didn't seem to add up to much at the end of the day. Jeez, another Saturday night gone and what do I have to show for it, type o' deal.

But with Bioware's obsession with moral choices and romantic hilarity and endless shades of grey between light and dark, I find myself actually thinking about the stories afterward. The stories in SW:TOR are so engaging, it's more like reading a good pulpy novel than whiling away the hours racking up points in a video game.

Anyway.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Sunday, January 15, 2012 5:57 PM

BYTEMITE


I've been doing flashpoints with my brother. We only done the first one, the Esseles one from the Republic Fleet. We had some trouble with the first boss, but eventually after three times we figured out a strategy. We needed to kill off the minions, because they were killing me and I'm the only one who can heal other party members or companions in battle. Plus we needed to manage the aggro spread better. The other bosses were easy, though I still die every time, I'm not sure if I'm drawing too much aggro for being a scoundrel. Could be.

Interesting that the darkside Jedi has more to it than first glance.

Uh oh. I think I just got spoilers for Tython. Now I'm going to be double questioning this Jedi who decided to take me on as an apprentice.

The one thing I don't like are the romantic subplots, though.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RomanticPlotTumor

As if it isn't annoying enough that all of the male NPCs will flirt with a female player character. In fact, that's one of the nice things about being a Sith, everyone treats you like scum.

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Sunday, January 15, 2012 8:55 PM

HKCAVALIER


The Sith Warrior gets a lot of attention from the opposite sex as far as I can tell. As a slave turned acolyte you are treated as sub-human, but you're not a slave soon enough and folk start sidling up to you for all kinds of reasons, many of which boil down to power-envy.

Here's the thing, though. The game has a few "great loves" sorta planned out for each class and those stories are more than just "growths" on the narrative, plunging, as they do, the player into yet deeper moral quandaries which is the heart of the game/world/story.

The Star Wars universe exists for the reconciliation of opposits, so love stories fit right in. Now, o' course, in SW:TOR there are plenty of opportunities for "meaningless" sex, but it's unfair to use the TVtropes argument "if the story can exist without the romance the romance shouldn't be there" in a create-your-own adventure story. The romantic part of the story can be experienced as integral to the narrative by one player and seen as a tumor by another. Neither is definitively right or wrong.

Oh, and you needn't second guess your master on Tython. I didn't give anything away beyond: hey, your story is more interesting than you might think.

Speaking of spoilers (this is for the male Smuggler storyline through the end of Ord Mantell) and seeing as you've played the female...

Select to view spoiler:


The male Smuggler has a major plot twist involving a romantic entanglement with Viidu's gf and a double cross which she orchastrates that I was totally not expecting. As a female Smuggler, I'm wondering if there was anything like that going on that you could see.

Having played through the male Jedi Knight opening and seen it played through as a female as well, I know there's a major romantic subplot the male can get into that can turn pretty surprisingly dark if you go down that road, but the female JK doesn't seem to have access to that subplot at all. I hope all the best romantic plots aren't only for the boys. That would suck--and be kinda counter intuitive.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Sunday, January 15, 2012 9:29 PM

BYTEMITE


Nah, not so much. Though I gathered she was kinda... Well. I wasn't expecting what actually happened, but I stood up for her initially. Now I don't think I'd care to see her again.

I sure didn't get into any subplots, thankfully. I think they're pretty bad. I deliberately avoided them in the original KOTOR too.

What's a captain to do? I just want to pretend like all I want is to get paid in the midst of random acts of goodwill and charity while avoiding the law. Have these people ever heard of professionalism?

I'll probably stick my companions in my ship when I get it and go questing alone. I don't like having them judging me all the time, positive impression or not.

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Sunday, January 15, 2012 9:36 PM

BYTEMITE


On the other hand, whenever I try to write romance just to attempt to be a well rounded author and to fake understanding you humans it's also really bad, so I guess I shouldn't be too harsh.

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Monday, January 16, 2012 7:39 AM

HKCAVALIER


Quote:

Originally posted by Bytemite:
I'll probably stick my companions in my ship when I get it and go questing alone. I don't like having them judging me all the time, positive impression or not.

This is what's so fascinating about this game. I love the light/dark points and the companion points system because they mimick the kinds of pressures we feel in real life choices. You actually feel judged by a game mechanic! From an immersion standpoint, how cool is that???

Me, I never thought of it as judgement, so much as happy/sad, horrified/relieved. When my Sith Lord is being menacing or when I brutally kill a rival Sith who's gotten in my way, I don't imagine my ex-slave judging me, I imagine her just feeling awful--scared, empathetic to my victim, etc. Conversely, when I use my power more humanely, or defy the Sith order, she feels some amount of relief and hope that her life may not end at the wrong end of my light sabre. To me it adds dimension to my in-game life. I love the cringy feeling I get when I've made her feel bad.

In the Imperial Agent storyline I went through an opposite kind of peer pressure weirdness when I was sent to interrogate a "notorious party girl." My increasingly sadistic sidekick actually egged me on to try to seduce this woman and then turn on her, at one point telling me, "She's got spirit, now let's try to break it." Ultimately, I couldn't bring myself to beat the woman I was interrogating--as my companion clearly wanted--but I didn't make the nice deal I could have made with her--and might have if my companion weren't around--instead discretely reminding the woman what kind of power she was up against and shouldn't she just simplify her life and tell me what I need to know? I knew it disappointed my companion, but there are limits, damn it all! The whole thing kinda creeped me out, but with the fate of the Empire at stake, I couldn't much dwell on it, could I? Hilarious!

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Monday, January 16, 2012 7:48 AM

BYTEMITE


You're not really getting to play your character how you want to if you're getting computerized peer-pressure. I find it irritating. I wonder if I ought to just cover up that corner of the screen.

But then, part of my irritation may be that the dialogue choices don't let me play my smuggler how I want to either, or maybe I'm just too nice or something. But the game really hasn't let me be subtle about it, my smuggler is coming off as a total goody two shoes. Blegh.

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Monday, January 16, 2012 9:15 AM

FREMDFIRMA


Quote:

Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Also, I have a confession. See, I have a hugely difficult time coming up with names for video game characters. If the name isn't right--or say if I get the hair wrong during character customization, I gotta scrap it and start over. So, a friend of mine got the game and he was playing a Bounty Hunter, so I hadda make up an Imperial Agent on the spot and stole the name and (albeit blurry) likeness of our own dear Frem. I was terribly amused when the woman who was going to be his first "companion" is described as "...an anarchist" by his stuffy British handler. Good times.


Oh gawd that's hysterical...

I might drop the dosh on this, but ne'er fear, I have a long list of character names I use and that ain't usually one of em - I've played a few games with Anthony but our schedules aren't usually very compatible, alas.

Anyhow, lemme see if I can't bag a copy, neh ?

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Monday, January 16, 2012 11:21 AM

HKCAVALIER


Hey Byte,

Yeah, I recall something of the sort with the Smuggler. Sure there are darkside choices all around, but mostly they're simply stupid or ill-tempered, or love this, pro-military. Like I'm gonna betray the foxy cat-girl and return the stolen meds to the pencil neck soldier who lost 'em in the first place??? Oh hell no. Or, screw the orphans 'cause the military offered me some cash to extract the doctor? Those aren't choices for a smuggler--they do work a good deal better for the Trooper when he/she gets 'em, though.

And, whuh-oh, choosing the Smuggler class and not wanting to get involved with the romantic subplots? Sounds like a recipe for frustration. Nobody gets as much action in the game as the Smuggler. Just watch out for Corso, that is NOT a blaster in his pocket, he IS happy to see you...

Sounds to me like you might enjoy the Bounty Hunter story. Over on the Imperial side being a decent person is a ton more challenging and meaningful, I've found. Once you hit Dromund Kaas the psychotic tomfoolery never lets up. I love seeing a quest giver icon on my mini-map only to discover on approach that the quest is coming from a Sith. Oh hell, what demented shit is she gonna demand I get up to? And how much money can I squeeze out of her if I do? I kinda love how you can strong-arm people and you get a little cash icon in the corner of the screen popping up like a companion opinion. It's fun when your money approves of your actions!

And the game by no means throws sexual partners at the Bounty Hunter, far as I've seen. Been chatted up by only a couple women and both of 'em were distinctly "eeew," so it was an easy and character building decision to walk away. I have this kinda hilarious relationship with my companion though. She seems to be kinda interested in me, but whenever the conversation steers in that specific direction she backs away or laughs it off or stonewalls. I'm continually impressed with how much work went into creating multidimentional characters.

I dunno. I can see how I could easily find myself at odds with the game and it's constraints one way or another, but I find myself continually willing to take it on its own terms and discover the characters the game and I come up with.

Hey Frem,

I'm kinda of the oppinion that this is sorta the best game I've ever played--prolly not the best in any objective sense, but the most personally gratifying. Maybe. At least for now. Like they sat down and asked themselves, "So, what kinda game we gonna make for HK to love?" and went from there.

I'm currently on two servers, both west coast. One's PvE, called Namadii Corridor--that's the server my friend who bought the game started on; and Lord Ieldis, RP server. I have my Sith characters on Namadii and my Republic characters on Ieldis, so potentially I can have one character of all the 16 subclasses in the game--potentially, not planning that outcome at the moment.

One thing about the game that can be a pain is it's hard to play with other real people who are more than a day behind you on any of the planets/storylines. It gets awkward with all the stories you can't share and it's really easy to overlevel in this game, I find. And then you have your friend endlessly apologizing 'cause they're "holding you up," etc. Also, playing two characters of the same class together can break immersion, 'cause they have exactly the same voice and mannerisms in all the cutscense. Much better to have a mix. So, practically, having extra room for more characters allows me to start a new character if a friend wants to join me and I've already leveled out of the area on another toon.

Finding folks who share your schedule can be challenging. I have one friend who's schedule matches up with mine pretty dang well, but our other buddy goes to bed SOOOOO early. He starts crapping out as early as 9:30 on a Saturday night! lol He's an accountant and a devout Buddhist, not exactly a party animal.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Monday, January 16, 2012 11:45 AM

BYTEMITE


Quote:

but mostly they're simply stupid or ill-tempered, or love this, pro-military.


Omigosh yes. It's like, here's a lawwoman who seems to be injured and I ask if she's doing all right. Then suddenly she expects me to help her make an arrest of some criminal element who did the same thing I woulda done if she were coming to arrest me, but the only option to say "no" was to tell her to toughen up! I mean, come on.

With all the law helping I'm obviously going to be doing, it'll be a miracle if I'm not pegged as an Alliance snitch and my contacts stay intact. The only times I even remotely get to behave like an outlaw is the few times I can act like I only just happened to show up somewhere the law was by happy coincidence, or I ask them to keep my name off the records. Amusingly see-through, but dammit, at least it's something.

And then when I'm trying to be nice at the end of a mission, it'll be all "I was honoured" this and that. The best I can do in that case is pretend it's an artifact of the spiritualistic culture I came from. But that only goes so far before I want my dialogue choices to really reflect some good old fashioned roguery.

Don't even get me started on Corso, his "I'm a naive backwater hick, inexperienced in the ways of the universe" pick-up attempt was laughable and annoying from the start, let alone when it becomes obvious it's all an act WAY before he finally fesses up to it.

At this point I wish he'd just take off with all my cash already, because at least it would be better than his idea of puppydogging.

It's a shame, because otherwise all the tricks a smuggler can do in a fight really makes it a fun class to play. I mean, you're stealthing around, lobbing around flashbangs, diving behind cover, hacking droids to stay out of fights, kicking people in the groin to stun them, what's not to like?

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Monday, January 16, 2012 2:56 PM

HKCAVALIER


Hey Byte,

Yeah, as I ease my way into a new character/storyline I find I have to take several runs at the first dozen conversations or so to get a feel for what works. The Smuggler is best when he's cracking wise and those replies aren't marked--you just kinda need to get a feel for it. Usually, if the reply tag is straight forward it ain't the funniest line. Often, the funny lines are hiding under the least compelling reply tag. And humor can cover a whole gamut of feelings, so you have more room to live your character the way you want. Or so I've found. Your mileage, etc.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Tuesday, January 17, 2012 5:04 AM

BYTEMITE


Yeah, I'm having to suck it up and just play my conversations as they are. I guess not everything can be a hilarious witticism.

At least I can pretend I'm more sarcastic than people give me credit for.

Oh, and also, I finally figured out why my story wasn't progressing. I had to hitchhike all the way back to Ord Mantell because the quest told me to go to the space port and board a shuttle to Coruscant, but didn't tell me I had to look for some people first. Blargh.

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Wednesday, January 18, 2012 6:32 AM

FREMDFIRMA


Oh gee, I just love EA's disastrously broken installs... *hisssss*

Mind you, I've had the bloody game for three DAYS now and still can't get it to friggin WORK cause of technical difficulties related to EA's typical halfassery - I shoulda KNOWN better than to invest in this (which mind you, means delaying purchase of certain stuff I kinda maybe needed) after the fiasco of having to put two full days into installing Dragon Age: Origins - which required manually unpacking the files to a seperate directory and then by hand installing while correcting CRC errors up the ying-yang and then hacking at the game code in a very technical way to get their overaggressive and ridiculous DRM bullmalarkey to even *function* so the DLC works and forget about tech support, yeargh...

So now I am out damn near seventy bucks for a game that's so broken on install it's driving me up the bloody wall, and the worst of it ?
Having to download and redownload near 10 GIGS of patchfile crap... at 176 KB/s - only to have it fail, replete with (what a surprise!) CRC errors, and no way to crack the files open and manipulate them like I did to get DAOC to work, which even when it did, would crash randomly and then require me to hunt up and handpatch invididual game files *IF* I could figure out which one was bad.

Damn EA to the very depths of hell.
I shoulda known better the instant I realized they were involved with this, once they have your money, it's all a big F-U from them.

If I do not have this workin by tomorrow, imma see if my bank can't jam them up for my money back.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Wednesday, January 18, 2012 7:07 AM

BYTEMITE


I know what you mean, Frem. I was one of the open beta group that was testing server load just two weeks prior to green light. I also had the Pre-Order, where they let people play one week early.

It was a debacle. EA and Origins didn't tell anyone that people were going to get the client in waves, relative to when they signed up for the pre-order, meaning not everyone got the full week, either.

That's without getting into Origins/EA Downloader itself and the draconian spyware stuff they have going. I'm mildly assuaged by knowing apparently ALL games with online capacity nowadays have external monitoring and a line in the TOS about releasing gathered information to third parties. I don't really like it, and that kind of thing is just asking for people to hack it, but it's not a dealbreaker for me yet.

The launcher can be buggy - make sure you run it with admin settings (right click launcher menu on most computers). That seems to have solved crash issues for a lot of people. The ten gig download is pretty steep, it was like that right from launch day, which is pretty bad.

Also, when you make your account, make sure you do ALL FIVE security questions. I had a problem where I filled in only three, and the other two security questions registered as a lot of gibberish. So when I logged in on both the website and the game, it asked a security question I never answered and I had to get EA customer service to unlock my account again.

I'm sorry you're not having fun yet. :(

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Wednesday, January 18, 2012 6:48 PM

BYTEMITE


Another option is a conflict with an old version of winrar or winzip.

Alternatively, here's a way to get the download files manually, by deleting your assets folder, which may have corrupt files in it already that are screwing with things.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=795&page=56

One more thing to check is if your settings aren't 32 bit. The game doesn't like that.
Apparently some new computers or installing to an external harddrive can cause the problem you're describing. You could try installing to an old computer, and then transfer the files over.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=795&page=66

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Thursday, January 19, 2012 6:56 AM

FREMDFIRMA



Gee and now they've wiped the forum to hide the ever growing cascade of bitching, no doubt winging the ban hammer at those revealing their wonder product is in fact, a piece of go-se.

NOT. WORTH. IT.

DELTREE SWTOR *.* /Y


*waves bye bye to seventy bucks*

*goes to immediately pirate about seven hundred bucks worth of BW/EA stuff in retaliation*

One shouldn't HAVE to go through all that crap to get something YOU PAID FOR to work.
And they'll suffer for this, they will, one way... or another.

-F

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Thursday, January 19, 2012 7:06 AM

BYTEMITE


I'm sorry Frem. I guess we should have warned you. I didn't think to mention it because I got it working, but yeah, it took me about four days.

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Thursday, January 19, 2012 7:18 AM

HKCAVALIER


Yikes! I'm sorry to hear that, Frem. Me, I had the game working in the usual couple hours of downloading. It's a new MMO, not without bugs. They've been patching it at least once a week, so maybe you could try again in a couple weeks or a month and it would work?



HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Thursday, January 19, 2012 3:31 PM

FREMDFIRMA



Well, it's not over yet, it seems...

Okay, now I've been an avid vid-gamer since the days of Channel F and Coleco Telstar, and for some period of time I was really tight with a lot of the crew at Interplay, some of whom have over the years moved on to Rockstar or BioWare, and made some new friends along the way, you see.
So I do kinda know some of the folk who actually do the grunt work of building these things, hell we had one of them in our FFXI party for years and occasionally me and our DRK would also play PGR2 Racing with him, damn his Koenigsegg CCX to the depths of hell, meh.

Anyhows, I was playing another game earlier this morning and verbally tearing a long and bloody strip off Bioware for ever getting involved with EA in the first place, compounded by a long list of games and companies EA has completely wrecked with their rent-seeking, borg-like viciousness and exploitation, sprinkled liberally with profanity and hatred for those who seek profit at the expense of what makes games great - one reason I have mostly gone back to retro-games which while less pretty, were actually FUN.

And one of those former Interplay refugees who landed in the BioWare camp is like "whoa, whoa, hold up, give us a chance here!" and I proceeded to deliver a verbal excoriation since I don't have the ABILITY to "give them a chance" since EA's fundamentally broken install prevents me from even TRYING to, and unless he could give me back my cash I wasn't really interested in hearing it...

And he offers to send me physical copy, next day air, with updated install and a printed cheatsheet on how to get it to work if it goes flaky.
OOOOooo-KAY, then.
One thing about them ex-Interplay folk, they're not corporate drones, they're GAMERS - remember what their motto was, and as such he wasn't gonna let something like that go if he could fix it, and that folks, is what made Interplay great in the first place.

And it's the LACK of it, which is why EA sucks wookie testicles.

Anyhows, we'll see, I guess, we'll see...

-Frem

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Thursday, January 19, 2012 5:42 PM

BYTEMITE


That's really nice of them.

You know, when I was a kid, I had a lot of respect for Blizzard, this was in the time of Warcraft 2 and Diablo. Diablo is still one of my favourites: yeah, it's simplistic compared to modern games, the code is easily hacked, multiplayer was a crazy fest of duplicating and pk, and yet somehow it was still good.

I'm sad to see sometimes how the business side of things has overtaken what was once Blizzard's integrity (though I still play WoW, credit card security issues aside).

Bioware is kind of the same way now, I have these mixed feelings of respect but also wariness. But this story just goes to remind me that there's still a kernel of people who care and have integrity in the industry.

I think you'll have fun once it's working. Bioware plus Star Wars is a proven formula, I've always appreciated how their games make you think because of the moral dilemma aspects. I actually credit KOTOR for changing the way I look at the world, I became less vindictive after playing that. For people who think video games are so bad for kids, they really ought to try playing through the light side.

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Thursday, January 19, 2012 10:57 PM

FREMDFIRMA



You'd have loooooved this bit from an earlier SW RPG, I think...

Pretty obvious that imma Potentium-Theory Grey Jedi, who's actually viewed by most as a Sith and chooses not to disabuse them of that notion cause it's too much work and they'd prolly not believe him anyways, especially not with Jedi propagandizing.
Ergo they sent some creep to deliver their traditional ultimatum - and this is pretty much the response said creep got.

"I have no apprentice, wouldn't want one, and you know what, piss on the rule of two... if I wanted to slavishly follow someone elses damn rules I'd be sucking up to the council, now wouldn't I ?

And that's another thing, there IS no dark side, there IS no light side, the Force is the Force, it simply IS, like gravity or energy, it EXISTS - and any notion of a moral connotation comes not from the Force but from within ourselves, and it is this most of all which offends me, that the Jedi so terribly fear their own reflections that they would smash the mirror, attempt to amputate rather than embrace and guide WHO THEY ARE, give names to actions as if those names were a seperate thing, as if Good and Evil were absolutes instead of matters of perspective, and worse!
They would hold OTHERS to their own personal absolutes, projecting their own fallacies, their own weaknesses onto others and then seeking their destruction because they cannot face themselves?
Because understanding there ARE no absolutes offends them?!

And you call me a monster, do you?!
At least I know WHO I am, I know WHAT I am, and can face that knowledge without needing to blame someone else for MY flaws and failures, I am not blinded by some concocted myth of infallibility, by some... some... CRACKBRAINED, ludicrous notion of moral superiority!
Nor might I add, am I beset by any pressing need to inflict it unwanted, upon others, unwilling, by force of arms or manipulation - whether you live by my rules or not means naught to me, whether you believe what I believe means even less, and can you say that of the council, would you dare say that TO the council ?

A bunch of whimpering old fools who wish to amputate that which makes them sapient, to tear out and destroy their own grace because they fear the path it may some day take, that judge others pre-emptively on actions only in potential, that destroy emotion for fear of losing an impartiality that only even exists from their narrow and blinded perspective, if even then ?
Why not just replace them with droids... oh, wait, you can't because droids can't access the Force, right ?
How do you even know that is true ?
Because they TELL you so, THEM ?
No, you know NOTHING!
Go from here, mercenary, and tell the council that the universe does not exist to serve their prejudices, and I'll not serve them either."


Of course yon merc didn't take that too well and wound up chopped into little sizzling pieces for their trouble, so Darth Pandus shipped the remains back with a tape of that rant - woulda loved to have seen their faces when they watched it.

Anyhows, I figure that verbal rampage, near as I can remember it, would amuse you given it's unique perspective on the Jedi.

-Frem
PS. I sincerely hope there's even SOME complexity to the moral scale or whatever they use in SWTOR, since most games involving a karma meter are flat out downright stupid about it, which I know prolly irritates you as much as it does me.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KarmaMeter

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Friday, January 20, 2012 1:40 AM

HKCAVALIER


Hey Frem,

So far, your assessment of the Force as existing beyond good and evil is supported by the story I've seen so far. I find the light/dark points remarkably accurate, though that may have more to do with my low expectations being exceded. I like that some of the dark side choices are pretty human, and even sensible given certain contexts.

And as I was saying, so far there seems to be plenty of room, story-wise, for a non-sith, "grey" Jedi in the game--my friend is playing one and teaming up with her is hilarious and nerve wracking--ya just don't know what she'll do!!! But she makes sense at the end of the day.

"As to your other remarks, I'm troubled that you are still so ruled by your anger, my friend. Do you not find that it blunts your access to the Force, blinding you to consequences, leading you to action that you later must regret? I hear so much reget in your words, old friend.

I don't find your ideas monstrous, only...exhausting in their intensity. I've often found in my meditations the Force to be something quite beyond our human ideas of good and evil. That hardly changes the necessity for men and women to champion the cause of good, does it?

You have hit upon a pet peeve of mine, I confess, with this overworked notion that we jedi destroy emotion. That you can know me for these many years and malign my ethos in this way saddens me. We jedi do not destroy emotion, we remove the affliction that causes it. Like the flame that threatens to engulf our home, we deprive our passion of what it feeds on. And the fire is quelled but never dies. We seek peace above all things and, I am here to tell you, we find it. The quest is often difficult, the journey long, but our many masters, who have gone before, light the way.

You will forgive me if I still hold out hope that you will know that peace, my friend. Lay down your sword long enough to know the depth of joy that dwells in the heart of the Force.

May the Force be with you always."


HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Friday, January 20, 2012 6:20 AM

BYTEMITE


Evil responses still range from mere lying, poking poodles, and pointless kicking the dog.

Neutral and Good responses are more nuanced. And at least you aren't restricted to alignment by your faction. So I imagine you could make your Grey Jedi not-a-Sith.

Though it'd be tricky if you were coming at it from the Jedi side, but even my Jedi has lied and gotten some darkside points here and there. Usually when another cadet has messed up in some minor way, like asking me for help when they shouldn't with a personal trial their trainers gave them and poorly explained, and the too strict Jedi want to kick them out. I usually take the blame for it just so they get a second chance. (Yes, apparently that's a dark side action, maybe it's relative to how the Jedi would see it in this case)

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Friday, January 20, 2012 7:44 AM

FREMDFIRMA



Ooooh this is too, too fun...

The character in question, Darth Pandus(1) - was all but shanghaied initially into the order and over time that bitterness, resentment and a distaste for the dogmatic hypocrisy of the order exploded during an assignment where he felt the Jedi were "backing the wrong side" and resulted in the untimely death of his Cerean master at his own hands (there is a slight hypocrisy although understandable in the Jedi treatment of Cereans, which no doubt served to grate on his nerves) and him breaking with the Order.

He then took up residence somewhere in the wastelands of Metalorn(2), and prefers to be left alone, something the Council does not intend to do, much to his increasing ire.

In combat he relies on Form VII: Juyo - to quickly steamroller an opponent, and failing this will simply distract their attention and all but vanish, either to assess the situation, or get the hell out of dodge, leaving the opponent too confused or defensive to follow.
(Gamewise, probably going to go Sith Marauder, but with no essential loyalty to them or their agenda, cause Pandy don't care much for anyone elses rules..)

"Anger ? you mistake that which you see for it is passion that drives me, not rage, and without it no being ever develops, rather they stagnate and decay, and it is that stench which drove me from their ranks old friend, and what arrogance you show me, that the consequences of an action or inaction can so to a nicety be predicted ? HA!, the universe disagrees with your certainty, as do I.
And yes I have regrets, for I am no fool, without regret there is no learning, without guilt there is no justice, and without pain there is no growth - such a low opinion you must have to think me blind to my own failings, especially as it was this arrogance I left behind, albeit in some few pieces.

And what cause of good to you speak of, good for whom, and when ?
Such abstractions are as meaningless as our interpretations of them - each must do what they believe to be the right thing, even if all stand against them, for to do any less is but cowardice, a betrayal of ones self, and ultimately all one stands for - not only does the Council believe in their astounding arrogance that there is but one single path, they would herd others to it regardless of their will!
I find my purpose not in the answers old friend, but in the questions, the questions those old fools fear to ever ask because they suspect they may not like the answers.

Yet what then, when you have no answer ?
Then this I say to you, if you have no answer, you must then be the answer, and so shall I be, if the course they set themselves upon requires the destruction of the ideals that conflict with their own, then an answer to that they most certainly shall have, and I suspect they will find that answer as unpalatable as they find any disagreement, for it comes seasoned with the bitterness of their own failures.

So you would bank your fire, would you ?
I find I cannot but fan the flames of mine into a blaze that must consume, and not by my own choice, yet from ashes does not derive the most fertile soil of all ?

Go in peace old friend, and tell them they forment their own doom, that much like a handful of sand, the harder they squeeze, the more slips right through their fingers, and when what gently held is kept, what tightly gripped is crushed...
And perhaps, you might remind them of the merits of leaving well enough alone."


-Frem
(1) Pandus is latin for crooked-corrupt.
(2) Given what Metalorns industry is/was, and his attitude about rules, it's pretty obvious one of his hole cards is a handful of Droideka, which would come as a pretty nasty surprise for any unwanted guests, up to and including Jedi.

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Friday, January 20, 2012 4:09 PM

FREMDFIRMA



Update: got physical copy, installed physical copy, AGAIN get trapped in the endless 10 gig loop-o-rama of CRC errored garbage, finally nailing down what the exact problem was and consorting with some hacker type buddies involving a hideously long IRC transfer of 3 version and 7 resource files, which then had to be manually placed by hand and followed up with some explicit editing of the client defaults file...

Another full day of hours and hours down the drain and all this I get for my trouble is "internal error 5" and a crash to desktop on the loading screen.

I sincerely hope they get class-actioned, cause the horror stories are racking up faster than they can purge the complaints and I am hearing nasty rumors of hardware meltdowns - which doesn't shock me in that days and DAYS of screwing with this garbage I can tell you it's some of the shoddiest most halfassed code I have seen in my entire life, I'd be embarassed to charge money for this go-se, but of course we all know EA has no shame.

Mind you, said former Interplay rep was all by ripping his own eyes out of his sockets over this since it's reached a point where even he cannot possibly excuse how screwed up this all is.

So another WHOLE DAY down the drain, and still nothing to show for it.

-Frem

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Friday, January 20, 2012 6:51 PM

BYTEMITE


Aw jeez. :(

Well, at least now it sounds like for sure it's their awful launcher and downloader.

I'm reading up on it on the forums, someone suggested downloading the internet client and installing on top of the physical one.

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Friday, January 20, 2012 7:09 PM

BYTEMITE


More looking:

http://www.savetaris.com/doctor#section2.4

This says one possibility is if the patching is just failing utterly, you can try putting it on a different computer, and if that works transfer the files over.

Or, I actually didn't have all the patcher errors (though it did take me a while to get set up), you could get the directory from me or maybe some of the other people around here, get patched up that way.

The downside of editting manually the files is that it makes you have to go to the server with all the other people who had to try that work around, and now it's getting screwed up.

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Saturday, January 21, 2012 12:05 AM

FREMDFIRMA



Further code hammering gets the correct login screen, but still fails with internal error 5.
And back to the endless circle jerk of their badly broken launcher/patcher.
Speaking of the code, upon examination...

This is not a beta, this is at best, a late-stage alpha, and it's unforgiveable to release something like this as a retail product in that it potentially qualifies as theft by fraud/deception...
(See Also: Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rigs:_Over_the_Road_Racing
And I am pretty sure by now there's vengeful people meaning to do exactly that, for this debacle makes the fiasco of FF14 look like childs play by comparison.

Gamers are pretty tired of getting stuck with being unpaid or exploited beta testers, alas that Sword Of The Stars II fell to this level of stupidity and that'll probably put paid to Kerebos, who at LEAST handled it with a dignity unmatched by other gaming companies, not that it's likely to help.
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/62760/Sword-Of-The-Stars-2-s-Launch-
Failure


Bad enough all that, but I have noticed a prevalence of WGC "Solutions" coming from official sources, and worse even then that - a WGC (Wild Goose Chase) Solution is basically a time-waster intended to get you out of their hair and waste your time while crossing their fingers and hoping the problem either resolves itself or that you do what everyone seems to do these days and network with other gamers given that most tech support wavers between laughable and useless...
You know the drill, pull the logs, reset, reboot, re-install - none of which is gonna solve your problem, not one bit, but hey, it gets them off the hook for a while, right ?
And when all else fails blame the user and their hardware.

But no, some of the WGC solutions being offered are downright self-destructive.
Screwing with your RAM voltage ?!
Disabling system cores ?!
Arbitrarily yanking chips, in or out of sequence ?!

Seriously folks, *NO* amount of fiddling your RAM voltage is going to solve the problem of CRC errors and corrupted files because IMHO whatever they're building these games on is thoroughly incompatible with Quad-Core, Win7 machines (which seems to be the essential ROOT of the problem with both DAOC and SWTOR), it's just NOT - what it *will* do, if you keep following that official-source "advice" is wreck your machine, frag it to hell...
Which, I suppose gets them off the hook and buys time for someone else to come through with a fix, but it sure doesn't do YOU any good, does it now ?

Man, encouraging frustrated and desperate gamers(victims) to wreck their own hardware in order to avoid blame and having to fix your screwups, that goes beyond Evil Corporation and straight into Complete Monster territory, especially on top of the forum banning, purging and censorship which fools no one.

My old Interplay buddy seems to be in the process of having a nervous breakdown (I send him back a pint of scotch in the box he sent me the physical copy) and from what I could understand of his semi-coherent, desperately apologetic rantings is that EA could care less how broken it is and has no intention of putting any effort into fixing it, dropping the whole matter on BioWare, which screws them good and proper since most of the folk who know how the code even works fell to the typical EA Death March, or routine round of pink-slipping the minute the game ships...
http://gamerant.com/eaimposed-studio-death-march-hurt-need-speed-games
-spice-41843
/
So basically there's no one THERE who knows HOW to fix it any more.

I figure BioWare is gonna pay pretty dearly for this when sales of Mass Effect 3 prove somewhat lacking due to this debacle, but EA ?
Now that's another story...

Some other irate folk have decided to throw in collectively and assist in a quasilegal variation on a round-robin handoff in an attempt to purposely crash EA's stock prices, and if that proves effective, said tactic will likely get expanded and used viciously in retaliation - cause you see, they took my money, I have no useable product...
AND YOU... DO. NOT. BREAK. CONTRACT. WITH. ME.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Saturday, January 21, 2012 7:51 AM

BYTEMITE


I have a quad core Win 7 machine. But it's possible it could break in the future, maybe due to a system update.

I've heard some of these recommendations to mess with the RAM, I find them questionable. When I posted above about a RAM limit, what I'd read was more about installing to a drive that falls under the limit, and less about destroying RAM. Definitely ill-advised.

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Saturday, January 21, 2012 10:42 AM

FREMDFIRMA



Well, as usual, it seems I am correct - the essential problem is that the Launcher/Patcher and the files it delivers are wholly, absolutely, and fundamentally incompatible with Win7/Quad-Core machines.

Now some people got lucky, those who's stuff worked BEFORE the 1.1 "Patch" mostly, but even they had to do a lot of workarounds, and what bugs me about all this is that it's a KNOWN, ONGOING problem which EA doesn't seem to have any intention of fessing up to, since Dragon Agr: Origins has *THIS EXACT SAME PROBLEM*, and it relates to how Win7 checks file CRC - I can't find it right now, but one DAOC workaround which did work, before EA/Origin wiped any reference to it, involved hacking Win7 and completely disabling that particular check...

And yanno, designing something with such high system requirements that is NOT compatible with 64bit operating systems and high end machines is insane, and EA has had plenty of time to fix this problem, and they don't.

Anyhows, realizing this I hauled out that old piece of junk laptop from the bottom of the closet, and kicked it over here, jacked in the network cable and spent all day so far installing and patching SWTOR, despite the poor little thing coming nowhere NEAR the system requirements, and wouldn't you know it, it worked without a hitch - so I grabbed my SeaGate Goflex and jacked THAT in, and am copying the whole bloody directory as we speak, good fortune in happening to have an outdated laptop that still had 20Gigs of space on the drive (just barely) AND a SeaGate Goflex 1TB USB external drive, but this is still pathetic, ridiculous and insane... especially as I know damn well imma have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN every time they patch this garbage.

I guess we'll see once I get the functional files on the external hard drive and jack it back into this one, but I am vengeful and unforgiving about this, nor am I the only one...
And on that note a shout out to FalconEvo, who has SINGLEHANDEDLY done more to support and fix the game, than the entire tech support, customer service, and dev teams combined - of his own whim, and it seems that yet-another-forum-purge has occured since I guess the users saluting him musta offended the useless trolls of their in-house staff, grrrr

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Saturday, January 21, 2012 12:37 PM

FREMDFIRMA



Finally.

Lv5 Sith Warrior - and my fellow Sith are puppy-kicking idiots.
*shakes head*
Mercy can be a weapon, having someone who owes you big is worth far more than another corpse, especially if they have useful skills - and loyalty is never earned by those who cast aside those no longer useful to them.

Oh yes, and again, if I wanted to slavishly follow someone elses friggin RULES I'd be a Jedi, wouldn't I ?

I rather suspect some of my so-called peers are gonna get it in the neck at my own hands, cause they're just too STUPID, petty little fools the lot of them, unable to see beyond the now.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StupidEvil

Me, imma what ya call pragmatic, neh ?

Will also try Republic Smuggler, but later.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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