The Fanatical Swordsman

There are so many wonderful features of Star Wars: The Old Republic. I got the immense pleasure of playing the Beta this last weekend, and I want to share some screenshots and opinions. I will be putting out a series of posts with the Top 4s of the many things I got to try, including the classes, the PvP, the systems, and the experience in general.

I think this may be one of the best games I’ve ever played. The character progression, the stories, the class-design, and the PvP are all extraordinary. Everything is pretty polished, and the details are pretty close to being ironed out. I am going to enjoy putting out these posts.

Here are the top 4 neat features in SWTOR!

1. Class-specific buffs
   When I first saw the lineup of classes, the first thing I thought was “where are the support classes?” I play a captain in LOTRO, which is the main buffing class. I was thrilled to death when I logged on and found out that each class has its own specific buff. These buffs don’t necessarily make or break the game, but the idea is that with a balanced group, you will have four good buffs. They are on a 6 second cooldown, with a 30 minute duration, so a nice thing to do is to flyby buff people.
2. Cutscenes
   This is the game right here. This makes every quest meaningful and fun. I think I probably got to level 10 doing MAYBE 40 quests. But it took the same amount of time that I would taken to level to 10 doing 100 quests.
   

   Options...so many options

3. Bindpoints
   This system is one of the best things about this game. The ability to use a 30 minute cooldown skill and return to ANY bindpoint on the planet is really nice. It is like someone sat down and said, “OK guys, let’s make travel fun instead of annoying.”
4. Mods
   The mod system is really cool. People familiar with the mod system from Knights of the Old Republic and the relics in the Legendary system from LOTRO will know kind of what this is. Each Crafting Crew Skill makes a different mod, like scopes for blasters by Armstech, color crystals by Artifice, and armor plating by Armortech. The mods are where an item gets its stats. There were people literally using a level 16 blaster up through 35 with just changing the mods in and out. Every time they found a new item it wasn’t as good as what they had.

A SWTOR Beta Top 4: Things To Know About The Knight Class >>