So, I hit level 50 yesterday, and I wanted to write a post, detailing my overall impressions, along with some suggestions that would help improve the overall experience.

- This game will be the first MMO I've ever played where I'll eventually have several toons at max level. I'm not typically a questing type of guy; I tend to grind out a single toon to max, then focus on that single toon, raiding, doing dailies, etc., and getting it as powerful as possible. This game, though, is going to be hard, since I plan on doing that with as many toons as I can. I'm not done with my class quest yet, despite being 50, though I'm very eager to continue and finish it, and I'm just as eager to start other, new toons to see what sort of epic storyline awaits for them.

- Flashpoints - so far, I've done about half of the available ones, I believe, while leveling up. I do agree with what folks have said, as far as story being a big emphasis in Black Talon, but not so much the later ones. That notwithstanding, I find the existing FPs to be an excellent selection and very well done instances for being launch material. They're challenging without being overly difficult, they provide a nice source of fairly decent gear, and they serve the purpose of teaching group mechanics, more complicated than tank-n-spank boss fights, etc., in preparation for end-game raiding very well. That's not to say most of the boss fights are complicated in and of themselves, but they're a tad beyond the simple tank-n-spank, as I said, and as such, serve their purpose in introducing inexperienced players how to avoid standing in the fire.

- Leveling speed - I've seen a fair number of folks complaining about how quick and easy it is to hit 50. I don't think I entirely agree with that. For one thing, the level cap is only 50 at the moment, so it's not going to take as long as a game like WoW, where you have almost double the amount of levels to grind through. My leveling experience seemed like it went fairly quickly, but that, I believe, was primarily due to how much I enjoyed it. At no point, really, did it feel like a boring, repetitive grind. And, if you look at the actual time it took, I got the game a few days after release, which was Dec 20th, and it's now the 25th of January, so it took about a month to hit 50. That was just about the quickest month I can remember, though, and it seems just about right, in my mind. I'm not the quickest leveler, by any means (obviously), but I'm also not the slowest. I'd estimate my speed as right about average, and a month seems right about where it should be. I'm working on my next toon at the moment, and I anticipate it going quicker, since I know what I'm doing, where to go, etc..

All in all, I found the leveling experience to be a huge improvement over any other MMO I've ever played, and there have been a fair number. The best compliment I can pay it is to say that I can't wait to level another toon. That's a new experience for me, but one that I'm certainly enjoying.

There was a couple other things I wanted to mention, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment, so I'll leave the impressions at that and move onto the...

Suggestions (I've already posted some of these in various locations, but wanted to put them all in one centralized location, as well as include a few new ones; most are pretty minor, in any case, and I did include a couple Juggernaut-specific ones) -

Increase Guild Description Text Limit - As it stands now, the Guild Description box is entirely too tiny to fit much of anything at all in it, much less anything useful. It won't even fit all the vent info; I can put the URL and password, but I have to tell every single person the Port # any time they need to put it in. That is not only inconvenient, but it negates the possibility of putting a, oh, I don't know, an actual Guild Description, lol.

Proc Notifications - I play a Sith Juggernaut, and I have to spend most of every fight watching my action bars. Retaliate, Force Scream, Pommel Strike, and Savage Kick all operate on procs, and I'm sure other classes have just as many abilities that work the same, if not more. So, either I watch my action bars in case they proc, or I miss out on using them entirely. If nothing else, enabling the game for addons will allow addon devs to create this, and many other useful tools.

Enable Addons - this is a fairly common suggestion, so I'll keep it brief. Suffice it to say that developers of MMOs are never able to fully satisfy every single customer they have. Addons help bridge that gap, allowing devs to create specific addons to meet every personal preference. Not only that, but they take a huge load of work off the game's developers, allowing them to focus on more important and pressing issues.

Buff Speeder Speeds - as of right now, level 3 speeder speed seems like a giant waste of money. It starts out 90% speed increase for level 1, and costs 120,000 credits, if my memory serves. For level 2, an additional 10% increase, which is barely noticeable, is 220,000 credits, and the final level is 330,000, again for an additional 10%. Add in the 55,000 credits for the cheapest level 3 speeder, and it almost costs 400k credits for an additional 10%. That, developers, is a rip-off. It should at least go up in increments of 25%, so level 1 starts at an even 100% increase, level 2 is 125%, and level 3 is 150%. I'd be more than happy to spend almost a half a million credits for speed boosts like that.

A Couple Juggernaut-Specific Suggestions -

Remove the time limit on rage intake from damage - I hate the fact that my rage intake is arbitrarily limited to a single point per hit every 3 seconds. Rage gen should be based off the percent of damage I receive, and it most certainly should not have a time limit on how often I can get it, especially not when the rage I get from my offensive abilities has been decreased. I made an in-depth post about this in the Jug forums, and pretty much everyone said I was doing something wrong if I was always rage starved, which I am. I've come to the conclusion that I get just as much rage as everyone else; I just have higher standards than they do. I did an experiment the other day during a boss fight in Colicoid War Games: when my rage was at zero, I taunted the boss and refrained from using any of my rage generating abilities. When the initial taunt wore off, I used Threatening Scream, my AOE taunt. Both those abilities last 6 seconds total, so the boss attacked me for 12 seconds altogether while I didn't hit him once, and in that 12 seconds, I received not a single point of rage. That is completely unacceptable.

Buff our AOE threat abilities - I've only tanked with my Jug, so I can only go on what I've read others say, which is that the other tanking classes can tank big groups of mobs with relative ease compared to us. Especially when we take on a group of exclusively ranged mobs, which happens quite frequently, we end up running from one mob to another, trying to keep threat on all of them. We need a silence-type of ability, to more easily kite ranged mobs, for one thing, and we either need one or two more AOE threat generating abilities, or the ones we do have need some buffing.

Ok, I do believe this wall o' text is big enough as it is now, so I'll call it quits. Despite the big block of suggestions, it's my opinion that SW:TOR is damn near the best MMO I've ever played. Not counting the rage situation with my Jug (which I literally hate), I love almost everything about this game. I'm sure all the whining haters will come on and tell me how wrong all of my opinions are, and they'll go into great depth explaining to me why this game is inferior to most others, and why it will crash and burn by this time next month, but I don't really care. I think Bioware did an epic job with this game, and for me, the end-result definitely lived up to the hype and expectations.

So yah, if you've gotten this far, then you have my thanks for reading, and thanks extended to Bioware for making this amazing game

So, I hit level 50 yesterday, and I wanted to write a post, detailing my overall impressions, along with some suggestions that would help improve the overall experience.

 

- This game will be the first MMO I've ever played where I'll eventually have several toons at max level. I'm not typically a questing type of guy; I tend to grind out a single toon to max, then focus on that single toon, raiding, doing dailies, etc., and getting it as powerful as possible. This game, though, is going to be hard, since I plan on doing that with as many toons as I can. I'm not done with my class quest yet, despite being 50, though I'm very eager to continue and finish it, and I'm just as eager to start other, new toons to see what sort of epic storyline awaits for them.

 

- Flashpoints - so far, I've done about half of the available ones, I believe, while leveling up. I do agree with what folks have said, as far as story being a big emphasis in Black Talon, but not so much the later ones. That notwithstanding, I find the existing FPs to be an excellent selection and very well done instances for being launch material. They're challenging without being overly difficult, they provide a nice source of fairly decent gear, and they serve the purpose of teaching group mechanics, more complicated than tank-n-spank boss fights, etc., in preparation for end-game raiding very well. That's not to say most of the boss fights are complicated in and of themselves, but they're a tad beyond the simple tank-n-spank, as I said, and as such, serve their purpose in introducing inexperienced players how to avoid standing in the fire.

 

- Leveling speed - I've seen a fair number of folks complaining about how quick and easy it is to hit 50. I don't think I entirely agree with that. For one thing, the level cap is only 50 at the moment, so it's not going to take as long as a game like WoW, where you have almost double the amount of levels to grind through. My leveling experience seemed like it went fairly quickly, but that, I believe, was primarily due to how much I enjoyed it. At no point, really, did it feel like a boring, repetitive grind. And, if you look at the actual time it took, I got the game a few days after release, which was Dec 20th, and it's now the 25th of January, so it took about a month to hit 50. That was just about the quickest month I can remember, though, and it seems just about right, in my mind. I'm not the quickest leveler, by any means (obviously), but I'm also not the slowest. I'd estimate my speed as right about average, and a month seems right about where it should be. I'm working on my next toon at the moment, and I anticipate it going quicker, since I know what I'm doing, where to go, etc..

 

All in all, I found the leveling experience to be a huge improvement over any other MMO I've ever played, and there have been a fair number. The best compliment I can pay it is to say that I can't wait to level another toon. That's a new experience for me, but one that I'm certainly enjoying.

 

There was a couple other things I wanted to mention, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment, so I'll leave the impressions at that and move onto the...

 

Suggestions (I've already posted some of these in various locations, but wanted to put them all in one centralized location, as well as include a few new ones; most are pretty minor, in any case, and I did include a couple Juggernaut-specific ones) -

 

 

Increase Guild Description Text Limit - As it stands now, the Guild Description box is entirely too tiny to fit much of anything at all in it, much less anything useful. It won't even fit all the vent info; I can put the URL and password, but I have to tell every single person the Port # any time they need to put it in. That is not only inconvenient, but it negates the possibility of putting a, oh, I don't know, an actual Guild Description, lol.

 

Proc Notifications - I play a Sith Juggernaut, and I have to spend most of every fight watching my action bars. Retaliate, Force Scream, Pommel Strike, and Savage Kick all operate on procs, and I'm sure other classes have just as many abilities that work the same, if not more. So, either I watch my action bars in case they proc, or I miss out on using them entirely. If nothing else, enabling the game for addons will allow addon devs to create this, and many other useful tools.

 

Enable Addons - this is a fairly common suggestion, so I'll keep it brief. Suffice it to say that developers of MMOs are never able to fully satisfy every single customer they have. Addons help bridge that gap, allowing devs to create specific addons to meet every personal preference. Not only that, but they take a huge load of work off the game's developers, allowing them to focus on more important and pressing issues.

 

Buff Speeder Speeds - as of right now, level 3 speeder speed seems like a giant waste of money. It starts out 90% speed increase for level 1, and costs 120,000 credits, if my memory serves. For level 2, an additional 10% increase, which is barely noticeable, is 220,000 credits, and the final level is 330,000, again for an additional 10%. Add in the 55,000 credits for the cheapest level 3 speeder, and it almost costs 400k credits for an additional 10%. That, developers, is a rip-off. It should at least go up in increments of 25%, so level 1 starts at an even 100% increase, level 2 is 125%, and level 3 is 150%. I'd be more than happy to spend almost a half a million credits for speed boosts like that.

 

A Couple Juggernaut-Specific Suggestions -

 

Remove the time limit on rage intake from damage - I hate the fact that my rage intake is arbitrarily limited to a single point per hit every 3 seconds. Rage gen should be based off the percent of damage I receive, and it most certainly should not have a time limit on how often I can get it, especially not when the rage I get from my offensive abilities has been decreased. I made an in-depth post about this in the Jug forums, and pretty much everyone said I was doing something wrong if I was always rage starved, which I am. I've come to the conclusion that I get just as much rage as everyone else; I just have higher standards than they do. I did an experiment the other day during a boss fight in Colicoid War Games: when my rage was at zero, I taunted the boss and refrained from using any of my rage generating abilities. When the initial taunt wore off, I used Threatening Scream, my AOE taunt. Both those abilities last 6 seconds total, so the boss attacked me for 12 seconds altogether while I didn't hit him once, and in that 12 seconds, I received not a single point of rage. That is completely unacceptable.

 

Buff our AOE threat abilities - I've only tanked with my Jug, so I can only go on what I've read others say, which is that the other tanking classes can tank big groups of mobs with relative ease compared to us. Especially when we take on a group of exclusively ranged mobs, which happens quite frequently, we end up running from one mob to another, trying to keep threat on all of them. We need a silence-type of ability, to more easily kite ranged mobs, for one thing, and we either need one or two more AOE threat generating abilities, or the ones we do have need some buffing.

 

 

Ok, I do believe this wall o' text is big enough as it is now, so I'll call it quits. Despite the big block of suggestions, it's my opinion that SW:TOR is damn near the best MMO I've ever played. Not counting the rage situation with my Jug (which I literally hate), I love almost everything about this game. I'm sure all the whining haters will come on and tell me how wrong all of my opinions are, and they'll go into great depth explaining to me why this game is inferior to most others, and why it will crash and burn by this time next month, but I don't really care. I think Bioware did an epic job with this game, and for me, the end-result definitely lived up to the hype and expectations.

 

So yah, if you've gotten this far, then you have my thanks for reading, and thanks extended to Bioware for making this amazing game

I have nothing to add. I just wanted to be a jerk.