Stardock should simply hire me to be a creative director over a game.  Greatest game ever or Unicorn filled F***-fest?  You decide!

If I recall correctly, and it's been a while so I may not, but you don't aim your gun in KOTOR either.  

The beta was outstanding.  The story telling of a good single player game, real consequences for your quest choices, and interesting, if not revolutionary, gameplay that will make playing with my friends enjoyable in a way that WoW hasn't been in a few years.  I'm quite excited.  

Several thousand people does not make a commercially successful MMO on the scale EA and Bioware are going for.  Especially not when you spend (based on some estimates) $150M on development.  There's plenty of innovative stuff in SWTOR, even if the combat and group dynamics aren't radically new.  

If you have read any of the expanded universe stuff, which is all considered Star Wars Canon, there are plenty of things that need to be beat on repeatedly for minutes with a light saber.  

I'm curious, and I don't mean this in a snarky way, but how would you implement a long lived MMO based on one of the most popular stories in history and make it revolutionary and not a complete waste of $150M in development?  You could push the boundaries on some things, but push too many and you risk pushing yourself right out of the market by making the game too inaccessible.  

Okay, if the story is good I am in, but how do I know until I purchase it? Youtube I guess.

And I exaggerated some of my points, KOTOR in my mind is a great balance between what we saw in the movies and what is good gameplay in a video game. Sure chain lightning is a game breaking win button, but other than that. The lightsabers were well balanced without making everything else useless. The thermal detonators were rare enough to need to be saved for large groups of infantry. From what I have seen from video footage, the game seems like it ignores any attempts at adding the fun KOTOR to SWTOR. It's a tried and true RPG game. One that is in many ways the fan base I would guess of this new game.

Is anyone seriously claiming that using it as a platform would offend anyone in the RPG market? That is just absurd to me. I tried playing WoW and I noticed it was easy to bake a sandwich, watch Stargate SG-1, and Skype while playing a "hard dungeon to beat." And I was the freaking tank!

I am not saying KOTOR had FPS elements, but besides that, it had a tactical vibrancy that is just lost on WoW clones.

How much does it cost to play a month?

Combat is definitely similar to WoW, though it's not the same.  Close, but there are notable differences.  Where SWTOR really shines though is some of the non-combat innovations.  Just how well they make use of the SW license, the companion system, the crafting system (and how it works with the companion system), and most importantly the way they tell the story combined with the excellent lasting light/dark consequences.  All character/NPC interaction is fully voice acted (as opposed to WoW's catch phrases and Walls-O-Text).  Conversation choices are similar to Mass Effect (the radial choices with good/neutral/bad and sometimes special consequences).  And the whole group instance conversation mechanic looks awesome, though I only experienced it a few times.  

For example, early on in one of the class intro zones you get the choice of killing or redeeming an evil NPC.  Kill him and you get a reward.  Save him and he later has quests for you.  Real effect based on your decisions.

Another example is the class stories.  Each class has different stories that span many levels and theoretically change based on your choices (though I never experienced it).  I didn't get anywhere near max level during the beta, but the first chapter of your character's story spans ~30 levels. While you're leveling and doing different world story lines or galactic plotlines, you can also pursue your character's personal story.  

Anyway, the combat isn't revolutionary but there are some great ideas and a huge amount of potential in SWTOR.  Whether they fulfill it or not remains to seen, but so far it looks pretty good.  

Think it's $14.99/month if you pay monthly.  

Well I am glad they are at least pushing things in the right direction. It feels alot like the issue of racism with older generations, a gradual climb towards something really good. 

The thing is, I see monthly payments as a significant opportunity cost. So I will wait a half decade or so before I am ready to actually pay that much for the game. I realize that for MMO level costs it is a reasonable and standard price, but without something really amazing each month, I would just assume stick with one time purchases and a few DLC buys. 

You did change my mind about the game though, so that never happens on the internet. 

Ya mean, like me ?

Really, the problem with Lightsabers as seen in movies and other games is that they're too effective. That means when someone else has one and they get used on you (ie: in PvP, which KOTOR doesn't have but SWTOR does) it's not very fun. Constantly being one shot because a Sith Assassin can stealth up and cleave you in half from behind in a single strike isn't fun. And of course playing anything that isn't a Jedi/Sith would be pretty foolish because the power levels aren't even close to each other.

That was the biggest thing they had to fix to make a MMO version of Star Wars work, and they did a pretty good job of it.

it looked like a star wars version of wow to me, lightsabre battles are lame (in the movies/books/'starwars reality', when you 'touch' another with your sabre it cuts through them severing limbs/torso/what have ya, not causing a lil burn damage each of the 30 times you hit them), the 'tank' (more wow cr*p) was shot @ 1000 times with laser fire from small arms & large turrets that take down fighters & such, in star wars 'reality' normally one small arms shot will take out someone. 

I've played star wars games where the sabers actually make contact with each other every time when two jedi's are fighting, so my tactic was to use two sabres & go high defense, this way there sabre never got through to hit me, I think I saw SWTOR sabres make actuall contact with each other a couple of times but not sure. I don't know, I'm just not impressed with any of the Star Wars game since the one good version of Tie fighter so many many years ago (how they went from that to this cr*p is unkown to me)

I can't wait for a star wars mmo using something like Eve's engine that will allow for me to fly around in a Star destroyer with a hull full of tie advanced 

Waiting for things to move a bit, just checking the forum from time to time.

Played Skyrim, Anno 2070 and a bit of King Arthur for those who know this game.

I am in an hibernation phase atm.

I lurk here frequently, but really there is very little for me to say so I am not as active as I used to be.

I check in everyday to see if there is new info.

The only other games I am remotely interested in are Torchlight II, Victoria II: A House Divided and Crusader Kings II.

All these games will be out in 2012.

CK2 looks awesome. That and FE are the two games I'm really looking forward to.

CK2 looks good, but will probably wait a bit for them to patch it before I buy it. Paradox being Paradox and all. Super excited about it though, CK is one of my all time favs.

Lord Xia me thinks we need to have a karma drive for ya

its like a car wash or bake sale except that instead of cookies and washing cars to raise money for something we all give you rep points so you can break 100 karma points

I definitely can't fault you for that but the various let's plays all look really good already. I know that doesn't necessarily speak to stability on a wide range of systems but hopefully with two months still to go they'll polish it down to a mirror shine.