UPDATE: This post has been updated. Scroll to the bottom to see the info.
So several players figured out that using the /getdown command would not only cause your character to start dancing but would also interrupt any casting that your target was attempting.
Here’s a video of it in action:
We’re not sure if it worked in PVP, and have no intention of testing it, but suffice to say, Bioware did not approve of this and players were promptly sent emails similar to this:
(Click for full-size.)
Source: Reddit.com/r/gaming
UPDATE:
Biowares Community Manager: JovethGonzalez has jumped on this and has this to say:
Just wanted to let you know that this email is a fake. There are no such things as “special dance zones”.
Nobody puts our players in a corner.
Everybody is free to get down.We are NOT banning players for the use of emotes.
Source: The Official Forums.
I was received my “Welcome to the beta!” email from BioWare on Thursday, November 24h. I spent Friday the 25th downloading the client and the weekend spanning 26th and 27th trying to find time to play.
So when the “Thanks for participating!” email arrived Tuesday morning from BioWare, I was a little disappointed. I didn’t feel I’d had enough time to explore the latest MMO trying to steal World of Warcrafts’ crown. I’d submitted bug reports and did as a good tester should do and shared my opinions through the in-game forms. Alas, I fired up the uninstaller and freed up 14 gig from my E:\ drive.
Thursday morning saw a new email from BioWare arrive… “You’ve been chosen for the final beta test!”. Good news: I get to play, properly this time! Bad news: I had to re-download 14 gig!
And download I did…
So here’s my experiences with the beta.
Character Creation:
You can see a video of my chacter being created here: YouTube Link (opens in a new window). Your first choice in the character creation process, is “The Galactic Republic” or “The Sith Empire”. Star Wars fans will know what to expect from either side, newer players will be able to tell the “good guys” from the “bad guys” from the colouring system (red and blue).
Next up is your choice of class (more on that in a minute), and when you reach level 10 you’ll be able to choose your Advanced Class. The classes are pretty straight-forward looking but I was surprised but large amount of customization options.
Galactic Classes are: Trooper, Smuggler, Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular.
Sith Classes are: Bounty Hunter, Sith Warrior, Imperial Agent and Sith Inquisitor.
There really is something here for everyone. I won’t go into detail regarding the classes as I simply didn’t have enough time to properly test them out.
Presentation:
Thankfully, this is clearly a PC game and not a console port. The UI is nicely presently, those of you with even basic experiences of MMO’s will find your way around the menu’s easily enough. The in-built help system is useful without being in the way and can be removed completely right from the get-go. The one thing I didn’t like was the combat log… or lack-of. Maybe I over-looked it but I couldn’t see a combat log/window telling me how much damage each attack was doing and what was damaging me. It’s something vital to the game so I think I just over-looked it. Time was precious so I spent it completing as many quests as possible.
Here’s a look at the UI, click to enlarge:
Graphics:
Thankfully, there’s plenty of options for resolution, draw distance and so on. The environments look very good and the Star Wars galaxy means we’ll be getting plenty
of variety.
There were some blurred textures here and there. Some close-up textures on characters looked like they’d been scaled-down for some reason. A lot of MMO’s will scale things back to reduce CPU/GPU/Server loads etc, but to see it done in a game that puts so much emphasis on close-up shots of characters seems very odd. Maybe this won’t be an issue in the final retails product.
Sound:
Music seemed a sparse, entering combat when you’re outnumbered seemed to trigger more dramatic music
and this worked really well.
The voice acting was varied nicely and well spoken. No-one stood out as particularly stiff or just there to fill-in. The creatures and droids were all accounted for too, each with their own unique vocals, beeps and boops. The one problem I had was with cut-scenes… those of you who play WoW will be used to simply running over to an NPC, hitting “ACCEPT QUEST” and running off to kill 10 boars or whatever is required. The Old Republic encourages you to sit through a mini cut-scene for many of the quests. If you enjoyed Knights of the Old Republic then you won’t have a problem with this (I didn’t! I enjoyed the extra lore.) But this is a game aimed at stealing players from WoW and RIFT, I doubt many of them will have the patience for the long-winded speeches involved in character-development. Even fewer will have the patience to search through the HELP system/Config Options to find which key is used to skip said cut-scenes.
