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

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.  

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.  

Ya mean, like me ?

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 

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.

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

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