I’ve been playing MMORPGs for quite a few years now. I’m kind of a junkie, quite frankly; I’m in love with the persistence of the MMO space and love creating my very own character. The latest in this series of publisher/developer attempts to capture folks loose cash is Star Wars the Old Republic. I was in the beta and I absolutely hated this game. The only thing I liked about the game was the voice acting. But once the game came, I was presented with other friends experiences and soon decided I needed to try the game again. What a difference a few months made. The game was amazing, one of the best MMOs I’ve ever played. A all most perfect blending of the old and the new. I’ve played every class on the Imperial side(you know the Empire!) and I’m around 17 levels into a Jedi Knight. But I’ve seen a lot players having trouble with various aspects of the game. I just want to let folks know what I’ve found out through research or just being in right place at the right time. So here you go:
1) Your game is performing badly? Head over to this link. With some clarification, if you are running a Windows Vista 64-bit machine you want to change the mode to Windows XP Service Pack 2. As there is NO Service Pack 3 according to Microsoft. This worked for me and has had no effect on my PC otherwise, so try it.
2) Do you only know folks that are your class? Yeah, I’ve had that problem too. So rather than not grouping up; go into system preferences in game, go to the social tab, and allow people of the same class into your story events. You WILL have to do your storylines multiple times to progress your individual story but at least if your friends are of a higher level than you; they can help you out.
3) Not enough credits? Wow, you MUST be doing something wrong. Make sure to grab a crafting crew skill along with your two gathering skills. You can do multiple things with this. To level your crafting skill you can reverse engineer your creations to regain some of your lost materials from unwanted items. You can also put these items on the Galactic Market(read Auction House), this mostly works but let me tell you selling dark side materials or equipment on the Republic side or selling light side materials or equipment on the Imperial side really doesn’t work. Finally, make sure to take any weapons or gear that isn’t bind on pick up to the Galactic Market. The game is relatively expensive, so you may have to do both of these things depending on your class/level. As a Jedi Knight for example, I have consistently had around 10,000 credits just from doing the above and before level 13, I had a running total of 8.000 from doing nothing but selling vendor trash.
4) Why can I only have 3 crew skills? I don’t really know. But the best way to fix this is to have alts that you ARE playing on the same side on the same server that can share final equipment. Like having an Artifice, Armortech, Cybertech, Synthweaving, and Armstech characters. Or pick your top three, if your not going to have that many alts. This will also help with the upcoming Legacy advantages and perks.
5) Wait, why doesn’t any of my gear work anymore? Well, perhaps you made an alignment choice that turned your Dark Side I or Light Side I gear unusable. It’s very possible that you did this without even realizing you were close to the threshold. Or you made a decision that added a very large number of dark side or light side points to your total and changed your alignment drastically. This happened to me with my main character about a week ago. You have two options; slog through getting those points back through regular story mission choices or flashpoints. Or you can take the Diplomacy gathering crew skill and gain some points on one side or the other very slowly. But you will have to spend time and credits on the leveling the Diplomacy Skill. I’ve been working on doing both and I’m homing in on getting back to Dark Side I. Yay!
6) Seems like everywhere I go, there is no one there! I haven’t had this experience personally, as my server is full to busting and even with the zoning/instancing that Bioware has been doing we still DO experience lag from the server from time to time. But I have heard this complaint from people around the web. My best advice is to either change servers while your character is low level and you haven’t invested in them too much yet. Or just wait for a while. Most of the low population servers will probably either be absorbed by larger ones or fill up; it’s an MMO staple. Also, most of the game was designed for a full to overflowing server population and only minimal instancing so, places look like they can hold far more people than are currently there. The VERY BEST thing to do is to play with your friends and don’t worry; this kind of thing takes care of itself.
7) Since launch Bioware/EA has been applying lots of patches and there certainly have been quite a few maintenance nights a week that many folks think is probably a little crazy. But as this is a new game, this sort of thing will happen. Make sure you head over to link, to check server status and keep an eye on your launcher for the game in order to know about upcoming patches.
8) I’m getting bored with this game! Yeah, OK…. Well, I have a few questions for you: 1. How often do you play? More than 5 hours a day, how many days a week. Play less, fewer hours, fewer days, etc… 2. Do you play with others? If not, you REALLY SHOULD! Join a guild or just pick up a group from flashpoints or heroics. Either way, find some cool folks and do a bunch of quests with them. Doing this changes the game drastically. 3. Have you played any PVP or Operations? If you are max level, you will want to at least try one or both of these. 4. Did you play one class all the way to the end and are now bored with that class? Role an alt, make sure they have a different class style. If you are playing a Jedi Knight, play a Smuggler or vice versa. Or play an Imperial Agent if you haven’t all ready. Star Wars the Old Republic represents a minimum of 40 hours of gameplay. If you’ve rushed through it, I’m not surprised your tired of it. If nothing else, take a couple of weeks off.
9) I’m feeling under-leveled every time I face a story climax or I keep dying and I don’t know why! There are any number of reasons for this but I will try and give you the most common ones. Are you doing ALL the quests, not just your story quest? If not, then that’s probably why, unlike World of Warcraft most of the areas are designed with the idea in mind that you are going to do all most all of the quests. And for the most part, they are easy and good, so don’t miss out, do them. If your not doing Heroic quests, that’s ok, but it will definitely help you as you level. Almost all Heroic quests are pretty easy with the recommended number of people(Heroic 4=4 people recommended, Heroic 2= 2 people recommended). Also as you level, probably around 24+ you will want to invest in some gear off the Galactic Market(Auction House), because some of the gear from completing quests can be on the weak side. Even to complete later quests. This used to happen a few years ago in World of Warcraft before they fixed it. I believe Wrath of Lich King was the first time this was addressed. I’m sure as time goes on Bioware will address this issue as well, but for right now, it’s up to you. Finally, there could be one more reason… How well equipped is your companion? If they don’t have gear that is at least around their level, they could be too weak to support you. You can buy them gear, but the easiest fix is to simply find them gear from the random stuff that drops off enemies. This works best for light or medium armor wearers but I’ve found it’s functional with everyone.
10) If you have not all ready done so; be careful when choosing your advanced class. Also, with the idea that Star Wars Old Republic is someone’s first MMO they handle advanced classes poorly. The player must speak with one of the two quest givers on their respective fleets. As this is the first time you are going to this area the idea that these quest givers might be missed is natural. If you are a new player be sure to explore the fleet thoroughly as I missed about half the areas in it to begin with; thinking it was much smaller than it actually was.
That’s my ten, I’m sure there will be more tips in coming as I play deeper into the game. But for now, see you online; And may the Force be with you.(the Jedi say that entirely too much, don’t you think?)
No comments:
Post a Comment