StarWars:The Old Republic

[doh123]

So, some of you running it in Parallels 7 + Win7 are actually getting a playable game? That's....tempting...

like I posted before... runs great for me this way. Bootcamp install of Windows is something I just won't do... and I'm using it this way until its out and i can make a working Wineskin port of it.

I was under the impressions parallels did not support DirectX 10. I'm glad to read that Parallels supports this game. Do you think I could run it on a mid 2010 MBP 17", 8GB Ram, nVidia 330M 512 MB, 2.6 i7?

I'm sure you can get it to run with those specs, but you'll probably be stuck in the mid ranged graphics settings... much lower than you could do with a Bootcamp install, but perfectly playable.

I second that, the game is butt ugly. I couldn't even make shadow maps look half descent. They all looked like they were 10x10 pixels. I guess this joke they call UI wasn't helping, because it was bugged.

you must have a screwed up computer... I noticed none of that and it looks great. What is wrong with the UI, its very clean and simple and easy to use. You sound like a Blizzard employee.

It makes me wonder how they managed to piss away 100+ million and they didn't even bother hiring a talented team of art designers and couldn't buy a better 3D engine.

The HeroEngine was probably not a wise choice, but its not working that bad now. The developers are even adding in clients using OpenGL for Mac, Linux, and iOS.

I'm pretty disappointed with the state of this game 3 weeks before launch >.<

Really? I find it great. I've played many many betas for MMORPGs and this is by far the best I've ever seen.

For example, it's always pretty dark and what not so overall ambience is kind of bluish. When my character talks to another one during a cutscene, I notice something really odd. There's direct yellow light shooting right at the NPC from up above, so the engine ends up mixing yellow and blue. Bad decision. I mean it's color theory basics, saturated yellow and blue don't match well.

I really think you have something messed up on your machine... I've never seen anything like that... or maybe its just one certain place where you had the issue and it should be bug reported?

There's virtually no ambient light in the game. You can be looking at your character on NPC during a daylight and part of his or her face is going to be almost completely black. Have they ever heard of fill lights or HDRI (However, DX9 doesn't support HDRI, does it?).

seriously? what game are you playing? Never seen any NPC faces that looked like that at all.

There's no metallic shader on droids. They are all made of cardboard, aren't they?

its paint... why do you assume they must be shiny? I think your wanting realistic graphics and not stylized graphics. Its supposed to look cartoony to a degree and not realistic... just like Kotor... did you moan too when Clone Wars was animated stylized and not realistic?

But yellow glow/black core pre-order crystal pretty much solidified my belief that Bioware has some of the worst art directors in the industry. Black isn't light, black is absence of light. The crystal looks cheesy. I removed it from my saber the moment I saw it and deleted it, so it doesn't take up my bag space.

I agree on this... the crystal is horrid for Light Sabers... looks so stupid. its decent on blasters, but I still end up not using it. What a rip off.

Nope. I am not a masochist or religiously faithful fanatic. Enjoy pain and suffering of this "epic failure" in the making.

Not everyone likes everything. There can be millions of people who love some certain thing as is, while a few hate it beyond belief. its impossible to make everyone happy. I, and almost everyone I talk to, think the game is fantastic though.

 

[stellardream]

I am not even going to react to the stupid "go away forever" comment, because whenever I see a small Chow Chow on the street barking at me, I just ignore it rather than trying to kick it.

you must have a screwed up computer... I noticed none of that and it looks great. What is wrong with the UI, its very clean and simple and easy to use. You sound like a Blizzard employee.

No, I was playing it on top of the line 2011 iMac and I don't need a Geek Squad to figure out how to configure it. Like I said, it probably was the UI bug, because on health/force bars didn't work. Sometimes when I logged on Area Loot didn't work, although it was on. However, all shadow maps were very pixelated.

No, I am speaking as somebody who registered on swtor.com back in 2008 and had CE on pre-order. Do you like labeling people you disagree with?

The HeroEngine was probably not a wise choice, but its not working that bad now. The developers are even adding in clients using OpenGL for Mac, Linux, and iOS.

It doesn't mean that Bioware is going upgrade their version. They stated before, they rewrote major parts of the engine. I get it why they did what they did. They decided to save development time on server and networking code.

Really? I find it great. I've played many many betas for MMORPGs and this is by far the best I've ever seen.

I take it you didn't participate in Rift beta test. And before I get shot down again, I don't play Rift, because I found myself caring very little about back story and the world in general. However, I admire Trion for what they have done.

I really think you have something messed up on your machine... I've never seen anything like that... or maybe its just one certain place where you had the issue and it should be bug reported?

seriously? what game are you playing? Never seen any NPC faces that looked like that at all.

There's nothing wrong with my machine. However, I am trained to notice really crappy art, because, what ya know, I am a professional artist.

its paint... why do you assume they must be shiny? I think your wanting realistic graphics and not stylized graphics. Its supposed to look cartoony to a degree and not realistic... just like Kotor... did you moan too when Clone Wars was animated stylized and not realistic?

So, R2-D2 was also covered in matte wall paint, right? No, I don't care whether they go for realistic or stylized graphics. What I care is attention to detail. Things like that tell me that money were spent elsewhere. KOTOR is a very old game, DX8 game, right? It was released back when shader programming was in its infancy.

Frankly, I could care less for Clone Wars. I care very little for Lucas' take on Star Wars in general. The Idiocy Menace... sorry, Phantom ruined it for me. I was going to buy this game, because it's been developed by Bioware.

I agree on this... the crystal is horrid for Light Sabers... looks so stupid. its decent on blasters, but I still end up not using it. What a rip off.
Not everyone likes everything. There can be millions of people who love some certain thing as is, while a few hate it beyond belief. its impossible to make everyone happy. I, and almost everyone I talk to, think the game is fantastic though.

At least we can agree on something.

 

[MichaelVain]

Doh123,

Thanks for the information. I take it I have to run it in Parallels 7 and 64 bit windows?

I've never used parallels or bootcamp so I'm sorry for the basic questions.

Thanks.

 

[doh123]

Doh123,

Thanks for the information. I take it I have to run it in Parallels 7 and 64 bit windows?

I've never used parallels or bootcamp so I'm sorry for the basic questions.

Thanks.

I did. You can download Parallels 7 free trial if you have a Windows license and try it before paying for it. Parallels is a virtual machine running on OSX, whereas bootcamp is just a dual boot, meaning you have to boot into one OS or the other

 

[Huntn]

I had a couple of unused Best Buy gift cards and decided to preorder the hard copy of the game through there. Yes, it means I'm going to miss the first couple of days/week/month of mayhem when the servers open to the public. Also if you buy the digital preorder, you will get early access to the game which started on 13 Dec. I had mixed feeling about the game, but in the end decided to follow it into retail, at least for a while. I remember being 500th in que on those beta weekends. It's not something I want to rush into again.

Anyone playing now, since early access started? How is access?
Thanks!

 

[jchall30]

I haven't had any que waits as of yet through my second day in the game.

 

[Alaerian]

I got an email around 9 yesterday morning, so I hopped in and quested both solo and with a couple friends. They've fixed a fair few things from the last beta and changed more, so the experience is quite pleasant. I'm playing for enjoyment now - that means no 18 hour sessions of pure levelling madness, fueled only by Monster and Rockstar.

I've decided on a Republic Trooper. That decision, I'll admit, was partially influenced by the voice actor - Jennifer Hale. If you're scratching your head about who that is, I'll give you a clue: FEMSHEP.

Servers have been much less populated than I anticipated. However, they still feel quite "full." I'm quite pleased with the staggered launch - it prevents questing hubs from being overloaded, and the competition for mobs is diminished. The amount of bitching and QQ on the forums, however, is astonishing. It's actually quite funny. People are literally threatening to sue. I haven't laughed so hard in a while.

 

[ohsnap]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Could someone running Bootcamp with an i5 or i7 machine press ctrl-shft-f and report what kind if FPS you're getting please?

 

[LagFighter]

I'm having a lot of trouble running this on my mid-2010 15-inch MacBook Pro. I've got the Nvidia 330M GT w/ 512MB dedicated memory, i7 @ 2.66 GHz (although I believe it's dual core), and 8 GB of RAM that I installed myself. I'm running on Boot Camp with Windows 7 64-bit, and I've updated my drivers.

Yet, despite all of this, I'm still only getting about 10 frames per second at best, and that's with all settings on low. Any ideas on what might be causing this?

Notably, I do have the higher-resolution screen, running at 1680 x 1050.

Here are my specs if that helps:

I did some framerate testing and it's well below 10 FPS. Stunning, because my computer appears to be blowing away the minimum requirements for this.

 

[Milly79]

Game was simply unplayable on my late 08 Macbook. With everything on low the player models were all screwed up, except for in cutscenes.

My specs are:

Intel Duo 2 - 2.4 ghz
4gb Ram
Nvidia GeForce 9400m @ 256 mb

Anything I can do? I don't care how crappy the game looks itself as long as it runs.

 

[lantree]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Could someone running Bootcamp with an i5 or i7 machine press ctrl-shft-f and report what kind if FPS you're getting please?

I've been getting around the 40 to 50 FPS last night when i was on. This was under boot camp with apples standard ATI graphics card drivers.

 

[ohsnap]

I've been getting around the 40 to 50 FPS last night when i was on. This was under boot camp with apples standard ATI graphics card drivers.

Thanks for the info, much appreciated.

 

[Alaerian]

Game was simply unplayable on my late 08 Macbook. With everything on low the player models were all screwed up, except for in cutscenes.

My specs are:

Intel Duo 2 - 2.4 ghz
4gb Ram
Nvidia GeForce 9400m @ 256 mb

Anything I can do? I don't care how crappy the game looks itself as long as it runs.

I don't think there's much you can do, honestly. Well ... short of getting a new computer.

 

[Huntn]

Game was simply unplayable on my late 08 Macbook. With everything on low the player models were all screwed up, except for in cutscenes.

My specs are:

Intel Duo 2 - 2.4 ghz
4gb Ram
Nvidia GeForce 9400m @ 256 mb

Anything I can do? I don't care how crappy the game looks itself as long as it runs.

MacBooks are just not AAA Game friendly. My MBP (see sig) does fine with SWTOR. Until it is verified, I'd have to wonder about the Air.

 

[DoghouseMike]

Yea, it's that 9400m that's hurting you.
I'd try running it on the lowest of the low setting with the resolution turned way down. See if you can overclock the gpu too, it might make enough of a difference to make it playable.
I'd really look at upgrading, or throwing a cheap windows box together though

 

[MattA]

Game was simply unplayable on my late 08 Macbook. With everything on low the player models were all screwed up, except for in cutscenes.

My specs are:

Intel Duo 2 - 2.4 ghz
4gb Ram
Nvidia GeForce 9400m @ 256 mb

Anything I can do? I don't care how crappy the game looks itself as long as it runs.

I had the same issue with my Mac Mini w/9400m. Loading the newest NVidia drivers fixed the issues with the player models. It was playable, though it's definitely time for me to upgrade my machine.

 

[lewys]

I have two questions about this.

I have windows 7 ultimate 64 bit but it isn't genuine. Will i need a genuine copy of windows to play it? I read somewhere that i may need to. If i get the game i will be buying from a store so it will be a genuine copy.

Also i only have 20 gig partitioned for windows with bootcamp. Can i partition windows to have more space or would i have to delete everything? I dont mind deleting all the windows stuff but would like to keep my mac stuff.

Thanks

 

[mobilehaathi]

I have windows 7 ultimate 64 bit but it isn't genuine. Will i need a genuine copy of windows to play it?

The official response to this can only be yes.

 

[Mr.C]

I have two questions about this.

I have windows 7 ultimate 64 bit but it isn't genuine. Will i need a genuine copy of windows to play it? I read somewhere that i may need to. If i get the game i will be buying from a store so it will be a genuine copy.

Also i only have 20 gig partitioned for windows with bootcamp. Can i partition windows to have more space or would i have to delete everything? I dont mind deleting all the windows stuff but would like to keep my mac stuff.

Thanks

I'm not even sure why you bring up the subject of bootleg software here in the 1st place.

 

[nylon9]

Sorry if someone had already said this, but I was hoping to hear if someone with a MBP and geforce 512mb 9600M GT GPU is getting good FPS? In large cities, PvP, instances?

Its strange reading the official forums, so many people seem to be having major FPS issues with quite good cards, while some people with my card seem fine while others say its unplayable.

Thanks!

Other specs: (2009ish?? MBP)
2.8ghz core duo
4gb ram
win7

 

[Fitret]

SWTOR is basically unplayable on my MBP in Parallels 7 and based on the other responses in this thread, I'm not sure why. I've got a 2.2GHZ i7, 8GB of RAM (of which 4GB is allocated to my VM), and Radeon HD 6750M with 1GB of VRAM (though Parallels will only let you allocate 256MB). I'm running Win7 x64, I have all of the optimization settings set for Windows speed and I'm plugged in to AC power. I've tried running the game in full screen, 800x600 with all the graphics settings on low and it still stutters along at something like 10FPS.

For those that got Parallels to work well, what are your machine specs? What settings on your Mac, Parallels, Windows, or SWTOR did you have play with to get decent framerate?

 

[Melbatoaster]

I've got an early 2011 17" MBP. Installed SWTOR onto a 100 Gig Partition of Windows 7 Ultimate 32, crashes immediately with an "Appcrash" error.

I'm on the latest 3.3 Bootcamp, and am trying to figure out how to update my graphics drivers, since I'm all out of ideas. When I let the AMD site auto-detect and then try and install, it gives me an error. Is this normal for Bootcamp? I'm trying to google for a good guide on updating your video drivers, not having much luck.

 

[Liquorpuki]

Just wanted to say I think this game is a WoW Killer. The voiceovers, presentation and cutscenes make WoW questing seem old and non-immersive. I don't see the appeal in taking another WoW character from 1-85, much less a panda.

Loving this game and I've been playing MMORPG's since 2000. Merry Christmas everyone

 

[rasmasyean]

It looks like "storywise" SWTOR is pretty nifty, at least if you like Star Wars. So I'm pretty sure it makes a great PVE experience for most ppl. But how's the PVP? Anyone get far enough to really expereince the major PVP aspects of the game? Comparisons to WoW welcome as usual.

 

[Yogakun]

It looks like "storywise" SWTOR is pretty nifty, at least if you like Star Wars. So I'm pretty sure it makes a great PVE experience for most ppl. But how's the PVP? Anyone get far enough to really expereince the major PVP aspects of the game? Comparisons to WoW welcome as usual.

That's if you are lucky enough to get on it and are able to play it.