As far as I know, you can not respec your Advanced Class (ie Sith Sorcerer to Sith Assassin), you can only reset the skill points you have spent in the trees.

I've heard that hybrid specs aren't that great, but I have no first hand experience to back that up.

I just finished playing the weekend beta; I leveled a Consular - Sage to 23, Smuggler - Gunslinger to 21, Bounty Hunter - Mercenary to 15, Knight - Guardian to 14 and a Sith Inquisitor to 8.

As far as I got, I enjoyed all the class stories very much.  Class story enjoyment order: Knight, Bounty Hunter, Smuggler, Consular.  (didn't see enough Inquisitor)

Ironically, the classes' play style I enjoyed are the inverse.

I PvPed quite a bit the last two days.  It was a blast, but I think that not having level brackets is a mistake.  While life totals were comparable, lower level characters just couldn't compete with the ability sets of significantly higher level characters.  By about level 20, I never lost 1v1 to a low teen character.
It's definitely possible to level by PvPing, which is neat.  I leveled the Sage and Gunslinger from about 15, and made plenty of money (I had over 40,000 with each, which is what mount training costs at level 25) and received good gear upgrades by turning in valor tokens.

PvP impressions:  Ranged combat is king.  I never had much trouble dealing with a melee class 1v1.  It may be a skill/level thing though.

Gunslinger (skill points in sharpshooter) is a beast, I always topped the damage and kill charts by a large margin (until near the end when people started catching on).  Amazing burst damage potential.
Gunslinger had good survivability (especially with an ability to make you un-cc-able for 20 seconds while in cover), but only had mediocre escapes - with three or more people on me, I was guaranteed to die, it was only a matter of time.
Class that gave Gunslinger the most trouble: nothing really stuck out, but some scoundrel and operative specs seemed to be tougher.  If melee managed to get up close, they could be an annoyance (stealth classes could start the engagement up close, obviously).
Class that gave Gunslinger least trouble: anyone who tried to attack head on while I was behind cover .  More than once - with a few lucky crits - I killed people who charged head on in 3 or 4 attacks, before they could touch me.

Sage - I specced Seer (healer) for a little while, but because of my low level, my healing wasn't significantly better than when I specced Telekinetic (ranged direct damage), though my ability to do damage was noticeably less.  I easily topped the healing charts whenever I spent any time healing (sometimes even just healing myself), but that's no surprise because no one heals in PvP .  I was able to consistently be in the top three on the damage/kill side, even when spending some time healing.  Survivability was better than I expected.  With a shield ability that absorbed a decent bit of damage (4.5 sec cooldown, but can only use it every 20 sec per person), and a Force Speed ability (2 sec of 150% speed), there were quite a few matches where I never died (though I spent a good portion of them running like a bitch ).  I could burst some nice damage, but no where close to the Gunslinger.
Class that gave Sage the most trouble:  Scoundrels and Operatives.  I could never seem to kite out of range of their "close range" high damage attacks while they had some healing (those who used it...) to make the engagements drag out.
Class that gave Sage the least trouble:  Knights and Sith Warriors.  With all my cooldowns up, I could easily kite them.  If they did manage to get in close, they were usually hurting pretty badly by that point and didn't live long.

Crew skills are neat, whenever I was running around turning in quests, I had my companion(s) doing gathering missions.  I was able to craft good upgrades for my lightsaber (Sage - Artificer) and pistols (Gunslinger - Armstech).  My Bounty Hunter went Cybertech, but I never made it to a high enough level to use the earpieces that he could make.

I never got around to trying any Flash Points.

When the game is released, I'll most likely play a Smuggler - Gunslinger first, then a Consular - Sage.

ETA:  Regarding Human Males: body style 2 is the only decent one.  1 is too small, 4 is fat and 3 is steroid man.

ETA2:  Space combat wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be, but what I saw got old fast.

I played in the beta for just a little last week and to be honest I really wasnt that impressed. Im tired of MMO's where you have to grind X amount of these critters then go on to grind out X amount of these critters. I lost interest after about an hour of play time. Same shit just different looks. Yeah I know its Star Wars! Im canceling my pre order.

I enjoyed that the grind x factor was made into bonus portions of existing quests.



 

your right on the red, I should have clarified that you could change your skill points around.  Good clarification.  



 

Agreed.  I don't see this as grinding.  The missions gave good XP with the ability to gain more xp by killing 5-15 creatures/characters during the quest.  Killing random creatures out in the world didn't yield as much XP imo.  I was able to achieve lvl 16 Sith Inquisitor just by doing the quests and very little creature killing by the time I reached Kaas city.



 

yeah that was kinda nice, also it didn't seem too grindish, i pretty much killed as many as needed on my way to or from the main goal. definitely not WOW's kill 50 goblins to get 4 goblin ears quest.



Still waiting on a new ultima online with basic skills and full loot game, doubt it will happen but i could see spending a few months doing that as opposed to the free month i normally get burned out on MMO's
 

I'm waiting to see how they implement an achievement system.



Granted I didn't play past 11th level, but I did it on more than a few characters.

From the Sith/Jedi perspective, I hope (not sure if I missed it) they offer some sort of Jedi/Sith Order System.  SWG had a great system (if anyone remembers), but it was poorly implemented.

One system I really like is the trait system in LoTRO.



http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Traits






They let you also semi-respec just by going to a bard and spending a little money. They can help you really dial in a build.



 

This game just doesn't feel like an MMO.

I cant stand the linear game! I played SWG and am playing EVE right now and I love the idea that you can go anywhere you want and do what ever you want.

Anyone see this upcoming Razer Keyboard for Star Wars?



http://store.razerzone.com/store/razerusa/en_US/pd/productID.241167600/categoryId.57478500

http://www.razerzone.com/swtor/keyboard

If they are under $200, I'll buy one, I need a new keyboard anyway.





I doubt they will be though



 

Looks cool, but I can't justify the expense.

Does it come with a fleshlight?







 

Looks cool, but useless. The keys over the touchpad are on the wrong side of the keyboard. They need to be on the left side for right handed people. Otherwise you have to take your hands off the controls. Bad plan.

I just use a Nostromo Gamepad. I can program the keys to do whatever I want. only time i touch a keyboard is for chat. for people that like macros, Nostromo can do that too.

Nostromos are awesome once you get used to them.  I have two n52's.

 

Sounds like you never played wow. Or atleast untill they ruined the game and made it a wellfare state.

Got my Sith Inquisitor up to lvl 11 last night and went Sorcerer like I did in beta.  I then rolled a Sith Warrior and got it up to lvl 11 and went Juggernaut this time vs Marauder from beta.





Ended up playing on Saber of Exar Kun.

I just got my early access invite this morning.  Too bad I'm stuck at work until 5.

Yeah, I got my early invite - preloaded the game earlier, try to hop on.... 11gb download.

oh nice i have to install it again

only 3gb left...

I cheated on the downloads and just fired up the client every few days to keep it patched. Now I'm heading back in to smack around some critters in an attempt to get my ship. I'm on... something Cantina (only server with Cantina in the name) playing a Sith Warrior whose name I forget. I'll report back with that in a bit.

What server is everyone playing on?

This is fucking gay - I get to main assets 17, then it hangs up at 1% on the install - is it some gigantic install, or is my shit fucked up? I've literally been waiting on this download since I woke up and now its the fucking afternoon, if I have to delete everything and start over I'm going to fucking cancel this stupid game.

so this is what their customer service bot had to say on their forums:

"We are looking into this issue at the moment. We hope to provide a solution soon.

We apologize for the inconvenience in the meantime."

ETA 2: I just received an email from Amazon that my physical copy of the game is going to arrive on Dec 16 rather than the 20th.



Seems like everyone is spread out.

I have my Republic characters on Canderous Ordo, because Skygod's guild is on that server, and my Empire character is on Krayt Dragon because Evilsmurfkilla's guild is on that one...

ETA: http://republicindustries.guildlaunch.com/index.php?gid=223930 and http://www.swtor.com/guilds/182502/delirium-tremens respectively.

i think we need a AR15 guild

A problem I'm seeing is the vast number of servers making it hard to organize ARFCOMmers.

My friends from work are on Canderous Ordo, on the Sith side.

 












 

Skygod put together a call for arfcommers to join up together - the guilds called Republic industries on canderous ordo. When I can get the stupid installer to work I'll be on that one

Yeah it kind of sucks they have so many servers.  Hopefully that isn't a downfall.
Btw I'm on Saber of Exar Kun.  I'm with the Empire which is a PVP East Coast server.





 

Im glad they do , to avoid ques on the 20th . i think there will be a massive exodus from WOW  EVE and EQ2 as it is some thing new and they are going to get overwhelmed in the next 30 days. There is nothing out there thats new and good to play coming except maybe diablo 3 so I think several million will come try it out , i think there were 3 million preorders already .

GW2 isn't too far off and will take a good amount of the pvpers.  

 

the big thing for tor is that if you don't like pvp or the end game stuff, you can just roll a new character and do a new storyline.  

got my invite today, i'll roll my character tonight.

A half hour wait ...just to play this game. Ridiculous.

I still can't get the goddamn game to install. It freezes my computer up during install at 1% of Game Assets 17.

On the eve of the early start for SWTOR I present, Deadpool?

Uh, what? I've never waited longer than it takes to load, never more than a minute or so. What server are you on?

I had a short, <10min wait yesterday afternoon.  The server list had 6 or 7 other servers with queues.

Last night there was a 30 minute queue on Canderous Ordo.

 

Hi guys,
have any of you PVP'd yet. was wondering how you like it. i remember back in the day when rift was suposed to be the shit so i went out and got it and it sucked. how does the game live up to the hype?
questions directed to those with early access.
any feed back would be awsome thanks.

you aint seen nothing yet , just wait till the 1st week of launch when 10000 people are in Q on each server.

PvP is kickass.  I love playing warzones.

 

+1

Love it!

Got my collectors edition today.