The problems:

• In many areas Comcast is a local monopoly. There’s no broadband competition. While DirecTV/Dish may be able to provide TV to some areas, they can’t provide broadband. Verizon stopped rolling out FIOS, and in most areas only offers 768k DSL. There’s little choice for customers who want real broadband access.

• Comcast is both an ISP and a cable company. The cable company arm is threatened by streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. The ISP arm effectively gates access to the cable company’s only real competition.

• By instituting a bandwidth cap, the ISP arm puts a limit on how much their customers can partake of streaming competitors.

• By not counting Comcast’s (cable) streaming against that same (ISP) cap, it provides a barrier to the cable company arm’s competitors.

• Logically, since Comcast owns both the network and the content, there’s an argument to be made that they’re not doing anything wrong. However, that ignores the fact that they are a de-facto monopoly on true broadband access in many areas.

• A company that has a monopoly in one market cannot be allowed to leverage that monopoly to stifle competition in another market.

The solution:

• Break up Comcast into two seperate companies. One that owns content, and one that owns infrastructure. Let the ISP own the lines to the house. Force the content arm to compete on even footing.

I finished my run of Mass Effect 3 this past weekend. There’s some controversy surrounding the “ending”, to the point of folks returning the game, demanding changes from Bioware, etc…

I’m actually going to argue that the game, as shipped, is incomplete. That there is no “ending” given.

Ample warning, there shall be spoilers.

Most folks agree that things get a little…odd…after Shepard gets hit by Harbinger’s beam during the run to the Conduit. Up until that point, most of the game makes sense and follows logic. After the screen turns white, things go a bit wibbly-wobbly.

In no particular order:

• Joker flees Earth in the Normandy, attempting to escape from the collapsing Relay conduit. Why exactly would he flee? Particularly after everything he and Shepard have been through. He may not be a combatant, but he’s never shown himself to be a coward.

• The Normandy crash-lands on a jungle planet. Joker emerges completely unharmed. Remembering his brittle-bone syndrome where he can suffer breaks by sneezing too hard, he makes it through a crash with not even a scratch? Seems highly unlikely.

• Even more unlikely, the squadmates you had with you on Earth also emerge, completely unharmed. This means Joker needed to break from the Sword squadron, get to Earth, pick up Shepard’s squad (but not him), get back up into space, and make the jump before the Crucible fires.

• When Shepard makes his slow-motion stagger to the Conduit, Harbinger is nowhere to be found, even though he was nearly standing on the Conduit (a little behind, but still) just prior to this scene. The only enemies Shepard faces are three husks and a Marauder.

• After going through the Conduit, Anderson is on the radio, claiming to have “followed” Shepard through. Somehow he’s ahead of Shepard - but his commentary on the “chasm” comes at a point where Shepard can see the same chasm. He should be able to see Anderson at that point, but doesn’t.

• During the final conversation with the “Kid”, it’s mentioned that The Illusive Man (TIM) made the “Control” choice, but couldn’t carry it out, as he was already being controlled. However, this must’ve happened prior to the confrontation in the Citadel control room (since TIM doesn’t make it out alive). If that’s the case, why did he come from behind Shepard, rather than from the elevator?

• When confronted by Shepard and asked why he doesn’t just control the Reapers, TIM’s response is that he needs Shepard “to believe”. Why would he care what Shepard believes?

• During the same confrontation, Anderson has a line “They are controlling YOU” - when he says this, he’s not looking at TIM, but at Shepard.

• We’ve never seen the Reapers exert any sort of physical control over anything other than the Collectors (and even then, it was only Harbinger “assuming control”). Yet TIM is able to simultaneously control both Shepard and Anderson. An argument could be made that he could exert some level of control over Shepard’s implants (after all, they were done by Cerberus, even though Miranda says she didn’t implant a control chip), but Anderson? Anderson’s just a regular old human. A badass one, but he’s never revealed to have implants of any kind. How exactly is TIM controlling him?

• During the “choice” conversation with the “Kid”, Shepard is compeltely out of character. He’s very oddly submissive and receptive to what the “Kid” says. This is in stark contrast to every other conversation in the game.

• The “Kid” first identifies himself as the Catalyst, then as the creator/controller of the Reapers. Then, he starts referring ot the Reapers as “we”, which implies that he’s one of them. Shepard ought to be picking up on that - why would he listen to anything someone directly associating themselves with the Reapers says?

• The “Kid” actively tries to dissuade Shepard from choosing Destroy, while playing up the Control and Synthesis options. He even makes the cliched argument that Shepard is “different”, and can succeed where TIM failed. This seems highly unlikely to me.

• Further, the “Kid” first says that Shepard is the first organic to make it this far - then just a little later implies that TIM made it there first, chose “Control” and failed. It can’t be both. Regardless of having implants, if Shepard is considered an “organic”, so should TIM.

• Why exactly is the “Kid” the same one Shepard first saw on Earth, and has been having creepy nightmares about?

• Speaking of that kid on Earth, he gets around almost nonsensically, and noone other than Shepard ever notices him? Even when he gets on the shuttle, there are soldiers helping others on, wouldn’t they pay special attention if they saw a child?

• Assuming you had a high enough EMS score (I didn’t, because apparently I didn’t make the right choices in previous games, and have no interest in multiplayer, but I’ve seen the “extra” scene), the final scene before the credits in the Destroy ending is Shepard waking up under some concrete rubble, with a piece of rebar piercing his leg. The last time we saw Shepard before this was on the Citadel, which so far as we’ve seen, doesn’t have any concrete construction - just metal. On the other hand, the area in London where the Conduit was is filled with the stuff. This heavily implies that Shepard wakes up on Earth. Based on his proximity to the explosion at the Crucible, and that the Conduit was a one-way transport - it doesn’t make sense that he’d end up back on Earth.

That’s a lot of odd bits that don’t make sense. And I’m not even going into the similarities between the three “endings”.

There’s a way this can make some sense, though.

The “extra” clip in Destroy heavily implies Shepard is in London. The only reasonable way that can happen is if he never actually went through the Conduit. So let’s make a base assumption that everything between the fade-to-white when he’s hit by Harbinger and that point happens while Shepard is unconcious.

Throughout the game, Shepard has seen this weird kid - first on Earth, then in dreams, and finally at the Crucible controls. As I mentioned earlier, noone else sees this kid. Anderson doesn’t see him in the vent, the soldiers don’t see him approach or get on the shuttle, and Shepard is alone when he gets to the Crucible.

Based on descriptions of the Indoctrination process, hallucinations and nightmares are heavily referenced. The Rachni Queen way back in ME1 mentioned “inky shadows”, which matches quite well with the second and third dream sequences. In ME2, one of the logs from the Reaper IFF mission mentions seeing things in vents, and walls moving/changing. Both of these happen to Shepard (the latter referenced by Anderson).

So, what if the “Kid” is actually a Reaper projection (presumably by Harbinger) meant to slowly break Shepard’s will? This would explain Shepard being the only one to see the kid, the nightmares, and the fact the Catalyst uses the exact same form.

Adding to this, if you listen to the audio during the dreams, there are echoes/whispers of the crew/squadmates that Shepard failed to save from death. The entire setup seems to be designed to haunt Shepard with his failures, and reinforce sympathy towards the “Kid”.

After the events on Tuchanka, wherein (in my game), Shepard loses Mordin, we see him crack for the first time. He’s shown as being incredibly distraught - which would seem to be a perfectly normal reaction for most people. Not for Shepard. He’s lost friends before, but nothing ever seems to have had this sort of effect on him.

Doubly so after the encounter with Kai Leng and the loss of the Prothean VI. Shepard completely loses his cool if you go talk to Joker. This just doesn’t happen.

It’s a pretty blatant way to show that Shepard’s resolve is being broken, slowly but steadily. This comes to a head in the run-up to the Conduit, when things on Earth are shown as being horribly bleak, and Shepard makes a few quantum-calls to settle his affairs. The tone that gets set is that even Shepard thinks at this point it’s hopeless - but being Shepard he’s going to do it anyway.

This of course ends with the beam hit, and the fade to white.

From that point on, things take on a dreamlike state. If this is the final stages of Harbinger’s attempt to asset control of Shepard’s mind, much of what we see/hear here may be symbolic.

The Anderson/TIM confrontation takes the forefront here. If this is all happening in Shepard’s head, these aren’t really TIM and Anderson. TIM obviously would represent the Reaper influence - and his attempts to convince Shepard that controlling them is the right solution, combined with his “need” for Shepard to “believe” this (rather than just taking matters into his own hands) would seem to support this. Likewise, Anderson would represent Shepard’s resistance to Reaper control - just as Anderson leads the resistance on Earth.

TIM attempts to execute Anderson - IE: Harbinger attempting to take down the last vestiges of Shepard’s ability to resist. Remember, at this point Shepard’s mentally unstable, at the point of breaking, and has likely been quite heavily injured, and losing blood. His ability to resist is most likely lower than it’s been in the entire series (aside from his brief stint being dead). Harbinger is attempting to capitalize on that.

Shepard manages to resist, and instead shoots TIM - once again resisting the Reaper influence.

After this, Shepard is tired. His will to resist is tired. Anderson and he have a little heart-to-heart, and Anderson dies. Shortly after, Shepard also looks “ready” to die. He’s let down his defenses at this point, and Harbinger sees the final chance to break him.

Rousing him from what may have been his real death, a call comes in supposedly from Hackett - there must be a problem on Shepard’s side. Once again, Shepard needs to take action. But he’s broken, and can only manage to crawl to the control panel before blacking out.

At this point the elevator goes up to the “choice” area, and we have the conversation with the “Kid”, who is very likely Harbinger once again.

This time, though, Shepard’s will is weak. He’s submissive, compliant. He appears to believe everything the “Kid” tells him. All those dreams, all that guilt - Shepard’s been conditioned to sympathise with the “Kid”. He doesn’t appear to catch the little slips - referring to the Reapers as “we”. He even seems to buy into the “TIM failed, but you’re different” line.

Then, you’re forced to choose. You can’t shoot the “Kid”. (I tried - you fire, but nothing happens) You can’t walk away - you’re just reset to follow the path. You must choose.

And the choices, if you think bout them, are pretty bad all around.

Control - TIM chose this and failed, the “Kid” even says that this will kill you - but implies that you’ll be able to control the Reapers. How exactly will Shepard do that when he’s dead? I don’t think Shepard would buy into this nonsense. Control is submission. Shepard is anything but submissive through the series. The fact the “Kid” smirks rather evilly if you choose this is the nail in the coffin.

Synthesis - Remember Saren? He went on and on about this very thing. Didn’t work out well for him. This implies that somehow every organic and synthetic life will somehow be altered. Shepard’s always been a champion of free will - why would he make this decision for every sentient in the galaxy? He wouldn’t. Even though this feels vastly superior to “Control”, it’s still not in character - and would appear in hindsight ot give the Reapers even more power - since they can directly interface with synthetics.

Destroy - Everything in the series shows Shepard as being the one who gets things done. He accomplishes the mission. At whatever cost. What’s his mission? Destroy the Reapers. This is the only choice that seems in-character to me. Additionally, the “Kid”, who identifies himself as a Reaper - actively tries to dissuade you from this choice. He has to present it - since otherwise the choice would be “Reapers win” or “Reapers win more”. Having the option there makes it feel more like a choice, and less like being railroaded into what the Reapers want. Choosing this is also the only way to get the extra “Alive” clip of Shepard in the rubble. Symbolically, this choice would show that Shepard, even in his broken state, continues to resist Reaper control.

And that’s how it ends. Shepard wakes up, after having thrown off the attempted Indoctrination. He’s badly wounded, but alive. This would also imply that noone made it to the Conduit, the Citadel hasn’t been opened, the Crucible hasn’t been fired, and the Reapers haven’t been dealt with.

In other words, there hasn’t been an ending. There hasn’t even been a climax. We’re still building up to that final confrontation between Shepard and the Reapers.

EA/Bioware can of course add to this with DLC. The final message from the game is to watch for DLC. And no doubt, EA/Bioware would love to see more income from DLC. They already ripped a character out of the game to sell seperately (the Prothean from the From Ashes day-one DLC was written into the game, then removed to be sold seperately, along with a new mission).

My fear is that they’re planning on selling us the ending that should have been included with the game itself. It would confirm that EA/Bioware have cheated their customers - implying that Mass Effect 3 was a complete product, when in fact it isn’t.

A free DLC that adds an ending would be fine by me, but I fear the production of this would cost a great deal of money, if it hasn’t already been written/performed/programmed. (Hiring the voice talent isn’t cheap.) Of course if it had already been written, and was then intentionally cut/held back from the final product, that’s a slap in the face to customers as well. Customers deserve a complete product. For a game, particularly the endcap to a 6 year trilogy, this means the ending can’t be something that’s not provided with the game.

Bottom line: If the ending is released for free, I’ll play it. If it’s sold, I won’t. I refuse to support this sort of treatment, where integral parts of games are ripped out to be sold later. Ripping content out for this purpose (important plot-relevant characters) is bad enough - the entire ending? Unforgivable.

So let’s talk about Soul Calibur V, shall we? The Soul series, all the way back to Soul Edge in the arcades (ported as “Soul Blade” to the PS1 due to name conflicts) has had a fantastic storyline for a fighting game series. Each character had a well-defined and developed motivation for seeking one sword or the other. They had personality.

That’s all out the window this time around.

We have new characters replacing old ones, with no explanation whatsoever. Who the heck is Xiba? He’s a staff-user like Kilik, and may even have the same staff - but we’re given no information about him. Same with Natsu, who’s apparently the ninja representative this time around, replacing Taki for unexplained reasons. Several other characters share this same fate. Others, like Talim or Zalaselamel, are missing completely.

What passes for “Story Mode” focuses tightly on just two characters - Patrokolus and Pyrrha, the son/daughter of series veteran Sophitia (who isn’t in the game, apparently having been killed by Tira off-screen between IV and V - Yay for story!). Siegfried, Ivy, Tira and new character ZWEI (yes, capitalized, and apparently a not-so-subtle shout-out to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure) have guest spots. We see Nightmare (well, a little of him) and Maxi/Natsu/Xiba/Leixa have a single-chapter cameo. That’s it. Noone else.

Oh well, they’ll be explained in their Arcade Mode endings, right?

Right?

Nope. “Arcade Mode” is the new name for what used to be “Time Attack”. It’s six stages, and you’re judged on how long it takes you to complete. There are no in-engine cutscenes between fights, and no character-specific openings/endings whatsoever. Not even storyboard-style text-based ones like in some previous entries.

Story Mode takes about two hours to complete. Hope you like Patrokolus - you’ll be using him for most of it. Once you’re done with that, you’re done with single player. There’s nothing else. Even SCIV, which was terrible, had Tower of Souls. SCV has nothing.

Apologists are saying “Yes, but the actual gameplay is good, and Namco focussed on the tournament circuit this time around.” Both true statements, but come on. Even tournament-darling Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition 2012 has arcade-mode openings and endings. They’re not great (SF story lines have always been horrible and bare-bones), but they’re present. MK9 also spent a lot of resources on tournament balancing/gameplay concerns, and still managed to have some of the best single-player content ever seen in a fighting game.

For a series known for its single-player content (Remember Tales of the Sword?), SOul Calibur V is a complete and utter disappointment.

Now, putting those complaints aside for just a moment, the actual fighting game itself is very good. It’s gorgeous, controls well, and is fun to play.

But even there, there’s room for complaint. Many characters have lost a good deal of their original move sets. Let’s take Leixa for example. She’s the replacement for Xianghua, and shares both her style and move set (she also looks like her, to the point I wouldn’t be surprised if folks mistook her for her forebear). However, a good deal of Xianghua’s move set is missing. This is a style that centered around flow. One move smoothly flows into another. With Leixa, that’s missing. Many of her moves just…stop. In previous entries, Xianghua would have another move that would continue where the first left off. This just feels sloppy.

Other characters, like Mitsurugi, had alternate stances that enabled different types of moves. These stances have been removed, which removes quite a bit of versatility. But not all stances were removed - Siegfried for example seems to maintain his, although he’s lost quite a few options coming into/out of/between stances.

All characters now have a “Critical Edge” move, similar to SF4’s Supers/Ultras. These all use the exact same activation - qcf-ABK. No variation between characters at all.

Guard Impact now uses part of the same meter used for Critical Edge. It’s function is now replaced by “Just Guard”, which requires tapping the guard button at the exact moment of impact (Guard Impact was tapping forward on the stick, plus Guard, just before the impact). Parries are apparently gone completely.

This all seems to have been done to make the game “more accessible”. Problem being, the game already was potentially the most accessible fighting game out there. These changes really only serve to dumb things down.

For a long-time fan of the series, this is pretty sad. At least in its misery, SCIV was true to its roots. SCV, while feeling like a better game, really falls flat in a lot of ways that disappoint me.

It’s ridiculous, fun, and way, way over the top.

The demo consists of two boss fights. I’d really have liked to see a bit of the non-boss gameplay, since that will most likely make up the bulk of the game.

The boss fights owe a lot to God of War and somewhat surprisingly Panzer Dragoon.

The main system in play seems to be dealing with the fight mechanics until you’ve filled the meter at the top of the screen, at which point you go into a cinematic QTE. These weren’t too difficult to keep up with, although I found myself paying more attention to the QTE prompts than the action.

The art style is a cross between cell shaded and manga - which works really, really well.

I’ll probably be picking this one up.

It looks like I’ll be pulling a three-way main change, due to a game-breaking bug related to group questing.

Drop Quests Bugged

Our static group consists of my wife and I, as well as a friend of ours. We use a companion to fill the fourth slot.

Our friend plays a Bounty Hunter tank. My wife and I both play Sith Sorcerers, with her taking up healing, while I play DPS (currently Madness, which plays similarly to a WoW Mage/Lock hybrid).

Frequently, quests will involve collecting X number of item Y, dropped by mob type Z. For example early on Balmorra, there’s a quest to retrieve 5 Cyborg parts from (surprise, surprise!) Cyborg-type enemies. You go out, kill those enemies, and some of them drop the quest item. This is denoted by a yellow glowing beam emanating from the corpse. (Regular loot is similarly denoted by a cyan beam, good loot by a green one, and really, really good loot by a dark blue one which I’ve only seen a couple times).

Not every mob will drop the quest item, but in solo play, the drops are generally fairly frequent (a group of 3-4 generally producing 1-2 drops).

What we’re seeing, on most of these sorts of quests, is that one of us will finish the quest, and then the others will simply stop seeing the quest items drop, no matter how many are killed. It goes well beyond the case of simple bad luck - when groups of 3-4 usually drop 1-2, but you kill 15 groups with nothing, that’s a significant difference, and an indicator that something’s wrong.

We’ve sometimes been able to work around this by various combinations of:

• Members leaving the party
• Logging out/in
• Changing “phases/shards”
• Trying to “standardize” how many of a given quest item each player picks up, and only allowing any party member to finish the quest when all party members can see their final pickup.
• Trying to control who “taps” the mobs

…but these don’t always work either. Last week, for example, the problem started for my wife before any of us had finished the pickups. Both our BH tank and I had ~3 after two groups, while my wife saw no drops whatsoever. This persisted through all of us leaving the party, logging out and back in again (into a different phase/shard as well), and killing 15-20 groups of mobs with no quest drops for my wife whatsoever.

She got frustrated, and stopped playing as a result. She’s actively considering quitting the game entirely. She’s upset, and understandably so.

This is infuriating and disruptive. It means in the best case that it takes 2-3 times as long to finish these sorts of quests - or in the worst case not finishing them at all and getting frustrated enough to stop playing entirely.

We’re not entirely certain, but suspect that this is caused in part by both my wife and I playing the “same” class. We can’t prove there’s a connection yet

Group play in an MMO should be the standard. It should “just work”. This should be the highest priority. Group questing being broken is a huge problem that needs to be fixed sooner rather than later.

Main Change Roulette

Since the only real “problem” with our play that we can see is that both my wife and I are playing Sith Sorcerers, the only way for us to affect this and reclaim “fun” group play is for one of us to change mains. That, of course, would be me.

Since this is a Star Wars game, I want to play a lightsabre-wielding class. It’s just a matter of flavor for me. With us being unsure of how multiple party members of the same base class will work out (our current issue may be two of the same advanced class, but we can’t be sure), that leaves a single choice: Sith Warrior.

I’ve been soloing my Sith Warrior/Juggernaut, who’s now level 25, and about halfway through Nar Shaada. He’s fun to play, but is currently Tank-specced. We already have a Tank, and he’s a bit too far ahead. I can respec him to DPS without a problem, but I can’t pull him back to level 20, nor un-finish Balmorra. So while he’s the obvious choice, he won’t work out currently.

So, the weekend was spent getting another alt caught up, with the intention to be played in-group until everyone is caught up to my Juggernaut. With Inquisitor out, Bounty Hunter taken, and Warrior waiting in the wings, there’s only one base class left: Imperial Agent. Going Sniper with him. Being pure ranged DPS, he’s about as close to my Sorc as I can get as far as gameplay is concerned. I’m not really all that happy with the cover/gunplay mechanics, but this is just a stopgap to hold me over until we’re caught up to my Juggernaut, so I’ll deal with it.

I really, really like the design of his ship, though. The Sith ship is cool, but the Agent’s ship is very slick.

Making Money

With all of these characters approaching their mid-twenties, money becomes an issue. You see, at level 25, the ability to use a Speeder becomes available. The Collector’s Edition comes with a free level 25 Speeder, so you don’t have to shell out for that - but you do need to pay for training. 40,000 credits. Per character. Ouch.

This is especially difficult when it’s your first time through, and you’re trying to balance trade skills, gathering skills, equipment upgrades, and all the other “cool” stuff you’re finding. There are a lot of low-level money sinks in this game. Avoiding them seems to be the best option, even if it’s not the most “fun”.

There’s an easy way out of this, though. Assuming you’re mainly playing on weekends, with short spurts during the week, you probably won’t be leveling 20-25 in a couple days. More likely it’ll take a week or two. This gives you plenty of chances to complete the daily space missions.

Space missions become available once you receive your ship around level 15-16. The first quests you get are to do single missions, of which there are three available. Completing these three single quests opens up two dailies, which require you to complete all three a second time. If you do all of these when you first get your ship, you’ll very likely gain a level just from the quest experience, as well as a decent chunk of credits.

At level 20, two more space missions become available - again with single completion quests to start, followed by a daily that requires completion of both.

Just remember to invest in ship upgrades first. The level one upgrade set is pretty cheap, and will easily carry you through the first two tiers of missions. You buy these at the Fleet, from the vendor next to the Speeder salesman. You don’t strictly need these for the first tier, but the second tier will be very difficult without them.

Additionally, the upgrades allow completion of at least one “hidden” objective in the Cartel Listening Post mission, worth 2.5kxp and credits once daily. I won’t spoil it for you, but i’ll give a hint: Look for something targetable that doesn’t seem to be able to be destroyed. Then hit it with missiles every time you can.

Completing all three dailies (5 missions total), along with the bonus objectives in the missions themselves, will net you 8-12k credits a day, along with a good bit of XP. Averaging 10k/day, you’ll have the 40k for Speeder training in four days. Assuming you complete the dailies on work nights, you’ll have an extra 10k on top of that by the weekend. That should help to fund the other big moneysink - skill ups.

Via Techdirt: ‘Nerds’ finally speak to Congress on SOPA

About time, especially considering the original hearings didn’t include a single technical expert, nor dissenting opinion. This lineup is similarly one-sided, but as Masnick points out: “Of course, can you think of an actual, respected technologist who is in favor of SOPA? Yeah… didn’t think so…”

Does this mean Congress finally has pulled their collective heads out of the sand (or should that be “piles of money handed to them by the RIAA/MPAA lobbyists”)? Time will tell.

Noticed that my Pinboard account hasn’t been updating lately. I had it set up to automatically grab Starred items from my Google Reader account. While poking around in Pinboard, I found this distressing bit of news:

That’s not good.

I use Pinboard as a storage container for links I think are worth reading. This makes it easy to search for things I remember reading a while ago, but don’t particularly remember where. Being able to simply star an article in Reader, and have it automatically go to Pinboard was extremely convenient.

I’m going to have to find another solution. Shame on you, Google.

Via The Verge: A good smartphone comes but once a year

This brings up a great point. What if all that engineering effort went into making just one really awesome Android phone rather than ~8 (with carrier-specific variants)?

Pre-order: I give up

I’ve given up on receiving any sort of resolution to my pre-order issue. EA/Bioware don’t care. In the grand scheme of things, I can never really get repaid for the loss of Early Access, and the only ongoing benefit to having this resolved would be a low-level color crystal. Other than satisfying my desire for resolution, at this point it’s not worth my time and frustration to deal with this any more.

The Group Game

My primary character is played exclusively with a small static group consisting of my wife and a longtime friend.

I’m playing a Sith Inquisitor/Sorceror, investing heavily in the Madness tree (which looks roughly equivalent to a WoW Warlock). I may switch to Lightning (roughly a WoW Mage) depending on how I feel about the class as time goes on. I’m a DPS player by nature. I’ve never really felt the desire to heal, but having a heal spell or two to throw in a clutch situation is quite useful.

My wife is also playing a Sith Inquisitor/Sorceror, but is instead focusing on the Healing tree (roughly equivalent to WoW Priest). Her calling is healing, and she’s damn good at it. She’s enjoying having a few more DPS-oriented powers, though.

While the beta punished groups that contained more than one character of a given class by preventing them from taking part in each other’s class quests (one character could attend the other, but once done with the quest, could not enter the other player’s instance of it), this has been fixed. There are still a few speed bumps that seem to be in place, though. More on those later.

Our friend is playing our tank, a Bounty Hunter. He puts us to shame on small trash groups, having an ability that never fails to destroy an entire group in less time than it would take my DPS character to take down a single one. Slightly overpowered? Probably. He’s feeling some frustration as the actual tanking abilities (damage reduction, taunts, etc…) are apparently quite slow at being doled out. This will surely fix itself over time.

We’ve quested together up to level 15-ish, and done the first “Flashpoint” (TOR’s term for party dungeons). The max group size is 4, and there are only three of us, so we’ve been using a companion to fill the gap. Most of the time we use our Tank’s healer companion, since the Inquisitor’s first companion is a tank, and we really haven’t needed one as much as we’ve felt the need for a little more healing power.

Stories

The storyline portions are rather hilarious in a group, particularly when it comes to mixing Light/Dark characters. In our case, both of my party members are Light, while I’m playing Dark. This of course makes my character look like a raving lunatic some of the time. And that makes us all laugh like crazy.

Bioware’s had a lot of experience crafting conversation systems. What we have in TOR is essentially the same system as in the Mass Effect games. Generally you get three choices: “Good”/”Kind”, “Evil”/”Mean”, and “Neutral”/”Smartass”. By and large this works - but it offers three paths, where there really exist only two. There are defined “Light Side” and “Dark Side” gearing paths, but no path for “Neutral” characters.

There’s even an in-game reference to a character who walked the Neutral path - Revan. Started as a Jedi, ended up a Sith, then redeemed himself to the Light Side, and ended up master of both. He’s a legendary figure, to be sure (his story partially told in Knights of the Old Republic, and then glossed in the novel), but gives in-game evidence that such a path can exist. It’s a shame Bioware didn’t implement this.

The Solo Game

I’ve also soloed two more characters to level 10 (where you get off the first world and join the world-at-large), with two more on the way. Eventually I’ll have at least eight - one of each class on each side - but for now I’ve been primarily concentrating on the Empire.

The story lines thus far have all been pretty good, with the Bounty Hunter failing to grab me as much as the others. The Agent’s storyline is a bit more comedic, whereas the Warrior’s story is filled with awesome badass Dark Side moments.

The stories don’t give equivalent rewards in terms of Dark/Light side points. My Inquisitor took every Dark Side option available, and even did a few more quests than my Warrior (as he was able to group for the Heroic quests), but came out around 800-ish Dark, while my Warrior left Korriban with over 1300, having been played completely solo. It’s possible (and likely) that these will even out over time.

Likewise, all characters don’t feel like they’re equivalently powerful. Tanky-types definitely feel much more powerful than Magey-Shooty ones. My Warrior could effortlessly leap into a group of 3-4 enemies and down them in a few seconds. My Agent needs to plan every move carefully, as he’s incredibly impotent once non-focused mobs get up close. Again, this will probably even out as levels climb and the damage output of DPS characters outpaces that of tanks.

Wishlist

There’s a few areas I’d really like to see some improvement:

• When grouped, doing normal “drop” quests, we’ve noticed that sometimes either my wife or I would end up just having drops stop once the other had finished collecting the required number of items. To fix this, I would need to drop group, and my wife would need to reset her quest, and then complete it without me in the group. This is disruptive and frustrating, and needs to be addressed.

• Companions sometimes disappear for no apparent reason. When a party member has a companion out, and you send your own out to do some crafting, the timer ends up off-screen.

• UI Mods - I want my four action bars grouped at the bottom of the screen. I want to reposition my chat window. I want to remove extraneous bits from the UI. I’ve heard that UI mods are something that will be possible in the future. It can’t come too soon. (THis would also allow the community to fix issues with the default UI, such as the companion timer I mentioned previously.)

• Customer Service. This needs serious improvement. CS needs to be available, competent, and willing to help, particularly when everything isn’t going as planned. The SOP for EA/Bioware seems to be to clam up, shutting down access to the website, forums, and phone support when there are issues. This is unacceptable. Based on a number of folks in the forums who still haven’t had legitimate issues properly addressed, but are being lied to and having their tickets closed, the BS that I went through is still going on. This is also unacceptable. If there’s anything that’s going to cause folks to leave this game, this is it.

Just an update on the SWTOR situation.

Preorder: No resolution

Still no resolution to my preorder issue. I’ve received multiple mails from presumed autoresponder “M0-T0”:

Greetings,

I am Protocol Droid M0-T0 of Human-Cyborg relations,

Thank you for contacting us regarding the issue you are experiencing.

Since the game is officially launched, our Early Game Access and Pre-Order phases are now over. If you experience any issue accessing the game or posting in the forums, please make sure you have redeemed your retail code, and that your account has an active subscription.

• To redeem your retail code, please log into your account and click on the Code Redemption option, click on Enter a Code and follow the steps on screen.

• To add a subscription, log into your account and click on the Subscription option, then you can decide to either Sign up for a recurring subscription plan or to add a Game Time Code.

We apologize for any inconvenience that you may have encountered and hope to see you soon into the game.

Galactic Support is our specialty…

Sincerely,

Protocol Droid M0-T0 Star Wars: The Old Republic Customer Service

In other words “Since we didn’t bother to address your preorder issue prior to launch, we’re going to ignore it now”.

“Galactic Support” may be your specialty, but “Customer Support” is your job, and you’re not doing it.

Login status

Now that the official launch is past, I’m able to login to the game. This pretty much puts the nail in the coffin that my issue was indeed that the preorder code was never applied to my account, and that all SWTOR Support needed to do was issue me a valid preorder code.

At least I’m able to login. Many folks had similar issues with their retail codes, and are still waiting for a resolution. The “grace period” for doing so ends today, so anyone in that situation who doesn’t get their issue addressed will be locked out of the game. Hopefully SWTOR Support is more responsive to their issues than they were to mine.

Server Queues

I’ve seen minor queues (160-250ppl, 30 min) on the server our guild was allocated to, around 6-6:30pm when I get home from work. Many folks are seeing much worse. The problem seems to be that the fine folks at SWTOR allocated many large pre-launch guilds to the same servers, rather than spreading them out. Someone should have recognized this would cause issues.

But, queues are a part of MMO launches, so even though the worst of the situation should have been avoidable by some forethought and planning, this is still somewhat expected.

Forum Queues?

However, what’s more distressing is that as of this morning, there is now a queue on forum access, including the Customer Support forum. This extends to each page view, so evan after waiting 35 minutes for one page to refresh, moving to the next page of a long thread results in another queue.

This is ridiculous.

It seems that SWTOR Support’s answer to having many folks with issues is to:

• Lie to customers and tell them their problem is fixed, without actually fixing anything. (I’m looking at you, “M0-T0”.)

• Cut off non-email support - have the phone line hang up on customers, and deny forum access.

That’s not how you treat paying customers. That’s not right.

And they wonder why so many folks are pissed off.

But how’s the game?

Over the past two nights, I’ve played my Sith Inquisitor up to level 10 - the minimum required to join up with my guild. This is about how far I played the same class in the Thanksgiving weekend beta, so it wasn’t new content for me. Knowing how things were laid out helped move things faster.

They did fix the most glaring issue I had from the beta as well. In the beta, if you and your spouse were partied, playing the same class (she plays a healing priest traditionally, I play a mage - in SWTOR, both of those are the Sith Inquisitor), when you went to do Class Quests, only one of you could accompany the other. On the second character’s run, the first character would be locked out and unable to participate. Sitting out sucks. Thankfully this appears to be fixed.

Conversations in a mixed Light/Dark side group can be hilarious. Thankfully you now get whatever Light/Dark side points correspond to the answer you choose, not who wins the roll (In the beta, this was not the case).

My CE access allowed me into the “VIP Lounge” - a sparse area with a single vendor, who sells (for vast amounts of credits) things you probably don’t need. There’s an armor set that looks like it’s made for Bounty Hunters, but is Light Armor, so they won’t wear it. There’s some customization items for your companions. That’s really about it. That “exclusive vendor” really isn’t much to sing about.

Bottom line

Once into the game, it plays well, and I didn’t have many issues at all. The big problem with this game is Support (or more accurately, the lack thereof).

EA/Bioware NEED to fix this, or they will lose customers.