The good:

Can you hear the theme song in your head? I can.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is really playable right out of the gate. It is highly complex, running a lot of terrain and NPCs and cinematics, and doing it quite well. Lag has been very low and the longest Q time I’ve had was only 10 minutes. I am enjoying the two characters I’ve started playing quite a bit. Everyone I’ve played with so far has been having a lot of fun, with very few complaints, and no one seems worried about the long term viability of the game. Several of the game systems are fabulous, especially the map system. Considering the number of people playing, I’ve felt very little frustration over game resources and very little competition over quest goals. When I want to talk to an NPC it is smooth and easy to do. The group conversations have also been very fun, and the holo-com option is a real convenience when playing with a partner.

The bad:

I’d forgotten how time-consuming an MMO can be. I’ve stayed up too late and neglected a lot of real world things the past few days. Hopefully I’ll get to a point of balance after the initial new game rush. There are also still some glitches in the game, enough that they are pretty hard to ignore. They are quality of life and graphical rather than real gameplay or fun killers. Considering the number of systems running, it isn’t surprising. But it is a daunting list of little fixes that will take developer time away from new content. The UI still has a lot of maturing to do, but I’m also used to playing a game that had years of updates and fixes under its belt. However, I’m also used to playing a game that was highly UI customization friendly right of of the gate, so I have high expectations. People also need to be aware that if they run group content with strangers, there are no controls in place to keep those strangers from rolling need and winning gear that they can’t use. Be careful who you trust with your shiny blue or orange boss loots.

The ugly:

Guild support hasn’t gone very smoothly so far. My, albeit limited, experience has been that early-access pre-launch of guilds hasn’t gone as described. Until I logged in as the guild leader of our guild, fortunately I got in on day 1 of early access, no one else in our guild was given the option to join the guild. I’m sure that has caused all kinds of grief if it happened to everyone. On a good note, turning the guild over to our actual GL once she got her early access was very easy. The guild interface is very buggy and minimal. It doesn’t refresh the list to show everyone online, the show offline option doesn’t work right either, and the details window only works right intermittently. There is no guild bank at launch, which still astonishes me. I know it isn’t an easy thing to implement, but other games should have proven how important having one is. If they eventually give us a guild capital ship, I just may forgive them this brief period of guild support growing pains. However, I really hope some fixes are coming soon.