Ok, where to start.
First, the Jedi: Choosing a Jedi isn't a random action where you win the lottery at character generation. The Devs, several months from game start, will be keeping an eye out for the rare people that meet certain criteria (with automated code, supposedly). Each Galaxy (server) will have VERY few active Jedi slots, and whether Dark or Light, you have to be subtle when you get the slot, or Vader will hunt you down. The criteria for becoming a Jedi will not be made known, and, obviously, Light & Dark will have different criteria. The criteria will not be a quest, and certain actions will be tagged on players, and the cummulation of these actions may take quite awhile, so it'll be fairly hard (not impossible, just very hard) for people to definatively nail down what allowed them to become a Jedi.
Jedi characters CAN permadeath, but not the first time out. I think the 3rd death is permadeath. After that, you get to keep the character as a Blue Glowie (tm). A ghost.
Since you only get one character per Galaxy, if you get the Jedi slot, on that server only, you now have two slots for characters, one Jedi, one norm...even if you become a blue glowie.
Ok, next...there's a heated debate on the Beta Boards on whether the game is ready for release. It's split, fairly evenly...alot of people are saying no way, alot are saying it's much more ready and stable than most MMORPGs on release. (While some people are claiming that SWG is like Anarchy Online's release, others who were in the AO beta are saying they're stoned)
What alot of people are forgetting is that the game went to press a week ago...all the major problems being seen in beta in the past week, with major bugs popping up and seriously nerfed systems, aren't in the version that's going live...they're the devs seriously screwing with on-the-fly ideas to fixes for future patches after the game goes live, to see if their ideas have merit. Remember, in code and science, you learn from mistakes as well, and in beta, you TRY to break things.
Personally, I think the game is releaseable, and bought a copy...something no other MMORPG has been able to entice me into doing...but I also think that it's being released too soon. It needed another month. But the marketing dept and money controllers said otherwise, so the devs are wearing their brains to nubs doing the best they can.
Becoming a Master so quickly...it's not supposed to be THAT quick, but the professions are kinda like a huge tutorial. The object isn't to keep going up in level for months, the object is to know what you're doing so you can RP in the world as your profession. You start out with the missions (which you can get from Joe Blow NPC in the cantina or on the street, Poxy, it's not just terminal missions) to get there, and some of the repetitive stuff, but from there, once you master, it's all about RP with each other, and since MUSHes have thrived for a dozen years and are still going strong, and this is one of the first games to seriously attract that audience, there will be Galaxies with RP. (more importantly, there will be unofficial combat galaxies where people just try to kill each other, and the RP'ers are already talking to each other about staying away and forming their own unofficial servers)
"Inner city lag, unbelievable.. If you're not on a top of the line machine you will experience horrible lag while in cities and some people with higher up computers even complain about inner-city lag."
I barely meet the minimumn requirements, and my lag is neglible, even with most of the effects turned on.
Then again, I have the latest drivers, and installed it on the C:\ drive (Betas are supposed to be installed on C:\ but some people put it elsewhere.) I'm also not on the test server that was deemed a few days ago to have a serious config error that has nothing to do with the game itself, maybe this guy was on that server.
My game's crashed exactly once.
The rubber band effect is true. However, it's a bug in the code that was instituted to keep people from exploiting a bug that lets you walk really fast without a penalty if you combine a couple of things. The code was a temp fix, anyways, until the real fix was done, and was instituted since the game went to press.
Apparently, if you swan across a lake, because the broken code was looking for steps, it shot you back to the original shore when you stepped onto the opposite bank. Oops.
The pets have worked for other people. If you were a rebel getting trounced by the imperial with the ATST squishing people, I'd say you'd have to agree. But I don't doubt others have had problems...like I said earlier, I still don't think the game's READY.
But I'm still willing to play.
