(Eternity Vault Developer Walkthrough)
the latest official video gives us a much better look at what operations will look like in SWTOR. while it's no surprise that i'm loving everything i see about this game, i must specifically talk about how much i approve of the way they are setting up endgame. for starters, i think the eight and sixteen man options are great - and when you couple relatively smaller raiding groups with the versatility of each class, you get a game where high-end content is more accessible and less stressful. i say this as someone who has both organized/conducted raids, and someone who has had to share a raid spot with eight other people who also had perfect DPS rotations, all the consumables possible, every little min/max'ing detail covered, etc. - it will simply be easier to fill raid groups, and each guild could have several groups with varying levels of casualness/desire/skill levels.
the video also makes me that much more excited to main-tank on a sith juggernaut. lumbering into battle, lightsaber drawn, beckoning all of the fire and hatred, the realistic sway and folding of the cape, force-leaping to the feet of some gigantic killing machine and hacking away at it: yes, please. something about a class that feeds off of taking damage and hurting others just screams sith, and then you throw in that wonderfully inhuman sith armor, well, i'm just going to try and not use up all of the positive adjectives before the game even comes out.
now for something much more recent: according to this post on askajedi.com, BETA testing starts tomorrow, as in friday, the day after thursday and before saturday. as amazing as this is, the best part about it is the fact that the actual game launch is just that much closer - and even more so for those of us with pre-orders, thanks to early access.
that galaxy is not as far, far away as it once was.
