During the first Fan Site Summit Bioware organized for members of the Fan Sites that write about their upcoming MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, we had a chance to sit down for 2 days and play the game. These are impressions from our hands on experience and they are divided into the following segments:

1. Combat
2. Story
3. Exploration
4. General

You should also check out Swtorcrafter’s Bounty Hunter and General Gameplay Impressions for another view of the hands on experience.
 

In this article I will talk about the famous Story component BioWare has been focusing on as a main pillar of this MMORPG. If you know Bioware you know their strongest asset is great story. That is why I wanted to fight “The Man” and try and break that aspect of the game. I am an ex World of Warcraft player. Your story does not concern me. Give me quests and point me to where I can shoot stuff. There will be some spoilers in this article, but I will try and spare you as much as I can and warn you upfront when spoiler is incoming.

Click here to read why I think this is the best Bioware game ever made

As part of their regular Friday update swtor.com released a video of the gameplay showcasing a group of 4 facing some early level group content. All 4 Republic classes are
present and we can see different roles they have within a group. It is not too far off the MMORPG standard. I like how the tank is actually ranged (Trooper carries a massive laser cannon thing) while smuggler’s ability to help just a bit with healing stands out from a “rogue” like role.

Another thing to notice would certainly be how the quest is fully voiced and the group respond mechanics. It seems that when a group initiates a voiced quest each of them picks a response an than the game does a silent roll and picks one of the responses. Social points everyone’s been mentioning and that none seem to know what they are for probably have some role in this whole matter.

You can view the video bellow or on the official site. I also recommend you visit Darth Hater because they did a great dissection of the video here.