I guess I'm pretty jaded, I'd be playing this after it goes F2P and I've heard that they've 1) fixed all the problems and 2) added an interesting end game (you just have to know there isn't one right now).

Understandable. This is only the second MMO I've paid for, the other being EVE and I generally don't keep track of all MMOs. The beta was relatively bug free when I tried it and only ran into one mission stopper which isn't important to your class's storyline. If I kept running into bugs like that when I played, I'd probably opt to wait for F2P.

Do you have anything posted about how end game is designed? This doesn't sound like a replayable endgame to me, I could be wrong, but I think this game, more than any other MMO, will be fucked, due to their license, in end game.

Nah they've not mentioned much about the endgame design, just that each of the 8 classes has solo endgame content and high level coop operations for post-story raiding

Why do you think star wars will be more fucked endgame wise than any other game? Its something like 3700 years between the end of this game and the start of phantom menace so they can let you do pretty much anything and have heaps of time to undo it back to the state it was in Ep1. Also its not as if every class will be conquering the galaxy, for example the smuggler & bounty hunter's stories are both purely selfish quests for fortune & glory

Simple, because even though this game takes place way in the past pretty much everything looks the same. The droids look the same, the various costumes looks the same, all of it from all the game play I saw at PAX and screenshots.

Now take a look at Warrior sets from WOW (one of the most conservative classes as far as set designs go):

http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/a/a6/Warrior_Dungeon_Sets.jpg
http://images.wikia.com/wowwiki/images/8/8a/Warrior_Tier_Sets.jpg

This is the shit people expect. They expect crap that gets more and more ridiculous (not just gear sets, but raids, etc.) as they progress in content (eventually the whole damn thing topples from its own weight). Quiet frankly I doubt there's enough artistic license allowed in the license to do anything near what's required as far as gear (e-peen is a major reason to raid) or content.

I've posted WOW screenshots because it's the most well known MMO, but they're all pretty formulaic in this regard. I can only think of a few (like DDO) with muted graphics for end game gear, even then their end game progression gets pretty crazy and epic even without that.

Even though Star Wars has some pretty cool big monsters, there's only a few canonized ones and they've seemed reluctant to add new ones in past franchises (even in The Force Unleased you mostly just fight other Jedi and some Rancors as bosses, they introduced some huge baddy that you sort of fight in TFU2). Take a picture walk through the crazy ass shit Blizzard has done for WOW bosses, tell me they'll manage to pull that off. If they do, great, I just don't think they have the leeway even if they try as hard as they can.

EDIT: I should add, MMOs with stylized art have historically done way better (there's a number of good reasons for this). This is another, major thing that TOR lacks.

Or MMO's that encourage you to make your own design unique like DC universe. You can design a costume in that independent of the actual loot you acquire so you can be equipped with whatever loot you like but if you choose you can also look however you like.

Those do well too, and I haven't actually looked at DC Universe much (because I expected it to suck and I wanted to pretend it didn't exist, perhaps it's better now, at least I hear it is), but I expect even that is rather stylized in comparison.

There's a couple of good reasons that (I heard a talk by the lead dev for Wildstar Online in which he went over this, his name escapes me right now but I think he worked on Champions Online for a long time as well): the graphics age better and the engine needs less changes to look good are the biggest ones. You're also more likely to be able to create a unique look that will resonate with players while incorporating small details from different sources if you wish. There was a lot more and I sort of wish I'd taken notes (he was a very good speaker) but I was fucking tired by then:)

You would be correct, it's been heavily influenced by the Justice League animated show which helps to give it a unique look among MMO's.

For Imperials there's a Heroic mission on Dromund Kaas and one of the items required to complete it can't be retrieved because the object you get it from can't be interacted with.

There's actually shitloads of customisation options, my smuggler in the previous beta went through a dozen or so different looks depending on the armour I found for her and there were a lot of other smugglers around who had significantly different gear than me. Do a google image search for swtor bounty hunter and you'll see a fair bit of variation (and a lot of the redhead woman from one of the trailers), given the fact that the NDA has only just been lifted yesterday and the stress test beta is next week, I think its fair to say you'll soon see a LOT of "check out my character" screenshots that will illustrate the diversity. I doubt they start looking big & stupid but frankly thats a good thing

Okay for anyone who signed up to beta test the game before 11/11/11 and who are interesting in being in the stress test beta (scheduled for this weekend), the new client has just been released for you to download (www.swtor.com/tester).

Also they said somewhere on their forum that they're hoping this beta client will be patchable to the retail one so it might be worth getting just to save bandwidth in december

Thanks for the heads up. Do you know if we can use the previous client? I've got some problems with my connection currently and it's 10 times slower, I'd rather avoid downloading it again if I could.

Also they require answers for the security questions before they allow you to log on.

Thanks for the heads up, but dang... There musta been a lot of changes. So far I have to download 12.5 GBs. I'll just leave my comp on while I sleep.

14GB downloaded and it says there's 12GB more.