Since The Old Republic is unique among MMOs for being vulnerable to spoilers, I'll be including a spoiler section at the end of this post to discuss plot and story elements, right after Tasia's current portrait.
As far as gameplay goes, the Sith Inquisitor really needs her companion much more than the Trooper or Sith Warriors I played in the beta. Prior to my acquiring my companion, I found myself getting surrounded and badly cut up pretty often. I'd usually win, but it would be close. Now that I've got a pseudo-Tank companion, I send him in first, let him draw all the aggro, then murder everyone one at a time with Force Lightning. There's a solo quest in the Sith Academy that I failed at every time I tried it at levels seven, eight, and nine that was a cakewalk at level ten with my companion alongside. I even completed a Heroic 2 quest with just me and my companion, though my attempts at doing a Heroic 2+ quest ended in failure.
We should talk terms here, I suppose. Players coming from a World of Warcraft background may be surprised to discover that all classes in The Old Republic are pet classes. In WoW, the Hunter, Warlock, and Unholy Death Knights got pets...monsters or animals who travel with them on a permanent basis. You had a separate command bar that you used to give them orders, and you fought as a team.
In The Old Republic everyone gets a pet. Or more specifically, everyone gets a companion. A companion is a character who travels alongside you and fights for you, and has their own command bar just like a WoW pet. However, unlike a Warlock's demon, a Hunter's per, or a Death Knight's ghoul, a TOR companion can be conversed with. They fight harder for you the more they like you, and you can buy them gifts and even romance them as you go along! They have their own questlines that you can go on, and they comment on what you're doing as you go through the game.
They're pretty neat, though so far I've only had this one for a couple of hours. You get an item to change your companion's appearance, which I accidentally discarded, leaving me with the basic color scheme for him which is pretty annoying. I'm hoping to figure out where to find a new one, so I'll probably have to Google for that once I finish typing this up.
We should also talk about quests. Like most MMOs, TOR sends you on various missions around the planet you're on. Sometimes it's a fetch quest (go get this and bring it back) and sometimes it's a kill quest (kill x of creature y) and sometimes it's a conversation quest where you resolve it entirely through dialogue choices. In general, you get one or two conversation quests in your starting zone then a bunch of fetch quests, with the kill quests activated once you kill a monster in the area, then you get a chance to kill a bunch more of them as you go about your business in exchange for more experience with which to level up.
Heroic X quests are quests that require more than one player. The suggested number of players is the X. So a Heroic 2 quest means you should be able to do it with two people. Heroic 2+ means at least two, but probably more, hence my repeated failures at soloing it with my companion. Though I did get painfully close, and will likely head back there at level 11 to try my luck again.
Speaking of experience, questing is the primary way to get the points to level your character up with. You do get some for exploring and more for killing monsters, but mostly it's about the quests. I haven't tried PvP yet...in fact, I haven't figured out HOW to yet, despite having been given a quest to go and do so...so I can't comment on how valuable that aspect of the game is from an XP standpoint.
That said, you should still explore. On Korriban alone, I found three Datacrons out in the wilderness that gave me a permanent stat boost or a piece of an item that I can combine with other pieces to make...something. I'm not sure how that works yet, to be honest.
So that's where I'm at. I've just left Korriban with my new companion, and I'm tooling around the Imperial Space Station seeing what's on offer. I'll soon head off to Dromund Kaas, the Imperial Capital, to see what's the next step in my story.
Tasia, Level 10 Sith Sorceress, Imperial Space Station
Alia, Level 2 Jedi Consular, Tython
(SPOILERS after the Tasia portrait.)
(You have been Warned.)
Okay, so the story so far is that you're a slave from a conquered Republic world with Force Sensitivity, and you have to prove yourself worthy of becoming a Sith or die trying. This contrasts nicely with the Sith Warrior background, where you're the scion of a noble Sith family brought in from Dromund Kaas early because you're so cool. Even though you're going to pretty much the same places and having the same world quests, the differences in the way you're treated in one storyline versus the other is pretty stark.
I like that.
What caught me by surprise was this. As a Sith Warrior, you spend most of your time on Korriban with a rival, who you get into Sith nobility games with, including the opportunity to retaliate after he sends an assassin after you by sending three assassins after him. So that's cool. As one might expect, he slaughters your hit team as easily as you killed his guy, and during your final test in the Tomb of Naga Sadow, he ambushes you, and you fight your final duel and finally end him. It's predictable, but reasonably cool nevertheless.
As a Sith Inquisitor, you also have a rival. He's a pureblood Sith who hates your guts for being a lowly slave with delusions of grandeur. Which, to be fair, is exactly what you are. He's the favorite of your Overseer, and he gets all kinds of special treatment while you get sent on one suicide mission after another. Finally, in the Tomb of Naga Sadow during your final test....nothing happens. Turns out your rival blew it and is already back at the Overseer having failed his test, at which point the Lord for whom the Overseer is working flat out executes your rival and promotes you as her apprentice. No final duel, no test of strength. Just "You blew it? Here's some Force Lightning. New girl? You're up next. Don't fuck up like he did."
The tonal shift between the Sith classes is pretty huge. As a Warrior, you leave Korriban feeling like you're the master of the universe. You've fought through and kicked that asshole in the nuts and now you're a Sith, baby! Meanwhile, as the Inquisitor, you feel like you've barely scraped through, and that death is lurking right around the corner, and to fail is to die in agony. You're only here on your mistress' sufferance, and if the last guy hadn't cocked it up, you'd already be dead.
And you know what? That works for me. I never felt like anything more than the sum of my stats in WoW, and if Old Republic can get me to care about my character AS a character? That's awesome.
Bring on the story!
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