I found this read up on the forums just now. An interesting read:
This was my day so far at the event at the BioWare base at the Hilton. For info on the PvP, scroll down to the highlighted portion for the start of it. For a full recap, feel free to read the whole thing. Sorry for the wall of text. Not really.
Hi all
I'll start by saying I live in San Diego. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a pass to the comic convention, so when I heard they were bring TOR to town outside the Con, I couldn't have been more excited. Reports from other events like PAX mentioned long lines at events like this, so it was my expectation that this would be no different and so I planned to arrive early. Unfortunately for me, I arrived TOO early; when I got the the Hotel at around 7AM, there was no line, there was no BioWare rep, only a security guard who looked upon me with pity in his eyes.
I did not loose heart however, as I met up with two other fellow fans who had arrived around the same time as me, and so together we hunkered down and watched the great Con come to life around us. R2D2 rolled by, beautiful women of all shapes and colors struted their stuff in every costume imaginable, giving away nick nacks we had no use for but were to polite to turn away. We had a front row seat to this as we talked all things Nerd.
Soon; at around 8AM or so, the good folks at Darth Hater showed up and stared at us, amazed someone had actually arrived ahead of them. As we hung out BioWare's own David Bass come by to greet us, giving us an idea of what was in store. I had come thinking I would be playing an origin world, but lo and behold, instead we were to be the first public guinea pigs to try our hand at Alderaan's PvP! Sweet!
Time flew by and before we knew it, 12AM rolled around and, after signing in, I was in the first group to play said PvP, and here is what happened...
By now everyone knows the objective in the Alderaan PvP Warzone, so I won't get into that here. Instead I'll focus on what I played, what I did, and my impressions of the experience.
I sat down with the the Imperiall Agent Sniper. Yes, being first in line, in the first group, I had the pick of the litter, and somehow that is the class I started with. This might be due to the musical chairs nature of how we were allowed to select what to play; we were led into a darkened, air conditioned room where the computers where set up in a circle facing away from each other. Republic on one side, Empire on the other. You go in and quickly decide which class to play, knowing the longer you wait to make up your mind, the faster the seats filled up as people took classes and chairs behind you. But I digress...
The Imperial Sniper was built for, obviously, long range, so stealth was not an option. What I did have was portable cover, stun grenades, a group buff, and a host of ouchie single shot options with various cooldowns. Our characters were standing around some kind of station, and to get into the warzone, we had to enter it ourselves by going to the radar mini-map in the lower right portion of the window and select a button that was a Republic symbol or an Empire symbol, depending on which faction you happened to be.
This brought up a tab that allowed you to put yourself in the queue to enter the Warzone by clicking on a "enter solo" type button. Clicking the button makes the symbol on the bottom right blink, showing it worked, and after a minute or so a pop-up informs you the warzone was ready. Clicking enter warzone brings you into a hanger bay area, where we all collectively waited for the match to start, and hurriedly tried to figure out what all of the buttons did.
Before we were really ready, it was go time and you had to click on a speeder bike to enter the actual battle area. I found out later there are multiple bikes and taking a different bike takes you to a different part of the map. (I might have misunderstood this, so correct me if I'm wrong there). Good to know, I think. So we raced to the turrets and started the face off with the republic.
The fighting is fast, feirce, fun and requires every bit of your concentration. This is no WoW, where you can click on someone to start a normal attack while you use other abilities on top. In this game, you pick which ability to use and you better choose wisely because every choice matters. The abilites themselves were mapped to the keyboard's 1-0 , and also to the mouse, which also had more than enough buttons. This makes play very intuitive and easy to learn.
Buffs dotted the landscape that did everything from helping you hit harder, get tougher, or run faster.
I was worried before my hands on time that combat would be slow paced due to reports of it taking longer to kill each other. In reality, this only made victory more sweet, and harder won. When you take someone down, usually with a teamates assistance, you feel like you just went to WAR. On top of that, when you're cornered and outnumbered, you have a chance to survive if you can just hold out, or run, long enough. In my opinion, they NAILED the difficult tight rope of balance between too easy and too hard.
In my first playthrough, the Empire lost, but I still get bragging rights. During the fight I did well enough in the battle that a zone wide announcement trumpeted the fact that I was invincible, in big letters, which really me feel like I made a difference. So even in defeat, I took away a cookie.
All in all the PvP expereince was polished, FUN, and fluid. If BioWare serves up more interesting Warzones and scenarios, I can see this game going the distance.
I plan on going back tomorrow and trying out different classes, and also to play Mass Effect 3.
