So, the second mass Beta weekend JUST ended an hour and 15 minutes ago, but since the NDA is still lifted I can feel free to talk about it. I initially started a cyborg Smuggler on a PVP server with the intention of hanging with my friend, but since I got called into work unexpectedly early this weekend, it kinda put the kibosh on team-ups since I'd only be playing while he was asleep and vice-versa.

So you can imagine my happy surprise when I logged in Friday night and found the PVE server I'd played on the first weekend back WITH my old characters on it! Taking up my dead-sexy Chiss bounty hunter, "Cool Blue" Sha'de, again, I was actually able to get her up to 15 (dinged just before the beta ended); I was hoping to have my ship before the weekend ended, but such wasn't to be. I chose the Mercenary class so I could dual-wield, but if I get to play it again I'll probably go with the other profession for the better armor instead.

The spawns weren't half as brutal this time, but it might be because I was expecting them and actually had armor and my companion. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the horrible, horrible lag/frame rate problems which made moving Sha'de feel like driving a forklift with a busted steering column (most common occurrence: standing there hitting the turn arrow with no effect, then all of a sudden spinning 180 or sprinting into mobs I'd been trying to edge past), but since the purpose of this weekend was to stress-test the servers and gauge the effects on the game I suppose it couldn't be helped. Besides, since you had to actively target your opponents, I never had the problem of aggroing mobs with an auto-targetted shot I couldn't control.

Since I got to the point of actually acquiring my first companion (Mako, a cute cyborg computer geek), I can honestly say that the companion system is a gift from GOD (or The Force, as it were). While she wasn't QUITE as capable as a living player, her obsession with healing me in battle was a boon that saved my ass more than I care to admit, plus she was a good enough shot that she tended to rack up almost as many kills as me. I wasn't able to get her to handle the looting like I'd planned, I'm not even sure it's even capable, but I will say that her Crew Skill "Slicing" was worth getting, if only because the typical result was boxes of credits. Since I never got my ship, I wasn't able to make any use of the materials we Scavenged or use the Armstech to build better weapons, though. Also, it's a minor note, but while she had an almost Navi-like tendency towards annoying prattle at first, but the occasional comments she'd make about the settings were a nice touch. There was also a weird glitch that the programmers apparently know about where she'd start randomly blipping around the immediate area, occasionally getting in my way while I was looting, but, again, this was apparently something keyed to the purposely jammed servers.

While most of my problems this time were either nitpicks (do we really need SO MANY different types of useless vendor trash?) or due to the jammed server issues, I will say I was a little disappointed that in order to leave Hutta (and to return to it, as well apparently), you had NO CHOICE but to do a pick-up group for a "flashpoint." For someone who hates pick-up groups like I do, especially ones that last for a few hours that you HAVE to see through to the end, this was...actually more a nuisance than a deal-breaker for me. The Padawan we faced at the end of it took almost an hour to beat by herself alone ("Padawan," my sexy blue ass...the way she was flipping around and teke-smashing us, she would've given Darth Friggin' Vader a hard time), and all we got was a rare blaster rifle which, as a group of three bounty hunters (our Sith got DC-ed early in the mission), none of us could use it anyway (I won the roll for it, thankfully; due to my lag issues, I never got any of the other loot drops).

The thing that made the flashpoint tolerable was part of what made the entire came memorable: the cutscenes. It seems like a such a minor thing from the player side, but it really made this game unique and immersive, and the voice acting was great. I mean, a Twi'lek with a Minnesotan accent? LMAO! In fact, that's probably the word I'd use to describe the entire game, "immersive."

I am SO sold on this game...er...if I didn't have a few hundred dollars worth of unexpected bills at least.