Where Were You...3 Years Ago!

[QuiDonJorn]

Wishing I could log in and play it, but didn't get to til Feb 2011 because I didn't have my own personal internet connection til then. Came in during patch 1.1, a few weeks before patch 1.2 IIRC.

[KyaniteD]

I started early access on Dec 16 with the digital deluxe edition (upgraded to CE a short while later), so after the download finished I stumbled over my feet hurrying to set up camp on a (new) server and make sure I got the names I had come up with. I was a nervous wreck, because it was my first MMO and I was terrified to play alongside others while at the same time very excited to recreate my open beta character and continue her adventure.

(I remember I played a smuggler in open beta because I wanted to save the Jedi for the live game, but I fell hard and fast for the female smuggler and never looked back. xD)

Edited December 19, 2014 by KyaniteD

[KnightTyler]

I had been following the game since it was originally announced, pumped to play my own, personal story in the Star Wars universe. I had just graduated High School in May and I was skipping a semester before I started my freshman year at College. I remember downloading the beta on my $1800 XPS Laptop at the time and I had the laptop sitting on the edge of the bed, where it fell off and fried the Motherboard when it hit the ceramic tile. Needless to say I was very angry, also taking into consideration I lived in a rural area where the maximum download speed was 1.5Mbps. My girlfriend let me borrow her Dell Inspiron she had just got for Christmas so that I could at least start playing the game, but her laptop wasn't as powerful as my XPS was so I had to settle for low graphics until I was able to get another computer.

 

I remember carefully skimming through servers seeing if the names I wanted were available until me and my friends who were playing finally came across Elysium. Elysium was the best server I've ever been on in any game. Everyone on the Republic side was amazing in PvP and we hardly lost. People were very nice and friendly running Operations and I remember when our guild ran Eternity Vault for the first time just how amazed we were at the game. I preordered the Collector's Edition as soon as it was available and I have stayed subscribed to this game since Day 1. I love this game.

 

P.S. I also got around to getting a new Alienware X51 with a I7-4790 @ 3.60GHz, 16 GB Ram, 256GB SSD and a GTX 760 ti mainly so that I could play this game in all its graphical glory; but I also use it for work, business, and College.

Edited November 6, 2017 by KnightTyler

[Essence_of_Light]

I was enjoying the regular Dev diary updates from James Ohlen, Daniel Erickson, etc. Unfortunately, either these people aren't here anymore or they're non-existent. Sad sad day.

 

James Ohlen is still here, he just keeps his mouth shut now (for the most part). Daniel, on the other hand, got laid off if I'm not mistaken.

[RiVaN_]

I didn't get in on early access or at Launch. My wife and I have a deal, we don't make purchases for ourselves around Christmas time, so I was hoping to unwrap SWTOR on christmas morning. She Got me Skyrim, a new lense for my camera and a 9mm pistol instead. So January rolled around and I decided to pick up SWTOR.

 

My favorite memory from those early days was getting to return to Tarris (which was honestly the main thing that interested me in the game). I made it a point to explore the entire planet. Going in the Endar Spire, finding the bread crumb of clues that wrapped up the story of the folks in the Under under city and finding Brejik's Run speeder were the highlights for me. I'm still here and still enjoying every bit of this game.

I may have complaints and critiques, but I don't let that stuff ruin my day or my fun, this game is pretty awesome!

[MWidowmaker]

about this time 3 years ago...i think my first character was in grathan's estate

[waterboytkd]

3 years ago, I was still playing Dungeons and Dragons Online, probably grinding an Epic Party Crashers (best returns for guild renown). I had been keeping up a little on this game leading up to release (huge Star Wars fan), but thought I'd never play it because (no joke here) it was a subscription-only model. Nevermind that I spent more on Turbine Points in a year than I do on a $15/month sub...

 

But I was grinding hard at that game, as our guild was on its quest to be the first guild to level 100 on Ghallanda. We did it, too, around March, I think...But holy hell, did that burn me out (that burnout is why I still won't join a big guild or do Ops in SWTOR--I don't want to ever "play" a game the way I did DDO again).

 

So when I noticed one day in April that SWTOR was doing a free weekend, I jumped on the chance to try the game out (basically, you had access to the homeworld, capital world, and fleet, and were capped at level 15). Really, that moment was the end of DDO for me.

 

I kept blabbing about the game to my wife, and as my birthday was just around the corner, she bought me a copy of the game (because it came with a free month, so it was like buying a console game...). A couple months later, she had the game, too, as did my buddy we play with. Have been subbed ever since. Even got the game installed on a laptop so my 4 year old son can play (he even has a sub, as he loved doing space missions for a little, and will enter WZs, too--sorry for anyone that gets him on their team!)

[Drudenfusz]

With the official release 3 years ago I have been playing already for a few days... early access (I think I started on the 14th). Playing on a server that is no longer (Darth Revan's Mask), playing my main (which I still enjoy most), even though I had to rename the character when the server merges happened (and that is still something that bothers me how terrible that was handled by BioWare). Anyway, 3 year ago the first people in the guild I had joined even before the early access started to hit level 50, but about a month after release the guild already collapsed because of raid drama, another thing that had huge issues when the game was still young... just like the whole Ilum debacle.

 

So, overall I guess I don't get much feelings of nostalgia, but gets reminded how rocky it all was back then.

[DemonJin]

I was deployed, out to sea, and under the water, excited for the release.

[Beranzen]

I was in Day 1 of early access, by now along with my friend we were exploring Dromund Kaas on our Sith who would become both of our first 55s. I remember everything being so cool, the story drawing me in deeper and deeper, and that thrill of igniting your first lightsaber. How fun the combat was, and how flawless (for me NO issues at all) the launch was. Running thru Forged Alliances brought some of that back, as did the 12x XP. Looking forward to the next 3 years.

[s_w_sanders]

Buying a new computer and getting this game at midnight the day it came out. Then had to wait two days to play because of stupid work, and installing it.

 

Funny story wal-mart hadn't put out anything that night for midnight release so I annoyed the lady and got attitude by making her go in the back and search for this game.

[Murmurhem]

A security officer was making the rounds and tapped me on the shoulder - scaring the absolute crap out of me. I screamed and jumped out of my chair, knocking all of the knickknacks off my desk. Working late has never been the same.

 

This would have been golden had he/she known to simply whisper "T for Teen"

[Fellow-Canadian]

Was there a point in the past 3 years where Bioware didn't neglect the PVP forums? Didn't think so.

[Darth_Furian]

Three years ago I was... Mourning Star Wars Galaxies.

[TheSeventhJedi]

Three years ago? I don't even remember five minutes ago. My timehop app tells me I was playing the game though.

[LyraineAlei]

Three years ago was Dec 2011. I was three quarters of the way through my senior year credits-wise in high school. Parents saw that I wanted to play this, but I was still looking for a job (I swear everyone just blacklisted me because my family moved to the small town in 2005, not two generations before), so I couldn't pay for a subscription. Oh, and the laptop I did have (very cheap and low-end, for school because the family desktop wasn't even plugged in it was very old), had died just over a month before.

 

That was fun, not having a computer at home that I could use more often than when the 'rents weren't using theirs (AKA, not often). My citation skills were better than my peers' however.

 

Spent the next year looking some more for a job, almost diagnosed with depression before moving to my current location where I now have a job and can afford a sub, like I had for the last year.

 

Fun times, I'm still in the "kids these days" category.

[Kantorr]

I remember I made an account, but gave up the game soon after because my computer wasn't exactly very good. Terrible video and processing lag. By the time I bought a new rig, I had all but forgotten about the game. Glad I came back :-)

 

 

Holy Jesus my friend... We have similar stories.

 

I had been waiting for the game to come out for maybe over a year or so. My god... I was so excited. I am a HUGE star wars fan, and this game was the next big Star Wars thing!

 

So after LONG, LONG waiting, it was released. I ran it moderately on my Sony Vaio laptop, on low settings. But when I got to Aldaraan, it was too much. Lag got worse, and to preserve the experience I had waited for so long to have, I quit the game. I would return when I got a new gaming rig.

 

I left the February 2012 after release....

 

Time passed, and I never forgot about this game. I looked forward for SO long to sit in a cantina with Mako, and finish up a side quest.

 

So I managed to finally get my money together for my rig this summer. I ordered the parts and built it this fall. And in Late October, I finally stepped off that shuttle on Nal Hutta to get my sponsor for the great hunt!

[Vhaegrant]

Three years already!?

 

I guess I would have been playing Skyrim (and by playing I mean walking around picking flowers), or cursing Battlefield 3 (always kicked off a server before the match ended) waiting for the servers to go live so I could jump on and hopefully get all of the character names I wanted (relatively successfully, even with the server changes the few names I had to change forced me to be a bit more creative and come up with even better names )

 

For me SWTOR isn't about the end game, or even the group content (I'm not anti-social honest ) it's a full on nostalgia trip. A child of the '70s I grew up on the first wave of Star Wars and had a handful of the little plastic figures, some were school yard trades so never came with weapons, some were gifts from well meaning grand-parents (needless to say they were the aliens you had to squint really hard to see in the cantina) and a treasured few were the iconic main characters (Chebacca lasted for many years before an unfortunate incident with a tippex bottle and his transition into Albino Wookiee). My imagination filled in all the gaps, most of the gaps being the figures I wished I had SWTOR gives me a toybox full of the figures I wished I could have had, and allows a little escapism for an hour or two most days And it has Wookiees, no sightings of albino ones yet, but the Huntmaster was surprisingly close

 

A few friends have told me I need to grow up, usually before they waste a few hours smacking a small defenceless white ball into the long grass at stupid o'clock in the morning. Much rather have my middle age pursuits than theirs

Edited December 19, 2014 by Vhaegrant

[JarenWelen]

Got in on the first day of early access after a 3+ year d20 RP campaign - the idea was to build the backstory for our guild and starting characters during that time. Our GM was even sending us to places like Voss and Taris before they were announced, and I luckily chose a Miraluka character back in 2009! Huge amount of excitement but sadly the guild only lasted a month in game. Anyway!

 

I stayed up all night and completed Coruscant just in time for the servers to go down at 6AM. (Without spoilers, I had a real sense of urgency to complete my class mission as the race against the server shutdown timer ticked on!) I was back online the second the servers came back up and played all through the second day.

 

Unfortunately that second day was also my one year anniversary with my then-partner. I stopped playing with just enough time to shower and get to hers. I was sitting in the restaurant literally trying to keep my eyes open, was so out of it....

 

Needless to say, this did not go down well! (Stayed together 2 more years though!)

 

That was the day I taught myself the lesson that many people will learn at some point in their lives: the woman always comes first.

(Unless it's a really good game)

[oakamp]

3 yrs ago, everything is so bright,

swtor has so many hope, so much potential,

we sold 2 mils products,

2 mils ppl online,

servers were full,

 

but now..............................................,

sadly.

Edited December 19, 2014 by oakamp

[BurningDT]

I started up again recently, and I still have my old info in my signature, heh. I lost a bunch of my names, but I still have Dreadful fortunately.

 

I'm greatly enjoying all the new content.

[DarthDymond]

Working a job I hated, but living with my best friend who is a fellow Star Wars nerd and MMOer - he ended up getting way more into WoW's end-game than I ever was, even though we both went together and bought it the day after X-mas 2004, taking the plunge into MMOs and dying many, many times before we figured out what the hell 'tanks' were.

 

I had been in the SWTOR Beta, but because I knew my main would be a Sorc once it went live I only leveled one up to about the end of DK, after that I switched to a 'Slinger and a Merc so I wouldn't be repeating the exact same content too much once I started on the live Server (Saber of Exar Kun, since I was a big fan of the Tales comics).

 

I remember my roommate playing WoW on his computer (which was set up in the same room as mine so we could game together) and how he burst out laughing when I was playing that Merc and got the first time he calmly says "You work with me, or I shoot you in the face." Sadly, the time invested and the pull of WoW was too much for him, and although he tried it out, SWTOR didn't stick.

 

For me, though, SWTOR was a much better fit - by Early Access I had cancelled my WoW account (even lost a free copy of Diablo III doing so, but that game was doing nothing for me anyway) and I've been a happy SWTOR player ever since.

Edited December 19, 2014 by DarthDymond

[hunterraaze]

Three years ago, wow... Where did the time go? Unfortunately, I wasn't apart of this community yet, still two months away from me logging in for the first time, but even though I wasn't apart of the game yet, I was really excited to play it. I can't tell you the number of times I watched the class trailers and cinematics.

 

A friend of mine got me interested in this game, and it wasn't until about a week later that I got to play it, on the computer he bought just to play this game.

 

I was hooked instantly. The computer he bought was a $300 office rig, but it barely managed to play this game on low settings (it took us awhile to learn there was an ultra low setting), and even on low, the fps was terrible. You could barely move if you were inside. But those five minutes of playing this slideshow game had me hooked. I knew I too, would have to buy a computer just for this.

 

Before this, I was a console gamer. $400 was a lot for me, for something like this at the time. But over the next two months, I saved up, went over to Bestbuy and bought my first ever computer, just so I could play SWTOR.

 

The next week, SWTOR was all I could do. I would wake up in the morning, then play until night. My first character was a Male Human Bounty Hunter, Rasahj, my destined Mercenary. The amount of n00bie mistakes I made were uncountable. This was my first computer game, and my first MMO.

 

Since then, I've been very actively playing this game. Two years ago I bought a GT 640 to slap in my rig, which brought it up to medium-high settings, and this month I finally made the leap and built a real gaming pc. I've tried so many other mmo's, never to replace swtor, but only to play alongside it. And with each one, I dropped and came back to play this.

 

Swtor has been the dominating choice in how I spend my free time, and I have loved each and every minute of it. There are so many memories I have had in this game, and hopefully many more to come. I switched from being a console gamer to being a PC gamer because of this game. And SWTOR hasn't only affected me in gaming, it has also helped me become who I am today.

 

I have changed so much over the past few year, most definitely for the better. Before, I was a pretty quiet guy. I was scared to talk to people (it took a lot of courage to make my first forum post), but over the years that has most definitely changed. I would think SWTOR has actually helped drive that change in me. There is a few other impacts, but I don't want to bore you on the details .

 

I'm going to end this now, happy third year anniversary SWTOR, thank you for all the memories and experiences, and I wish you many more great years to come.

[mpdugas]

Very sadly saying goodbye to my first-ever SWTOR character, created two weeks earlier than launch and lost when beta went live.

[Twin]

I was in game, mourning the loss of SWG