For me to say I'm excited about Star Wars: The Old Republic is an understatement. I'm more excited about this game than a teenage boy about to lose his virginity to a supermodel. Missing a chance to demo this game at E3 was heartbreaking, but I finally got a chance to get my hands on the game at this year's Comic-con.

The first major aspect that stands out is obviously the dialogue choices. For years, putting engaging quests and a meaningful story into an MMO has been a very hard aspect to accomplish. MMOs are more about getting gear to show off to others, than actually providing a story that engages a player the way that a single player role-playing game does. I'm happy to report that Star Wars: The Old Republic may be the first MMO that will give players a storyline that is actually engaging.

I was given the Smuggler class to play, and the quest revealed that the enemy's systems were keeping my ship from leaving. It was my duty to find a way to shut off their defense fields. Once destroyed, I come back to find that one of my companions have stolen my ship.

I'm a little disappointed in the acting of the characters. Yes, I do realize they are animated characters, but the voice acting for some of the characters could have been better. My character's angry voice seemed the same as his depressed voice. Hopefully this doesn't reflect the rest of the game, but bad voice acting can take a player out of the story.

I've always stuck up for Bioware's choice of graphics, but I have to admit, now that I've finally seen them up close I'm not too thrilled about them. Sure, the demo was on a low res monitor, so it could just be the computer, but I found myself wanting more. The style is close to Warhammer Online's intricately detailed cartoony look, but the fine details of the game's structure isn't as well refined as it should be. This could have been just the visuals of the city I was in, but you would hope they would display a more visual appealing setting for a demo. It didn't even look like they took too much time with it. I hope they polish their visuals before the game is released.

The controls are what you would expect from an MMO. Even if you don't like them you can always change them to your liking. I will admit that I wish covering was easier for Smugglers. I feel like there is a better way than a hitting a hotkey to cover, and almost wish it was just automatic, or you could click on the green covering manikin.

The actual covering can be troublesome at some points. You can't cover when you really need to, and it doesn't let you get behind some of the objects you would think you can get cover from. However, when later levels provide the option to make your own cover, I'm sure this will not be a problem.

Maybe it was just because of my short playing time, but everything was more familiar than I expected. Nothing special jumped out besides the story cut-scenes and dialogue choices. Although, that may be the big change that will push the genre in the direction it needs to go. Despite the underwhelming demo, count me as one of the fans that will be lining up to buy the game on day one.