Star wars: The old republic

[Kiro]

I guess that depends on whether you're more of a Star Wars or WoW fan. I've never played WoW, and I don't intend to. I am, however, a Star Wars fanboy. While I was disappointed at the setting they chose, and it seems (from what I know) that TOR is trying to be WoW 2.0, overall I'd say it's a success....

[Marauder_chieftan]

I'm a fan, but not so much that i'm just a blind follower of WoW no matter what it does, i did quit for a reason.

But i'm not going to buy SWTOR when it's just a repackaged version of WoW with star wars thrown in, with a few cutscenes.

[Xwingt65]

Yes swtor has similarities to wow in the way it plays....BUT it feels like a far different beast. The stories they have written, the worlds they have made and the epic voiceovers make this game fun.....and it oozes star wars, much more so then the craptastic prequel trilogy

[Kiro]

Yes swtor has similarities to wow in the way it plays....BUT it feels like a far different beast. The stories they have written, the worlds they have made and the epic voiceovers make this game fun.....and it oozes star wars, much more so then the craptastic prequel trilogy

Mmmm, see, I agreed up until your last point; the thing I hate about the TOR timeline (from KOTOR onwards) is that it essentially is the prequel setting....for those who turn their noses up at the prequels. The game really should have been set in the Legacy era.

[Voss]

The game is identical to WoW in pretty much in every way, apart from the voice acting, which is patchy and at times badly scripted and animated. On top of that, the game lacks the same open area-free roaming that WoW had, and planets are more or less just guided corridoors. The character creation is nice, but all the races have the exact same animations and some are just a different colour skin, unlike WoW where they are all varied and diverse, and all have unique battle stances, casting animations etc. The space flying is dissapointing, as it's just a on-the-rails shooter minigame.

Erm, no. Or, to be more accurate; space missions are indeed on the rails, and yes, animations are shared by class, not race.

But guided corridors for planets? Not only wrong but almost absolutely and entirely wrong. Its not an unreasonable a claim for the urban planets (coruscant and nar shadda), but looking at tatooine, balmora, alderan and most of the others its an entirely laughable claim.

The voice acting is excellent (but not of course perfect), and frankly WoW doesn't even try to compete in this area. As are the story based quests and plots, which is something else that most of the genre abandons all pretense at.

It shares a fair bit in common with the standard MMO style, but I find the gameplay (and combat, particularly) far more integrated than other games I've tried. The impacts, knockbacks leaping, pushing, explosions and general hopping about and bouncing behavior give it a fairly different feel than a lot of mmo combat which generally feels pretty static. Sith warriors/Jedi Knights are probably the most boring class to play in my estimation at least until the late 20s, as they tend toward standard static fights where they just wack people with glowsticks. After you get force push it gets more interesting again, but it still isn't as interesting as the non-force classes.

I get the feeling often, that the people eating this game up are all just loving it because it's Bioware behind it, and they desperately want an alternative MMO to play.

Personally, I like it because its a genuinely good game, which is an absurdly rare beast. After the boring nonsense that was ME2, and the whole of dragon age as a concept as well as its execution, they bloody well owed me a good game, and I sincerely doubted they were capable of it. But apparently its where they tied up ever erg of talent they had for the last 5 years.

[eldargal]

Well I loved ME2 and both Dragon Age games*, in fact I love most things Bioware produce. But I love SW:TOR because it does for this decade what WoW did for the last, bringing all the best innovations of the previous decade or so of MMOs together in one neat, polished package. It isn't exceptionally innovative (apart from being fully voiced) but neither was WoW when it launced.


*Yes, even DA2. The graphics and recycled environments were dissapointing and the combat was less than inspiring but I loved the story. So refresging to be a hero at the centre of events beyond her control instead of being able to force warring factions to do what you want 'just because'. It was realistic, compelling and immersive. The DLC was fantastic too, particularly the Gray Warden prison thing. As someone who loves the DA lore the villain at the end of that DLC was just incredible.

[Voss]

I think thats the best way to think of TOR, really. Not as a WoW clone, but a 'current state of MMOs' game that happens to have astounding story and voice acting (particularly for a marketing category that generally treats those things with contempt).


I never actually played DA2, mostly because DA itself was so appallingly bad in both concept and execution that I almost swore off bioware games entirely. Everything was so terribly derivative and hackneyed (the story was awful and the game was essentially their version of Neverwinter Nights with the D&D license stripped out, and that wasn't even a very good game. Decent multiplayer programing platform, but uninspiring game), I would have paid more for a way to get Baldur's Gate working again on my current system. At least that game had some good points.

[nagash66]

Since the last patch the game died for me due to huge latency spikes every 2-3 mins, after looking at the forums it appears to be a problem quite a few people are having.

[New Cult King]

I only just started playing this, thanks to a friend sending me the 7-day trial invite, and I am loving it senseless.

It feels MUCH more involved than WoW - I want to hear the conversations and contribute to them whereas in WoW I just skip to the quest summary and rewards, and find out how many of X I need to kill to get Y piece of gear that may or may not even be usable by my class.

The quests feel more important, and more part of a coherent story than any other MMO I've played, and the combat is much more fun. The music and sound effects are amazing. I thought the whole "Tons of speech!" thing was just a gimmick, but it really does add to the game. I've ordered the full version, and am eagerly awaiting its arrival.

[Old School]

The game is great from the start. Then you hit Rank 50 and... tumbleweeds! There's nothing left. I haven't logged on for weeks now. Can't be bothered to grind the dailies.

Roll on GW2!

[eldargal]

So start an alt, there are 8 story lines and they are all brilliant as far as I've experienced. Also, the new, big content patch (1.2) is supposed to be coming later in the week, looking forward to the additions to the legacy system myself. I want a twi'lek Sith Marauder.

[Old School]

I have 8 alts already. If I have to plod through the entire underhive of Coruscant one more time, on foot, I'll go mad!

SPACE BAR FTW!

[Thanatos_elNyx]

The game is great from the start. Then you hit Rank 50 and... tumbleweeds! There's nothing left. I haven't logged on for weeks now. Can't be bothered to grind the dailies.

That is so weird.
It's like complaining about a lack of content after the credits roll in a movie.

[Old School]

That is so weird.
It's like complaining about a lack of content after the credits roll in a movie.

But after watching a movie, I don't have to keep paying the cinema $15 a month. :P

[eldargal]

The big content patch, 1.2 is being released tomorrow, you can read the times etc here. Really looking forward to this.

[Thanatos_elNyx]

But after watching a movie, I don't have to keep paying the cinema $15 a month. :P

Good point, but you can cancel your sub when you want to go on hiatus.
They will keep the characters for when you resub later.

I plan on doing this soon as I want to play all three MEs consecutively.

[Old School]

Unfortunately, I signed up for a 6 month sub on launch day. Nearly ran out.

[Thanatos_elNyx]

Unfortunately, I signed up for a 6 month sub on launch day. Nearly ran out.

Ah, you foolish fool! Says the guy who bought a lifetime subscription to STO and gave up after 8 months

[Old School]

LOL, okay, that's cheered me up.


Sorry to hear that.

[Voss]

The game is great from the start. Then you hit Rank 50 and... tumbleweeds! There's nothing left. I haven't logged on for weeks now. Can't be bothered to grind the dailies.

Roll on GW2!

I know what you mean. The end of the first chapter for most of the storylines actually broke me off the game. Most of them were interesting up to that point (except the trooper and sage, whose storylines had too many plot holes and no reason for me to care about the characters I met five minutes ago to engage me. Which is shame, because I liked the trooper gameplay). The storyline after Chapter I (level 35+) was... rather noticeably worse. The planets were fairly bland, and nothing really engaged my interest any more. I dragged 10 characters to level 20, 5 to 35, and managed to slog 1 up to 50. And it was such a painful slog through the forest of Kill x <creatures> and gather/scan/destroy y <things> that I couldn't bear facing it again.

I had some hope for the 1.2 content patch, but was under the impression it was just the legacy system and a bit more end game content. If there were more leveling/story content I might be interested.