I'm not trying to sound like a Bioware fanboy, but from a guy who knows his Star Wars lore and has extensive MMO experience my unbiased opinion of this guy is...
1. He is an idiot. Darth Maul was an inquisitor, not a warrior. From the beginning of his review it is clear he already has his own idea as to what the game-play is like.
Tell me one time Darth Maul used force lightning in the movies. Oh wait, he didn't! Darth Maul is a warrior, just because he has a staff saber doesn't mean hes in inquisitor. You are clearly "an idiot".
This isn't the movie, this is SWTOR. Warriors cannot use saberstaffs, only inquisitors and counselors can. You made the same mistake the author made. Do you expect stormtroopers and OMG BLASTERFIGHTZ!!11!1! everywhere?
Also lightning does not make you an inquisitor, the sith warrior (I forget his name) in the Hope video used lightning. Warriors can use it aswell.
MMO's to date have always had the same thing in common. The starting zone is always boring, non exciting and not much change up in the mobs killed nor the skills used. Usually auto attack and maybe 2-3 skills at your disposal depending on the class you were playing.
Today's MMO games have made a mockery out of questing as you can pretty much just fast track a quest text and have a waypoint put on mini map for you to go to.
In a game that your choices greatly effect your character personally and also effecting those arround you, your future interaction with other NPC's and the relationship between your companions. All i can say is i cant wait to see how fail people are with the FAST TRACK gotta get to end game quick aproach. Just to see how screwed up their toon will have become personally. Having Companions falling by the way side cause they dont like they way you are handling conversations, NPC's refusing to talk to you etc, greatly reducing your character in the long run.
I would suggest playing KoToR / Mass Effect 1/2 / Dragon Age: Oringins etc to see what you will have to deal with, because of the chat options you encounter. Then you will get a better understanding of what Bioware is doing with this game. So next time you wont pull some lame Article out of ya *** and actually play it like its meant to.
Seriously I can't believe the response's of some of the people here on this article. He was previewing the combat, you do not need to have seen and heard all of the cutscenes and dialogue to preview the combat. Those things help with the feel and the purpose of the game but it's perfectly acceptable to analyse just the combat objectively without needing to have gone through them. He is not analysing the entire game so bringing up other game systems is irrelevant.
Sure he did not have enough time to properly analyse all or most of the combat systems but he was just giving us his insight into his experinece of the combat in the starter area's. That's all this is his personal opinion of the combat starter area's. You may not agree with his reasoning but this is merely his personal opinion of the short time he's played. He doesn't expect you to put much weight on his words considering his lack of experience in the game he just wanted to share his thoughts.
Let's be honest here almost all of the people attacking him are complete and utter hypocrites. I'm almost certain that you would not care less if he made large sweeping positive comments of he entire game based on his very small play time but you rip him to shreds when he states an opinion of the game different to your own.
You came to hear only what you wanted to hear and nothing else and made up random excuses like skipping the story in order to explain why his experience is different to what you were expecting. How about people respect his opinion for what it is and leave it at that.
There was absolutely no need to attack him, sure his asking about the warrior's lack of ranged defense was uneccessary to think about consider the section of the game he's playing but for the most part he didn't make sweeping negative comments about the entire game just some questions he would like answered in his next play through.
I thought the article was good because it brought up an important point, can dialog make every quest seem more dramatic? Clearly the answer is no. When you can see the impetus of the quest without the dialog then your quest is poorly written and unengaging. I mean sure a couple paragraphs are written about why you need to kill boars in the orc starter area in WoW, but is that dialog good enough that it needs to be read? No. So when Bioware comes out and decides to read similar paragraphs to you and instead of clicking accept you choose from "Yes, my master/[Lie] Yes, my master/I love genocide" does that really immerse you into the character or do you feel like a cliche/parody? From the article it sounds like the latter.
At least in ME Bioware made the starter quest feel important, but that's the luxury of single-player I guess.
"I will not play it nor any other MMO until they make it possible to obtain the best gear without forcing people to group up to do so." SwampRob
Story, he skipped it so he has no right to be critical of it.
Melee vs. Ranged, if he has played other MMOs then he would know this wasn't something to be answered in a 30 minute demo of a lvl 2 character.
The 1st quest - This is the only thing he had any right to be critical of. There could have been more to the quest than just kill 10 slugs. Do we "know" that the quest was part of his Class story arc? Bioware has said there are Class story arc quests, and world story quests. He could just as easily have been doing a world quest. It seems it was a class story arc, but we can't be 100 percent. We also don't know what the next quest was. Perhaps the slug quest was the only "kill x mob" quest in the chain. So, you get thru that and you are off to being that bad*** sith you always wanted.
We know too little, and so does he. I just believe that in order to write any kind of prereview on a game that you cannot skip anything, and see what the WHOLE of the game entails. He was there to demo the game and he skipped content in order to write a review, and there is no way to write an objective article that way.
IMHO, you either play everything and judge it all on its merits, or you don't write an article on it. Period. Plus do your research, and don't say "I wanna play Darth Maul", and then pick the wrong class for that fantasy. Anybody that is in journalism should have to review the subject that they are talking about. Which he clearly didn't
Please stop, because the only people who are in the wrong here are the OP bashers. You people keep saying that he shouldn't be critical because he doesn't know about the entire game and its the first quest, moreover you say that it is rediculous that he is making something of the game if never was going to be. Yet it is you who are making claims about this article about things it never intended to do. The OP is giving a preview of gameplay of a class. Gameplay =/= story dialogue. So he did exactly what he needed to do. He is not judging the whole game at all as you people claim, he is basing his experience on the single quest and he said he wasn't impressed by that. So what did he do, he gave a gameplay PREVIEW, PREVIEw, PREVIEW based on a quest. He is negative about that quest and hopes the rest wont be similar. He is not being negative about the game in general at all, that is just what you fanboys keep saying. He is basing his experience of the things he was able to play and nothing more. He is not saying the entire class is horrible or boring, just the first quest. He just hopes that this experience will not be repeated troughout the entire game....
You people just dont want to hear a single negative thing, yet you also say that every mmo's first quest is boring, so WHAT IS THE PROBLEM. The OP clearly said he was only allowed to play a very limited demo. He just hopes that this demo is not similar to the rest of the game.
You know what is funny, that there is also a preview of the Smugler, which was very positive!! And yet, then it is ok to jump to assumptions? Then it is ok to conclude that this game is amazing based on a single quest? As long as it is positive right? Geez.....You people need to calm down and stop making this preview more than it is by calling it a REVIEW. Stop making this OP's experience more than it was. He only talked about the this single experience, just as you people claim it was, so I do not really see what the problem is.....
If every negative thing in this preview was positive, then you people woudldn't have complained as you didn't with the smuggler review. Stop making this preview more than it is.
Please stop because the only person wrong here was the writer of this article for wasting his time with something so uninformative. This is a profesional website with an article that belongs in a high school news paper. If the game is bad then tell me why its bad after you fully explored it. If you are previewing it and barely got to play and have no new insights to offer then don't put up the article until you do.
1.He complains about the story he skipped.
2. Complains about doing a standard mmo convention quest even though they are standard for a reason and he skipped the most innovative part of the game.
3. Complains about his class even though eveyr mmo gamer knows what to expect from a lowbie.
I thought the article was good because it brought up an important point, can dialog make every quest seem more dramatic? Clearly the answer is no. When you can see the impetus of the quest without the dialog then your quest is poorly written and unengaging. I mean sure a couple paragraphs are written about why you need to kill boars in the orc starter area in WoW, but is that dialog good enough that it needs to be read? No. So when Bioware comes out and decides to read similar paragraphs to you and instead of clicking accept you choose from "Yes, my master/[Lie] Yes, my master/I love genocide" does that really immerse you into the character or do you feel like a cliche/parody? From the article it sounds like the latter.
At least in ME Bioware made the starter quest feel important, but that's the luxury of single-player I guess.
So what makes SWTOR any different to ME in this respect? Nothing.
If I told you just go out and kill 10 rats, you'd think "Why am I doing this? What's in it for me?" But, if I told you to go out and kill 10 rats, hand you a flame thrower, and said if you do this you can sleep with my daughter who happens to be J-LO, then (if you're male) you'd say "Hell yes". The point is that ANY activity, whether its in a game or real life, will seem mundane and boring without context.
And that is why the article is so ironic: The OP said that the quest reminded him of every MMO. And why perhaps was that? Because he skipped over the very context that sets it apart from the competition i.e. the quest dialogue. So he failed to appreciate what sets the game apart from the rest. Plus, to expect something monumental or Epic within the first 15 mins of play is just not being very reasonable or objective.
So if the OP set out to do a small review of the whole game, then this article didn't accomplish that.
If a player doesn't actually take time to pay attention to the dialogue and story and then screams how the game doesn't "immerse" them, then how in gods name do they expect the game to accomplish this? Storylines and dialogue are an valid tools for immersion. Not the only ones mind you, but nevertheless they play a BIG part in helping to immerse the player in the medium.
So, if the OP set out to "review" solely the parts of the game in an objective way, this article didn't accomplish that either.
The OP started this "preview" with pre-conceived and biased notions and let them drive him in writing this article. I mean, what exactly was he expecting to see after the FIRST 15 mins of the game? He's a lowbie for gods sake. Surely he wasn't expecting a MONUMENTAL battle which would eradicate the other side within the first 15 mins? I mean, even single player games DON'T do that. The OP seemed to be expecting something monumental and Epic from the very outset. What in gods name was he expecting? To eradicate all Jedi from the universe in 15 mins flat as a level 1 with just a couple of "special moves"? Seriously?
And so, if the OP set out to "review" the combat system, this article didn't accomplish that as well.
Like the saying goes: Do not attempt to judge a book just from its cover. This is why the article was neither objective nor informative. If someone EXPECTs something epic and monumental from level 1, then they need to re-evaluate their expectations, because they are neither being realistic or reasonable.
Did he seriously just say that he was worried how a class in alpha would hold up against ranged opponents. Its an alpha build of the game; EVERYTHING about the classes is far from finalized.
Send somebody who knows what they are talking about when you get to play AAA titles.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
Did he seriously just say that he was worried how a class in alpha would hold up against ranged opponents. Its an alpha build of the game; EVERYTHING about the classes is far from finalized.
That's the irony about the article. To point out in an article that you have an anxiety about how a melee character will fair against ranged is just laughable. Why did he even bother mentioning it? Not to mention the fact that the game still has 9 months till release.
If Bioware can't sort out melee vs ranged combat, even by examining the MOUNTAIN of competition that has previously delt with it, then they may as well pack up and go home.
Melee vs ranged combat is fundamental to most MMO's. It's nothing new to either the industry OR Bioware.
The Sith Warrior looks JUST LIKE a Human WoW rogue LOL WoW with lightsabers!!!!!! whoo hooo!!!
Sith Warrior class doesn't have anything in comon with a WoW rogue, what you're saying it's just pure ignorance, just like the "article" garret something wrote. This is just one of those things WoW Fanboys write.
Unfortunately perhaps the WoW fanboys are also likely to be playing the game at launch, so while they may be ignorant you may encounter these types of question in SWTOR in-game chat channels, and also in gaming journalists reviews of the game. I would just be philisophical in approach, after all WoW is an old game now and these guys will eventually give up on it and progress into other mmorpg.
Wow! Wrong.. Very wrong. This is a BW title for cryin' out loud! It [the journey] is all about the story. To approach this product with an action or FPS oriented mindset does the title and the player experience a massive disservice. Moreover I don’t think the vast majority of MMO players are the mindless cretins the author seems to fancy them for; this is especially so for the fan base for this franchise to be sure.
This is the biggest myth I hear from people. Story and options have nothing to do with an MMO. Honestly, single player games have always done it better. MMO's developed to allow people to play together, and to bring a world to life. This can be done with linear story, dynamic story, or no story at all, leaving it to the players to create their own.
Personally, I think the problem with forcing story as a central component of the game is that it splits people up too much. In quest/story dependant games, all to often you get a group to do a quest, and as soon as the quest is done the group breaks up as inevitably not everyone has te same quests, or are on different stages. I miss the earlier games where you grouped up and went out into the world to find a good place to kill things at. Those groups would last for hours, and you formed friendships/guilds in the process. That is what an MMO is truly all about.
Well said. I played EQ1 for about 6 years and I can honestly tell you, I really don't even know what the story was about. But I will tell you that I have made more friends and developed more relationships because of the "MMO" part and generally loved the time i spent enjoying the game than i did enjoying the "RPG" aspect of the game.
Many people play MMO's for many different reasons. I can personally tell you if I wanted to play a story driven RPG I would play a console single player RPG. Im not saying that SWToR will be a bad game. But because of this review, the fence I was teetering on has now crumbled and I believe Im now on the "do not play" side. If this game really had nothing to offer besides VO and a few dialogue paths, and the game play was kind of well....boring , then why wouldn't I just go pick back up KotOR . I don't agree with the OP feeling he should be well....more OP in the beginning. But I do agree with the fact that he's a god damn sith apprentice. He shouldn't be out killing some slugs. They could have easily started the story off with assaulting some jedi apprentice camp and have you fighting other jedi apprentices. Something more epic. This IS Star Wars after all. Aside from swamp rats and crap like that, everything fought was always epic. The universe is brutal and to be out slaying a few slugs is kind of lame.
The OP showed what an average gamer will do. They won't sit through every dialogue and listen to every voice over. When you're playing a game for as long as most play mmo's, it'll eventually just get tedious. Not to mention, not everyone has hours every day to play a game, and some people might have an hour before they leave for dinner or have a ball game to go to or friends to hang out with that want to get as much done as possible rather than sit and listen for the next hour to dialogue. They might actually want to play the game in their short playable time.
You have to remember, the time the OP has available to test the game is limited as well. They have so many media companies out there trying to get in and report back to their readers that they just can't sit through all the dialogue if they want to get the most information possible back to their fans.
Long story short. Not everyone has a crap load of time to be as entwined into a story as you fan boys want them to be. Some people play games for OMGOSH "game"play and if its lacking, all the story in the world won't make it a great game. If i want a great story with no gameplay, i'll read a book.
Comments
What a piss poor article.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
This isn't the movie, this is SWTOR. Warriors cannot use saberstaffs, only inquisitors and counselors can. You made the same mistake the author made. Do you expect stormtroopers and OMG BLASTERFIGHTZ!!11!1! everywhere?
Also lightning does not make you an inquisitor, the sith warrior (I forget his name) in the Hope video used lightning. Warriors can use it aswell.
Just another person gonna add the obvious.
MMO's to date have always had the same thing in common. The starting zone is always boring, non exciting and not much change up in the mobs killed nor the skills used. Usually auto attack and maybe 2-3 skills at your disposal depending on the class you were playing.
Today's MMO games have made a mockery out of questing as you can pretty much just fast track a quest text and have a waypoint put on mini map for you to go to.
In a game that your choices greatly effect your character personally and also effecting those arround you, your future interaction with other NPC's and the relationship between your companions. All i can say is i cant wait to see how fail people are with the FAST TRACK gotta get to end game quick aproach. Just to see how screwed up their toon will have become personally. Having Companions falling by the way side cause they dont like they way you are handling conversations, NPC's refusing to talk to you etc, greatly reducing your character in the long run.
I would suggest playing KoToR / Mass Effect 1/2 / Dragon Age: Oringins etc to see what you will have to deal with, because of the chat options you encounter. Then you will get a better understanding of what Bioware is doing with this game. So next time you wont pull some lame Article out of ya *** and actually play it like its meant to.
Seriously I can't believe the response's of some of the people here on this article. He was previewing the combat, you do not need to have seen and heard all of the cutscenes and dialogue to preview the combat. Those things help with the feel and the purpose of the game but it's perfectly acceptable to analyse just the combat objectively without needing to have gone through them. He is not analysing the entire game so bringing up other game systems is irrelevant.
Sure he did not have enough time to properly analyse all or most of the combat systems but he was just giving us his insight into his experinece of the combat in the starter area's. That's all this is his personal opinion of the combat starter area's. You may not agree with his reasoning but this is merely his personal opinion of the short time he's played. He doesn't expect you to put much weight on his words considering his lack of experience in the game he just wanted to share his thoughts.
Let's be honest here almost all of the people attacking him are complete and utter hypocrites. I'm almost certain that you would not care less if he made large sweeping positive comments of he entire game based on his very small play time but you rip him to shreds when he states an opinion of the game different to your own.
You came to hear only what you wanted to hear and nothing else and made up random excuses like skipping the story in order to explain why his experience is different to what you were expecting. How about people respect his opinion for what it is and leave it at that.
There was absolutely no need to attack him, sure his asking about the warrior's lack of ranged defense was uneccessary to think about consider the section of the game he's playing but for the most part he didn't make sweeping negative comments about the entire game just some questions he would like answered in his next play through.
I thought the article was good because it brought up an important point, can dialog make every quest seem more dramatic? Clearly the answer is no. When you can see the impetus of the quest without the dialog then your quest is poorly written and unengaging. I mean sure a couple paragraphs are written about why you need to kill boars in the orc starter area in WoW, but is that dialog good enough that it needs to be read? No. So when Bioware comes out and decides to read similar paragraphs to you and instead of clicking accept you choose from "Yes, my master/[Lie] Yes, my master/I love genocide" does that really immerse you into the character or do you feel like a cliche/parody? From the article it sounds like the latter.
At least in ME Bioware made the starter quest feel important, but that's the luxury of single-player I guess.
"I will not play it nor any other MMO until they make it possible to obtain the best gear without forcing people to group up to do so." SwampRob
Please stop because the only person wrong here was the writer of this article for wasting his time with something so uninformative. This is a profesional website with an article that belongs in a high school news paper. If the game is bad then tell me why its bad after you fully explored it. If you are previewing it and barely got to play and have no new insights to offer then don't put up the article until you do.
1.He complains about the story he skipped.
2. Complains about doing a standard mmo convention quest even though they are standard for a reason and he skipped the most innovative part of the game.
3. Complains about his class even though eveyr mmo gamer knows what to expect from a lowbie.
Stop defending poorly written articles.
So what makes SWTOR any different to ME in this respect? Nothing.
If I told you just go out and kill 10 rats, you'd think "Why am I doing this? What's in it for me?" But, if I told you to go out and kill 10 rats, hand you a flame thrower, and said if you do this you can sleep with my daughter who happens to be J-LO, then (if you're male) you'd say "Hell yes". The point is that ANY activity, whether its in a game or real life, will seem mundane and boring without context.
And that is why the article is so ironic: The OP said that the quest reminded him of every MMO. And why perhaps was that? Because he skipped over the very context that sets it apart from the competition i.e. the quest dialogue. So he failed to appreciate what sets the game apart from the rest. Plus, to expect something monumental or Epic within the first 15 mins of play is just not being very reasonable or objective.
So if the OP set out to do a small review of the whole game, then this article didn't accomplish that.
If a player doesn't actually take time to pay attention to the dialogue and story and then screams how the game doesn't "immerse" them, then how in gods name do they expect the game to accomplish this? Storylines and dialogue are an valid tools for immersion. Not the only ones mind you, but nevertheless they play a BIG part in helping to immerse the player in the medium.
So, if the OP set out to "review" solely the parts of the game in an objective way, this article didn't accomplish that either.
The OP started this "preview" with pre-conceived and biased notions and let them drive him in writing this article. I mean, what exactly was he expecting to see after the FIRST 15 mins of the game? He's a lowbie for gods sake. Surely he wasn't expecting a MONUMENTAL battle which would eradicate the other side within the first 15 mins? I mean, even single player games DON'T do that. The OP seemed to be expecting something monumental and Epic from the very outset. What in gods name was he expecting? To eradicate all Jedi from the universe in 15 mins flat as a level 1 with just a couple of "special moves"? Seriously?
And so, if the OP set out to "review" the combat system, this article didn't accomplish that as well.
Like the saying goes: Do not attempt to judge a book just from its cover. This is why the article was neither objective nor informative. If someone EXPECTs something epic and monumental from level 1, then they need to re-evaluate their expectations, because they are neither being realistic or reasonable.
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
Did he seriously just say that he was worried how a class in alpha would hold up against ranged opponents. Its an alpha build of the game; EVERYTHING about the classes is far from finalized.
Send somebody who knows what they are talking about when you get to play AAA titles.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
That's the irony about the article. To point out in an article that you have an anxiety about how a melee character will fair against ranged is just laughable. Why did he even bother mentioning it? Not to mention the fact that the game still has 9 months till release.
If Bioware can't sort out melee vs ranged combat, even by examining the MOUNTAIN of competition that has previously delt with it, then they may as well pack up and go home.
Melee vs ranged combat is fundamental to most MMO's. It's nothing new to either the industry OR Bioware.
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
How do I download games?
Sith Warrior class doesn't have anything in comon with a WoW rogue, what you're saying it's just pure ignorance, just like the "article" garret something wrote. This is just one of those things WoW Fanboys write.
Unfortunately perhaps the WoW fanboys are also likely to be playing the game at launch, so while they may be ignorant you may encounter these types of question in SWTOR in-game chat channels, and also in gaming journalists reviews of the game. I would just be philisophical in approach, after all WoW is an old game now and these guys will eventually give up on it and progress into other mmorpg.Wow! Wrong.. Very wrong. This is a BW title for cryin' out loud! It [the journey] is all about the story. To approach this product with an action or FPS oriented mindset does the title and the player experience a massive disservice. Moreover I don’t think the vast majority of MMO players are the mindless cretins the author seems to fancy them for; this is especially so for the fan base for this franchise to be sure.
I die a little inside every time I read an MMORPG.com blog.
I myself played the game at E3 and enjoyed it.
It wasn't OMG THIS GAME IS SOOO FUN, but I still had fun with the 20 minutes that I played.
With a year left till release it can only get better.
Maybe I should write a blog.
I don't care about innovation I care about fun.