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DeaconX Reviews SWTOR (5 months of testing)
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TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
When it comes to guessing and speculating, it comes a hell of a lot closer than what he was spouting, based on the statements of BW people themselves (they stated the 300million dollar and other such numbers roaming around to be insanely high and far from the truth, budget was way, way less) and analists and the general development budget of MMORPG's.
Most of the AAA MMO budgets have been in the 40-50 million dollar range for development budget.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Yes it sounds like mediocrity and settling for less. With people like you around we would still be throwng sticks/stone and live in caves just because they are adequate. Who the hell needs house with running water/heating-cooling/electricity when people lived in caves just fine.
There, my post is creative/different/improved...
If i will play SWTOR it will be with thought they improved very very little over 7-10 years old games (story aspect). That doesnt mean SWTOR is not ok game...for 7-10 years ago.
Good write up, I would say it is a fair assessment from what little I've seen so far.
I hawe q for the OP, if the zones feel like hallways, can you compare them wow zones if you played it, are they similiar is somway or evem more restricted?
> Lets see how the game performs when it launches and have the people drawing their own conclusions about the game instead of throwing around a biased sort of "review".
If you throw out scores that are scores on the same thing (or even average them) and throw out things that dont even matter like server selection and "getting started" which have nothing to do with the game itself then the score is even lower. If you REALLY look at the review some of the stuff he gave higher scores on he talks about in other sections that he gives a lower score on. Tells me he just split them up to give it a higher score. Now if you do what I said the score isnt MUCH diffrent but there is a diffrence between an overall score (of things that actually matter and are just not split up or put in to up the score for no reason) of 6/10.
Because of the faults of the review which I have already said AND comments like "I could write better than them." I will take this for what it is. Its a post with a few tidbits of information that others didnt cover and nothing more.
This right here is actually 100% true. Just as an example lets look at the whole "It feels so liniar and zones feel like they are on rails." argument people LOVE to use. Lets use WoW as an example since most of us have played it even though some here on this site like to lie and say they never did and are the origional haters.
When WoW first launched MOST zones had quests spread everywhere. You could always miss a handfull of quests in a zone simply because no other quest took you in that direction and you never went exploring. Whats happened over the years? The same complaint in WOW and most other MMO's. The PLAYERS complain about quest hubs and quests not being streamlined. They all need to be in the same area blah blah blah. 1 quest shouldnt send us west when all the others send us east.
What the hell did people THINK would happen?
I wouldnt say that.
Too many times you see biased BS being passed off as a legitimate review when it comes to internet wanna be bloggers. Your review of Darkfall fell flat on its face, as you basically implied that game was a virtual "best thing since sliced bread" in your review.
This time we actually have a good MMO, and some folks are railing that it isnt cause they didnt get a game built to their style. This despite the fact it had been known for yrs what this game was aiming for.
A person can put up pie charts, or whatever means to try to justify their stance. When they have a history of bad mouthing a game/genre, their opinion becomes moot.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Is this relevant to the OP though? I thought the guy was looking forward to the game, and just happened to find it less than stunning. I don't think that makes his opinion moot at all. It just makes his opinion different from others'.
I don't care if OP likes or dislikes the game really everyone has the right to their own interests. But lets be fair here. If you read the review/preview and his replies to question you would understand he was looking for more features similar to SWG and when Bioware time and time again made it clear that this game will be nothing like SWG. When the basis of your reviews is based on wrong expectations, it doesn't matter if you review is positive or negative.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Not when it is done by someone without the ability to be objectionable.
If you have spent the past 2 or 3 yrs bitching reguarly about this game, rather than moving on, you have the credibility of a turnip.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Sorry for the heavy edit, but it's just for clarity and emphasis the points I agree with.
Good overview, even if I think the 'housing', space combat, and character creation/ models were scored too high.
That comes back to your playstyle and what you define as "completed".
There are people with 100 hours into the game who still have half the map to uncover and plenty more still in their quest journal.
You *say* you only have a few side quests to do... How do you know that? You know the exact number of quests in the game?
Also, you do realize that what quests you do get and what quests you don't get is largely dependent on what choices you make, what NPCs you interact with, which folks you side with (Storm Cloaks or Imperials), and so forth? There are likely entire storylines you may have missed and don't even know it due to your decisions or actions well before you'd have even gotten them.
You also realize that the game's quest system is constantly generating quest content dynamically based on where you are in the story, where you've been, where you haven't, etc? Todd Howard's noted that the Radiant system in Skyrim has been tweaked to where it will continue generating content for you for pretty much as long as you choose to keep playing so there really is no way to "finish the game". There's only deciding you've done everything you're interested in doing and are ready to put it down, which is likely the case here. You haven't nearly "completed nearly everything the game offers". You've "completed nearly everything you're interested in doing". Big difference.
So, maybe there's not "several hundreds of hours" for you. There certainly will be for others.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
this site is not EVERYTHING i've most deffinately been around as long as him just never made an account. never had a reason too. I wasnt going to say anything because everyone is already blasting you for your comment. so be well. hahahahaa
more specifically i remember when he broke the story it was AWESOME. BTW if SWG is your point i played too PRE-CU so get over it lol. also played diablo1 and 2 so where does that put me....... oh noes thats way before swg's time. SWG was a life changer i was there captain untill SOE grew an even bigger head and made my jedi grind and jedi totally worthless.
To feel heroic you have to overcome a difficult challenge! Learn from DragonsNest, just because you have 40 enemies littered in one room and you blast through all of them doesn't make it more fun. If anything it makes it more tedious. Keep in mind, DragonsNest is a close beat-em-up-style MMO, adding it to an RPG-like game SWTOR is just bad.
This is why Dark Souls is amazing and a perfect example of good challenge = fun gameplay. The fear of death and the thrill of victory is what makes heroic combat.
Nice review. The main thing with this game to me, and it has always been, is how it can retain subs and grow healthily. Once people play the story once and reach end game how will it progress? They said that they expect players to reroll different classes for a truly unique experience, but it seems that it just won't be as exciting as they planned.
They need to do something unique and grow the game in the right way. If they just follow WoW I don't see this being anything special. I never really have and I still don't anyway. If they do something cool to grow the game I would jump on board but we will just have to see. With a grind through treadmill where you never return to the old lands the end game can become very small and shallow. Tacking on more grind isn't the answer. I think this is the biggest hurdle these theme park MMO's need to figure out.
Hurray someone finally gets my "point' on these forums!
Anyone who has ever taken anything I've said seriously is an idiot lol
Great point someone made, this "review' highlights what the game is not rather then reviewing what the game is.
As such, it's a decent op-ed.
OP wants SWG 2.0.
Sad panda, go wait for Archeage and hope/pray/sacrifice goats to the Eastern Grinding Gods that that game is anything but crap like the other 99.99% of Eastern Made MMOs.
Sup DeaconX, long tie no see. I think we are the last folks still standing who thought this game would see the light of day way back in 06.
I've been in testing for some time as well and I agree with your summary. I mirror your thoughts on lack of open world. Even though the worlds do open up a bit, you are still kept pretty much on the same train track path, even if you do go exploring, there is little to see outside the track boundaries. The game like you said is robust in some areas, and majorly lacking in others. I will still buy the game, but with the hopes that future patches and updates based on consumer feedback will be applied that will make this one of the best games for a Star Wars fan ever.
As of now, I find myself getting burnt out within a few days, after which I take a break, come back and play. It’s not going to be a game that will hold my attention 24/7, which sucks because I had hoped it would. Either way there are some aspects that are fun, and I think once a player can get in with people they know, it should become much more fun even though I found myself able to solo a lot of the main parts of the game.
I too played SWG. I too was an elder jedi. I let go of it a long time ago though. I never expected this game to be as open as SWG, so I am not upset that it does not have enough SWG in it.
I loved SWGs openess, but I could not stand the huge list of bugs, imbalance, and lack of anything significant in that wide open space they provided us with. You spent so much time in SWG doing nothing but waiting, searching (hoping to find something worth while), and basically standing around.
I like many of us look back on the good of SWG and highlight those portions. But if you truly reflect back on the game and compare it to something like SWTOR, then you will find that SWG was mostly just a shell of a game. They tried to fix it with the CU and the NGE, but failed.
I find that some SWG vets are not willing to accept a game unless it mirrors SWG. It may be subconsious, but it is there all the same.
Good luck to you, I hope you find what you are looking for.
Don't get me wrong, I’m not expecting it to play like SWG did. This is pretty mcuh the only MMO I will be investing in from here on out. That game was so long ago for me and I've played so many other MMOs that I'm not so much interested in that game style anymore. I just think that SWTOR can become more, and I expect it will in time. Weather effects, day night cycles on some planets, dynamic events ect would go a long ways to foster immersion. Eventually they are gonna have to give some more open worlds to explore for the explorers as well. When I play SWTOR and put my mind into the KOTOR state, it really feels like KOTOR, and I like that. But when I compare it to other MMOs, it seems lacking on some fronts and those issues I highlighted are the key things it’s lacking. Me getting burnt out, is due mostly to the fact that I've played the same classes so many times each build.
I hate to say this but I kind of liked Rift in some ways, though I felt it was lacking as well on some fronts. I think this goes for any MMO to be honest. At launch it will never be everything we want, but it doesn’t mean I won’t play it.
I have played through 3 builds of TOR and each update they have added things people asked for to make the game better and better. I know BioWare is on the ball and this is why I am investing into the game; I know it will in time get better and better just like WoW did. So don’t think for one second I am bashing the game, I like it, I just wanted to point out things I think could use a real boost to make the game better for some players.
I say this because you seem to ignore things in your review such as why you would test a game for 5 months. Maybe because for an mmo, swtor is actually a good game. However you seem to review the game more as a single player game.
You do give credit for BW's strong points, their story but then claim you can write a better intro. I don't know what the story is but mmos target to a larger audience of different ages, so as long as the overall story and theme is good the choice of lamen terms should not be an issue for an mmo. Which you also put a quote as proof.
Character creation is important to me but you make it to be a complete fail, the same with combat, housing, and ships. Again, as an mmo they have development time and a lot of fine tuning. There also seems to be a lot of pvp elements in the game as well. WoW did not have much when it released, so keep that in mind as to how they developed the game to squeeze certain features while allowing for certain features to be expanded upon.
I say this because you left out that possibility of future expansions by giving a very negative picture of swtor and also not considering what is the actual focus. The focus is not housing, and it's not space combat and therefore those can be added. Also we don't know about character creation if it's going to get a patch soon with many more options or not since your review is of beta.
You seem very critical of beta, but of course your opinion is valid, and if people share your concern they will improve on what you ask. But it seems you went about it in a very round about way instead of looking at it as a nice feature for what it was and asking for more. Instead of giving a negative review to possibly get the devs attention or possibly get heard on mmorpg so future swtor customers can make the same requests.
I digress. I too want amazing character creation. A space expansion.
I am not sure about the combat but it seems good for what mmo combat entails.
I do hope for some smart combat scenarios in PVE to keep us on our toes like puzzles and tricky npcs.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
wow so much bashing on the OP. was he/she a troll in the community or something?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
False though theres speedbike points all over every planet to discovery and use as travel points until lvl 25. Which is half of the way to max level so i mean I guess for now its fair.
Played-Everything
Playing-LoL