I enjoyed CoH for a year. I enjoyed WoW for 3 years ... well, it was a love/hate relationship. I enjoyed Rift for two months. Basically, I fall into the MMO player category of seen one hotkey MMO, seen them all now.
GW2 looks somewhat different, but we'll see.
I got into the second beta weekend and the defacto open beta weekend. I think I made it to level 3 on a few different classes. The intro areas aren't very exciting and as much as kill x rabits isn't good, lots of gofor quests aren't much better, which is what TOR seemed to rely upon. I felt like I was running in circles to watch cut scenes. Almost reminded me of FFX a little where the gameplay was primarily watching cutscenes.
An example of better starting area was AoC. Now, after level 10-12, the game basically broke down from a mechanics standpoint, but the starter area was fun and engaging.
I agree, the game doesn't really start until half way through and it's unfare to judge an MMO before completing at least a few raid encounters. However, i think it's fair to say the TOR is very much a standard hoteky MMO. Looking through the skill and talent trees, I could almost relate every skill back to a previous MMO ... except the wording changed. DD, Channeled DoTs, HoTs, Hamstring, AoE, channeled AoE... it's all there. Build a spreadsheet, min/max, burn out.
I'll be honest. I love MMORPGs. I love BioWare's past RPGs. I love Star Wars games, even when they aren't so good (just as long as they aren't produced by SOE!). So I don't care about anything but SWTOR atm.
Talk to me again once I've played through with all 8 base classes (talking both Republic and Imperial classes, not Advanced Classes - but I'll still play the same base class in most cases because I'll want to play with all of the Advanced Classes as well). Then I may pull myself away long enough to try and play a bit of ME3.
And yeah, games like Kingdom's of Amalur: Reckoning do seem really cool and interesting. But SWTOR is as close to a "sure bet" as any company will ever get with me. I can see myself paying for subs, in 6 month increments, for the next ten years easy. Well unless BioWare completely drops the ball and stops coming out with any new content. That's just the way it is...
And I don't really care what people, that want something "new", think or say. And, yeah, they can call me a "fanboi" too if they want. This is the most excited I've been, at this time of year (Christmas), in like the last 40 years. I am stoked! I may not even sleep tonight... And I'll still play all day tomorrow. ;-)
I kinda want to disagree on the 'lots of content' statement at the beginning of the article.
Depending on how fast you play, there's really only about 2 days to 2 months of content in the game right now.
It's all relative, of course, but if I - as a very casual gamer - was able to hit 15 in a weekend, playing at a normal pace, then reaching 50 isn't too far away..
Also, considering how there are zero down-time activities in the game, all you'll be doing is combat, combat and more combat, while your crew makes stuff for you. Well, if you're like me, you'll be trying to squeeze some roleplaying in there too. I'm not even going to get started on that issue though.
1-10 should take even teh msot casual 3-4 hours to play. level 10-20 takes a lot longer. 20-30 even longer. Then after (from what I heard) it takes another dramatic spike in how long it takes to level.
did I think leveling in SWTOR was still too fast, yes. But if you didn;t play past level twenty then believe me your leveling slows down.
TOR has added its 10-15% new freshness to the MMO world. Companions, unique crafting system, story and while at the same time not shying away from a complex open world system. Most games taking it safe with a PvE system with some BG thrown in. Then we get into the, they didn't need to add like space combat. Totally fun and unneeded but BW went the extra mile. Is the game perfect? Nope but as a launch base it has more to offer them any MMO I can remember at launch. WoW didn't have any end game content at launch. All we had was raiding cities.
Give it a year and TOR will be looked at as the MMO launch to beat and closing is on WoWs 10 mill subs.
TOR has added its 10-15% new freshness to the MMO world. Companions, unique crafting system, story and while at the same time not shying away from a complex open world system. Most games taking it safe with a PvE system with some BG thrown in. Then we get into the, they didn't need to add like space combat. Totally fun and unneeded but BW went the extra mile. Is the game perfect? Nope but as a launch base it has more to offer them any MMO I can remember at launch. WoW didn't have any end game content at launch. All we had was raiding cities.
Give it a year and TOR will be looked at as the MMO launch to beat and closing is on WoWs 10 mill subs.
Agreed. I know most of you hate it, but it's pretty neat they threw an arcade style shooter into an mmo.
The only reason that I clicked on this was because I thought that you were going to say something about the Swams (the band) lol
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I'll be playing (tomorrow hopefully) certainly, and I'll certainly keep my sub active long enough to play through everything with somewhere between 8-24 characters. I know I'll have fun with it. But along the way, I will suffer recuring awareness of how much better it could be. I've never been a fan of Class/Level systems, and vastly prefer something more like what Ultima Online offered us where you get better at what you do, and you can equip any weapon or armor you can get your hands on, but only practice will make you effective with it. There's a couple games out there (Mortal Online and Darkfall) that aren't very big in America unfortunately that derived their advancement systems from there... Alas, they also seem designed to function as PvP gank-fest sandboxes, where you're only limited by your own cruelty to your fellow gamer
I'm hoping Space combat will be revamped within the first year to be almost exactly what SWG offered us. If the changes to SWG hadn't turned it into an online ghost town, I'd still be playing it just for the space experience.
I'm also not fond of the "Us vs. Them" two faction system used in WoW, SWTOR, and so many other games. CoH has improved on it by at least allowing you to change sides through in game quests, and hopefully SWTOR will give us similar opportunities eventually (If my Bounty Hunter ius willing to work for whoever pays him, why am I not allowed to let the Republic pay me to take down Sith Lords?). Bar none, the best faction system I ever saw was in Everquest. It was fairly complex, and a pain to pay full attention to, but essentially, when you killed someone, organizations and tribes and such that liked that guy now dislike you a bit more, and those that didn't like your victime thought a little higher of you. Where it got interesting though is that there were hundreds of factional groups that weren't always neatly split down the Good Vs Evil lines. The two party monopoly sucks in real life, and it falls very short of fulfilling what Bioware is capable of doing with the Star Wars genre.
Another thing I'm concerned about is what I have seen so far as an utter lack of keybinding capability in the game. I hope I'm mistaken. I play a lot of CoH, and its keybind/macro system opens up a tremendous amount of possibilities. I can run all of my character's abilities off of an XBOX S-pad in CoH (That's the old pad for the 1st gen XBOX, not the 360 thing). When I have to hunch over a keyboard and try to get my character to respond to WASD and Fkeys, I swear it's like trying to drive a starship with a stick-shift and a 4 pedal clutch spaced for a Dug. SWG wasn't as good as CoH in this regard, but they made a valiant effort. SWTOR seems to be following the dismissive assumption that if I'm not able to type 80 WPM blindfolded like every other hard-core gamer, I'm really not a demographic worth giving a damn about anyway.
Oh well, if nothing else, it's a decent release of KOTOR III shackled with a WoW interface and a subscription fee that allows me to get help from other players if a fight is too tough to solo
If brute force isn't working, you're not using enough.
I'm not sure I see SWTOR as the end of the traditional MMO era. In fact, if it produces large financial returns, the industry in general could see a resurgence in traditional MMOs.
If anything changes based on SWTOR it could be the acceptance of Sci-Fi as an MMORPG theme.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
" Most importantly, SWTOR has Star Wars, which will likely be the major factor in the MMORPG's success over others that might offer a similar gameplay experience, but don't have the license and setting to back it up."
See, Im not totally sold that this is a good thing. The star wars IP will bring in some kinds of players, no doubt, but it might also turn away some players. Lets be honest, Star Wars games are usually really bad. There are some notable exceptions, but most are just not worth the money. Now if Bioware had made the exact same game in terms of graphics style and fidelity, gameplay, etc etc... but had wrapped it all up in the Elder Scrolls IP, I would be all over it. With Star Wars... I'm very 'eh' right now.
I'm also of the opinion that the Star Wars IP and the major story elements only get you so far. When you are into the end game and have completed the story quests and are just farming content for gear (which ALL mmos devolve into... =[ ) will anyone care anymore? Will it matter that you are using a laser rifle instead of just casting a fireball? I think gameplay is what really makes an MMO last, and after the beta, Im just not sold that it can really pull it off for the long haul as it just feels like I've done this all before. I can see a few million people buying it, and then most of them leaving within a year when the new shiny MMO du jour comes out or they just kind of lose interest.
I dont get why so many people seem to want this game to be F2P, which it wont be for a long long long time. The box price will go down in a few months for sure, but this will not go F2P
Sencond, F2P sucks , that means you have limited access to content, gear, and what you can do, so to really enjoy a game that is F2P you need to pay money to get ahead, and I dont want to have to pay money to get access to anything, other then my standard sub, then i dont need to worry i know i can do whatever I want.
Most F2P games are scams.
If you love F2P games so much theres about 1000000000 of them , go play some gpotatoes games. see how fun they are
hello angel : ) like u i ll be plaing to marrow woot thankfully i did both testing times of november i did the ops i did story line instead side questing hehe on the next role around i did both
i thought it was going to be donting to do it wasnt so bad as i thought i didnt do a chuck full all at once just a frw at a time to get to know whats around me "exploring " on my jedi consular smuggler was fun flirt with the lady MCP's lol when there was a opeing for that uper lvls of that i did scoundroll that was more me lol sorry spelling heheh
i only have so much time to play ill just plat 2 to 3 hours at mort ? working at walmart dont help
thanfull to have a job yes but not at walmart haha see u in game angelfire : ) what ever server u finde your self on : )
The argument that its a 'Lucas' product and they will never do F2P so will never go F2P is flawed.. they already have a free to play Star Wars product. Clone Wars Adventures, a browser MMO lite. That said, its unlikely it will happen anytime soon because of the cost of the games production. Which I personally think they will make back in the first few monthes anyways.
I do enjoy the game and totally am gonna be playing, I like star wars but its not enough to hold me into a game.. and I'm not a fan or hater of biowares past offerings. So I am going into SWTOR purely as a MMORPG fan looking for something different story wise to play. I'm tired of high fantasy, I get my modern fix from FPS I play... I want sci-fi, and with the possible exception of EVE which is too fiddly for my tastes, and AO which is just painfully dated... the market is BADLY devoid of even decent sci-fi MMOs. I don't care that the play is like all the other games that came before it, because I enjoyed playing those too. So why is that a problem? I enjoyed the beta, and each new beta weekend only made me love it that much more. So thats why I am playing.. I had fun in the game.. and isnt that the actual point of a game?
hello angel that the whole point 'to have fun ' : ) i was there to on testing both times i was excited for it i rember back then games didnt have the grafix but they were fun some games ourt there there all shiney looking but games play was ...yawn.. one of my fav games years ago was earth & beyond i played that first be for SWG came out i tryed EVE it wasnt for me old republic has the elements i enjoy angelfire see u in game what ever server u land on : )
Is it me or was that a lot of bias between the lines?
I agree that Swtor isn't revolutionizing the genre, but neither are the other games you mentioned. Yet those can get away with your praise of innovating in certain regards, yet it looks like you dismiss Swtor's innovations as something out of a lower league;
"SWTOR does try some new things with the cover system and fully-voiced storylines, but one could argue that its main draw is the highly polished use of the Star Wars license, not any gameplay innovations."
"Some new things with the cover system and fully-voiced storylines" ... really now?
Next to the WHOLE game being "voice-overed", not only storylines; so also flashpoints, normal quests, heroic quests, companion interaction, etc. ...
What about ...
Meaningful alignment and having a choice in conversations?
Social points?
A host of companions with stories of their own, romance options and who will sell stuff for you or craft and harvest, even when you are offline? (Adding an intersting management component).
Personal spaceships?
The sheer amount of content at launch compared to most releases of the past years?
Classes and advanced classes with a variety of roles to spec into and not being pigeonholed in one side of the trinity if you don't want to?
The ability to two man flashpoints with your companions?
A deep gear customization system and gear leveling a long with you, allowing you to keep the look you like best? (Without an artifiial appearance tab system next to it hopefully).
Being able to learn rare and improved crafting recipes by breaking items down again?
An open FFA pvp area?
A way to get pvp rewards through just world pvp by exchanging mercenary commendations for warzone commendations?
Exploring with stat increases as rewards?
Anyway, probably I'm forgetting a lot too.
Stil, like I said: SWTOR isn't revolutionizing the genre but I bet it's just as much innovating or improving the stuff that works in themeparks as the other upcoming releases.
They are all traditional mmorpgs, ... just improved ones (hopefully).
DUDE! You hit the nail on the head! I find that all the negatives being brought up against this game seem to be missing the big picture. The genre is called MMORPG! I for 1 think that it's about time the genre started to embrace the RPG aspect. I have personally spent months bouncing around from MMO to MMO (note I left the RPG off) only to get bored with the same old same old, and finding myself asking what is the point of all this!? At least with this game there is a point. In beta I actually got into my character, and was very interested in what will happen next. I am also interested in going back and doing the same storyline in the opposite to see what will happen. They are not innovating the genre TRUE. They are doing what everyone should have done from the beginning! MMO + RPG = MMORPG. RPG should not just be the mechanic used when leveling up. It should be about the character's journey as well. THAT is what EA, Bioware and LucasArts have done.
Also, by taking out "auto-attack" It has made the simple and standard MMO style of play into a skill based thing. I have watched countless videos of duels and more, and now just because two people are the same level, class, gear, does not mean that it will neccissarily be a close fight. This and all the other thing mentioned above are what's going to make this game epic.
There is an old wisdom, "If it ain't broke...DON'T FIX IT!" The formula for MMO's works, that's why we play. Then there are those like me that have played over 50 MMOs but never played to end game because it got boring and I never felt like I was apart of the game. "So what if I don't kill 10 rats?" This game gives me the sense that if I don't kill 10 rats then they will reproduce and over-run the settlement, or something like that.
All I'm saying is, MMOs work. I have found myself playing single player games to get the RPG. Finally someone had sense to put them together, and add in a lot more features (above) to add and keep me interested.
I'll be buying the box copy from Game on the 20th. I enjoyed myself during the weekend test I got on. The FVO and story gave the game a refreshing feel even though the majority of the game is standard fare.
This will keep me out of trouble for a while, but I have a big decision to make once I can get my hands on GW2, TSW and Archeage. GW2 is 100% on my play list longterm due to the lack of a sub. I just need to decide on which of the others get my £10 a month alongside it. 2012 is going to be an interesting year (aong with the 21st Dec 2012 Mayan prophecy lol).
As a side note, I wonfer if TSW references the "end of the 5th age of man" somewhere?
If they ever spoil this game by bringing the purchase of ingame content with real world money, they will lose me forever.....Games are about escapism....Kinda hard to do that when your charging everything to the debit card instead of trying to earn it in-game through practice and honing your character and crafting skills....FTP = The death twitch that persists after the head has been blown clean off.
I think a key differentiator that SWTOR has is a level of replayability that is absent in most every other MMO. The fact that each class has a personal story that follows them with content from level 1 to level cap, and that the decisions you make along the way actually change the story.
This alone breaks the mold of "level then grind end-game", and gives players an alternative avenue to keep them interested in playing the game and paying the sub.
If Bioware release more class stories and maybe more classes and playable alien species, each with their own meaningfull stories, then they will have an offering that is un-matched in the mmo sphere in terms of fresh content.
Sure, the mechanics are samey or familiar, but the depth of content is from my beta experience un-matched for a launching mmo.
I'm not sure I see SWTOR as the end of the traditional MMO era. In fact, if it produces large financial returns, the industry in general could see a resurgence in traditional MMOs.
If anything changes based on SWTOR it could be the acceptance of Sci-Fi as an MMORPG theme.
Only if it's significantly more successful than all these other upcoming MMOs, including GW2. In the longrun, not just box sales. If anyone even attempts to "clone" TOR, it'll be upwards of a year from now that they even start to think about it. The market may look quite different by then.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
All I really care about is the fact that in TOR's beta I had more fun than in any other mmorpg (WAR, Aion, SWG, Lotro, Dndo, FFXIV lol, DCUO, CoH, CO, AoC and some other crap I cant even remember) since back in the day when I fired Anarchy Online on.
It could have some bigger twists or features, but regardless I really enjoy the game. Bioware makes the future for this game, not some C-B predictions. It's a good game if you like traditional RPG's, if you dont, why bother wasting forum space and your time?
Very well said. +1
The forums are here for people to give their opinions, positive or negative. Not just to praise everything that comes around. If you enjoy the game...great. If you dont...great. The only wastes of space are the pointless "Game X sucks and Game X players suck!" posts.
So if you or anyone else has a valid reason behind liking or disliking any game, I'll gladly hear it before I go spending my hard-earned cash.
I don't think TOR will be the "swan-song" for it's type of MMO. What I do think/hope is that MMO Publishers are finally starting to recognize how saturated the MMO market is right now....and are striving to seek out segments of the market that haven't been particularly well served by most of the recent releases.
The gaming market is a pretty wide and diverse audience....unfortunately most AAA MMO releases seem to be catering rather exclusively to one particular range of that audience...and discounting other (probably smaller, but still significant) ranges. In other words, they've found a formula and have been reproducing products based off of that formula with (generaly small) variations on that theme. That's mostly what I see TOR doing.
It does do some things differently.....but most of what it does and how it does it, doesn't interest me personaly.
I don't like the way Bioware does "story" in thier games...as to me, it's too much like the way novels or movies do "story"....TELLING you the story rather then letting you play a role in creating it.
The combat system isn't bad, but really brings not much appealing to the table for me. The way "cover" is implimented really is more of a gimmeck (IMO)....as opposed to something closer to FPS style cover & LOS mechanics.....and frankly I don't like SCI-FI games who's combat system so closely emulates stereotypical swords & sorcery genre's....games with modern/futuristic weapons should play fundementaly differently as far as combat goes (IMO).
I'm not at all interested in the VO and cinematics. Eye (ear) candy is nice in games....but definately a very low priority for me on my list of things that interest me in games.....and I feel too much was sacrificed in order to achieve it.
I do like the alignment system and the branching story arcs (though I feel they don't go nearly far enough) and those are definately something new to the genre....but they definately aren't attractive enough to me on thier own to offset the games other deficits.
Unlike many here, I'm not very much of a fan of the Star Wars IP........I like Sci-Fi alot, but Lucas's creation has got to be one of my least favorate implimentations of the genre. So, not alot of draw there for me.
I will be be playing SW:TOR for two reasons: First it is not similar to WoW and second that I think it is going in the right direction by adding more personal storyline elements to an MMORPG as well as more world persistant elements, which of it has nice balance.
The game is really more an evolution of MMORPG's as well as evolution of the WOW. It is, from what I have read, seen , heard and played a better version of thempark MMOS. However as a persistant MMORPG world it has lot to offer.
I really hope it would be the swan song of MMORPGs and fourtunately as long as there is money to be made in creating these kind of themepark MMORPGs, and I am sure SW:TOR will make alot of money, then the guys in suits are going to continue funding these kind of games. And Thank God for that
This is how business works, it is the best product that is the most successful because selling product only can help till buyer actually tries it. Even though BetaMax for example was better from a technical point of view than VHS. It recorded one hour of video per tape. JVC came out shortly after with VHS, and it initially supported two hours per tape. This keyed into the second win for VHS -- rentals. A single VHS tape could hold a whole movie, while you needed two tapes for Betamax.
This is an inherent strong point in consumerism, ease of use and adaptability with minimum drawback and hopefully there will still be more publishers that will continue to make more fun games like SWTOR and lesser the tedium like Betamax.. So the hope of MMORPGs may lie in the west rather than in the east where grindfest clones seem to rule supreme.
Sorry this game is totally similar to WoW in its Mechanics and gameplay. I'm sorry if that erks you but thats not an opinion that is a FACT.
Comments
I enjoyed CoH for a year. I enjoyed WoW for 3 years ... well, it was a love/hate relationship. I enjoyed Rift for two months. Basically, I fall into the MMO player category of seen one hotkey MMO, seen them all now.
GW2 looks somewhat different, but we'll see.
I got into the second beta weekend and the defacto open beta weekend. I think I made it to level 3 on a few different classes. The intro areas aren't very exciting and as much as kill x rabits isn't good, lots of gofor quests aren't much better, which is what TOR seemed to rely upon. I felt like I was running in circles to watch cut scenes. Almost reminded me of FFX a little where the gameplay was primarily watching cutscenes.
An example of better starting area was AoC. Now, after level 10-12, the game basically broke down from a mechanics standpoint, but the starter area was fun and engaging.
I agree, the game doesn't really start until half way through and it's unfare to judge an MMO before completing at least a few raid encounters. However, i think it's fair to say the TOR is very much a standard hoteky MMO. Looking through the skill and talent trees, I could almost relate every skill back to a previous MMO ... except the wording changed. DD, Channeled DoTs, HoTs, Hamstring, AoE, channeled AoE... it's all there. Build a spreadsheet, min/max, burn out.
If you don't worry about it, it's not a problem.
I'll be honest. I love MMORPGs. I love BioWare's past RPGs. I love Star Wars games, even when they aren't so good (just as long as they aren't produced by SOE!). So I don't care about anything but SWTOR atm.
Talk to me again once I've played through with all 8 base classes (talking both Republic and Imperial classes, not Advanced Classes - but I'll still play the same base class in most cases because I'll want to play with all of the Advanced Classes as well). Then I may pull myself away long enough to try and play a bit of ME3.
And yeah, games like Kingdom's of Amalur: Reckoning do seem really cool and interesting. But SWTOR is as close to a "sure bet" as any company will ever get with me. I can see myself paying for subs, in 6 month increments, for the next ten years easy. Well unless BioWare completely drops the ball and stops coming out with any new content. That's just the way it is...
And I don't really care what people, that want something "new", think or say. And, yeah, they can call me a "fanboi" too if they want. This is the most excited I've been, at this time of year (Christmas), in like the last 40 years. I am stoked! I may not even sleep tonight... And I'll still play all day tomorrow. ;-)
1-10 should take even teh msot casual 3-4 hours to play. level 10-20 takes a lot longer. 20-30 even longer. Then after (from what I heard) it takes another dramatic spike in how long it takes to level.
did I think leveling in SWTOR was still too fast, yes. But if you didn;t play past level twenty then believe me your leveling slows down.
Give it a year and TOR will be looked at as the MMO launch to beat and closing is on WoWs 10 mill subs.
Agreed. I know most of you hate it, but it's pretty neat they threw an arcade style shooter into an mmo.
IIf this game had nothing to do with Star Wars very few would be interested in it, yet alone defending it like rabid dogs.
Is it going to rake in obsene amounts of coin? Yep, thats what its first design princable is about seemingly.
The only reason that I clicked on this was because I thought that you were going to say something about the Swams (the band) lol
NEWS FLASH! "A bank was robbed the other day and a man opened fire on the customers being held hostage. One customer zig-zag sprinted until he found cover. When questioned later he explained that he was a hardcore gamer and knew just what to do!" Download my music for free! I release several albums per month as part of project "Thee Untitled" . .. some video game music remixes and cover songs done with instruments in there as well! http://theeuntitled.bandcamp.com/ Check out my roleplaying blog, collection of fictional short stories, and fantasy series... updated on a blog for now until I am finished! https://childrenfromtheheavensbelow.blogspot.com/ Watch me game on occasion or make music... https://www.twitch.tv/spoontheeuntitled and subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUvqULn678VrF3OasgnbsyA
It's a WoW CLONE!?
How can that be against a traditional MMO?
It brings nothing new to the table. It's a continuation.
Seriously.
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
I'll be playing (tomorrow hopefully) certainly, and I'll certainly keep my sub active long enough to play through everything with somewhere between 8-24 characters. I know I'll have fun with it. But along the way, I will suffer recuring awareness of how much better it could be. I've never been a fan of Class/Level systems, and vastly prefer something more like what Ultima Online offered us where you get better at what you do, and you can equip any weapon or armor you can get your hands on, but only practice will make you effective with it. There's a couple games out there (Mortal Online and Darkfall) that aren't very big in America unfortunately that derived their advancement systems from there... Alas, they also seem designed to function as PvP gank-fest sandboxes, where you're only limited by your own cruelty to your fellow gamer
I'm hoping Space combat will be revamped within the first year to be almost exactly what SWG offered us. If the changes to SWG hadn't turned it into an online ghost town, I'd still be playing it just for the space experience.
I'm also not fond of the "Us vs. Them" two faction system used in WoW, SWTOR, and so many other games. CoH has improved on it by at least allowing you to change sides through in game quests, and hopefully SWTOR will give us similar opportunities eventually (If my Bounty Hunter ius willing to work for whoever pays him, why am I not allowed to let the Republic pay me to take down Sith Lords?). Bar none, the best faction system I ever saw was in Everquest. It was fairly complex, and a pain to pay full attention to, but essentially, when you killed someone, organizations and tribes and such that liked that guy now dislike you a bit more, and those that didn't like your victime thought a little higher of you. Where it got interesting though is that there were hundreds of factional groups that weren't always neatly split down the Good Vs Evil lines. The two party monopoly sucks in real life, and it falls very short of fulfilling what Bioware is capable of doing with the Star Wars genre.
Another thing I'm concerned about is what I have seen so far as an utter lack of keybinding capability in the game. I hope I'm mistaken. I play a lot of CoH, and its keybind/macro system opens up a tremendous amount of possibilities. I can run all of my character's abilities off of an XBOX S-pad in CoH (That's the old pad for the 1st gen XBOX, not the 360 thing). When I have to hunch over a keyboard and try to get my character to respond to WASD and Fkeys, I swear it's like trying to drive a starship with a stick-shift and a 4 pedal clutch spaced for a Dug. SWG wasn't as good as CoH in this regard, but they made a valiant effort. SWTOR seems to be following the dismissive assumption that if I'm not able to type 80 WPM blindfolded like every other hard-core gamer, I'm really not a demographic worth giving a damn about anyway.
Oh well, if nothing else, it's a decent release of KOTOR III shackled with a WoW interface and a subscription fee that allows me to get help from other players if a fight is too tough to solo
If brute force isn't working, you're not using enough.
I'm not sure I see SWTOR as the end of the traditional MMO era. In fact, if it produces large financial returns, the industry in general could see a resurgence in traditional MMOs.
If anything changes based on SWTOR it could be the acceptance of Sci-Fi as an MMORPG theme.
" Most importantly, SWTOR has Star Wars, which will likely be the major factor in the MMORPG's success over others that might offer a similar gameplay experience, but don't have the license and setting to back it up."
See, Im not totally sold that this is a good thing. The star wars IP will bring in some kinds of players, no doubt, but it might also turn away some players. Lets be honest, Star Wars games are usually really bad. There are some notable exceptions, but most are just not worth the money. Now if Bioware had made the exact same game in terms of graphics style and fidelity, gameplay, etc etc... but had wrapped it all up in the Elder Scrolls IP, I would be all over it. With Star Wars... I'm very 'eh' right now.
I'm also of the opinion that the Star Wars IP and the major story elements only get you so far. When you are into the end game and have completed the story quests and are just farming content for gear (which ALL mmos devolve into... =[ ) will anyone care anymore? Will it matter that you are using a laser rifle instead of just casting a fireball? I think gameplay is what really makes an MMO last, and after the beta, Im just not sold that it can really pull it off for the long haul as it just feels like I've done this all before. I can see a few million people buying it, and then most of them leaving within a year when the new shiny MMO du jour comes out or they just kind of lose interest.
I dont get why so many people seem to want this game to be F2P, which it wont be for a long long long time. The box price will go down in a few months for sure, but this will not go F2P
Sencond, F2P sucks , that means you have limited access to content, gear, and what you can do, so to really enjoy a game that is F2P you need to pay money to get ahead, and I dont want to have to pay money to get access to anything, other then my standard sub, then i dont need to worry i know i can do whatever I want.
Most F2P games are scams.
If you love F2P games so much theres about 1000000000 of them , go play some gpotatoes games. see how fun they are
hello angel : ) like u i ll be plaing to marrow woot thankfully i did both testing times of november i did the ops i did story line instead side questing hehe on the next role around i did both
i thought it was going to be donting to do it wasnt so bad as i thought i didnt do a chuck full all at once just a frw at a time to get to know whats around me "exploring " on my jedi consular smuggler was fun flirt with the lady MCP's lol when there was a opeing for that uper lvls of that i did scoundroll that was more me lol sorry spelling heheh
i only have so much time to play ill just plat 2 to 3 hours at mort ? working at walmart dont help
thanfull to have a job yes but not at walmart haha see u in game angelfire : ) what ever server u finde your self on : )
DUDE! You hit the nail on the head! I find that all the negatives being brought up against this game seem to be missing the big picture. The genre is called MMORPG! I for 1 think that it's about time the genre started to embrace the RPG aspect. I have personally spent months bouncing around from MMO to MMO (note I left the RPG off) only to get bored with the same old same old, and finding myself asking what is the point of all this!? At least with this game there is a point. In beta I actually got into my character, and was very interested in what will happen next. I am also interested in going back and doing the same storyline in the opposite to see what will happen. They are not innovating the genre TRUE. They are doing what everyone should have done from the beginning! MMO + RPG = MMORPG. RPG should not just be the mechanic used when leveling up. It should be about the character's journey as well. THAT is what EA, Bioware and LucasArts have done.
Also, by taking out "auto-attack" It has made the simple and standard MMO style of play into a skill based thing. I have watched countless videos of duels and more, and now just because two people are the same level, class, gear, does not mean that it will neccissarily be a close fight. This and all the other thing mentioned above are what's going to make this game epic.
There is an old wisdom, "If it ain't broke...DON'T FIX IT!" The formula for MMO's works, that's why we play. Then there are those like me that have played over 50 MMOs but never played to end game because it got boring and I never felt like I was apart of the game. "So what if I don't kill 10 rats?" This game gives me the sense that if I don't kill 10 rats then they will reproduce and over-run the settlement, or something like that.
All I'm saying is, MMOs work. I have found myself playing single player games to get the RPG. Finally someone had sense to put them together, and add in a lot more features (above) to add and keep me interested.
I'll be buying the box copy from Game on the 20th. I enjoyed myself during the weekend test I got on. The FVO and story gave the game a refreshing feel even though the majority of the game is standard fare.
This will keep me out of trouble for a while, but I have a big decision to make once I can get my hands on GW2, TSW and Archeage. GW2 is 100% on my play list longterm due to the lack of a sub. I just need to decide on which of the others get my £10 a month alongside it. 2012 is going to be an interesting year (aong with the 21st Dec 2012 Mayan prophecy lol).
As a side note, I wonfer if TSW references the "end of the 5th age of man" somewhere?
~Wolf
U would like that dont you?
well keep dreaming the subs will rise even more after q2 2012...as mch as u like this game will not go f2p..
haters gonna hate now do me a favor and go back to ur farmille 1 pixel game mmo
If they ever spoil this game by bringing the purchase of ingame content with real world money, they will lose me forever.....Games are about escapism....Kinda hard to do that when your charging everything to the debit card instead of trying to earn it in-game through practice and honing your character and crafting skills....FTP = The death twitch that persists after the head has been blown clean off.
I think a key differentiator that SWTOR has is a level of replayability that is absent in most every other MMO. The fact that each class has a personal story that follows them with content from level 1 to level cap, and that the decisions you make along the way actually change the story.
This alone breaks the mold of "level then grind end-game", and gives players an alternative avenue to keep them interested in playing the game and paying the sub.
If Bioware release more class stories and maybe more classes and playable alien species, each with their own meaningfull stories, then they will have an offering that is un-matched in the mmo sphere in terms of fresh content.
Sure, the mechanics are samey or familiar, but the depth of content is from my beta experience un-matched for a launching mmo.
Only if it's significantly more successful than all these other upcoming MMOs, including GW2. In the longrun, not just box sales. If anyone even attempts to "clone" TOR, it'll be upwards of a year from now that they even start to think about it. The market may look quite different by then.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
The forums are here for people to give their opinions, positive or negative. Not just to praise everything that comes around. If you enjoy the game...great. If you dont...great. The only wastes of space are the pointless "Game X sucks and Game X players suck!" posts.
So if you or anyone else has a valid reason behind liking or disliking any game, I'll gladly hear it before I go spending my hard-earned cash.
i wish swtor all the luck ihope it does well. for me i want a sandbox star wars game. i would like a little more rpg than just mmo.
I don't think TOR will be the "swan-song" for it's type of MMO. What I do think/hope is that MMO Publishers are finally starting to recognize how saturated the MMO market is right now....and are striving to seek out segments of the market that haven't been particularly well served by most of the recent releases.
The gaming market is a pretty wide and diverse audience....unfortunately most AAA MMO releases seem to be catering rather exclusively to one particular range of that audience...and discounting other (probably smaller, but still significant) ranges. In other words, they've found a formula and have been reproducing products based off of that formula with (generaly small) variations on that theme. That's mostly what I see TOR doing.
It does do some things differently.....but most of what it does and how it does it, doesn't interest me personaly.
I don't like the way Bioware does "story" in thier games...as to me, it's too much like the way novels or movies do "story"....TELLING you the story rather then letting you play a role in creating it.
The combat system isn't bad, but really brings not much appealing to the table for me. The way "cover" is implimented really is more of a gimmeck (IMO)....as opposed to something closer to FPS style cover & LOS mechanics.....and frankly I don't like SCI-FI games who's combat system so closely emulates stereotypical swords & sorcery genre's....games with modern/futuristic weapons should play fundementaly differently as far as combat goes (IMO).
I'm not at all interested in the VO and cinematics. Eye (ear) candy is nice in games....but definately a very low priority for me on my list of things that interest me in games.....and I feel too much was sacrificed in order to achieve it.
I do like the alignment system and the branching story arcs (though I feel they don't go nearly far enough) and those are definately something new to the genre....but they definately aren't attractive enough to me on thier own to offset the games other deficits.
Unlike many here, I'm not very much of a fan of the Star Wars IP........I like Sci-Fi alot, but Lucas's creation has got to be one of my least favorate implimentations of the genre. So, not alot of draw there for me.
Sorry this game is totally similar to WoW in its Mechanics and gameplay. I'm sorry if that erks you but thats not an opinion that is a FACT.