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An Honest Opinion of SW:TOR
SuperXero89
Member UncommonPosts: 2,551
Well with the servers down for the rest of the night, now is a good time for me to dicuss what I personally think about the game. I've always been a fan of World of Warcraft. I often find that many MMORPG developers seek to emulate the success of WoW but either do it shoddily, or they fail to fully encapsulate all of what makes WoW so successful. Being a huge Star Wars fan since I first got the movies (the original original trilogy) for my 5th birthday, I've always thought a traditional MMORPG set within the Star Wars universe would be something amazing. When BioWare finally announced The Old Republic, I was ecstatic. Knights of the Old Republic is one of my favorite games of all time and an MMORPG version of KOTOR meant that I could now combine two of my favorite passions into one activity. All previous beta experiences aside, after playing through level 26, I can now say that I am very pleased at what BioWare has given us; however, I'm not so naive as to say the game is flawless. In fact, that is far from the case. The Old Republic has a number of issues that will impact one's ability to enjoy the game if they aren't already fans of the source material.
For starters, the quests and cutscenes are all very well done. If you can stomach sitting through cutscenes and heaps of dialogue, those additions really change the way you think about questing. No longer are you running to faceless camps filled with NPCs all in a nice line with exclamation marks over their heads with nondescript stories telling yout o go out and kill 10 rats. You engage in a dialogue with every quest NPC which gives them life and a character not seen in any other MMORPG. While some quests are fairly standard, many side quests are tiny self contained stories with moral choices similar to those found in the main story. Most of the standard kill/collect quests are in the form of bonus quests which you get in each area. They are totally optional to progression, and after the starter planet, I skipped them entirely. Every planet has a large amount of group quests which, in some cases, are like miniature flashpoint instances that take place within group phases. Given that the main story quest is the one questline which pushes you from area to area, you are not required to finish all sidequests in a linear sequence in order to progress. You may chose to entirely ignore certain side missions if you have made up the XP loss in PvP or if you simply are ready to get off a certain planet. Occasionally, new quests will pop up in old areas which reference your past deeds which you may miss entirely if you don't know where to look. Each archtype has its own storyline, so each side has a total of four main stories. Of course, all side quests are the same for each respective faction.
While the main story for each archtype class is different, the fact that all side missions are the same per faction may pose an issue when leveling alts. I would like to experience all the stories, but I'm not sure I want to be bothered with grinding through the same plethora of side missions over and over and over. As a result, more than anything, I'm tempted to role a member of the oposing faction for an alt. Of course, if I do that I won't be able to be in contant with my guild or anyone on my buddy list, and after I finish a character on the opposing faction, what then? SW:TOR and all new MMORPGs need multiple leveling paths even if it's just two potential zones per level range. Going through each zone is fun the first time, but repeating the same content so soon after completing it the first time is going to get old.
One thing though -- the running. Oh my goodness, the running! Contrary to the beliefs of most people, I feel as if BioWare got it right with the scale of the starter planets. They're the perfect size for the quests you must complete. Every planet after that is needlessly big with nothing but filler hallways or (in the case of planets like Tatooine), empty space. You'll constantly get quests telling you to go one direction and another from the same quest hub telling you to go somewhere across the map. I wouldn't have an issue with this if the planets were fun to explore, but as a matter of opinion, the planets are all relatively generic. Once you step foot on the planet, you've pretty much seen all there is to see. The rest of the planet is just the same generic tileset spread out over 2, 3, or 4 different maps. It's almost as if BioWare heard the cries of jaded sandbox fanatics and decided to make every planet after the starter worlds large just for the sake of having large worlds. Of course, you do get a spring skill at level 14 and a speeder at level 25, but the running is still annoying and it reaks of old school WoW. In regards to the speeder, riding training is expensive and harkens back to the days of WoW where you had to save up tons of money at that level in order to afford a mount. I did not like that then and I don't like it now. While people are saying they're leaving the starter planet with upwards of 25k gold, I have to question what they are doing. Having never purchased a single bag upgrade, I've only had about 31k even at level 26, and I don't usually have that much for very long due to skill upgrades being so frequent and so expensive.
The cutscenes are storylines are BioWare's major innovations, but that could be an issue. For those of us who are drawn into the game through the cutscenes, this is nearly a genre changing feature; however, not everyone cares so much about storylines and quest NPCs with personality. I'm sure there's a lot of players out there who are wearing out the spacebar as I write this, and for those people, I wonder if SW:TOR will truly hold their interest for a long period of time. Perhaps it's easy to say that the game simply wasn't made for them, and perhaps that is exactly the case, but it could create a problem for BioWare if most of the players currently clogging the login servers are the ones that love spamming the spacebar. The problem is that when you take out the voice acting and when you take out the cutscenes and story, you're leff with World of Warcraft ,minus a few key exceptions, in a Star Wars setting, and I can't imagine those people sticking around very long.
A couple of the key exceptions I am refering to are companion characters and crew skills. I find these phenomenal additions to the WoW formula. In SW:TOR you have three major "crafting" skills. You can gather materials and craft items using those materials, but you can also send your companions on certain "missions" which bring materials, credits, and rare loot drops. Your companion characters can craft, do missions, and gather materials all while you're adventuring, making this a huge step forward in traditional crafting mechanics. Taking a page from KOTOR, most items have slots where they can be modified with additional loot items. In theory, you can take a statless piece of gear and make it entirely equivalent to some of the best equipment in the game through modification. When a companion character is running errands for you, he, she, or it is fighting by your side akin to a henchman from Guild Wars Nightfall. You can even outfit your companion with armor and weapon upgrades exactly like you do your player character. Add those two things to the WoW formula and would that make the difference for people deciding whether to stay or to go back to WoW to await the panda invasion? Only they can say.
Space combat is another exception to the WoW formula, but it's such a minor part of the game that I doubt people will judge whether or not they stay or leave based on how great it is. Honestly though, I enjoyed the on-rails space combat. Panzer Dragoon II is another one of my favorite games of all time, and Star Fox is one of the most widely acclaimed video game franchises in history, so I'm not sure where all the hate comes from in regards to the space mini-game especially when you consider none of the KOTOR games ever had spaceflight. All they had was a turret minigame. That said, I honestly believe on-rail shooters present cinematic action better than a flight sim or even a more arcade style space flight game like Rogue Squadron ever could. Complete more than just the first mission to get a real feel for how fun it is. The battles are intense and all look phenomenal. In fact, space combat is probably the best looking portion of the entire game. You can earn badges and purchase equipment upgrades for your ship in order to more easily complete additional missions as well. I look forward to seeing how much BioWare expands upon this mechanic.
So far, I have completed every flashpoint for my level at least once, and so far, they are all extremely fun. The first flashpoint had a hefty amount of group dialogue and cutscenes which, I think, caused a lot of people to think all flashpoints would be that way; however, that isn't the case. Think of the first flashpoint as an introduction to the fun that is multiplayer conversations. The rest of the flashpoints that I have completed weren't all that different from what you would find in WoW or Rift, though I'm sure future flashpoints do have additional story content. Bosses were appropriately challenging and required strategies similar to what you see in WoW.
Quest and dugeon rewards are largely appropriate. At times, I feel as if they throw too much at you where I'm constantly asking myself "Ok, do I upgrade my own armor, do I upgrade companion 1's weapon, do I take this new chestpiece for companion 2, or do I take this commendation so I can buy something really nice later?" I would prefer if companion gear upgrades were given in addition to gear upgrades for youself. Speaking of commedations, badge grinding starts early in SW:TOR. Every planet as commendation badges which you can loot of random mobs, gain as quest rewards, or obtain from flashpoints. There are commendation merchants for gear and for modifications and the gear quality is at least the equivalent of blues in WoW. I enjoyed the flashpoints, but I foresee an issue with the way they are set up. Currently, all flashpoints are accessed through a singular location -- the fleet center which is basiclally the closest thing SW:TOR has to a faction capital. It's a great idea; however, it can be a pain getting together a group for a flashpoint unless every person who wants to run it is also waiting around in the fleet center. There's no galaxy wide LFG channel, and most players see fit to grind out the levels on the individual planets rather than wasting time trying to form groups in the fleet center. if there's not going to be a dungeon finder in the near future, BioWare should at least add a galaxy wide LFG channel to facilitate locating groups.
In terms of graphics, I'm not quite sure what's going on with SW:TOR. The textures in-game look low resolution and pixelated; however, the graphics in cutscenes are as smooth and vibrant as we've seen in all the screenshots. Given that BioWare has made no official statement regarding this, many people believe that this is how the game is supposed to look, and perhaps they are correct. While trying to examine this issue, I turned my textures from high to medium and noticed absolutely nothing happened whereas a change from low to medium required a re-load. This leads me to believe that high quality textures are, for some reason, missing from the game or at least disabled except for when in the middle of a cutscene. Why this is the case is anyone's guess, but I would assume there's a problem with the game engine. SW:TOR is a resource hog when it shouldn't be. There's a nasty trend where many MMORPG developers sacrifice graphics quality to allow the game to be played on a variety of systems, yet World of Warcraft remains pretty much the only MMORPG released without some game engine related issue. Playing this game using two different video cards at different occasions, SW:TOR causes the cards to run much hotter and if I'm not mistaken, a day spent in Taris nearly caused me to overheat. Framerates are all over the map. In some cases, I'll get around 30 FPS then rotate the camera ever so slightly and suddenly be upwards of 60. I would assume many of these issues are related to why we can't use the high quality textures in normal play. Because of this; however, the game can go from looking acceptable to good to downright awful depending on the area you're in. Certain areas tend to highlight the ugly textures more than others, and to make matters worse, an option foranti-aliasing has been removed and this game is in real need for it. While it can be enabled via an ini file tweak, this may cause additional graphical issues.
Aside from that SW:TOR has numerous tiny issues that have been eating at me lately. For one, it isn't polished. It's actually incredibly buggy. I haven't encountered anything game breaking, but the number of graphical glitches are astounding. Many times in a cutscene, the camera will randomly shake as if the planet is in the middle of an earthquake. Strange neon green lines jot out from the ground and shoot across the map in certain areas along with some red lines and other glitchy graphics. It's doubtful this is just my system as, once again, I've encountered these issues across two different video cards, and for the green lines at least, many players in an earlier beta reported seeing them as well. While I haven't gotten stuck in combat yet (the bane of Rift), my character and my companion are often stuck with our lightsabers on as we run across the map for several seconds. On occasion, a mob will slam my companion into the ground and she will stay there, magically teleporting next to me face down in the dirt as I move through the area as if I was playing Everquest and dragging someone's corpse. In Tatooine, I ran across a valley where nearly all Sand People were glitched where I could only remain in combat with them for about 3 seconds before they would revert back to full health. I'm sure there are others, but they are numerous and tiny. It would be difficult for me to recount every instance of a glitch given that I haven't exactly been keeping a log. Secondly, SW:TOR is fresh out of the box without numerous features that I consider to be standard for MMORPGs. The UI cannot be resized. There are no guild banks. There is no add-on support. There's not even little icons beside the quest tracker for when you need to use an item for a quest. Like in oldschool WoW, you have to manually place that item on your hot bar to use it. In my mind, the biggest offender is going to be the lack of a respec option. This isn't such a big deal for me since all I have are DPS talent trees, but for classes who can spec between tanking/dmg or healing/dmg are going to hate this system. Certain skill trees are better for PvP when they may not be entirely viable for PvE as well. Sure, there are respec NPCs in fleet centers, and the first respec is free, but the price for a respec ramps up quickly, and I doubt it will be viable to continually switch between specs. I'm not sure what BioWare was thinking with this, but that sort of omission is truly unacceptable. Other players have other issues as well, and perhaps I do, but because none of them are coming to me at the moment, they must not have concerned me as much as the lack of the features listed above.
I think, however, at the end of the day, whether or not SW:TOR is a huge success is going to depend largely on how many people buy into the BioWare formula within an MMORPG. Millions of people logged thousands of hours into KOTOR, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age; however, this is an MMORPG not a single player game. Will it become a problem for people going from quest NPC to quest NPC listening to the traditional BioWare style dialogue system? At what point will players get bored with this and begin treating it as WoW with lightsabers? Will they ever? Honestly, I don't think any of us can say at the moment. SW:TOR is a great game and is most likely going to be a success if for no other reason than the fact that it gives Star Wars fans a new MMO to call home. After all, if all those people can play the garbage that was NGE SWG for all those years, surely they can play and enjoy SW:TOR for a long time to come. Additionally, it's probably the most well funded MMORPG on the market outside of WoW published by a developer of considerable reputation which will draw an audience. If BioWare can sell SW:TOR's playerbase on the game's story mechanics, if they can fix the numerous bugs, and if they can add all those common features found in other recently created MMORPGs, I predict the game will be a success. If not, at the worst, I feel as if this game will perform similarly to Rift, LotRO, and EQ2 all who posessed and continue to posses a healthy subscriber base for quite some time.
Comments
What are your system specs? I run an ATI 5770, 8gb ram and an X4 965 BE and haven't encountered any of those graphical errors so far (fingers crossed). Nor does my card over heat, I feel that BW have nailed down a basic foundation of an MMORPG formula that nutrtured properly will grow to become an awesome game. Let's hope they took note of the SWG debacle which BTW is shutting down today!
Nice write up though.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
EVGA 580
AMD Phenom X6 1090T
8 GB RAM
Happened on an XFX 5870 as well.
I monitor my GPU temps now, and I haven't seen the GPU go over 84 degrees (Taris may have been a different story), but the fan seems louder when playing SW:TOR than it does in any other game. When I had the 5870, it was pratically screaming.
The only thing I can suggest is to check the drivers and update if needed but I'm sure you already did that.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
I'm not pushing an agenda either for or against hte game. That much should be clear after reading my write-up.
It's how I "honestly" feel about this game.
Gotta love this community...
Next time you gonna make such a topic put a WARNING : Wall of Text, in front.
I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it
--Voltaire
Thank you for that excellent review.
I'm not a star wars fan and am more than happy running around in Lotro for my lore fix, but if I was a star wars fan your review would certainly motivate me to give it a try.
Playing: Darkfall New Dawn (and planning to play Fallout 76)
Favourite games have included: UO, Lineage2, Darkfall, Lotro, Baldur's Gate, SSX, FF7 and yes the original Wizardry on an Apple IIe
Good review. Thanks.
I would agree with you that it is up to everyone else to decide if he (or any speaker) is being honest. However, unless there is some kind of genuine question about his honesty, then (and I mean this politely) I just see your whole point as moot.
Is it our job, not his, to decide if his review is honest? Yes. Does that mean he can't use a commonly used phrase in a thread title? No. Let me back this point up though with the rest of this post...
The two are not mutually exclusive...just because "he is not the one to call himself trustworthy," doesn't mean that he shouldn't use a phrase such as "honest opinion" if he was just trying to say, "Hey, here is my opinion, it is a genuine opinion that I put a lot of thought into. I am trying to give it to you straight."
The context matters here. He isn't a member of the community that is under suspicious for being dishonest or scandalous. When he typed "honest opinion," I bet he wasn't trying to invoke the most loaded form of the phrase possible...i.e.: "I AM AN HONEST GUY. I DO NOT LIE. HERE ARE MY OPINIONS, WHICH YOU SHOULD TRUST AND ADOPT AS YOUR OWN, BECAUSE I AM TRUSTWORTHY AND WANT THIS GAME TO SUCCEED/FAIL."
I just don't think he meant all that. It's just a common, fluffy phrase. You're reacting as if he meant it as more than that/as if he meant to use the super loaded form of the phrase.
This community is filled with anal retentive people who take stupid crap too seriously. You're a prime example.
Holy wall of text Batman!!!! Nothanks
Kind of a self defeating hypothesis isn't it? Who are you to say you're entire point isn't a heap of bantha poo?
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Great review i'm almost expriencing those green lines althought they are far less than they were in the thanksgiving beta.
It took me 2 mins just to scroll down to the bottom of the post,
I'm lazy can anyone sum up what OP said in one sentence?
Decent game that has managed to reproduce the WoW formula unlike others before it, many faults but none are game breaking. He is experiencing graphical errors and his GPU's have been overheating causing trouble, he still has yet to discover the source of these errors but overall is pleased with the game.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
How is that a hypothesis? And how am I arguing that? Because I'm not, silly.
Only difference is that I am not wearing a tag going all like "ohh here is an unbiased opinion TROLOLOLOLO".
People are going to judge me anyway, so f**k it. meh. Doesn't matter if I try to reasure them with crappy slogans and statements about how my opinion is valid due to my gaming expertise.
But I certainly am convinced that I am better than 95% of all of ya who fly around the points, and let your emotions run amok. I'm like a real life fat jedi - I'm not affected by emotions and all that. I don't care, and that is why I win!
It might sound arrogant but it ain't really. It's just me making my claim that him labeling himself as honest, makes me more suspcious of him. That's all what I'm about in this thread - And I am 100% right. Everyone else is just arguing semantics I think.
Bare facts - He's posted his opinion about a game he's just played, letting people know what he thinks.
You've joined the thread to have a go at him about his thread title and using the word 'honest', then turned the thread into a flame war, then said you arent arrogant but that you are 100% right and better than everyone else.
You are a prime example of the complete nobs on this forum who feel that making 'posts' is an art form that only you understand and you have the right to pull everyone else down. You've made this entire thread about you, and it was about a game originally.
Funnily, you ignored the only post so far that actually highlights what you are;
"This community is filled with anal retentive people who take stupid crap too seriously. You're a prime example."
Have a long hard think to yourself... 'I just saw a thread and decided I needed to criticise the poster for his title..." Then read the previous quote again.
Im sure you will pick holes in my post too, and try to reflect my own comments back at me to "win the day!". But seriously, you need to get a life mate
Or, maybe most people who use the expression "honest opinion" are really trying to give a more honest opinion than usual? Only super-trolls use "honest opinion" as means to give a less honest opinion.
As for "Everybody lies. First rule of House": yes everybody lies, but far from always and the extent of the lies does not need to be large either.
You're greatly mistaken.
He posted his opinion in a thread on a online discussion board to get feedback. I gave feedback regarding a statement he made. One I thought was silly. One which made me more suspcious of him. He retorted in anger - Claiming that his own thread was stupid crap (I won't presume to know) and that I am anal retentive. I don't even know what that is.
I could have been one of the many posters in this thread who dismissed the OP due to his wall of text. That's not very informative . That's not very good for having a discussion.
You give me too much credit. It takes other people to make the thread, or subject about me. The OP was the one who made it about me, and then you further indulged him. I don't need to make the thread about me. I know myself. I would rather help the OP, to fix the error of his ways. His ways of withdrawing other people. The way he choose to handle this thread has not worked out so well for him, and that is nobody elses fault than his own.
In fact I am one of the best posters on this board. I say what comes to mind, even if it's not the popular opinion, and that is much more healthy for a discussion. I have not called anyone names, or labelled anyone anything. I merely distanced myself and questioned the morale compass of a person who proclaims himself honest.
Your pee is boiling because you're are on a trainwreck, and I am right. I was not the one with my hands in the cookie jar. You sir, are the wrong one!
Regards,
That is true. I can't disagree with this. I guess, by your example, I read the OP's thread title as a "super troll".
I won't dispute this at all.
But let me asking you this friend - When looking at the state of this forum, and the way it is being moderated - by both fanboys and haters, would you really truly, fault a man(or a woman) for taking such stance?
The fact that you take posting on a message board so seriously, and actually rank yourself in your head, says a hell of a lot about you. Did he really post this to get feedback on HOW he actually wrote it and the phrasing he used?
In fact to edit this and go even further. You even posted saying you are 'correcting him on the error of his ways', and that it all hasnt worked out well for him. What friggin planet are you on? Who on earth wants or needs to post what they hope is their own opinion on their gaming experience, to get a complete tool like you come along and begin correcting them on the style of their post.
Even the very way you phrase responses, as though you're in a courtroom etc. The fact that you are so serious about a thread title and taking a stance on it. The fact that you have a rule regarding everyone lying. Or maybe that it took someone to point out to you it may just be an 'expression' he is using before you took a step back from your rant and applied some common sense.
This is a message board about games, people come here to talk about whether they do or dont like a game. I basically come here and read them to see what people think. You come here to "exist", and argue, and try to expand your epeen, to form a "reputation" for yourself, to counter peoples posts and claim the high ground. I replied to your post because I genuinely cant believe that your are such a nob head.
And YES, I GENUINELY believe that. I am being GENUINE. I am not lying as a rule of house, nor does me saying I genuinely believe it point to some underlying possibility that I am not in fact being genuine, simply because I said I was...
Let me say it once and for all, loud and clear, as everyone who reads this thread will feel the same;
YOU ARE A POMPOUS AROGANT NOB HEAD WHO NEEDS TO GET A LIFE!!!
lol... how is it that one of the longest articulated opinions on these forums about this game is posted, and everyone's talking about its title... xD
Perhaps. I mean.. anything is possible?
I will meditate on this. Thank you for your opinion.
Thank you for the review. I found it very helpful and I am looking forward to space combat now.
I know not everyone has early access, but looking at Xfire it's #6! Looks like this will be a very popular game next Tuesday, it does have the typical standard MMO features in it but Star Wars is a huge IP and makes the game fun and addictive.
I bet Warhammer Online had similar statistics.
I mean, come on ... they are gamers ... throw them game, claim it has boobs or is cool and they will all buy it....
If it is still on top in a few months is the real question... hype these days is so bad that probably an mmo pacman would sell a million boxes with the right hype.