Every single quest is click the same generator, box or terminal and kill 30 npcs. Every single one. The "bonus" missions, are just a misnomer for a kill x quest. It's the same thing, as it's required. Bonus != Optional. A real bonus mission would be something like clicking the generators in a set amount of time, and get bonus experience.
I think they are MUCH more innovative and definately more immersive than any MMO I've played. What did you want? Purposeless messenger-boy quests? I feel like I have a part to play in the quests, thanks to the voice acting and scenes. At least you're not collecting wolfs teeth for... why did we do that? I can remember why I had to poison the water in Hutta, because I was torn between making a moral lightside/darkside choice, and doing a little extra work.
Compaions are nice, but kind of takes away the whole fun part when everyone else has the exact same companions. There's a lot of bugs, like Mako's toggle auto abilities get reset when you mount. Ths makes her useless because she just casts a crowd control entire fight, and won't heal you. I don't really understand why we could not customize our companions. Why is there no talent tree for them? Why can't we change their names? etc
They went pretty far with the companions. They could, and probably will do more, but you will have tons more companions. While you can't give them talents, they all have multiple passives that toggle them between one "Spec" and another. IE: Quinn can do dammage or heal extra. You also have to choose which ones to gear, since they make such a huge differance in your success during combat around level 40. Kill mobs faster, or tank and spank over time? You have to play fovorites while leveling them. You definately have a lot of customization with them, in that sense.
Crafting is dull and boring. Whatever happened to meaninful crafting like eve, swg and vanguard? All you do is send your companions on "missions" and they return stuff back for you.
It's easy. simple, and it allows you to immerse yourself in the essense of the rest of the game, instead of running around, looking for mats. I don't see anything to complain about, crafting is a pain in the ass.
2011 (release) and with DirectX 11 out for years now, it surprises me they did not even take the basic features of it. There's no reason this game should not have anti-aliasing built in to the client, and not forced. Texture quality is reduced on players and monsters when exploring the world, but enhanced when you talk to people. Strange.
The cutscenes are the immersive parts of the game. It's where you get the story, and make important choices. That's the catch of the game.
Combat is unrepsonsive. There is a massive post, with BIoWare stating it is a known issue, about delay on certain spells. Don't even try to deny this, when bioware themselves acknowledge the bug. A lot of the spells are useless.
I haven't noticed on my marauder. perhaps because it's melee. Some abilites that shouldn't have a global CD I've noticed don't work immedietly because of the global cooldown. But only when I click on sidebars. everything mapped to a key works for me.
The only quest dialogue worth mentioning is class quest. Everything else is 2 windows of dialogue and move on to clicking generators and killing 30 guys. To be fair here, there are a FEW meaningful small quests.
I'm going back to my first rebuttal, here. If you follow the storylines, every plannet has significant stories, which apply to the plannet.
Space missions are basically on-rails (Starfox) point and click. There's probably about 10-15 of them, and they become boring daily quests after doing them a few times. There's no resaon to really even do space, except to relieve yourself from the click 5 generators, kill 30 droids quest you're on. I honestly have no idea why they would not have put space pvp in. This would have been awesome. Or hell even co-op space missions?! This is an MMORPG!
When they announced space combat, they said they were too late into development, but were going to release a space combat that would in no way be required for the player to look at twice. They also said they hoped to expand on it. It's like a minigame. I don't bother with it. My friend loves it. I'll play it later, if/when they expand on it. 100% optional. at least we get a taste. And it looks pretty, graphically.
Lack of UI mods, macros and customizable interface really sets this game back to 2005. If you want a competitive hardcore raiding scene, you need to compete directly with the market contender. Otheriwse we're going back. I mean seriously, why was there no option to scale the UI or move things around ON LAUNCH.
I belive SWTOR's dev. blog read something like "You like customization? You should! that's why we're allowing you to customize the UI!" Macros are definately a setback, no argument there.
Honestly I doubt this game will be anything specatular. It has less features overall than Warhammer had at launch, and the same balance issues as it. There are so many things this game could have done, but didn't. There are no mmo factors to the space missions. End game is basically outdated 4 mans, raiding and battlegrounds. The lack of LFD while leveling makes running dungeons painful.
I want to start with the LFD part. It's an okay feature,if it's on-server. but it deteriorates the social aspects. On my server, most people caught on to the /who LFG thing, so they get a personal message, and then invited. However, the PVP server I play on, I noticed people don't use it. It's a little painfull. Endgame is pretty dull, but I love alts, because every class is SO different. I'm leveling my MageRogueTank, right now. (Inquisitor assassin tank)
Take off your honeymoon glasses people. If they wanted to copy World of Warcraft, they did it. Too bad they copied the 2005 version of it. Nobody wants to wait 7 years for a game to be where the others are now. Nobody would have bought this game if it did not have Star Wars on the front of it.
wait, you mean 2005, when WoW was at it's quality peak, as far as likeablility? Virtually everyone I know left WoW, because it's way too dumbed down.
I am OK with the whole review except how can you give it an 8 for Innovation? decent but dumbed down graphics, same old questing system (voice overs are fine but they still only represent a spoken quest assignment and have been around in RPGs for a long time), 2 faction, action bar abilities... adds up to at most a 7 for Innovation... if that. Every F2P Asian MMO has the same elements in terms of "innovation". The only way that they have innovated is the spreading around of archetypes... though Rift has a better implementation of this, by far.
So, yes, I think the game is very good and polished and has lots of value... but innovation? Nope.
So something smells like fish here and one doesn't need 3 guesses what it is. Hint: $
I love swtor and even though its good review they should have least gave it a month in to review it geesh. As for your comment i got a warning for mentioning them giving lotro rise of isengard (the biggest turrd of an xpac) a site xpac award? They even gave it an award when it wasnt even out yet at the time. Rise of isengard is the biggest $$ pos xpac in history to everyone else and 90% of people agree on that yet it gets an award? Youll probably recieve a warning sadly they consider truth to be trolling/baiting.
please note this is not trolling/baiting im bieng serious and discussing a link that i replied to here. Thank you
Good read but I didn't see an opinion on how the crafting would affect the ingame economy. Is there an auction market? How is the market run? What is the value of the items that can be crafted/discovered and how will that make your character more valuable as a whole?
Some key things that stand out in a game (to me) and that are often missing in most mmorpg reviews.
why is visceral the new buzzword in the gaming journalism world? look at skyrim and every single review talks about the visceral combat
but yea, that aside, there's nothing visceral about TOR's combat. literally WoW style 123 skill patterns. not to mention the raids which feature 100 dudes with lightsabers beating on giant monsters (which the devs said they wouldn't do in the video interviews lol)
Good read but I didn't see an opinion on how the crafting would affect the ingame economy. Is there an auction market? How is the market run? What is the value of the items that can be crafted/discovered and how will that make your character more valuable as a whole?
The crafting at the moment is the way most crafting/professions systems are in mmorpgs shortly after game launch. They are supposed to be fun and maybe helpful to the player character as it progresses through game story. Game economics takes time. In a month or two it may be evolving, but for now it isn't really there or necessary. SWTOR is one of those games where you level through one story and if you like that you roll an alt and play another.
My own review would be very long but ultimately it can be summed up with a simple history of MMO's according to me.
Everquest took what had come before in terms of MUD's, Merdian 59 and Ultimate Online and refined it with a "modern" 3D engine and for the first time made MMO's worth of mass media attention.
Then Blizzard came alone and purified EQ into a game that half a decade later has 10 million paying subscribers making them the same amount of money in a month as SWTOR's entire 5 year development budget.
But while refining the game to be more accesible they also lost depth and the social richness. Many a WoW player quit not because of the game but because of other players.
Lord of the Rings refined the WoW experience further by removing the two idea of two opposing sides and putting everyone on the same side. It added social stuff (music) and was one of the smoothest launches in MMO history (which at that time meant it actually ran on consumer grade PC's and the servers were not made of egg cartons)
Then came War Hammer which tried to sell PvP as the main feature and like many others that tried the same, it failed.
Then came Age of Conan with an interface from hell that could not be adjusted, poor chat functionality, broken guilds, a poor LFG mechanic, a sub-par crafting system and.... wait a minute... oh it has nudity so I am not talking about SWTOR.
AoC failed, not because at its core it was a bad game but because it was a bad MMO. MMO's NEED working social functions. With WoW many of these were added through interfaces made by users. Something no other MMO company has apparently regonized.
And so, we come to WoW. Two sided again but hard pressed to tell the difference (go ahead, compare Sith Juggernaut vs Jedi Warrior), a non-modifable interface, piss poor chat, a non-functional LFG, a bare-bones guild, broken group mechanics, a crafting system where crafting for yourself is out of the question and rares are entirely random and even materials for rares are one big but expensive crap shoot.
SWTOR is a game, as a game it is pretty decent and a worthy KOTOR3. As a MMO... it just ain't there. Maybe 5 years ago it would have been great but this is 2012, some games are now over a decade old. Games have come and gone and you would expect a new game to learn from those that have come before.
When Wolvenstein first was released, it was reviewed as great. That was fair but if you released wolvenstein today... would it deserve the same high praise or would you rightfully say that it is not worthy of a modern FPS release?
I always had my doubts about Bioware being able to make a MMO and I have been proven right. Do you know how badly Bioware handled what is in essense an IRC client? No account wide ignore.
It seems so basic, on a validated MMO server your real identity is known, so if I ignore you, why am I NOT ignoring all YOUR alts on all MY alts? It is a very basic element, now trolls brag in chat about how they don't care about being ignored since it is not their main char.
Any basic IRC client handles this better, it is not difficult to test and IRC clients are available opensource. They could hire one developer, pay him for a month and get a fully functional IRC system in the first 6 months of development?
It gets tiring to see the same pisspoor chat functionality year after year for over a decade if not longer.
I have now assassin lev 50 and bounty hunter lev 30. I never had so much fun in my life in any game. This game have everything from single play to multi play expirience. World pvp is amazing and battles on Ilum are epic. I think i would level all empire classes to 50 after i get battlemaster pvp gear for my assassin, what is really hard and you need to spend much time in bg or daily quests to get that. What i specialy like is that you get some revard for fighting oposing faction players in world pvp not like in most of the games where you get nothing for that. Simply it is a dream for star wars fan. Now i must go, my girlfriend Ashara is waiting for me on Tatooine and we go to kick some ass. Last thing--where you can find game with so much romance like you have in swtor? You can even marry your favorite companion
The only good part of swtor is the voice over. The problem is that Bioware has probably put too much money and effort into it, and not into the rest of the game.
And while I like voice over, I'm on my 2nd character now, and I now tend to skip the non-class quest conversation. The other quests are just repeats.
The reason why I stay playing, is because it's a star war game. Most part are pretty basics:
- quests are simple: kill x or collect x.
- space combat is a mini solo game.
- crafting is way too simple
- many many many bugs. None of the bugs I reported during beta are yet to be fixed.
The only good part of swtor is the voice over. The problem is that Bioware has probably put too much money and effort into it, and not into the rest of the game.
And while I like voice over, I'm on my 2nd character now, and I now tend to skip the non-class quest conversation. The other quests are just repeats.
I now have 8 characters and have yet to skip ANY of the VO content. I am sure that some of it might get a little boring sooner or later, but it beats skipping ALL of the Quest Text like I normally
The reason why I stay playing, is because it's a star war game. Most part are pretty basics:
- quests are simple: kill x or collect x.
Seriously, how many games do not do this? There are only so many types of quests you can do and yes, they get recycled, just like every other game out there. At least in this one you get a choice for WHY you are doing the quests and in many missions I have done now, your decision of why or how changes the actual parameters of the missions. Pretty cool in my opinion. Sure beats "Yes, I will do it" or "No, not this time" like almost every other game out there.
- space combat is a mini solo game.
Loving the Space Game. Nice change of pace when you just don't have time for a normal quest OR are waiting on something (crafting). I do admit I hope they listen to the players and add a more in-depth Space Simulator later on, but I really hope they keep the system they have as well.
- crafting is way too simple
I get a variety of crafting missions, some of which are not the ones I need to do for the recipe I have, since they are randomized. I have a chance for critical succes and failure. I get to deconstruct items to recover some materials AND have a chance for learning a better way to craft that item (more advanced gear). Overall much better than gathering 10 things to use to craft 5 things to use to craft the one thing I need for ONE part of a recipe for my actual gear recipe. MUCH BETTER IN MY OPINION.
- many many many bugs. None of the bugs I reported during beta are yet to be fixed.
Most times I do not like calling people a liar, but I am sorely tempted here.
- graphics are basics
The basic graphics have been known for about a year now. If they bother you this much still then you probably never should have bought the game. Just a thought.
- no long term end game
This game has just as much endgame as most games out for years now. In fact more than most. It also has TONS more than most games when are released. But I guess if you do not want to do flashpoints on "Hard Mode" or worse, Raids, PvP, questing, or crafting at end game than you might be right.
- ... and many more, the list is simple too long
Just trying to be a Devil's Advocate here. In RED above.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Might I also add that Value was given a 10/10. The reason: it offers more than the usual 10 hours of gameplay that other games do for the same price. Um. Isn't that the whole point of MMO's? They're supposed to last for months, sometimes even years, we're on an MMO site reviewing an MMO, not a general gaming site. If this is the case, I want every MMO reviewed to have a 10/10 for value - unless of course you can reach end game in a week and have nothing else to do.
No by comparison to other mmo's at launch there is huge value. Rifts was good but got old quickly.
This game has 2 routes to the end, empire and republic which are pretty much 100% unique. I have not seen that in an MMO for a long time. The ammount of stuff to do on each world gets bigger with each world ( couple of exceptions like the small world Quesh). The voice acting is great and gives a good feeling for the game.
I am in a big guild moved over from WoW. I notice alot of people in my guild rushed to 50 and said it was getting a bit boring. After chating to them they adimitted that they mostly just space bar to skip all the voice sections so they can rush to 50. You really loose something doing that this game you need to put in a bit more effort and take it slower that you usually would to get the most out of it, you wont regret it.
"Player run economies" because that worked out so well for SWG.
"Minecraft cities" which even people admit is not logically possible.
"giant open world pvp" somebody really likes to play I 1v1 your class into the ground beause I suck at teamwork, and have no friends.
"meaningful crafting" ah you want a game where you can sit around and just craft because you don't like raids or pvp.
Like the Original poster even said, this is about Evolution, not revolution. Games that try to Revolution method end up failing because they are doing too much too soon at the same time. You end up ruining certain parts of your game because so many parts of your game are new and can't all have a massive dedication towards perfects soo many unique systems.
But just my opinion, the review was a little high, its a good game, but like he said were reviewing it how it is, not what it will be. I would give it a 8/10, as it loses points for laggy pvp, unfixing UI, bland Guild systems and a few noticable bugs the farther you get towards end game (35+)
Oh and Eff the fact that Same gender romances wern't in the game at launch.
The only good part of swtor is the voice over. The problem is that Bioware has probably put too much money and effort into it, and not into the rest of the game.
And while I like voice over, I'm on my 2nd character now, and I now tend to skip the non-class quest conversation. The other quests are just repeats.
I now have 8 characters and have yet to skip ANY of the VO content. I am sure that some of it might get a little boring sooner or later, but it beats skipping ALL of the Quest Text like I normally
The reason why I stay playing, is because it's a star war game. Most part are pretty basics:
- quests are simple: kill x or collect x.
Seriously, how many games do not do this? There are only so many types of quests you can do and yes, they get recycled, just like every other game out there. At least in this one you get a choice for WHY you are doing the quests and in many missions I have done now, your decision of why or how changes the actual parameters of the missions. Pretty cool in my opinion. Sure beats "Yes, I will do it" or "No, not this time" like almost every other game out there.
- space combat is a mini solo game.
Loving the Space Game. Nice change of pace when you just don't have time for a normal quest OR are waiting on something (crafting). I do admit I hope they listen to the players and add a more in-depth Space Simulator later on, but I really hope they keep the system they have as well.
- crafting is way too simple
I get a variety of crafting missions, some of which are not the ones I need to do for the recipe I have, since they are randomized. I have a chance for critical succes and failure. I get to deconstruct items to recover some materials AND have a chance for learning a better way to craft that item (more advanced gear). Overall much better than gathering 10 things to use to craft 5 things to use to craft the one thing I need for ONE part of a recipe for my actual gear recipe. MUCH BETTER IN MY OPINION.
- many many many bugs. None of the bugs I reported during beta are yet to be fixed.
Most times I do not like calling people a liar, but I am sorely tempted here.
- graphics are basics
The basic graphics have been known for about a year now. If they bother you this much still then you probably never should have bought the game. Just a thought.
- no long term end game
This game has just as much endgame as most games out for years now. In fact more than most. It also has TONS more than most games when are released. But I guess if you do not want to do flashpoints on "Hard Mode" or worse, Raids, PvP, questing, or crafting at end game than you might be right.
- ... and many more, the list is simple too long
Just trying to be a Devil's Advocate here. In RED above.
Well, I'm glad you resisted the temptation to call him a liar on the bugginess, because this is the buggiest launch I've played in some time. Some are the same obvious bugs you see every single time you play, while others are new and associated with content you are just reaching for the first time. For the most part, they are minor bugs, but many are so obvious that it's clear they just haven't been fixed because they are too far down the priority list of bug fixes to have been worked on yet. (I'm thinking that list is pretty long).
Also, what are you talking about regarding quests? I have never had my choices effect the details of a quest or the requirements. Your class can effect a few of the quests that are shared with other classes. You can end up having to do an additional quest if your light side/ dark side choice means you haven't satisfied a quest giver, but the story doesn't branch and the quests don't change based on your dialogue.
On my Imperial Agent Operative, I routinely tell the Sith to go stuff it, but they keep entrusting me with their most sensative missions. I'll get an occassional bit of dialogue scolding me for being too concerned about civilian lives, but even fighting the Empire every step of the way as a Light Side Imperial, nothing has played out any different due to my choices, aside from the occassional "well, you failed this, so go do that" additional quest step.
The problem(s) with crafting are that it's far too dependant on the RNG (Random Number Generator), whether it be Reverse Engineering to try to get the blue (and then purple) schematic, or hoping for exceptional gear, it's all about the RNG. If you are lucky, you may make a profit, if not, you will go broke. Also, the economy is a mess because crafting was never balanced with the economy in mind. Sometime's you are gates by "common" materials that end up being too rare in practice, which boosts market prices for those materials. The rare and epic materials are so rare, that whether you send your companions on missions, or buy them on the market, you will never get them at a price that allows a profit, except for the rare RNG blessed exceptional results. (A lot of times, there are NPC sold alternatives for things, either straight cash, commendation based or based on other currencies, which end up capping the price you can charge even for the better wares you manage to produce).
The results are a mess, with some crafted goods flooding the market and forcing people to sell at 70% of the automatically recommended prices (which already are too low to produce profit), other items are far too rare, because most crafters after getting repeatedly burned just stop trying to sell certain items. You'd think scarcity would raise prices and profits, but the resistance vs. price levels that are able to produce profits are so high that you just can't sell enough for things to balance out.
Most people just don't have the money to spend. The cash sinks are so severe that most people who keep pace with their skills and obtain or upgrade "mounts" when able to just don't have enough cash to support the economy. Nerfing slicing made things worse, not better, because that money not only could help subsidize crafters, but it was a major source of disposable income for people who don't craft to use to buy crafted goods.
Don't get me started on Modifiable Items. Cool idea on paper, but the economy needed to be balanced around it, which didn't happen. They should have just given players what they wanted, either transferable skins or an appearance tab, rather than insisting on doing it their way, which has just created a mess in the player driven economy.
Its boring. Just like all newer mmorpg's. Easy, boring, mirrored, restrained.. Only things to do are PvP, quests or Flashpoints. Datacrons are finished in a few hours at best and crafting is automated.
Dull and not worth more than a month or two of sub.
I dont see SWTOR as an innovative MMO. But does it have to be? They brought you a Star Wars experience. It is up to you to decide if that is worth the box and sub.
The reviewers on this website seem to make the same mistake. The score doesnt reflect the article in several cases. The high score seems more to just express their current enjoyment with the game, which I believe with no doubt. But I also think that this is the wrong way to write a review because it lacks the much needed objectivity. Their own reviewing system gave them this problem.
The moment you put innovation and aesthetics as measurement, but not 'fun' (I know it cant be objectively measured) in a reviews score, it means that you can score bad in those departments, while the game still can feel highly enjoyable to you (you can give those features a 6, while the game feels like a 10 for you atm). This is where it goes wrong. The reviewers are afraid that the end number will give the wrong impression. So they try to 'correct' the different category scores to put them in line with the endscore. But the endscore here is the subjective score in this case, because it reflects their enjoyment with the game, which cant be divided just like that in these categories.
So this reviewing system simply wont work. The only way it could work is to compare the release with the goal that the developers had in mind and how they lived up to their promises. Did they manage to do it?
Then next to that compare things with other MMO's that can be compared. Like payment model, aestetics, combat, UI (needs a seperate section), etc. Use the Pro/Con list for this too, but leave out an endscore! Why? Because players are all different. Some dont give a shit about graphics, while others not about the UI. So you cant create an average endscore from this that has any meaning.
coming directly from KOTOR and Mass Effect 2, SWTOR is really a good extension of those two games. i've always been a solo player in WoW and EQ2, so i'm ok that most of this game can be solo.
cut scenes and voiceovers are fantastic, i usually have the habit of muting the sound while playing songs on my itunes, but with SWTOR, i totally enjoy listening to the background music and the dialogue. i look forward to the story quests and surprisingly, with 1 main and 1 alt, i didn't feel like i was doing the entire thing again - although the side quests do get a bit too repetitive after a while.
i will give it a 7.5/10 even though i really enjoy the game. key features like LFG function, advance guild system are sorely missing. i don't care if SWTOR has the most stable launch of all the other MMORPGS, it should be a given that game launches are stable.
Comments
The real popular mmos are connected to.............
Forum Wars , and it seems most of so called Veterans and Cellardwellers spend their time PVPing there
creating bubbles of verbal bullshit insulting and trolling anyone with an opposite mindset.
i ll wait a bit before i sub to swotor , and then make up my mind after having played at least 50% of whatever the game has to offer
I am OK with the whole review except how can you give it an 8 for Innovation? decent but dumbed down graphics, same old questing system (voice overs are fine but they still only represent a spoken quest assignment and have been around in RPGs for a long time), 2 faction, action bar abilities... adds up to at most a 7 for Innovation... if that. Every F2P Asian MMO has the same elements in terms of "innovation". The only way that they have innovated is the spreading around of archetypes... though Rift has a better implementation of this, by far.
So, yes, I think the game is very good and polished and has lots of value... but innovation? Nope.
I love this game. It's innovative in many ways because it brings so much into the MMORPG genre that has been desperately needed for so long.
Good review ,
The game is great and it will get even better , story is great and feels starwars all the way.
Let other's learn from it .
Good job so far make it even better.
8.7 - surprise surprise.
But then according to your recent blog entry http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/staffblog/012012/22458_Community-Spotlight-Growing-Out-of-Gaming.html you "can't find an mmo you like" , you "can't stand WoW" but "Star Wars is a kind of a reskin of WoW" and you "realized your disgust of today's mmos" , this review is quite on the contrary.
So something smells like fish here and one doesn't need 3 guesses what it is. Hint: $
I love swtor and even though its good review they should have least gave it a month in to review it geesh. As for your comment i got a warning for mentioning them giving lotro rise of isengard (the biggest turrd of an xpac) a site xpac award? They even gave it an award when it wasnt even out yet at the time. Rise of isengard is the biggest $$ pos xpac in history to everyone else and 90% of people agree on that yet it gets an award? Youll probably recieve a warning sadly they consider truth to be trolling/baiting.
please note this is not trolling/baiting im bieng serious and discussing a link that i replied to here. Thank you
Good read but I didn't see an opinion on how the crafting would affect the ingame economy. Is there an auction market? How is the market run? What is the value of the items that can be crafted/discovered and how will that make your character more valuable as a whole?
Some key things that stand out in a game (to me) and that are often missing in most mmorpg reviews.
I have an idea.
Might want to re-read the blog there, bud. It's our Community Spotlight. The post quoted there in the beginning is another user's post.
"Visceral Star Wars Combat"
why is visceral the new buzzword in the gaming journalism world? look at skyrim and every single review talks about the visceral combat
but yea, that aside, there's nothing visceral about TOR's combat. literally WoW style 123 skill patterns. not to mention the raids which feature 100 dudes with lightsabers beating on giant monsters (which the devs said they wouldn't do in the video interviews lol)
The crafting at the moment is the way most crafting/professions systems are in mmorpgs shortly after game launch. They are supposed to be fun and maybe helpful to the player character as it progresses through game story. Game economics takes time. In a month or two it may be evolving, but for now it isn't really there or necessary. SWTOR is one of those games where you level through one story and if you like that you roll an alt and play another.
My own review would be very long but ultimately it can be summed up with a simple history of MMO's according to me.
Everquest took what had come before in terms of MUD's, Merdian 59 and Ultimate Online and refined it with a "modern" 3D engine and for the first time made MMO's worth of mass media attention.
Then Blizzard came alone and purified EQ into a game that half a decade later has 10 million paying subscribers making them the same amount of money in a month as SWTOR's entire 5 year development budget.
But while refining the game to be more accesible they also lost depth and the social richness. Many a WoW player quit not because of the game but because of other players.
Lord of the Rings refined the WoW experience further by removing the two idea of two opposing sides and putting everyone on the same side. It added social stuff (music) and was one of the smoothest launches in MMO history (which at that time meant it actually ran on consumer grade PC's and the servers were not made of egg cartons)
Then came War Hammer which tried to sell PvP as the main feature and like many others that tried the same, it failed.
Then came Age of Conan with an interface from hell that could not be adjusted, poor chat functionality, broken guilds, a poor LFG mechanic, a sub-par crafting system and.... wait a minute... oh it has nudity so I am not talking about SWTOR.
AoC failed, not because at its core it was a bad game but because it was a bad MMO. MMO's NEED working social functions. With WoW many of these were added through interfaces made by users. Something no other MMO company has apparently regonized.
And so, we come to WoW. Two sided again but hard pressed to tell the difference (go ahead, compare Sith Juggernaut vs Jedi Warrior), a non-modifable interface, piss poor chat, a non-functional LFG, a bare-bones guild, broken group mechanics, a crafting system where crafting for yourself is out of the question and rares are entirely random and even materials for rares are one big but expensive crap shoot.
SWTOR is a game, as a game it is pretty decent and a worthy KOTOR3. As a MMO... it just ain't there. Maybe 5 years ago it would have been great but this is 2012, some games are now over a decade old. Games have come and gone and you would expect a new game to learn from those that have come before.
When Wolvenstein first was released, it was reviewed as great. That was fair but if you released wolvenstein today... would it deserve the same high praise or would you rightfully say that it is not worthy of a modern FPS release?
I always had my doubts about Bioware being able to make a MMO and I have been proven right. Do you know how badly Bioware handled what is in essense an IRC client? No account wide ignore.
It seems so basic, on a validated MMO server your real identity is known, so if I ignore you, why am I NOT ignoring all YOUR alts on all MY alts? It is a very basic element, now trolls brag in chat about how they don't care about being ignored since it is not their main char.
Any basic IRC client handles this better, it is not difficult to test and IRC clients are available opensource. They could hire one developer, pay him for a month and get a fully functional IRC system in the first 6 months of development?
It gets tiring to see the same pisspoor chat functionality year after year for over a decade if not longer.
I have now assassin lev 50 and bounty hunter lev 30. I never had so much fun in my life in any game. This game have everything from single play to multi play expirience. World pvp is amazing and battles on Ilum are epic. I think i would level all empire classes to 50 after i get battlemaster pvp gear for my assassin, what is really hard and you need to spend much time in bg or daily quests to get that. What i specialy like is that you get some revard for fighting oposing faction players in world pvp not like in most of the games where you get nothing for that. Simply it is a dream for star wars fan. Now i must go, my girlfriend Ashara is waiting for me on Tatooine and we go to kick some ass. Last thing--where you can find game with so much romance like you have in swtor? You can even marry your favorite companion
The only good part of swtor is the voice over. The problem is that Bioware has probably put too much money and effort into it, and not into the rest of the game.
And while I like voice over, I'm on my 2nd character now, and I now tend to skip the non-class quest conversation. The other quests are just repeats.
The reason why I stay playing, is because it's a star war game. Most part are pretty basics:
- quests are simple: kill x or collect x.
- space combat is a mini solo game.
- crafting is way too simple
- many many many bugs. None of the bugs I reported during beta are yet to be fixed.
- graphics are basics
- no long term end game
- ... and many more, the list is simple too long
Just trying to be a Devil's Advocate here. In RED above.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
No by comparison to other mmo's at launch there is huge value. Rifts was good but got old quickly.
This game has 2 routes to the end, empire and republic which are pretty much 100% unique. I have not seen that in an MMO for a long time. The ammount of stuff to do on each world gets bigger with each world ( couple of exceptions like the small world Quesh). The voice acting is great and gives a good feeling for the game.
I am in a big guild moved over from WoW. I notice alot of people in my guild rushed to 50 and said it was getting a bit boring. After chating to them they adimitted that they mostly just space bar to skip all the voice sections so they can rush to 50. You really loose something doing that this game you need to put in a bit more effort and take it slower that you usually would to get the most out of it, you wont regret it.
So go to daoc then.?
Read my blog http://sanmonocobra.blogspot.com/
I love the sandboxers on this site:
"sandbox is the future" no, it was the past.
"Player run economies" because that worked out so well for SWG.
"Minecraft cities" which even people admit is not logically possible.
"giant open world pvp" somebody really likes to play I 1v1 your class into the ground beause I suck at teamwork, and have no friends.
"meaningful crafting" ah you want a game where you can sit around and just craft because you don't like raids or pvp.
Like the Original poster even said, this is about Evolution, not revolution. Games that try to Revolution method end up failing because they are doing too much too soon at the same time. You end up ruining certain parts of your game because so many parts of your game are new and can't all have a massive dedication towards perfects soo many unique systems.
But just my opinion, the review was a little high, its a good game, but like he said were reviewing it how it is, not what it will be. I would give it a 8/10, as it loses points for laggy pvp, unfixing UI, bland Guild systems and a few noticable bugs the farther you get towards end game (35+)
Oh and Eff the fact that Same gender romances wern't in the game at launch.
Well, I'm glad you resisted the temptation to call him a liar on the bugginess, because this is the buggiest launch I've played in some time. Some are the same obvious bugs you see every single time you play, while others are new and associated with content you are just reaching for the first time. For the most part, they are minor bugs, but many are so obvious that it's clear they just haven't been fixed because they are too far down the priority list of bug fixes to have been worked on yet. (I'm thinking that list is pretty long).
Also, what are you talking about regarding quests? I have never had my choices effect the details of a quest or the requirements. Your class can effect a few of the quests that are shared with other classes. You can end up having to do an additional quest if your light side/ dark side choice means you haven't satisfied a quest giver, but the story doesn't branch and the quests don't change based on your dialogue.
On my Imperial Agent Operative, I routinely tell the Sith to go stuff it, but they keep entrusting me with their most sensative missions. I'll get an occassional bit of dialogue scolding me for being too concerned about civilian lives, but even fighting the Empire every step of the way as a Light Side Imperial, nothing has played out any different due to my choices, aside from the occassional "well, you failed this, so go do that" additional quest step.
The problem(s) with crafting are that it's far too dependant on the RNG (Random Number Generator), whether it be Reverse Engineering to try to get the blue (and then purple) schematic, or hoping for exceptional gear, it's all about the RNG. If you are lucky, you may make a profit, if not, you will go broke. Also, the economy is a mess because crafting was never balanced with the economy in mind. Sometime's you are gates by "common" materials that end up being too rare in practice, which boosts market prices for those materials. The rare and epic materials are so rare, that whether you send your companions on missions, or buy them on the market, you will never get them at a price that allows a profit, except for the rare RNG blessed exceptional results. (A lot of times, there are NPC sold alternatives for things, either straight cash, commendation based or based on other currencies, which end up capping the price you can charge even for the better wares you manage to produce).
The results are a mess, with some crafted goods flooding the market and forcing people to sell at 70% of the automatically recommended prices (which already are too low to produce profit), other items are far too rare, because most crafters after getting repeatedly burned just stop trying to sell certain items. You'd think scarcity would raise prices and profits, but the resistance vs. price levels that are able to produce profits are so high that you just can't sell enough for things to balance out.
Most people just don't have the money to spend. The cash sinks are so severe that most people who keep pace with their skills and obtain or upgrade "mounts" when able to just don't have enough cash to support the economy. Nerfing slicing made things worse, not better, because that money not only could help subsidize crafters, but it was a major source of disposable income for people who don't craft to use to buy crafted goods.
Don't get me started on Modifiable Items. Cool idea on paper, but the economy needed to be balanced around it, which didn't happen. They should have just given players what they wanted, either transferable skins or an appearance tab, rather than insisting on doing it their way, which has just created a mess in the player driven economy.
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Its boring. Just like all newer mmorpg's. Easy, boring, mirrored, restrained.. Only things to do are PvP, quests or Flashpoints. Datacrons are finished in a few hours at best and crafting is automated.
Dull and not worth more than a month or two of sub.
- Nothing lasts.. but nothing is lost. -
I dont see SWTOR as an innovative MMO. But does it have to be? They brought you a Star Wars experience. It is up to you to decide if that is worth the box and sub.
The reviewers on this website seem to make the same mistake. The score doesnt reflect the article in several cases. The high score seems more to just express their current enjoyment with the game, which I believe with no doubt. But I also think that this is the wrong way to write a review because it lacks the much needed objectivity. Their own reviewing system gave them this problem.
The moment you put innovation and aesthetics as measurement, but not 'fun' (I know it cant be objectively measured) in a reviews score, it means that you can score bad in those departments, while the game still can feel highly enjoyable to you (you can give those features a 6, while the game feels like a 10 for you atm). This is where it goes wrong. The reviewers are afraid that the end number will give the wrong impression. So they try to 'correct' the different category scores to put them in line with the endscore. But the endscore here is the subjective score in this case, because it reflects their enjoyment with the game, which cant be divided just like that in these categories.
So this reviewing system simply wont work. The only way it could work is to compare the release with the goal that the developers had in mind and how they lived up to their promises. Did they manage to do it?
Then next to that compare things with other MMO's that can be compared. Like payment model, aestetics, combat, UI (needs a seperate section), etc. Use the Pro/Con list for this too, but leave out an endscore! Why? Because players are all different. Some dont give a shit about graphics, while others not about the UI. So you cant create an average endscore from this that has any meaning.
coming directly from KOTOR and Mass Effect 2, SWTOR is really a good extension of those two games. i've always been a solo player in WoW and EQ2, so i'm ok that most of this game can be solo.
cut scenes and voiceovers are fantastic, i usually have the habit of muting the sound while playing songs on my itunes, but with SWTOR, i totally enjoy listening to the background music and the dialogue. i look forward to the story quests and surprisingly, with 1 main and 1 alt, i didn't feel like i was doing the entire thing again - although the side quests do get a bit too repetitive after a while.
i will give it a 7.5/10 even though i really enjoy the game. key features like LFG function, advance guild system are sorely missing. i don't care if SWTOR has the most stable launch of all the other MMORPGS, it should be a given that game launches are stable.
such as? just saying it's true doesn't make it so.
Innovative in the way it's missing:
Swimming
Third party addons
Minigames like card games or slot gamers
Dual spec
Day/night cycles
Non humanoid based playable races
Planetary housing
Housing furnishing
Animal based pet classes
Resources for crafting that do have quality
Complex crafting system
Guild leveling system
Animal mounts
Flying mounts
PvP Arenas
Collision detection between characters
Macros
Barber / Image Designer
Appearance tabs
Fishing
Guild "Tabard"
Multiplayer mounts
Gear Dyes
Shared storage bank slots
In game voice chat
LFG tool
Guild bank
Incentives for socialization
Character extended body customization
3 Factions RvR
Wolrd PvP
RPG tools
Underwater content
3d exploration
I enjoy crafting