No other MMO launch has gone this smooth with a fraction of the subs entering. No other launch MMO has been this polished and complete
RIFT and LOTRO to name a few, TOR has more bugs and unoptimized engine than RIFT and LOTRO ever had, so I dont really know what you are smoking but you should stop.
By the way, to any and all of you who disagree with our score. Why not write your own review here?
Wait, so its not your personal score ?
But yea, i agree with other 2 or 3 people, this review was really spot on. Asthetic 9/10 and innovation 8/10 (would give it 10 myself, so many new things, including voice acting and umm... erm... probably some other stuff too). Also, pvp is cc hell, so, in my books, it totally deserves even more, maybe 10,1/10 (10,1 for innovation) would be more realistic score.
By the way, to any and all of you who disagree with our score. Why not write your own review here?
Wait, so its not your personal score ?
But yea, i agree with other 2 or 3 people, this review was really spot on. Asthetic 9/10 and innovation 8/10 (would give it 10 myself, so many new things, including voice acting and umm... erm... probably some other stuff too). Also, pvp is cc hell, so, in my books, it totally deserves even more, maybe 10,1/10 (10,1 for innovation) would be more realistic score.
imo , ofcourse.
It is my personal score and opinion -- but it is also our official review.
Great game and a great and fair review! I personally do not think voice acting gets old, i've made quite a few characters that are of the same class (Diffrent specializations) Wich has the same story, i just play it out via light side instead of dark side and so forth. Loving it and will be subbing for a great long while.
i had plenty of time in beta to experience what was mentioned in the review....
I dont believe its a good idea for an mmo site to review an mmo without any mention of hte endgame. Sure as a standalone game review as much as you can, but mmos cannot be reviewed as ann mmo without some end game mentions.
I think you have to LOL when just after launch players are demanding end-game. What about the game itself, there is a ton of it there. ENd-game is what people patch in post-launch for players to occupy their level capped characters with. In six months to a year I would expect quite a lot of that. At the moment the 1-50 is most of it, and that is fair enough this early on.
"SW:TOR is an excellent single player game, but a terrible MMO."
I cannot agree more.
My review would give it a plain 5.0
Say what now? Excellent single player game?
Now I've seen it all. How much are Americans paying for it? $50? $60? For one month and if they drop it they'd have to resub to have the right to play this...excellent single player game.
Let us call a spade a spade.
It is an MMORPG no matter how we may butcher the term to save face.
Future patches/expansions that add in more customization options for characters, UI customization, more guild functions, more Legacy System functions, improved/expanded space content and features, more and better open world and instanced PvP, more flashpoints, more Operations, continuing class story arcs, new planets and global story arcs etc.
8.7/10 is fair now, but I see this game evoling into a 10/10 as time progresses.
Usually when i don't agree with what critics have to say i simply throw 'you must be paid' retort. it always makes me look cool.
How much did they pay you to say that? ;-)
Good review, and agree with the positives and negatives mentioned. One thing to clarify; you can actually get ship upgrades like EMP blasts, anti-targetting systems, and power shunting. So it's not so much a one-handed experience in the higher levels. But everything else he mentioned, like the scenario repetition in later missions, is spot on.
Future patches/expansions that add in more customization options for characters, UI customization, more guild functions, more Legacy System functions, improved/expanded space content and features, more and better open world and instanced PvP, more flashpoints, more Operations, continuing class story arcs, new planets and global story arcs etc.
8.7/10 is fair now, but I see this game evoling into a 10/10 as time progresses.
That's why I've subbed and am loving this game.
my thoughts exactly. And no i dont believe just 10/10 will do justice this game in xx months time, they will have to reinvet ratings system or give it 12/10, because its gonna be that good !
Ok joking aside, unlike fanboys, i dont know how will this game develop, what will be added, or if the game is gonna be the greatest thing ever created, thus getting the 10/10 rating 'in the future'. Thats why im not subbed and not gonna play past free month. Because right now, the game offers much less than some older games, with addition of voice acting, and unlike many here, im not SW fan, and cant predict the future :P
A Gaming Site that survives on the Advertising $$$ of Game Developement Companies is NEVER going to give an honest and unbias review.
They absolutely will not bite the hands that feed them.
AAA Game = AAA $$$ = AAA Review
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT Playing: Skyrim Following: The Repopulation I want a Virtual World, not just a Game. ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
I love how much anger this review has stirred up from the haters...
I have to say I agree very much with the review. It is almost exactly what I gave it in my personal review at the end of the beta. Great game all around...
What's more worrying than a biased review is the amount of people agreeing... so you all think SWTOR is innovative? So innovative as to have an 8/10 rating?.. or that it's social features are the best out there?....
REALLY?... have you at least tried to compare these features to other games?..... REALLY?
The UI, character quality, armor designs, environement and idea of visual progression sucks, but its starwars so.. 9/10
Gameplay:
Quests are copy and pasted all the way to 50, pvp is balaned (lol), combat is exactly the same as other games, and Ilum is fun (which 99% of the pvp community disagrees with). Buutt it has voice acting so 9/10!
Innovation"
Star wars does absolutely nothing new but story telling, but its star wars so 8/10
Longetivity:
This game is pretty long, if you are terrible at mmo's. AKA 8/10
Value:
This game lasts a while (this one I can agree with). 10/10
Social:
It gives things for being social. Just about all you can say, so a reasonable score of 7.5
There ya go folks, I got a bit lazy at the end but it pretty much sums up what a critical reader would see when reading this review.
IMO, this is truly a sad day for journalism. TBO I enjoy parts of the game, but how do you justify this high of a score with all the negative citations you provided as most are core features of any MMO created after 2006?
Lets review:
Aesthetics: 9/10
Pro: Voice overs, Music
Con: Inflexible UI, Character Creation
Gameplay: 9/10
Pro: Story, Crew
Con: No auto attack, Space Combat
Innovation: 8/10
Pro: WoW Based Con
Con: No advancements beyond WoW circa 2006
Polish: 9.5/10
Pro: Did not rush to launch
Con: Customer Service
Longevity: 8/10
Pro:Content
Con:
Value: 7.5/10
Pro: None
Con: BW plans for multiple toons for enjoyment.
Social:
Pro: Social Points
Con: Single player, Guilds, LFG system
Conclusion: So basically you're able to settle for a sub par overrated MMO because it's Star Wars...
By the way, to any and all of you who disagree with our score. Why not write your own review here?
Aesthetics: 6/10
Environments 7/10:
Environments are nice still the lack of day/night cycles are making the world feel too static. Too many invisible walls. Players evolve in corridors. Games does not promotes exploration.
Character 4/10:
Huge boobs on old fat rebel officer, hobbit hands on our charcters, weird body size proportions, lack of in between body choice, 4 choices for each face setting like 4 eyebrow, 4 makeup color, 4 jewellery choices and no way to choose how to mix them. Awful female faces options: character creation options is a miss
Gear: 5/10:
Huge shouler flaps, demonic horned hoods, brain textures on helmets, warlock robes, no gear dyes, no appearance tabs. Preset gear color for all classes. Even with the modded gear you keep levelling in mismatched gear or in twin costume
Cutscenes 7/10:
Too many off camera angles or weird ones. They should have hired a filmmaker to help them.
Don't forget: High textures not working and AA not even available. Just for the little story AoC was flamed for not having DX10 at launch...
Gameplay: 7/10
Class story 8/10:
Most class stories are nice but playing a dark sided Jedi Knight sucks. Even with the most dark sided answers the NPC don't even notice. Seems they all failed the force sense exam. Sadly too often the dialogs are pretty bland or uninspired.
World quests: 6/10:
Most of them are pretty generic and are getting boring on your first alt. Still better than other MMO though.
Combat 8/10:
Same old stuff. The lack of autoattack is annoying as it make you feel your character is dumb enough to let him be beaten to death without even trying to react. Melee is more annoying than ranged as you keep running between ranged mobs during combat. The main problem is the lack of responsivity from the combat as there is a delay between what we do and what's happen in game. Kind of frustrating, especially for PvP
Warzone 6/10:
Not even as good as what's being done in other MMO plus you can't choose to which warzone you want to queue and there's a major issue with Illum. Also there's no level brackets. Finally Jedi in Huttball with glowbats is ruining the lore and while, somehow fun, feels silly.
Worse to come: Same faction vs same faction warzones and no companions in "open world" PvP either.
Open world PvP 2/10:
Simply put there's no open world PvP. You will be very lucky to encounter an opponent's faction player in that game but in warzones. The way the planets and space routes are designed prevents this.
UI 4/10:
In short AoC UI is better and that's saying something.
You can't even scale the UI, nor choose where to move your quickslot bars. The only moveable UI frames are the chat panel and the loot window and the raid UI. There's no way to disable the smart camera nor change the zoom speed. No mouse look toggle either. The default font is a bit too bold making it painful to read. In windowed mode you can't change the gama level. The trash loot and the blue loot have quite the same in game color on mobs. There's no bindable hotkey to open the Codex, nor hide the helmet slot. Splitting sacks is a pain. Items don't automatically stacks when getting them from an email of moving them to the bank. There's no weapon preview. You can't zoom in/out in the character or closet view. There's no mission tracker hotkey and it always reset to on from zoning or logging out. There's no hotkey to hide/show nameplates. On the planetary map you can't display multiple type of entries at once. When faded out the map still shows the legend and the quest tracker (useless when moving around). Also the maps get the focus when faded out meaing for example you can't mouse4 autorun on/off if your cursor is on the map. We can't even change the companion skills in its own quickslot bar, nor as you guessed by now move the companion quickslot around. We can't lock items in the inventory. All resources nodes share the same icon. No friendly vendor sorting. AH UI stinks. Space map is also lacking: can't right click to get back to previous area. Crafting missions pop up closes all open windows....
V.O. UI: Big bummer can't (shift?) space skip dialogs to the dialog choices
Crafting 7/10:
Light years behind SWG bit better than WoW, Rift, not even as good as LoTRO, EQII, Vanguard.
Can't queue mission, can't sort items by slots or sats. No buy mats button. No separate inventory/bank slot for crafting mats. The good stuff is you can use mats from the bank and you can send your alt to harvest. Still if you are aggroed your companion harvest is interrupted.
Space 2/10:
Even Star Fox is more fun and better made! Also kind of disturbing, in a totally scripted scenario how come the music is too often off? Starting either too late or still running high when the combat pace is getting low or off? X-wing iMuse achieved way better in a much more random setting.
Who said multiplayer? PvP? Manly managed turrets? Space ship chassis choice? Space ship interior furnishing? Space ship exterior customization? Cockpit UI? Radar?
The space ship is a glorified, not conveniently accessible moveable bank storage.
Innovation 3/10
Only things to notice: speaking pets and totally V.O. story. Apart that TOR is the apogee of the lack of innovation and I dare saying it butchered what was being done well in other games especially in terms of socialization, immersion and giving choices to the player. In TOR you play, look like and breathe the way the devs wanted you to by taking you not by the hands but with manacles.
Polish 7/10
Let's see: lacklustre UI, AA not working, High textures not available, many players with regular disconnection errors 9000, Black screen crashing, horrid FPS issues, Taris memory leak @launch, players that can't complete patching the game, many V.O. camera angles off, some quests story lines broken, group and guild chat that was broken, totally flawed PvP design on Illum, poor LFG system, not even dual specs
As reference LotRo and more recently RIFT where polished games @launch. Saying TOR is 9.5 over 10 is an insult for Turbine and Trion Worlds.
Wow, I'm seeing a lot of people who used to post a lot of hate about this game before it even released. Now they're saying they bought the game and are ready to if not already have unsubbed the game. I'm sorry, but why should we care when you got exactly what you expected in the first place? It's not our fault that you're so addicted to MMOs that you have to buy every one that comes out even though you KNOW the game isn't made for your play style and tastes.
So, let me get this straight. You purposefully buy a game you know doesn't fit your play style, just so you can come back to these boards and scream bloody murder about how awful it is and how right you were about it over the last months and years?
First of all, Mike B was this site's press liason for the SWTOR demos this past year at the game conventions so I hardly call his view unbiased. This site should have had someone other than him do the review if they wanted to remotely seem unbias about their review.
As far as the review itself goes he failed to bring up the failed attempt at character and companion customization BW is usually known for.
He failed to make note of BW using race-restricted classes that is as old a mechanic as the genre itself.
He also failed to make note of the linear game progression and restricted travel paths making exploration impossible.
Nevermind he didn't even touch on the space combat on rails that BW cloned from an already existing kiddie star wars game that uses the same visuals and mechanics.
That's only four of the many huge points a lot of players are ranting on the BW site about, yet he expects us to believe it deserves an 8.7? The game gets a 5 from me at most.
Well let me see here, "Beta" should be a different game/experience from launch which is the finished product. Unfortunaley Beta to them was just a server stress test.
By the way, to any and all of you who disagree with our score. Why not write your own review here?
Aesthetics: 6/10
Environments 7/10:
Environments are nice still the lack of day/night cycles are making the world feel too static. Too many invisible walls. Players evolve in corridors. Games does not promotes exploration.
Character 4/10:
Huge boobs on old fat rebel officer, hobbit hands on our charcters, weird body size proportions, lack of in between body choice, 4 choices for each face setting like 4 eyebrow, 4 makeup color, 4 jewellery choices and no way to choose how to mix them. Awful female faces options: character creation options is a miss
Gear: 5/10:
Huge shouler flaps, demonic horned hoods, brain textures on helmets, warlock robes, no gear dyes, no appearance tabs. Preset gear color for all classes. Even with the modded gear you keep levelling in mismatched gear or in twin costume
Cutscenes 7/10:
Too many off camera angles or weird ones. They should have hired a filmmaker to help them.
Don't forget: High textures not working and AA not even available. Just for the little story AoC was flamed for not having DX10 at launch...
Gameplay: 7/10
Class story 8/10:
Most class stories are nice but playing a dark sided Jedi Knight sucks. Even with the most dark sided answers the NPC don't even notice. Seems they all failed the force sense exam. Sadly too often the dialogs are pretty bland or uninspired.
World quests: 6/10:
Most of them are pretty generic and are getting boring on your first alt. Still better than other MMO though.
Combat 8/10:
Same old stuff. The lack of autoattack is annoying as it make you feel your character is dumb enough to let him be beaten to death without even trying to react. Melee is more annoying than ranged as you keep running between ranged mobs during combat. The main problem is the lack of responsivity from the combat as there is a delay between what we do and what's happen in game. Kind of frustrating, especially for PvP
Warzone 6/10:
Not even as good as what's being done in other MMO plus you can't choose to which warzone you want to queue and there's a major issue with Illum. Also there's no level brackets. Finally Jedi in Huttball with glowbats is ruining the lore and while, somehow fun, feels silly.
Worse to come: Same faction vs same faction warzones and no companions in "open world" PvP either.
Open world PvP 2/10:
Simply put there's no open world PvP. You will be very lucky to encounter an opponent's faction player in that game but in warzones. The way the planets and space routes are designed prevents this.
UI 4/10:
In short AoC UI is better and that's saying something.
You can't even scale the UI, nor choose where to move your quickslot bars. The only moveable UI frames are the chat panel and the loot window and the raid UI. There's no way to disable the smart camera nor change the zoom speed. No mouse look toggle either. The default font is a bit too bold making it painful to read. In windowed mode you can't change the gama level. The trash loot and the blue loot have quite the same in game color on mobs. There's no bindable hotkey to open the Codex, nor hide the helmet slot. Splitting sacks is a pain. Items don't automatically stacks when getting them from an email of moving them to the bank. There's no weapon preview. You can't zoom in/out in the character or closet view. There's no mission tracker hotkey and it always reset to on from zoning or logging out. There's no hotkey to hide/show nameplates. On the planetary map you can't display multiple type of entries at once. When faded out the map still shows the legend and the quest tracker (useless when moving around). Also the maps get the focus when faded out meaing for example you can't mouse4 autorun on/off if your cursor is on the map. We can't even change the companion skills in its own quickslot bar, nor as you guessed by now move the companion quickslot around. We can't lock items in the inventory. All resources nodes share the same icon. No friendly vendor sorting. AH UI stinks. Space map is also lacking: can't right click to get back to previous area. Crafting missions pop up closes all open windows....
V.O. UI: Big bummer can't (shift?) space skip dialogs to the dialog choices
Crafting 7/10:
Light years behind SWG bit better than WoW, Rift, not even as good as LoTRO, EQII, Vanguard.
Can't queue mission, can't sort items by slots or sats. No buy mats button. No separate inventory/bank slot for crafting mats. The good stuff is you can use mats from the bank and you can send your alt to harvest. Still if you are aggroed your companion harvest is interrupted.
Space 2/10:
Even Star Fox is more fun and better made! Also kind of disturbing, in a totally scripted scenario how come the music is too often off? Starting either too late or still running high when the combat pace is getting low or off? X-wing iMuse is achieved way better in a much more random setting.
Who said multiplayer? PvP? Manly managed turrets? Space ship chassis choice? Space ship interior furnishing? Space ship exterior customization? Cockpit UI? Radar?
The space ship is a glorified, not conveniently accessible moveable bank storage.
Innovation 3/10
Only things to notice: speaking pets and totally V.O. story. Apart that TOR is the apogee of the lack of innovation and I dare saying it butchered what was being done well in other games especially in terms of socialization, immersion and giving choices to the player. In TOR you play, look like and breathe the way the devs wanted you to by taking you not by the hands but with manacles.
Polish 7/10
Let's see: lacklustre UI, AA not working, High textures not available, many players with regular disconnection errors 9000, Black screen crashing, horrid FPS issues, Taris memory leak @launch, players that can't complete patching the game, many V.O. camera angles off, some quests story lines broken, group and guild chat that was broken, totally flawed PvP design on Illum, poor LFG system, not even dual specs
As reference LotRo and more recently RIFT where polished games @launch. Saying TOR is 9.5 over 10 is an insult for Turbine and Trion Worlds.
Wow! I could feel the dissatisfaction dripping from every word. Sad thing is I would give this guys review a much larger nod than the actual sites review not because it mirrors my own thoughts, but because at least his scores are consistent with what was written. I also thought it was pretty detailed so yeah good review and enjoyable read.
The most dull and lifeless mmo world i've ever played in and they gave it a 9? check out some of the terribe textures in the game and then come back and say it's a 9.
"Aesthetics".
Whether or not you like the "dull and lifeless world is another thing". The world is lifeless, somewhat reminiscent of Hopper's oils so I would call it "stark" and I would still give it a 9 on art design.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Comments
I think that is an excellent idea.
RIFT and LOTRO to name a few, TOR has more bugs and unoptimized engine than RIFT and LOTRO ever had, so I dont really know what you are smoking but you should stop.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
It's a solid 7 in it's current state no more.
Wait, so its not your personal score ?
But yea, i agree with other 2 or 3 people, this review was really spot on. Asthetic 9/10 and innovation 8/10 (would give it 10 myself, so many new things, including voice acting and umm... erm... probably some other stuff too). Also, pvp is cc hell, so, in my books, it totally deserves even more, maybe 10,1/10 (10,1 for innovation) would be more realistic score.
imo , ofcourse.
It is my personal score and opinion -- but it is also our official review.
Great game and a great and fair review! I personally do not think voice acting gets old, i've made quite a few characters that are of the same class (Diffrent specializations) Wich has the same story, i just play it out via light side instead of dark side and so forth. Loving it and will be subbing for a great long while.
I think you have to LOL when just after launch players are demanding end-game. What about the game itself, there is a ton of it there. ENd-game is what people patch in post-launch for players to occupy their level capped characters with. In six months to a year I would expect quite a lot of that. At the moment the 1-50 is most of it, and that is fair enough this early on.
Say what now? Excellent single player game?
Now I've seen it all. How much are Americans paying for it? $50? $60? For one month and if they drop it they'd have to resub to have the right to play this...excellent single player game.
Let us call a spade a spade.
It is an MMORPG no matter how we may butcher the term to save face.
Might not make a sound, but the seismologists probably pick it up. Have you seen the size of those people?
Agree with the review.
100% spot on, fair, balanced, and accurate.
Excellent write up.
Future patches/expansions that add in more customization options for characters, UI customization, more guild functions, more Legacy System functions, improved/expanded space content and features, more and better open world and instanced PvP, more flashpoints, more Operations, continuing class story arcs, new planets and global story arcs etc.
8.7/10 is fair now, but I see this game evoling into a 10/10 as time progresses.
That's why I've subbed and am loving this game.
How much did they pay you to say that? ;-)
Good review, and agree with the positives and negatives mentioned. One thing to clarify; you can actually get ship upgrades like EMP blasts, anti-targetting systems, and power shunting. So it's not so much a one-handed experience in the higher levels. But everything else he mentioned, like the scenario repetition in later missions, is spot on.
my thoughts exactly. And no i dont believe just 10/10 will do justice this game in xx months time, they will have to reinvet ratings system or give it 12/10, because its gonna be that good !
Ok joking aside, unlike fanboys, i dont know how will this game develop, what will be added, or if the game is gonna be the greatest thing ever created, thus getting the 10/10 rating 'in the future'. Thats why im not subbed and not gonna play past free month. Because right now, the game offers much less than some older games, with addition of voice acting, and unlike many here, im not SW fan, and cant predict the future :P
A Gaming Site that survives on the Advertising $$$ of Game Developement Companies is NEVER going to give an honest and unbias review.
They absolutely will not bite the hands that feed them.
AAA Game = AAA $$$ = AAA Review
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
I love how much anger this review has stirred up from the haters...
I have to say I agree very much with the review. It is almost exactly what I gave it in my personal review at the end of the beta. Great game all around...
What's more worrying than a biased review is the amount of people agreeing... so you all think SWTOR is innovative? So innovative as to have an 8/10 rating?.. or that it's social features are the best out there?....
REALLY?... have you at least tried to compare these features to other games?..... REALLY?
..Cake..
MMORPG.com review in a nutshell
Aesthetics:
The UI, character quality, armor designs, environement and idea of visual progression sucks, but its starwars so.. 9/10
Gameplay:
Quests are copy and pasted all the way to 50, pvp is balaned (lol), combat is exactly the same as other games, and Ilum is fun (which 99% of the pvp community disagrees with). Buutt it has voice acting so 9/10!
Innovation"
Star wars does absolutely nothing new but story telling, but its star wars so 8/10
Longetivity:
This game is pretty long, if you are terrible at mmo's. AKA 8/10
Value:
This game lasts a while (this one I can agree with). 10/10
Social:
It gives things for being social. Just about all you can say, so a reasonable score of 7.5
There ya go folks, I got a bit lazy at the end but it pretty much sums up what a critical reader would see when reading this review.
IMO, this is truly a sad day for journalism. TBO I enjoy parts of the game, but how do you justify this high of a score with all the negative citations you provided as most are core features of any MMO created after 2006?
Lets review:
Aesthetics: 9/10
Pro: Voice overs, Music
Con: Inflexible UI, Character Creation
Gameplay: 9/10
Pro: Story, Crew
Con: No auto attack, Space Combat
Innovation: 8/10
Pro: WoW Based Con
Con: No advancements beyond WoW circa 2006
Polish: 9.5/10
Pro: Did not rush to launch
Con: Customer Service
Longevity: 8/10
Pro:Content
Con:
Value: 7.5/10
Pro: None
Con: BW plans for multiple toons for enjoyment.
Social:
Pro: Social Points
Con: Single player, Guilds, LFG system
Conclusion: So basically you're able to settle for a sub par overrated MMO because it's Star Wars...
Aesthetics: 6/10
Environments 7/10:
Environments are nice still the lack of day/night cycles are making the world feel too static. Too many invisible walls. Players evolve in corridors. Games does not promotes exploration.
Character 4/10:
Huge boobs on old fat rebel officer, hobbit hands on our charcters, weird body size proportions, lack of in between body choice, 4 choices for each face setting like 4 eyebrow, 4 makeup color, 4 jewellery choices and no way to choose how to mix them. Awful female faces options: character creation options is a miss
Gear: 5/10:
Huge shouler flaps, demonic horned hoods, brain textures on helmets, warlock robes, no gear dyes, no appearance tabs. Preset gear color for all classes. Even with the modded gear you keep levelling in mismatched gear or in twin costume
Cutscenes 7/10:
Too many off camera angles or weird ones. They should have hired a filmmaker to help them.
Don't forget: High textures not working and AA not even available. Just for the little story AoC was flamed for not having DX10 at launch...
Gameplay: 7/10
Class story 8/10:
Most class stories are nice but playing a dark sided Jedi Knight sucks. Even with the most dark sided answers the NPC don't even notice. Seems they all failed the force sense exam. Sadly too often the dialogs are pretty bland or uninspired.
World quests: 6/10:
Most of them are pretty generic and are getting boring on your first alt. Still better than other MMO though.
Combat 8/10:
Same old stuff. The lack of autoattack is annoying as it make you feel your character is dumb enough to let him be beaten to death without even trying to react. Melee is more annoying than ranged as you keep running between ranged mobs during combat. The main problem is the lack of responsivity from the combat as there is a delay between what we do and what's happen in game. Kind of frustrating, especially for PvP
Warzone 6/10:
Not even as good as what's being done in other MMO plus you can't choose to which warzone you want to queue and there's a major issue with Illum. Also there's no level brackets. Finally Jedi in Huttball with glowbats is ruining the lore and while, somehow fun, feels silly.
Worse to come: Same faction vs same faction warzones and no companions in "open world" PvP either.
Open world PvP 2/10:
Simply put there's no open world PvP. You will be very lucky to encounter an opponent's faction player in that game but in warzones. The way the planets and space routes are designed prevents this.
UI 4/10:
In short AoC UI is better and that's saying something.
You can't even scale the UI, nor choose where to move your quickslot bars. The only moveable UI frames are the chat panel and the loot window and the raid UI. There's no way to disable the smart camera nor change the zoom speed. No mouse look toggle either. The default font is a bit too bold making it painful to read. In windowed mode you can't change the gama level. The trash loot and the blue loot have quite the same in game color on mobs. There's no bindable hotkey to open the Codex, nor hide the helmet slot. Splitting sacks is a pain. Items don't automatically stacks when getting them from an email of moving them to the bank. There's no weapon preview. You can't zoom in/out in the character or closet view. There's no mission tracker hotkey and it always reset to on from zoning or logging out. There's no hotkey to hide/show nameplates. On the planetary map you can't display multiple type of entries at once. When faded out the map still shows the legend and the quest tracker (useless when moving around). Also the maps get the focus when faded out meaing for example you can't mouse4 autorun on/off if your cursor is on the map. We can't even change the companion skills in its own quickslot bar, nor as you guessed by now move the companion quickslot around. We can't lock items in the inventory. All resources nodes share the same icon. No friendly vendor sorting. AH UI stinks. Space map is also lacking: can't right click to get back to previous area. Crafting missions pop up closes all open windows....
V.O. UI: Big bummer can't (shift?) space skip dialogs to the dialog choices
Crafting 7/10:
Light years behind SWG bit better than WoW, Rift, not even as good as LoTRO, EQII, Vanguard.
Can't queue mission, can't sort items by slots or sats. No buy mats button. No separate inventory/bank slot for crafting mats. The good stuff is you can use mats from the bank and you can send your alt to harvest. Still if you are aggroed your companion harvest is interrupted.
Space 2/10:
Even Star Fox is more fun and better made! Also kind of disturbing, in a totally scripted scenario how come the music is too often off? Starting either too late or still running high when the combat pace is getting low or off? X-wing iMuse achieved way better in a much more random setting.
Who said multiplayer? PvP? Manly managed turrets? Space ship chassis choice? Space ship interior furnishing? Space ship exterior customization? Cockpit UI? Radar?
The space ship is a glorified, not conveniently accessible moveable bank storage.
Innovation 3/10
Only things to notice: speaking pets and totally V.O. story. Apart that TOR is the apogee of the lack of innovation and I dare saying it butchered what was being done well in other games especially in terms of socialization, immersion and giving choices to the player. In TOR you play, look like and breathe the way the devs wanted you to by taking you not by the hands but with manacles.
Polish 7/10
Let's see: lacklustre UI, AA not working, High textures not available, many players with regular disconnection errors 9000, Black screen crashing, horrid FPS issues, Taris memory leak @launch, players that can't complete patching the game, many V.O. camera angles off, some quests story lines broken, group and guild chat that was broken, totally flawed PvP design on Illum, poor LFG system, not even dual specs
As reference LotRo and more recently RIFT where polished games @launch. Saying TOR is 9.5 over 10 is an insult for Turbine and Trion Worlds.
Originally posted by MikeB
By the way, to any and all of you who disagree with our score. Why not write your own review here?
I did a couple of weeks ago. Now I would like to know why MMORPG disabled them...
Wow, I'm seeing a lot of people who used to post a lot of hate about this game before it even released. Now they're saying they bought the game and are ready to if not already have unsubbed the game. I'm sorry, but why should we care when you got exactly what you expected in the first place? It's not our fault that you're so addicted to MMOs that you have to buy every one that comes out even though you KNOW the game isn't made for your play style and tastes.
So, let me get this straight. You purposefully buy a game you know doesn't fit your play style, just so you can come back to these boards and scream bloody murder about how awful it is and how right you were about it over the last months and years?
We didn't!
First of all, Mike B was this site's press liason for the SWTOR demos this past year at the game conventions so I hardly call his view unbiased. This site should have had someone other than him do the review if they wanted to remotely seem unbias about their review.
As far as the review itself goes he failed to bring up the failed attempt at character and companion customization BW is usually known for.
He failed to make note of BW using race-restricted classes that is as old a mechanic as the genre itself.
He also failed to make note of the linear game progression and restricted travel paths making exploration impossible.
Nevermind he didn't even touch on the space combat on rails that BW cloned from an already existing kiddie star wars game that uses the same visuals and mechanics.
That's only four of the many huge points a lot of players are ranting on the BW site about, yet he expects us to believe it deserves an 8.7? The game gets a 5 from me at most.
Well let me see here, "Beta" should be a different game/experience from launch which is the finished product. Unfortunaley Beta to them was just a server stress test.
Wow! I could feel the dissatisfaction dripping from every word. Sad thing is I would give this guys review a much larger nod than the actual sites review not because it mirrors my own thoughts, but because at least his scores are consistent with what was written. I also thought it was pretty detailed so yeah good review and enjoyable read.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
"Aesthetics".
Whether or not you like the "dull and lifeless world is another thing". The world is lifeless, somewhat reminiscent of Hopper's oils so I would call it "stark" and I would still give it a 9 on art design.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo