I agree about the flashpoints. Black Talon is still my favorite so far. The others are just a typical dungeon crawl, but the social points of the conversations make BT feel more like a noteworthy event, rather than a search for pretty gear. I hope future flashpoints model themselves more like the first ones (looking forward to playing the Republic one soon) and less like the later ones.
Important facts: 1. Free to Play games are poorly made. 2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals. 3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE. 4. Community is more important than you think.
The scores don't match the criticisms. I pretty much feel this way about all the SWTOR reviews. It just smells of kiss ass. Reviewers list a number of major negatives yet still give 9/10 scores. I believe that honest reviews are just dead. Sad.
Soooo... because you don't like the game, every review that says the game is great is lying. Uh huh. That's a load of garbage and you know it. Your opinion doesn't match othger peoples opinions. thats life. But it IS your opinion.
Its not just that. I personally havent said how tor is such a bad game. In fact its rather good one. I just find it a bit weird how game with multimillion $ budget managed to blatantly copy another game, which is by the way, good 8 years old, added voice acting and now is being touted as the bestest thing ever.
All that while it basically brings nothing new to the table, other than alraedy mentioned VA, in fact it has less features/content than some older games. While i do realize content comes with time, that doesnt mean how tor's competition is wow 7 years ago - it competes with today's wow, its 7 years of content.
Lets face it, if it wasnt star wars game, how many people would be playing it today. I mean, other than being star wars, its really not much different to 100's of other games out there. Yes it does have voice acting, but im not really sure how exactly is voice acting going to keep people occupied for months and years to come.
What game did they copy exactly? Oh let me guess... they copied wow (wow is 7 years old btw, not 8). Hate to blow your bubble but every game for the last 8 years has copied wow. And this game offers alot that no other game has that you are choosing to ignore.
Look, I'm not saying its perfect, its far from that. There are alot of things missing with this game that game 8 years older have. Like proper housing. But I really hate the lies being spewed on mmo sites.
An MMO having the ability to make you laugh, clap, and cheer while sitting on the edge of your seat... this is the only MMO I've seen since the first days of EQ that has done that. Its an important accomplishment. Whether you like it or not.
The scores don't match the criticisms. I pretty much feel this way about all the SWTOR reviews. It just smells of kiss ass. Reviewers list a number of major negatives yet still give 9/10 scores. I believe that honest reviews are just dead. Sad.
Soooo... because you don't like the game, every review that says the game is great is lying. Uh huh. That's a load of garbage and you know it. Your opinion doesn't match othger peoples opinions. thats life. But it IS your opinion.
And what are reviews but one persons opinion? Opinions can be influenced by many factors. Money being a big one.
Take a look at my website, you'll see some real reviews that include more facts than opinions.
The scores don't match the criticisms. I pretty much feel this way about all the SWTOR reviews. It just smells of kiss ass. Reviewers list a number of major negatives yet still give 9/10 scores. I believe that honest reviews are just dead. Sad.
Soooo... because you don't like the game, every review that says the game is great is lying. Uh huh. That's a load of garbage and you know it. Your opinion doesn't match othger peoples opinions. thats life. But it IS your opinion.
Its not just that. I personally havent said how tor is such a bad game. In fact its rather good one. I just find it a bit weird how game with multimillion $ budget managed to blatantly copy another game, which is by the way, good 8 years old, added voice acting and now is being touted as the bestest thing ever.
Ironic that Blizzard got lucky with WoW 7 years ago, which had the backing of the Warcraft series or WoW would have never been a hit either. BTW Blizzard and WoW is a copy of a copy of a copy etc.
Today there is much more competition in the MMO market for the consumers $$ and comparing the greatest subscription MMO with seven years of content to a game 3 weeks old is absurd.
If you don't like a game don't play it, and quit running to MMORPG.com to trash it.
The thing is, sites like this give reviews based on 8.0 being average it seems, or maybe 7.5.
This review, while I have some issues with parts of it (no open world PvP when theres an etire planet devoted to it?) is basing scores off 5 is being average.
I would give overall aesthetcs a 7, Game play an 8, UI a 3, Crafting a 7, Polish a 7, space an n/a because whats in now is just a minigame and innovation a 5 (I dont see a ton of innovation, but Rift didnt really have much either for instance. SWTOR is 'average' for innovation)
I hear this alot: 5 is average. When I went to school, anything below 60% was failing and 75 was considered average. In college it was anything below 68 was a fail. So to rate a game at 5.5, as someone pointed out earlier, is to say that the game made a good effort, but failed on all counts.
If we are going by the school grading system though, an 87 is a B/B+. And if you put it in those terms, SWTOR most certainly is at worst a B. So why are people getting their panties in a bunch over it?
The thing is, sites like this give reviews based on 8.0 being average it seems, or maybe 7.5.
This review, while I have some issues with parts of it (no open world PvP when theres an etire planet devoted to it?) is basing scores off 5 is being average.
I would give overall aesthetcs a 7, Game play an 8, UI a 3, Crafting a 7, Polish a 7, space an n/a because whats in now is just a minigame and innovation a 5 (I dont see a ton of innovation, but Rift didnt really have much either for instance. SWTOR is 'average' for innovation)
I hear this alot: 5 is average. When I went to school, anything below 60% was failing and 75 was considered average. In college it was anything below 68 was a fail. So to rate a game at 5.5, as someone pointed out earlier, is to say that the game made a good effort, but failed on all counts.
If we are going by the school grading system though, an 87 is a B/B+. And if you put it in those terms, SWTOR most certainly is at worst a B. So why are people getting their panties in a bunch over it?
The scores are very fair if 7.5 is average.
That's where I was headed with that. The game rates as a solid B according to MikeB.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
The scores don't match the criticisms. I pretty much feel this way about all the SWTOR reviews. It just smells of kiss ass. Reviewers list a number of major negatives yet still give 9/10 scores. I believe that honest reviews are just dead. Sad.
Soooo... because you don't like the game, every review that says the game is great is lying. Uh huh. That's a load of garbage and you know it. Your opinion doesn't match othger peoples opinions. thats life. But it IS your opinion.
That's the single most used excuse from fanbois.
-The graphics are horrid!
+No they aren't! They are amazing and immersive!
-But look at them!... they look like they were made in 1992 and are so buggy!
+Uhuuu, they suit to the style of the game dude!
-Your companion has no clothes, I'm a Sith with orange shortpants and a green cloak and the force lighning has bugged out and is a permanent feature of my character now. Graphics are horrid!
+Nah dude.. that's just your opinion! Graphics are amazing...9/10 for sure!... Sometimes 9.5/10 !!
Only children run around calling people names like you just did. Congratulations on very effectively giving reasons to dismiss everything you say out of hand from now on.
Where do you see a "name" ?... besides you systematicaly avoid a lot of points that people have made a s responce to something you've posted. You don't need an excuse.. you just do it.
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.
**snip**
Thank you. This is a real review.
Journalists giving high scores for such an unoriginal game are doing a disservice for the industry that is plagued by generic clones of a 2004 game. If you liked the game that's cool but at least be honest. 8/10 inovation? You gotta be kidding.
The thing is, sites like this give reviews based on 8.0 being average it seems, or maybe 7.5.
This review, while I have some issues with parts of it (no open world PvP when theres an etire planet devoted to it?) is basing scores off 5 is being average.
I would give overall aesthetcs a 7, Game play an 8, UI a 3, Crafting a 7, Polish a 7, space an n/a because whats in now is just a minigame and innovation a 5 (I dont see a ton of innovation, but Rift didnt really have much either for instance. SWTOR is 'average' for innovation)
If I may, world PvP means you can PvP everywhere in game, not on very specific areas.
So even something as "large" as a TOR planet isn't world PvP but a glorified warzone.
For example whatever you may (eventually) dislike RIFT or WoW you are able to bring the war where you want to and even assault the capital cities. Thing you can't do in TOR.
Guys, the other conversation regarding the alleged payment for reviews is verging on off topic. Please keep the discussion to the merits of the review and the game. Thanks.
And no, this request isn't some sort of cover-up. Our advertising and editorial are handled separately. This is simply to keep the discussion flowing.
To give feedback on moderation, contact mikeb@mmorpg.com
By the way, to any and all of you who disagree with our score. Why not write your own review here?
**snip**
Now this is how you write a none biased review, focusing on all aspect of the current game not as the OPs review who based it only StarWars,Bioware and Voiceovers and rate it.
Looks just as subjective to me, there's no such thing as an unbiased opinion or experience, and that's what both of these reviews are based on.
An unbiased review focuses on the inner workings of a game and that's it, there are very few of these coming from gaming sites or mags or fans, almost all of these reviews are based on experience and opinion.
My experience has been nothing like what Deewe brought up in his "polish" section. So based on my experience, my review would read completely different. See how that works?
So I guess you can move your UI frames around, have AA and no visual bugs (yes I know you can enable it client side), you also have the high textures, and you never notice the camera angles in cutscene. Then you never PvP or at least not on Illum and don't want to choose the warfront you want to queue for. Also you never used group chat nor guild chat that much during the last fews days and never see the "player does not exists" message when adding someone to your friendlist. Also you never experienced lost emails, like the ones sent to your deleted and re-created toon. Finally glad to see you also aren't like many others stuck with your character unable to gain any more light side or dark side points, nor you companion affection is stuck or you have affectiom popup in cutscene and your affection score does not change at all!
I'm not saying the game is bad. It's just lacking and certainly not polished at all. Or would I say very uneven.
The scores don't match the criticisms. I pretty much feel this way about all the SWTOR reviews. It just smells of kiss ass. Reviewers list a number of major negatives yet still give 9/10 scores. I believe that honest reviews are just dead. Sad.
No, the truth is, despite it's flaws, we still have damn fine game here.
Guys, the other conversation regarding the alleged payment for reviews is verging on off topic. Please keep the discussion to the merits of the review and the game. Thanks.
And no, this request isn't some sort of cover-up. Our advertising and editorial are handled separately. This is simply to keep the discussion flowing.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
By the way, to any and all of you who disagree with our score. Why not write your own review here?
**snip**
Now this is how you write a none biased review, focusing on all aspect of the current game not as the OPs review who based it only StarWars,Bioware and Voiceovers and rate it.
Looks just as subjective to me, there's no such thing as an unbiased opinion or experience, and that's what both of these reviews are based on.
An unbiased review focuses on the inner workings of a game and that's it, there are very few of these coming from gaming sites or mags or fans, almost all of these reviews are based on experience and opinion.
My experience has been nothing like what Deewe brought up in his "polish" section. So based on my experience, my review would read completely different. See how that works?
So I guess you can move your UI frames around, have AA and no visual bugs (yes I know you can enable it client side), you also have the high textures, and you never notice the camera angles in cutscene. Then you never PvP or at least not on Illum and don't want to choose the warfront you want to queue for. Also you never used group chat nor guild chat that much during the last fews days and never see the "player does not exists" message when adding someone to your friendlist. Also you never experienced lost emails, like the ones sent to your deleted and re-created toon. Finally glad to see you also aren't like many others stuck with your character unable to gain any more light side or dark side points, nor you companion affection is stuck or you have affectiom popup in cutscene and your affection score does not change at all!
I'm not saying the game is bad. It's just lacking and certainly not polished at all. Or would I say very uneven.
To insert a few of the other bugs, duping, boss mobs in zones still have the programming object definition as their IN GAME NAMES - this means that those zones werent play tested even once. Animations for some attacks have to happen 5 or 6 times for the attack to finally go off... at least as a marauder using ravage.
By the way, to any and all of you who disagree with our score. Why not write your own review here?
**snip**
Now this is how you write a none biased review, focusing on all aspect of the current game not as the OPs review who based it only StarWars,Bioware and Voiceovers and rate it.
Looks just as subjective to me, there's no such thing as an unbiased opinion or experience, and that's what both of these reviews are based on.
An unbiased review focuses on the inner workings of a game and that's it, there are very few of these coming from gaming sites or mags or fans, almost all of these reviews are based on experience and opinion.
My experience has been nothing like what Deewe brought up in his "polish" section. So based on my experience, my review would read completely different. See how that works?
So I guess you can move your UI frames around, have AA and no visual bugs (yes I know you can enable it client side), you also have the high textures, and you never notice the camera angles in cutscene. Then you never PvP or at least not on Illum and don't want to choose the warfront you want to queue for. Also you never used group chat nor guild chat that much during the last fews days and never see the "player does not exists" message when adding someone to your friendlist. Also you never experienced lost emails, like the ones sent to your deleted and re-created toon. Finally glad to see you also aren't like many others stuck with your character unable to gain any more light side or dark side points, nor you companion affection is stuck or you have affectiom popup in cutscene and your affection score does not change at all!
I'm not saying the game is bad. It's just lacking and certainly not polished at all. Or would I say very uneven.
How many of those have YOU encountered? Because I didn't encounter ANY of them.
I have encountered bugs... This one time I died in Huttball and respawned in the respawn area...then DIED AGAIN.. while in the respawn area.. and it didn't let me respawn anymore so I sat there until the game kicked me out due to staying in the spawn point.
I've had a bug where the boss of a trooper mission spawned in the ceiling and could shoot me anywhere on the map while I couldn't target or shoot him at all.
I've had a bug where, after sitting through a 30 minute queue, I received a CTD upon character log-in and had to come back to a 45 minute queue!
I've had some issues, but didn't have ANY of those that you spoke about.. not even the guild chat problem, though others in my guild mentioned having it.
The point is, why base polish off of problems OTHER people are having, why not base it off of the problems you personally experience. I have a friend who gets the blackscreen error, but she also has an underpowered computer (that doesn't meet minimum requirements) with an integrated graphics card... :shrug:
I have to say I am a little dissapointed in TOR compaired to what I thought I would be.
There are almost no features for role players at all to be honest - can't even sit in chairs other then 1 on our ship. There are a few emotes in the game and we can take other people to our ship - thats about it.
The story so far for the character I am playing ( Jedi Sentinel ) is okay but not great. Not like KOTOR and Mass Effect whos stories I do consider to be great stories. The side quests / stories seem to be fairly repetative to be honest and a lot of the voice acting on these side quests is reused stock responses. Id rather read new text then hear the same line repeated over again to be honest. Somehow in terms of story writting abilities for all quests I expected better from Bioware.
The combat as far as combat goes in games I am finding pretty fun. Love the lightsaber animations so far - there are a lot of fun looking moves included in them.
The games launch was very smooth for an MMO launch - a few bugs, as every MMO has but over all very polished compaired to most - and not laggy despite the number of sign ups. It was handled very well and people are well spread out over the servers provided.
The game world graphics are really nice, although some of the character graphics could use some work. You often get hair ending up in the back of your neck while your moving around, glitches with clothing and what not.
Still its early day's and there is always room for improvement, right?
Con- Ability delay due to animations drags down the fluidity of combat.
I have a question about this.
I have experienced this only twice that I can thnk of, both times centered around the riposte ability. I dont notice *any* lag at all on normal attacks. Once the gcd is over, the attack will fire when pressed (if its not on its own cooldown). The responsiveness is exactly as you woud expect. I do not PvP much.
Are people actually experiencing this as a common occurance? If you do, are you jamming the button before the gcd is up as opposed to responding when it is up?
I am just kind of confused why this is such a big deal when it seems to be extremely infrequent on my end, and many others as well.
Like most gamer i disagree with the 9+ score from the pro, and there is like a world with my own scoring.
-graphic 4/10 honestly its crappy plain and simple, no argument here
-gameplay 4/10 Not that it's bad but its not good either, and tbh i don't like Wow gameplay anyway, and even if i did Wow i think is just better and have a lot more cohesion, and wow is 10 years old guys, 10, yes TEN... 20 years ago we played pong and pack man...
-innovation 4/10 (is it even a category we usually use to score new games? i don't believe so, but lets pretend it does) Honestly it deserve a zero, but since they put some story in our mmo i can't be that harsh.
-polish 7/10 Not such a good polish i'm sorry, compare to the mmos i played over all, and not just the AoC/Vanguard mess which seam to be the standard now when you talk about polish in mmos.
-longevity 4/10 what longevity is there? i see none, gameplay is the same as wow, story element are pretty short, since you max a toon in few days. When during beta the dev was talking about longevity and rerolling power in this game i was like face palm, f*...* lyers. This game weak point is longevity if you can't see that you are pretty much blind.
-value 4/10 especially for some 120$ box which is actually a full year of mmo for most titles out.
social 6/10 but only because its the game out now, this would need some revaluation in few month if things change when it come to popularity. The game is definitely not build to promote social aspect for sure.
Ill add my own section for this game because it really deserve it imo
-story : 7/10 well the dialog are horrible guys, and the impact of your own path is pretty much unexistent unlike your claims... that's explain the somehow low score, and Bioware definitely made better story quests in older games anyway, so even from their own standard they are pretty low to me, 7 is definitely where it should be to me at least.
conclusion 4.5/10, as you see i didn't bought a lot from the novelty aspect, nor the Bioware + SW awesome sauce. Not that i don't value either, Bioware made one of my best game, and i love the 1r trilogy for sure as any kid from those days looking it at the theater when it went out.
You guys should make a new NWN or something like that, that was actually a brilliant multiplayer game, and it aged damn well.
By the way, to any and all of you who disagree with our score. Why not write your own review here?
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.
Are you playing on a PVP server? The way most planets are designed prevents this, but on Tatooine I had several encounters with the opposing faction, while doing my normal quests. From general chat all sorts of people were having similiar encounters. All of my encounters were within a 5 level range, but lots of higher levels 40-50 were also running about on both sides.
There was even a fairly large PVP battle near the world boss, with characters from Tatooine level up to max involved.
I thought Nar Shaddaa was going to be similiair, but I only saw the opposing faction in the commons area. Overall, world PVP isn't too great, but I obviously had a differant experience than you.
Con- Ability delay due to animations drags down the fluidity of combat.
I have a question about this.
I have experienced this only twice that I can thnk of, both times centered around the riposte ability. I dont notice *any* lag at all on normal attacks. Once the gcd is over, the attack will fire when pressed (if its not on its own cooldown). The responsiveness is exactly as you woud expect. I do not PvP much.
Are people actually experiencing this as a common occurance? If you do, are you jamming the button before the gcd is up as opposed to responding when it is up?
I am just kind of confused why this is such a big deal when it seems to be extremely infrequent on my end, and many others as well.
It seems to happen much more overall with melee classes than the ranged classes in my experience. I had it happen so often my marauder that it made me quit playing him.
I like story. Simple. Games that have story are what I like. Also, I love Star Wars, so this game had my money the second I found out about it. Not to say that it's perfect, far from it, but it's been less than a month since release(remember WOW's release.....probably not.) For those who do remember and say its wasn't as bad as this, I compare that to your grandpa saying that things were better back in the 30's.
Firstly, there is a many areas where I thoug they could have added alot of customization, especially in the guilds and starships. They need to add some kind of guild hall like City of Heroes, with all the customization and banners and etc. Following along with City of Heroes, user created content would put this game over the top for me, but with the game being full voice acted and complete with cutscenes, custom missions and that stuff would feel kinda empty compared to the rest of the game, so that will never happen. More customization of the armour and your starship would be good, but im hoping Bioware will do something about that a couple months down the road. The final little thing would be being able to give your starship a name; its pretty frustrating being a smuggler and it's just (your name here)'s ship. Cmon Bioware, of all the fixes that game needs that one has got to be the easiest one.
Other than my obsession with WOW that ended abruptly and for no real reason 2 years ago, the only other MMO I have really put any legth of time in has been City of Heroes, so i am not going to argue with you hardcore guys on things like UI and stuff. Personally, i enjoy the crafting because I dont actually have to do it, I pay other people to do it for me; which really, isn't that just like life? (If you want to craft stuff, go work in an assembly plant, its good honest work)
I can say that Bioware definetely didn't have hardcore MMO gamers in their radar, cause if they did, it would have taken the game another 3 years to come out, and while Blizzard has that luxury when it comes to Diablo 3 and its next MMO, I think EA and BIoware would rather have thier millions of dollars now rather than later. Bioware definetley were focusing their game on those who can only afford 2 to 3 hours a day inbetween work, school, sleep and real-life social engagements.
In terms of the actual article, I think the number rating on reviews is dead, it just panders to people who arent actually going to read the review anyway and cheapens the art of the review more than it already has, which is pretty bad already. I think it was a quite fair review, but the ratings are completely off.
Now before all you haters pull down your pants and "reply" to this, try and remember that this is personal opinion. Just because your a devout "realist", doesnt mean someone with something positive to say is an ignorant, bright-eyed punch drinker. Life is personal opinion, if there were people who were right and those who were wrong, life would be meaningless and dull. Its shades of grey. So while you guys hate, im going to go enjoy killing sandpeople.
(Can't you tell I dont comment on reviews often? Ill try and keep it shorter next time.)
Like most gamer i disagree with the 9+ score from the pro, and there is like a world with my own scoring.
-graphic 4/10 honestly its crappy plain and simple, no argument here
-gameplay 4/10 Not that it's bad but its not good either, and tbh i don't like Wow gameplay anyway, and even if i did Wow i think is just better and have a lot more cohesion, and wow is 10 years old guys, 10, yes TEN... 20 years ago we played pong and pack man...
-innovation 4/10 (is it even a category we usually use to score new games? i don't believe so, but lets pretend it does) Honestly it deserve a zero, but since they put some story in our mmo i can't be that harsh.
-polish 7/10 Not such a good polish i'm sorry, compare to the mmos i played over all, and not just the AoC/Vanguard mess which seam to be the standard now when you talk about polish in mmos.
-longevity 4/10 what longevity is there? i see none, gameplay is the same as wow, story element are pretty short, since you max a toon in few days. When during beta the dev was talking about longevity and rerolling power in this game i was like face palm, f*...* lyers. This game weak point is longevity if you can't see that you are pretty much blind.
-value 4/10 especially for some 120$ box which is actually a full year of mmo for most titles out.
social 6/10 but only because its the game out now, this would need some revaluation in few month if things change when it come to popularity. The game is definitely not build to promote social aspect for sure.
Ill add my own section for this game because it really deserve it imo
-story : 7/10 well the dialog are horrible guys, and the impact of your own path is pretty much existent unlike your claims... that's explain the somehow low score, and Bioware definitely made better story quests in older games anyway, so even from their own standard they are pretty low to me, 7 is definitely where it should be to me at least.
conclusion 5/10, as you see i didn't bought a lot from the novelty aspect, nor the Bioware + SW awesome sauce. Not that i don't value either, Bioware made one of my best game, and i love the 1r trilogy for sure as any kid from those days looking it at the theater when it went out.
You guys should make a new NWN or something like that, that was actually a brilliant multiplayer game, and it aged damn well.
I hope that no one takes this review seriously. WoW came out in 2004 bud. 20 years ago we we're playing on the super nintendo, get your time line right.
Graphics, pretty good, not mind blowing but pretty good, hands and mouth sync is really good.
Animation, top notch, best I've seen in an MMO.
Story, absolutely brilliant.
polish, for a game not yet a month old, as good as RIFT if not better.
Longevity, simply astounding, alts, legacy, pvp, rp, best themepark for longevity honestly.
Gameplay for the style of game is pretty damn good also.
Innovation, yea story is nice but beyond that not much.
Comments
I agree about the flashpoints. Black Talon is still my favorite so far. The others are just a typical dungeon crawl, but the social points of the conversations make BT feel more like a noteworthy event, rather than a search for pretty gear. I hope future flashpoints model themselves more like the first ones (looking forward to playing the Republic one soon) and less like the later ones.
Important facts:
1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
4. Community is more important than you think.
What game did they copy exactly? Oh let me guess... they copied wow (wow is 7 years old btw, not 8). Hate to blow your bubble but every game for the last 8 years has copied wow. And this game offers alot that no other game has that you are choosing to ignore.
Look, I'm not saying its perfect, its far from that. There are alot of things missing with this game that game 8 years older have. Like proper housing. But I really hate the lies being spewed on mmo sites.
An MMO having the ability to make you laugh, clap, and cheer while sitting on the edge of your seat... this is the only MMO I've seen since the first days of EQ that has done that. Its an important accomplishment. Whether you like it or not.
Take a look at my website, you'll see some real reviews that include more facts than opinions.
Ironic that Blizzard got lucky with WoW 7 years ago, which had the backing of the Warcraft series or WoW would have never been a hit either. BTW Blizzard and WoW is a copy of a copy of a copy etc.
Today there is much more competition in the MMO market for the consumers $$ and comparing the greatest subscription MMO with seven years of content to a game 3 weeks old is absurd.
If you don't like a game don't play it, and quit running to MMORPG.com to trash it.
If we are going by the school grading system though, an 87 is a B/B+. And if you put it in those terms, SWTOR most certainly is at worst a B. So why are people getting their panties in a bunch over it?
The scores are very fair if 7.5 is average.
That's where I was headed with that. The game rates as a solid B according to MikeB.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
It gets a big fat 0 from me, considering I can't buy it in-store in South Africa and there's no end in sight to that little problem.
If they don't want my money, they won't get it!
Theres a whole lot of SA players on my server.
Where do you see a "name" ?... besides you systematicaly avoid a lot of points that people have made a s responce to something you've posted. You don't need an excuse.. you just do it.
..Cake..
If I may, world PvP means you can PvP everywhere in game, not on very specific areas.
So even something as "large" as a TOR planet isn't world PvP but a glorified warzone.
For example whatever you may (eventually) dislike RIFT or WoW you are able to bring the war where you want to and even assault the capital cities. Thing you can't do in TOR.
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So I guess you can move your UI frames around, have AA and no visual bugs (yes I know you can enable it client side), you also have the high textures, and you never notice the camera angles in cutscene. Then you never PvP or at least not on Illum and don't want to choose the warfront you want to queue for. Also you never used group chat nor guild chat that much during the last fews days and never see the "player does not exists" message when adding someone to your friendlist. Also you never experienced lost emails, like the ones sent to your deleted and re-created toon. Finally glad to see you also aren't like many others stuck with your character unable to gain any more light side or dark side points, nor you companion affection is stuck or you have affectiom popup in cutscene and your affection score does not change at all!
I'm not saying the game is bad. It's just lacking and certainly not polished at all. Or would I say very uneven.
On the list of pros and cons I would add
Pro- Multiple character starting locations and differing storylines gives the game high replayablitiy
Con- Ability delay due to animations drags down the fluidity of combat.
Con- Level of Character Customization is simply sub-par compared to any game released in the last several years.
Otherwise it was a fairly evenhanded review.
All die, so die well.
No, the truth is, despite it's flaws, we still have damn fine game here.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
To insert a few of the other bugs, duping, boss mobs in zones still have the programming object definition as their IN GAME NAMES - this means that those zones werent play tested even once. Animations for some attacks have to happen 5 or 6 times for the attack to finally go off... at least as a marauder using ravage.
How many of those have YOU encountered? Because I didn't encounter ANY of them.
I have encountered bugs... This one time I died in Huttball and respawned in the respawn area...then DIED AGAIN.. while in the respawn area.. and it didn't let me respawn anymore so I sat there until the game kicked me out due to staying in the spawn point.
I've had a bug where the boss of a trooper mission spawned in the ceiling and could shoot me anywhere on the map while I couldn't target or shoot him at all.
I've had a bug where, after sitting through a 30 minute queue, I received a CTD upon character log-in and had to come back to a 45 minute queue!
I've had some issues, but didn't have ANY of those that you spoke about.. not even the guild chat problem, though others in my guild mentioned having it.
The point is, why base polish off of problems OTHER people are having, why not base it off of the problems you personally experience. I have a friend who gets the blackscreen error, but she also has an underpowered computer (that doesn't meet minimum requirements) with an integrated graphics card... :shrug:
I have to say I am a little dissapointed in TOR compaired to what I thought I would be.
There are almost no features for role players at all to be honest - can't even sit in chairs other then 1 on our ship. There are a few emotes in the game and we can take other people to our ship - thats about it.
The story so far for the character I am playing ( Jedi Sentinel ) is okay but not great. Not like KOTOR and Mass Effect whos stories I do consider to be great stories. The side quests / stories seem to be fairly repetative to be honest and a lot of the voice acting on these side quests is reused stock responses. Id rather read new text then hear the same line repeated over again to be honest. Somehow in terms of story writting abilities for all quests I expected better from Bioware.
The combat as far as combat goes in games I am finding pretty fun. Love the lightsaber animations so far - there are a lot of fun looking moves included in them.
The games launch was very smooth for an MMO launch - a few bugs, as every MMO has but over all very polished compaired to most - and not laggy despite the number of sign ups. It was handled very well and people are well spread out over the servers provided.
The game world graphics are really nice, although some of the character graphics could use some work. You often get hair ending up in the back of your neck while your moving around, glitches with clothing and what not.
Still its early day's and there is always room for improvement, right?
If MMORPG.com were so biased and wrong and payed off, how come every other major review site or magazine is giving the game similiar scores?
Any explanation?
I have a question about this.
I have experienced this only twice that I can thnk of, both times centered around the riposte ability. I dont notice *any* lag at all on normal attacks. Once the gcd is over, the attack will fire when pressed (if its not on its own cooldown). The responsiveness is exactly as you woud expect. I do not PvP much.
Are people actually experiencing this as a common occurance? If you do, are you jamming the button before the gcd is up as opposed to responding when it is up?
I am just kind of confused why this is such a big deal when it seems to be extremely infrequent on my end, and many others as well.
Like most gamer i disagree with the 9+ score from the pro, and there is like a world with my own scoring.
-graphic 4/10 honestly its crappy plain and simple, no argument here
-gameplay 4/10 Not that it's bad but its not good either, and tbh i don't like Wow gameplay anyway, and even if i did Wow i think is just better and have a lot more cohesion, and wow is 10 years old guys, 10, yes TEN... 20 years ago we played pong and pack man...
-innovation 4/10 (is it even a category we usually use to score new games? i don't believe so, but lets pretend it does) Honestly it deserve a zero, but since they put some story in our mmo i can't be that harsh.
-polish 7/10 Not such a good polish i'm sorry, compare to the mmos i played over all, and not just the AoC/Vanguard mess which seam to be the standard now when you talk about polish in mmos.
-longevity 4/10 what longevity is there? i see none, gameplay is the same as wow, story element are pretty short, since you max a toon in few days. When during beta the dev was talking about longevity and rerolling power in this game i was like face palm, f*...* lyers. This game weak point is longevity if you can't see that you are pretty much blind.
-value 4/10 especially for some 120$ box which is actually a full year of mmo for most titles out.
social 6/10 but only because its the game out now, this would need some revaluation in few month if things change when it come to popularity. The game is definitely not build to promote social aspect for sure.
Ill add my own section for this game because it really deserve it imo
-story : 7/10 well the dialog are horrible guys, and the impact of your own path is pretty much unexistent unlike your claims... that's explain the somehow low score, and Bioware definitely made better story quests in older games anyway, so even from their own standard they are pretty low to me, 7 is definitely where it should be to me at least.
conclusion 4.5/10, as you see i didn't bought a lot from the novelty aspect, nor the Bioware + SW awesome sauce. Not that i don't value either, Bioware made one of my best game, and i love the 1r trilogy for sure as any kid from those days looking it at the theater when it went out.
You guys should make a new NWN or something like that, that was actually a brilliant multiplayer game, and it aged damn well.
Are you playing on a PVP server? The way most planets are designed prevents this, but on Tatooine I had several encounters with the opposing faction, while doing my normal quests. From general chat all sorts of people were having similiar encounters. All of my encounters were within a 5 level range, but lots of higher levels 40-50 were also running about on both sides.
There was even a fairly large PVP battle near the world boss, with characters from Tatooine level up to max involved.
I thought Nar Shaddaa was going to be similiair, but I only saw the opposing faction in the commons area. Overall, world PVP isn't too great, but I obviously had a differant experience than you.
It seems to happen much more overall with melee classes than the ranged classes in my experience. I had it happen so often my marauder that it made me quit playing him.
My operative had the same problem.
My Bounty Hunter almost never did.
I like story. Simple. Games that have story are what I like. Also, I love Star Wars, so this game had my money the second I found out about it. Not to say that it's perfect, far from it, but it's been less than a month since release(remember WOW's release.....probably not.) For those who do remember and say its wasn't as bad as this, I compare that to your grandpa saying that things were better back in the 30's.
Firstly, there is a many areas where I thoug they could have added alot of customization, especially in the guilds and starships. They need to add some kind of guild hall like City of Heroes, with all the customization and banners and etc. Following along with City of Heroes, user created content would put this game over the top for me, but with the game being full voice acted and complete with cutscenes, custom missions and that stuff would feel kinda empty compared to the rest of the game, so that will never happen. More customization of the armour and your starship would be good, but im hoping Bioware will do something about that a couple months down the road. The final little thing would be being able to give your starship a name; its pretty frustrating being a smuggler and it's just (your name here)'s ship. Cmon Bioware, of all the fixes that game needs that one has got to be the easiest one.
Other than my obsession with WOW that ended abruptly and for no real reason 2 years ago, the only other MMO I have really put any legth of time in has been City of Heroes, so i am not going to argue with you hardcore guys on things like UI and stuff. Personally, i enjoy the crafting because I dont actually have to do it, I pay other people to do it for me; which really, isn't that just like life? (If you want to craft stuff, go work in an assembly plant, its good honest work)
I can say that Bioware definetely didn't have hardcore MMO gamers in their radar, cause if they did, it would have taken the game another 3 years to come out, and while Blizzard has that luxury when it comes to Diablo 3 and its next MMO, I think EA and BIoware would rather have thier millions of dollars now rather than later. Bioware definetley were focusing their game on those who can only afford 2 to 3 hours a day inbetween work, school, sleep and real-life social engagements.
In terms of the actual article, I think the number rating on reviews is dead, it just panders to people who arent actually going to read the review anyway and cheapens the art of the review more than it already has, which is pretty bad already. I think it was a quite fair review, but the ratings are completely off.
Now before all you haters pull down your pants and "reply" to this, try and remember that this is personal opinion. Just because your a devout "realist", doesnt mean someone with something positive to say is an ignorant, bright-eyed punch drinker. Life is personal opinion, if there were people who were right and those who were wrong, life would be meaningless and dull. Its shades of grey. So while you guys hate, im going to go enjoy killing sandpeople.
(Can't you tell I dont comment on reviews often? Ill try and keep it shorter next time.)
I hope that no one takes this review seriously. WoW came out in 2004 bud. 20 years ago we we're playing on the super nintendo, get your time line right.
Graphics, pretty good, not mind blowing but pretty good, hands and mouth sync is really good.
Animation, top notch, best I've seen in an MMO.
Story, absolutely brilliant.
polish, for a game not yet a month old, as good as RIFT if not better.
Longevity, simply astounding, alts, legacy, pvp, rp, best themepark for longevity honestly.
Gameplay for the style of game is pretty damn good also.
Innovation, yea story is nice but beyond that not much.
8.5-9/10
Has the potentional to be fantastic.