Better Video than from inside the article. Put it on 1080P, let it buffer a little, expand it to full screen, and you can really experience the great detail of the environment (especially if you have an Alienware 120Hz Monitor like me) lol: http://youtu.be/czQ_8gi3QLc?hd=1
I really liked the review. Things I liked about it:
1) Though he didn't like the character art proportions, he admired the environments and it was obvious by the end of the review that he left the gaming wanting more despite this one drawback for him. Though I disagree with him, it nice to see someone not let one drawback get in the way of his overall opinion. No mention of things like OMG NO SWIMMING OR DAY NIGHT CYCLES, I'm not playing. lol
"Because while I'll admit, the cartoonish art and “heroic proportions” BioWare has been touting for player characters has never been a huge sell for me – and make no mistake, it still isn't – the environments were the perfect image of concept art made real."
2) As I am the type that prefers grouping, I like this part:
"Before I started to learn the rhythm of my class, which felt very advanced for a level 26 character, I was struggling through even random mobs that wandered outside our Imperial outpost. Solo play was by no means impossible, but watching the interplay between classes when grouped was not only helpful while making the overall experience easier, but it was intensely satisfying as well."
What it shows is that the game is not FORCING you into grouping, but it certaintly makes it attractive to group. That along with the Social Points you will receive for grouping make it to me more likely than in games like WOW that people may end up grouping after all while still allowing those who solo to solo...if at a slower pace due to the challenge.
3) I like how unlike others who say things like "Its WOW with Lightsabers" before even trying the game, he writes:
"I did however get a chance to duel one of my fellow Imperials, which ended in a very, very close loss for me. And while I did lose, something I'm sure my Sith masters would find... disturbing, it showed some good balance between classes, which isn't as copy-paste from World of Warcraft as you might imagine.
It's just another example of how even though this game borrows from those before it, it doesn't make it a clone. Maybe wait to play before calling it one. He mentioned about the "World of Warcraft-friendly control", but that doesn't make it a clone. It make the game SMART for everyone.
He also mentions the following as a WOW veteran:
"Yes, it certainly shares concepts and some gameplay elements from what will no doubt be its largest competitor and point of comparison/reference (of which I myself was a five-year veteran, only recently freed from crippling addiction to epic lootz) but this is Star Wars, through and through"
Isn't this what is most important and what we are all looking forward to?
Pshh, another "journalist" shill paid off by Bioware. Everyone knows this game is going to crash and burn.
Which will mean more players for my favorite ( insert unreleased / barely surviving ) MMO.
I think the reason for the 4 man was because the content was suppose to be designed around each person in the group being a different class. Notice how on each side there are 4 classes. 4 classes, 4 group spaces...that part make sense to me.
It could also be the fact that they wanted 4 players and 4 companions way back in development. But it didn't work out so we now have 4. And that is more than likely exactly as you posted. Four classes leads to 4 man groups.
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them? R.A.Salvatore
I think the reason for the 4 man was because the content was suppose to be designed around each person in the group being a different class.
Notice how on each side there are 4 classes. 4 classes, 4 group spaces...that part make sense to me.
It could also be the fact that they wanted 4 players and 4 companions way back in development. But it didn't work out so we now have 4. And that is more than likely exactly as you posted. Four classes leads to 4 man groups.
Wondering if that means the average raid will be 12-16 players, 3 groups of 4 or 4 groups of 4.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Take this with a grain of salt because G4TV will say anything looks good just to make themselves look good not to mention they are always pro Bioware not matter what. The best review is your own. If you like it then play it, if not don't play it. Personally I think Bioware has to show me something impressive to make me want to play it. I just don't know if I can stomach another tradional mmo right away. The combat in TOR is comes to be as being very boring right now.
I think the reason for the 4 man was because the content was suppose to be designed around each person in the group being a different class.
Notice how on each side there are 4 classes. 4 classes, 4 group spaces...that part make sense to me.
It could also be the fact that they wanted 4 players and 4 companions way back in development. But it didn't work out so we now have 4. And that is more than likely exactly as you posted. Four classes leads to 4 man groups.
So no-one can have an NPC companion out if the group has four PC slots filled?
Take this with a grain of salt because G4TV will say anything looks good just to make themselves look good not to mention they are always pro Bioware not matter what. The best review is your own. If you like it then play it, if not don't play it. Personally I think Bioware has to show me something impressive to make me want to play it. I just don't know if I can stomach another tradional mmo right away. The combat in TOR is comes to be as being very boring right now.
Yeah combat does look a little static but kind of reminds me of dragon age which is not a bad thing...but the writing, the atmosphere and the story driven quest are pretty much the main selling points.
I think the reason for the 4 man was because the content was suppose to be designed around each person in the group being a different class. Notice how on each side there are 4 classes. 4 classes, 4 group spaces...that part make sense to me.
It could also be the fact that they wanted 4 players and 4 companions way back in development. But it didn't work out so we now have 4. And that is more than likely exactly as you posted. Four classes leads to 4 man groups.
Wondering if that means the average raid will be 12-16 players, 3 groups of 4 or 4 groups of 4.
I have read that different difficulties lead to different raid size. Eight man for easy and more for hard. But that is unconfirmed and darthhater did count 16 from the video disection. I would guess that they will be testing 16 to 24 for the highest number. But we are months from finding out.
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them? R.A.Salvatore
But reguarding the OP, I really appreciate your enthusiasm about the game. Im looking forward to it to! Though I think a lot of people will overlook or ignore the fact that it is "Star Wars through and through", and get caught up in people calling it Star WOW, or WOW clone, and so on.
and GW2 will both have a November 2011 release... TSW will never make that
Hmm... must have missed Arena Net giving a release date. May I see your source that says there will be a November 2011 release date?
More like wishful thinking. We'll be lucky if we see GW2 in Q1 2012 let alone 2011.
This was what I was thinking as well, but since he did mention it... I thought I may as well request his sources. :P
He's making an educated guess. That's what he meant in the last part of his post when he mentioned his intuition.
It's an educated guess because if either TOR or GW2 can capitalize on the holiday market, they're certainly going to want to do that. Not saying they'll sacrifice quality to get it out, but it's a good goal for both.
and GW2 will both have a November 2011 release... TSW will never make that
Hmm... must have missed Arena Net giving a release date. May I see your source that says there will be a November 2011 release date?
More like wishful thinking. We'll be lucky if we see GW2 in Q1 2012 let alone 2011.
This was what I was thinking as well, but since he did mention it... I thought I may as well request his sources. :P
He's making an educated guess. That's what he meant in the last part of his post when he mentioned his intuition.
It's an educated guess because if either TOR or GW2 can capitalize on the holiday market, they're certainly going to want to do that. Not saying they'll sacrifice quality to get it out, but it's a good goal for both.
An educated guess no doubt, but it was my understanding that A net mentioned in an earnings call or whatever those are, that they will have a beta by the end of the year? I could have misinterpreted the info though.
and GW2 will both have a November 2011 release... TSW will never make that
Hmm... must have missed Arena Net giving a release date. May I see your source that says there will be a November 2011 release date?
More like wishful thinking. We'll be lucky if we see GW2 in Q1 2012 let alone 2011.
This was what I was thinking as well, but since he did mention it... I thought I may as well request his sources. :P
He's making an educated guess. That's what he meant in the last part of his post when he mentioned his intuition.
It's an educated guess because if either TOR or GW2 can capitalize on the holiday market, they're certainly going to want to do that. Not saying they'll sacrifice quality to get it out, but it's a good goal for both.
An educated guess no doubt, but it was my understanding that A net mentioned in an earnings call or whatever those are, that they will have a beta by the end of the year? I could have misinterpreted the info though.
I interpreted their statement as the second half of the year, but I could be wrong. I think November is more doable for TOR in any case. Some folks are thinking that the two are playing a bit of chicken right now. There's some value in being the second one to announce a release date as you can steal the thunder so to speak. I just don't think GW2 is far enough along to really play chicken quite yet, but I could be wrong.
My prediction is that TOR hits in time for the holiday buying and that GW2 hits first quarter 2012 so that they don't compete during their releases. That's a total guess obviously.
Take this with a grain of salt because G4TV will say anything looks good just to make themselves look good not to mention they are always pro Bioware not matter what. The best review is your own. If you like it then play it, if not don't play it. Personally I think Bioware has to show me something impressive to make me want to play it. I just don't know if I can stomach another tradional mmo right away. The combat in TOR is comes to be as being very boring right now.
Yeah combat does look a little static but kind of reminds me of dragon age which is not a bad thing...but the writing, the atmosphere and the story driven quest are pretty much the main selling points.
heres a good example
We'll see. I'm not bashing it by any means here bcause if there is improvement from here to launch I will be more than happy to buy it but right now it doesn't look to be on the radar at the moment.
The combat in TOR is comes to be as being very boring right now.
It may look like that to you, but those who actually played the game, most of them seemed to like and enjoy it very much.
Of course, if you're completely burnt out on how combat has worked in MMO's for years, then this might still not be your cup of tea. It all depends upon how much burnt out you are on traditional MMO gameplay features.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Something I noticed in the video.. The Trooper fires his gun at one point and walks at the same time... Love the idea, even if it doesn't add anything to gameplay that I'll be able to fire a gun and move..
I guess their thnking on the 4 in a group thing was to try to make the game feel more heroic because in larger groups you become less of a factor. I also think they feel more people will be doing the duo thing with 2 companions since the game was built around companions too.
Maybe i'm bored with the whole MMO thing, but watching this video i dont find anything exciting. It's blend, generic, combat is uninspiring, slow and similar to waht we've seen in the last 10 years.
Maybe i'm bored with the whole MMO thing, but watching this video i dont find anything exciting. It's blend, generic, combat is uninspiring, slow and similar to waht we've seen in the last 10 years.
Other than the successful first 20 levels of Age of Conan Tortage, name me one successful MMO that comes close to trying to immerse with story quests so that experienced gamers are no longer opening a wall of text and hitting accept without caring about that text. Of course there are similarities.it's an MMO. Being physically sucked into a Tron like world is still a few years away. Sorry. Back to single player games for you.
Maybe i'm bored with the whole MMO thing, but watching this video i dont find anything exciting. It's blend, generic, combat is uninspiring, slow and similar to waht we've seen in the last 10 years.
Other than the successful first 20 levels of Age of Conan Tortage, name me one successful MMO that comes close to trying to immerse with story quests so that experienced gamers are no longer opening a wall of text and hitting accept without caring about that text. Of course there are similarities.it's an MMO. Being physically sucked into a Tron like world is still a few years away. Sorry. Back to single player games for you.
"... name me one successful MMO that comes close to trying to immerse with story quests..."
Neither does SWTOR as far as you know - and you won't know until launch day.
Absolutely right. Im gauging by the majority of those who played the game at the last few events, especially the hands on in April where if you went to the swtor forums, there were god knows how many pages of threads supporting the strength of the story and star wars feel to the game similar to this reviewer. The difference is they were just every day users. The problem is the haters here forget all that with their one week attention span.
I think the reason for the 4 man was because the content was suppose to be designed around each person in the group being a different class.
Notice how on each side there are 4 classes. 4 classes, 4 group spaces...that part make sense to me.
I agree whilan, I just think it is a little limiting for people like me that tend to make a wide circle of friends in a game. I used to like in City of Heroes how a full team was 8 people, but it was also very hard to fill a team sometimes, especially later at night when I normally play. 4 is a good number and probably pretty easy to design for, I just think for a better social aspect, this game would be better served by going with a 5 or 6 man team. Still, we can't know how it will work out until we play it, can we.
I agree we'll have to wait to see. I like the possibility of it being easier to create groups, but ToR maintains the Holy Trinity, and I'm a bit worried about tank and healer shortage. Ignoring companions for a moment, you'd be looking for 1/4th of the players to play tanks and 1/4th to play healers. I think companions are meant to make up the difference, but I have my doubts about the effectiveness of companion tanks in instances. Companion healers might be ok, but we won't know until we try it.
I hope that the availability of companions for soloing will make both tanks and healers more popular role choices. Any word on the ability to swap between multiple builds? I'm assuming it won't be possible as it sort of works against the deep personal story in some sense.
Not sure why I'm worried about this. I always end up tanking or healing anyway. LOL
I think because the classes are a little more interesting than what I have seen in games like WOW, people like me who only pay long range DPS classes may want to try some of the others. After watching the game play videos over the last couple of months, I am defintely going to try a healer for the first time :-). Not sure about tank.
My first character in any game that gives me a chance is always a healer. Normally my second is a DPS and my third is a Tank. The diversity of this class system though leads me to believe that we are well in hand since it seems that the "Holy Trinity" is blurred quite a bit in this game.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
I am just happy they "confirmed" it will be out in 2011! So no "It might be pushed back to 2012".
So within 6 months time we all will be playing SW:TOR! I can wait that long, i will just play all the other games that are out from now till then for timefillers!
Maybe i'm bored with the whole MMO thing, but watching this video i dont find anything exciting. It's blend, generic, combat is uninspiring, slow and similar to waht we've seen in the last 10 years.
Comments
Pshh, another "journalist" shill paid off by Bioware. Everyone knows this game is going to crash and burn.
Which will mean more players for my favorite ( insert unreleased / barely surviving ) MMO.
It could also be the fact that they wanted 4 players and 4 companions way back in development. But it didn't work out so we now have 4. And that is more than likely exactly as you posted. Four classes leads to 4 man groups.
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them?
R.A.Salvatore
Wondering if that means the average raid will be 12-16 players, 3 groups of 4 or 4 groups of 4.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Take this with a grain of salt because G4TV will say anything looks good just to make themselves look good not to mention they are always pro Bioware not matter what. The best review is your own. If you like it then play it, if not don't play it. Personally I think Bioware has to show me something impressive to make me want to play it. I just don't know if I can stomach another tradional mmo right away. The combat in TOR is comes to be as being very boring right now.
Correct
Yeah combat does look a little static but kind of reminds me of dragon age which is not a bad thing...but the writing, the atmosphere and the story driven quest are pretty much the main selling points.
Hmm... must have missed Arena Net giving a release date. May I see your source that says there will be a November 2011 release date?
More like wishful thinking. We'll be lucky if we see GW2 in Q1 2012 let alone 2011.
This was what I was thinking as well, but since he did mention it... I thought I may as well request his sources. :P
It could also be the fact that they wanted 4 players and 4 companions way back in development. But it didn't work out so we now have 4. And that is more than likely exactly as you posted. Four classes leads to 4 man groups.
Wondering if that means the average raid will be 12-16 players, 3 groups of 4 or 4 groups of 4.
I have read that different difficulties lead to different raid size. Eight man for easy and more for hard. But that is unconfirmed and darthhater did count 16 from the video disection. I would guess that they will be testing 16 to 24 for the highest number. But we are months from finding out.
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them?
R.A.Salvatore
But reguarding the OP, I really appreciate your enthusiasm about the game. Im looking forward to it to! Though I think a lot of people will overlook or ignore the fact that it is "Star Wars through and through", and get caught up in people calling it Star WOW, or WOW clone, and so on.
He's making an educated guess. That's what he meant in the last part of his post when he mentioned his intuition.
It's an educated guess because if either TOR or GW2 can capitalize on the holiday market, they're certainly going to want to do that. Not saying they'll sacrifice quality to get it out, but it's a good goal for both.
An educated guess no doubt, but it was my understanding that A net mentioned in an earnings call or whatever those are, that they will have a beta by the end of the year? I could have misinterpreted the info though.
hmmm, here I was thinking it was KOTOR 3 with multiplayer...
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD
Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE
Waiting on: Lost Ark
Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
I interpreted their statement as the second half of the year, but I could be wrong. I think November is more doable for TOR in any case. Some folks are thinking that the two are playing a bit of chicken right now. There's some value in being the second one to announce a release date as you can steal the thunder so to speak. I just don't think GW2 is far enough along to really play chicken quite yet, but I could be wrong.
My prediction is that TOR hits in time for the holiday buying and that GW2 hits first quarter 2012 so that they don't compete during their releases. That's a total guess obviously.
We'll see. I'm not bashing it by any means here bcause if there is improvement from here to launch I will be more than happy to buy it but right now it doesn't look to be on the radar at the moment.
It may look like that to you, but those who actually played the game, most of them seemed to like and enjoy it very much.
Of course, if you're completely burnt out on how combat has worked in MMO's for years, then this might still not be your cup of tea. It all depends upon how much burnt out you are on traditional MMO gameplay features.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Something I noticed in the video.. The Trooper fires his gun at one point and walks at the same time... Love the idea, even if it doesn't add anything to gameplay that I'll be able to fire a gun and move..
I guess their thnking on the 4 in a group thing was to try to make the game feel more heroic because in larger groups you become less of a factor. I also think they feel more people will be doing the duo thing with 2 companions since the game was built around companions too.
Maybe i'm bored with the whole MMO thing, but watching this video i dont find anything exciting. It's blend, generic, combat is uninspiring, slow and similar to waht we've seen in the last 10 years.
Other than the successful first 20 levels of Age of Conan Tortage, name me one successful MMO that comes close to trying to immerse with story quests so that experienced gamers are no longer opening a wall of text and hitting accept without caring about that text. Of course there are similarities.it's an MMO. Being physically sucked into a Tron like world is still a few years away. Sorry. Back to single player games for you.There Is Always Hope!
Other than the successful first 20 levels of Age of Conan Tortage, name me one successful MMO that comes close to trying to immerse with story quests so that experienced gamers are no longer opening a wall of text and hitting accept without caring about that text. Of course there are similarities.it's an MMO. Being physically sucked into a Tron like world is still a few years away. Sorry. Back to single player games for you."... name me one successful MMO that comes close to trying to immerse with story quests..."
Neither does SWTOR as far as you know - and you won't know until launch day.
Absolutely right. Im gauging by the majority of those who played the game at the last few events, especially the hands on in April where if you went to the swtor forums, there were god knows how many pages of threads supporting the strength of the story and star wars feel to the game similar to this reviewer. The difference is they were just every day users. The problem is the haters here forget all that with their one week attention span.There Is Always Hope!
My first character in any game that gives me a chance is always a healer. Normally my second is a DPS and my third is a Tank. The diversity of this class system though leads me to believe that we are well in hand since it seems that the "Holy Trinity" is blurred quite a bit in this game.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
I am just happy they "confirmed" it will be out in 2011! So no "It might be pushed back to 2012".
So within 6 months time we all will be playing SW:TOR! I can wait that long, i will just play all the other games that are out from now till then for timefillers!
guess we will not be seeing you there then.