Fantastic game if you like Bioware games. Not to be missed
if you don't like bioware games, then you shouldn't be playing anything with the letters "RPG" in them, thus you shouldn't even be on this website.
LOL.
SWTOR is quite a step down from Dragon Age Origins and ME1/2 unfortunately... and there is more to RPG than conversations and choices that make no difference in the game.
That's a pretty fair review. I think I would've given character generation a point less simply because there could be more options, and I'd probably give crafting a 7.5 because it's drawn me in, which crafting rarely does.
Not sure why's character customization rated 7/10, which would indicate above average score, since there isn't many games that would do worse in this matter. Similarly, 8/10 for companions that get stuck after every few minutes, are slow to react when you send them to attack, and generally are a nuisance to fight with is a bit off, otherwise well done.
The story of SWTOR is what makes the score for this mmo.
The upcomming patch finaly spreads the level 50's in their own brackets.
Ive notice quite some bugs with diffrent classes.
Horrible fps in busy hubs and warzone's
Doing flashpoints on off hours is almost imposible when not in a guild who want to assist you.
Looking for a spot in a flashpoint on prime time varies from 5 minutes spamming /1 to 30 minutes spamming /1
Getting the heroic quest done on planets is the same story as with flashpoints.
I was on a medium /high server 3 weeks ago and it seems some servers are getting a rough time now as the free month is almost up.
These are the most notable negatives of SWTOR at release and iam sure alot of this getting worked on.
What i notice when playing is that its hard to get things done that require groups of tank/healer as any mmo you have to be patient but limited free time and waiting a long time can be a devestating blow for a new mmo specialy when you played world of instacraft aka WoW.
OP made an excelent revieuw and hats of for that one as we dont see many posts like this anymore on the boards.
Now i needed to buy SWTOR with a 2 month timecard in The Netherlands so i got 3 months playtime and when iam being honest and critical i realy hope that GW2 is released in that timeframe.
I realy dig SWTOR singleplayer its like playing KOTOR III wich is quite cool.
But for an mmo its a little underweight in terms of things to do that are alot of fun.
Also a minor anoyance is the way Bioware do their maintanance in the morning instead of doing the EU servers in night time when it affects the least amounts of players.
Its not a biggy if done once, but calculate the amount of hours you miss when you want to play on a monthly base or year and you see that it is a realy lame timeframe for us EU players.
My verdict is around the same as the OP a 7 overal.
And that aint bad as iam a very critical person who see more of the bad then the good
There is one more thing i want to add to this witch is the textures.
For me Aion had alot of great textures even WoW have great textures when maxed out.
SWTOR has very strange textures specialy the character and gear looks horrible for a mmo made in this age.
Now i know that graphics aint the most importand part of an mmo but man sometimes when you look at your character the gear looks down right awful with vague to ugly graphics.
I seriously hope this will get improved soon as this looks more and more ugly the more you notice this.
I heared SWTOR has over 1 million players at this point, but i think the free month will drop it below the 1 million mark in a few days.
Alot of PvP players are fed up with the amounts of CC / bugs / and what not to whine over in PvP.
In Pve alot of servers already cleared all the contend, and say its way to easy.
Will they stay subbed ? or they /cancel till a new patch roll out with new contend ?
Iam sceptical that SWTOR will break 3 million players in the upcomming month and it doesnt say anything about the quality in SWTOR.
But my guts tell me that EA/Bioware are not living up to their name and serve the players with fast food in time.
GW2 is around the corner and Archage is looking very interesting to say the least.
Time will tell us what Bioware has in store for us tough so i hope for the best
If you give story a 9 our ot 10, you should comment on that because it has to be something close to perfection, and you hardly say anything about how the story is.
Epicent, I agree with your review. I think the individual ratings are on the mark as is the composite score. I give it about a 73 overall, but my feelings on the game are essentially the same.
It's a mediocre MMORPG, bolstered by it's strong story, while lacking in other aspects, sometimes seriously lacking.
I think hopes and expectations shape perceptions that edge away from the middle towards either extreme. Some will pretend it's a better game than it is, because they really want this Star Wars MMORPG to be good. Others are so frustrated by the game falling so short of hopes and expectations that they become angry.
I've been through the ups and downs with MMORPG launches so many times over the last decade+ that it's a little easier to just see a game for what it is. It's a mediocre game that should have been so much more, but you can say that about most of the AAA titles released in the last six years.
If the story was realy bad in SWTOR it proberly dint even had feet to walk, alot of fun i have is only from the story, and many people agreee that SWTOR story telling is what makes the game worth paying a sub for.
But once the story is told and beel played out then you know and feel empty and see how shallow SWTOR realy is.
The amount of contend is small, to small if you ask me.
But we dont know what Bioware has in store for us so we need to sit down and wait for that one
But if Bioware does not deliver in time or the next tier of contend is even smaller then i can tell you that it wont live up to the expectation of many players.
Wich reseults in sub drop and bad karma all over the place.
Remember Warhammer and Aion in the 1st month ?
Not doom talking here i just try to be realistic about the near future and the impact of fast or slow reaction of the mmo creator.
We have seen so many mmo's being great at launch and fail in the next months.
I realy hope we can have alot of fun and keep getting alot of fun.
Issues needs to be adressed asap and playerbase needs to get satisfied from all points of vieuws be it by PvP or Pve or solo and group play.
SWTOR has alot to offer but it provides small pieces of the cake wich are consumed real fast these days, and paying a sub makes a presure of developers to keep rolling out patches to fullfil the needs or people/ quit for the timebeing wich is quite bad for an infant mmo.
Still i have hope tough and still have fun atm, but for how long ?
I'm interested to know whether this format was designed specifically for SWTOR. If it is that makes this review non-objective, slanted and biased. If you actually average out the categories you have listed you actually give the game an average score of 5, not 7.. meaning that you must be weighting some things heavier than others... making it inherently biased. It'd be less biased without numbers.
A lot of the times websites like MMORPG, IGN, Gamespot, any anything on Metacrawler are forced to give insanely biased reviews is either for advertising revenues or because they're only relating on one experience of a single class, a single leveling path and a single set of playstyle preferences.
Anyone who thinks they can give an unbiased review of an MMO is deft. An MMO gives too much of an experience to quality for a valid review.
I'm not trying to slam you I'm simply stating that you should spend more time working on completing a written piece of strengths and weaknesses in the game, weigh them off (without numbers) and give your opinion on whether it is a worthwhile buy. A lot of people who give reviews forget that their job is actually to tell someone to buy or not buy this game.
By keeoing it simple and leading it to text people are going to agree with you. If you emphasize numbers as if this is some scientific opinion it is more likely to get flak from people who disagree with it or alternatively stop people from preaching to the choir.
By making it mathematic you have me question something like, what is a 10/10 story mean vs a 3/10 quest. I mean if you define those categories that's fine and all but it just creates more work for you as a reviewer and requires more attention for a reader.
I'm not a professional writer by any means but I know that if you use numbers people are just going to look at numbers.
Great review. I'd have rated some things slightly higher and some slightly lower (my personal score was a 7.5), but you hit the nail on the head. For a somewhat linear MMO, it does most things adequately and even some of them quite well.
I'm interested to know whether this format was designed specifically for SWTOR. If it is that makes this review non-objective, slanted and biased. If you actually average out the categories you have listed you actually give the game an average score of 5, not 7.. meaning that you must be weighting some things heavier than others... making it inherently biased. It'd be less biased without numbers.
A lot of the times websites like MMORPG, IGN, Gamespot, any anything on Metacrawler are forced to give insanely biased reviews is either for advertising revenues or because they're only relating on one experience of a single class, a single leveling path and a single set of playstyle preferences.
Anyone who thinks they can give an unbiased review of an MMO is deft. An MMO gives too much of an experience to quality for a valid review.
I'm not trying to slam you I'm simply stating that you should spend more time working on completing a written piece of strengths and weaknesses in the game, weigh them off (without numbers) and give your opinion on whether it is a worthwhile buy. A lot of people who give reviews forget that their job is actually to tell someone to buy or not buy this game.
By keeoing it simple and leading it to text people are going to agree with you. If you emphasize numbers as if this is some scientific opinion it is more likely to get flak from people who disagree with it or alternatively stop people from preaching to the choir.
By making it mathematic you have me question something like, what is a 10/10 story mean vs a 3/10 quest. I mean if you define those categories that's fine and all but it just creates more work for you as a reviewer and requires more attention for a reader.
I'm not a professional writer by any means but I know that if you use numbers people are just going to look at numbers.
Your overanaylzying it. The final review isn't some algorythm. Its simply what I thought was a fair rating for the game overall. If I were to be biased and put the rating that I personally think about it..........It would have been around a 5. This was nothing to do with biasism.
If the story was realy bad in SWTOR it proberly dint even had feet to walk, alot of fun i have is only from the story, and many people agreee that SWTOR story telling is what makes the game worth paying a sub for.
But once the story is told and beel played out then you know and feel empty and see how shallow SWTOR realy is.
The amount of contend is small, to small if you ask me.
But we dont know what Bioware has in store for us so we need to sit down and wait for that one
But if Bioware does not deliver in time or the next tier of contend is even smaller then i can tell you that it wont live up to the expectation of many players.
Wich reseults in sub drop and bad karma all over the place.
Remember Warhammer and Aion in the 1st month ?
Not doom talking here i just try to be realistic about the near future and the impact of fast or slow reaction of the mmo creator.
We have seen so many mmo's being great at launch and fail in the next months.
I realy hope we can have alot of fun and keep getting alot of fun.
Issues needs to be adressed asap and playerbase needs to get satisfied from all points of vieuws be it by PvP or Pve or solo and group play.
SWTOR has alot to offer but it provides small pieces of the cake wich are consumed real fast these days, and paying a sub makes a presure of developers to keep rolling out patches to fullfil the needs or people/ quit for the timebeing wich is quite bad for an infant mmo.
Still i have hope tough and still have fun atm, but for how long ?
I don't think this will ever happen there are so many people playing MMO's and so many MMO's to be played now,. Even with the up coming releases this year, it will continue to divide everyone.
I'm interested to know whether this format was designed specifically for SWTOR. If it is that makes this review non-objective, slanted and biased. If you actually average out the categories you have listed you actually give the game an average score of 5, not 7.. meaning that you must be weighting some things heavier than others... making it inherently biased. It'd be less biased without numbers.
A lot of the times websites like MMORPG, IGN, Gamespot, any anything on Metacrawler are forced to give insanely biased reviews is either for advertising revenues or because they're only relating on one experience of a single class, a single leveling path and a single set of playstyle preferences.
Anyone who thinks they can give an unbiased review of an MMO is deft. An MMO gives too much of an experience to quality for a valid review.
I'm not trying to slam you I'm simply stating that you should spend more time working on completing a written piece of strengths and weaknesses in the game, weigh them off (without numbers) and give your opinion on whether it is a worthwhile buy. A lot of people who give reviews forget that their job is actually to tell someone to buy or not buy this game.
By keeoing it simple and leading it to text people are going to agree with you. If you emphasize numbers as if this is some scientific opinion it is more likely to get flak from people who disagree with it or alternatively stop people from preaching to the choir.
By making it mathematic you have me question something like, what is a 10/10 story mean vs a 3/10 quest. I mean if you define those categories that's fine and all but it just creates more work for you as a reviewer and requires more attention for a reader.
I'm not a professional writer by any means but I know that if you use numbers people are just going to look at numbers.
Your overanaylzying it. The final review isn't some algorythm. Its simply what I thought was a fair rating for the game overall. If I were to be biased and put the rating that I personally think about it..........It would have been around a 5. This was nothing to do with biasism.
Well here is the problem with that. What you are telling me is you feel this game would get a grade of 50%, barely a pass. That you would not recommend this to a friend. Then you would go out and write a review where 'unbiased' it is a 7.
I don't think anyone ever thinks that reviews are unbiased. Everyone treats a review as what it is, one opinion.
The big reason why AngryJoe has become so popular as a reviewer is not because of his angry character and great detail in sets but his honesty in reviews.
My point on the numbers is that it makes it look like you are calculating it out scientifically. As opposed to I'm sure what it was intended, people who ask "how is its questing."
Unfortunately I believe your task of creating an unbiased review is faulty and you will find an inevitable problem that it is merely an opinion, not science. When MMORPG give this game an 8 (I think they gave it an 8) that is the opinion of their staff. Everyone is free to disagree with it or feel stronger about it. Reviews are designed recommendations for the general audience and should act that way.
A lot of review websites (just check out Metacrawler) give games higher ratings than they deserve. 7 Gamespot writers for example admitted for voting Skyrim as their game of the year even though they did not feel it is the game of the year.
If you just have honesty people will appreciate that. People in this thread are agreeing with you largely because the vast majority of the MMORPG community generally agree the same thing about SWTOR, it is not an awful game but it is not a great game.
I'm interested to know whether this format was designed specifically for SWTOR. If it is that makes this review non-objective, slanted and biased. If you actually average out the categories you have listed you actually give the game an average score of 5, not 7.. meaning that you must be weighting some things heavier than others... making it inherently biased. It'd be less biased without numbers.
A lot of the times websites like MMORPG, IGN, Gamespot, any anything on Metacrawler are forced to give insanely biased reviews is either for advertising revenues or because they're only relating on one experience of a single class, a single leveling path and a single set of playstyle preferences.
Anyone who thinks they can give an unbiased review of an MMO is deft. An MMO gives too much of an experience to quality for a valid review.
I'm not trying to slam you I'm simply stating that you should spend more time working on completing a written piece of strengths and weaknesses in the game, weigh them off (without numbers) and give your opinion on whether it is a worthwhile buy. A lot of people who give reviews forget that their job is actually to tell someone to buy or not buy this game.
By keeoing it simple and leading it to text people are going to agree with you. If you emphasize numbers as if this is some scientific opinion it is more likely to get flak from people who disagree with it or alternatively stop people from preaching to the choir.
By making it mathematic you have me question something like, what is a 10/10 story mean vs a 3/10 quest. I mean if you define those categories that's fine and all but it just creates more work for you as a reviewer and requires more attention for a reader.
I'm not a professional writer by any means but I know that if you use numbers people are just going to look at numbers.
Your overanaylzying it. The final review isn't some algorythm. Its simply what I thought was a fair rating for the game overall. If I were to be biased and put the rating that I personally think about it..........It would have been around a 5. This was nothing to do with biasism.
Well here is the problem with that. What you are telling me is you feel this game would get a grade of 50%, barely a pass. That you would not recommend this to a friend. Then you would go out and write a review where 'unbiased' it is a 7.
I don't think anyone ever thinks that reviews are unbiased. Everyone treats a review as what it is, one opinion.
The big reason why AngryJoe has become so popular as a reviewer is not because of his angry character and great detail in sets but his honesty in reviews.
My point on the numbers is that it makes it look like you are calculating it out scientifically. As opposed to I'm sure what it was intended, people who ask "how is its questing."
Unfortunately I believe your task of creating an unbiased review is faulty and you will find an inevitable problem that it is merely an opinion, not science. When MMORPG give this game an 8 (I think they gave it an 8) that is the opinion of their staff. Everyone is free to disagree with it or feel stronger about it. Reviews are designed recommendations for the general audience and should act that way.
A lot of review websites (just check out Metacrawler) give games higher ratings than they deserve. 7 Gamespot writers for example admitted for voting Skyrim as their game of the year even though they did not feel it is the game of the year.
If you just have honesty people will appreciate that. People in this thread are agreeing with you largely because the vast majority of the MMORPG community generally agree the same thing about SWTOR, it is not an awful game but it is not a great game.
I'm not rewriting the constitution. 2 words. Chillax and decaf.
* Im though haveing trouble to find time of doing a flashpoint, because i dont wont to spend 5 min or more waiting on a HUB when i can be doing quests.. So i have skipped Hammer STation as a flashpoint.
In the upcomming patches they should make a flashpoint tool ASAP!!
Crafting: Is not fun, but ive never been a crafter so i havent really done anything with it.
Character Custom....: Is okay for me since im playing a sith and im running around with a awesome helmet on, so i cant even se my face. So why bother with this?
But im also haveing huge problems with FPS, on a hub my FPS drops down to avg. of 15-20.
Ive done some terrible things. Im lvl 31 and ive skipped every heroic + bonus series untill now and, i kinda feel missed out on something. Because ive been playing this game mainly as a single game, but now im on nar shadaar for 2nd time(CRAP!!) ive decieded to start doing the bonus series and HC if i can.
Ive done some terrible things. Im lvl 31 and ive skipped every heroic + bonus series untill now and, i kinda feel missed out on something. Because ive been playing this game mainly as a single game, but now im on nar shadaar for 2nd time(CRAP!!) ive decieded to start doing the bonus series and HC if i can.
You haven't done anything "terrible". If a game doesn't encourage players to see everything through one means or another, it's the fault of the game, not you. More than most games I can think of, TOR lets you skip everything, but you also think you're missing things. The bonus missions are "kill 10 rats" without clicking an Accept button, that's the only difference, and the flashpoints I've tried so far are far and away less interesting than a typical vanilla WoW dungeon like Deadmines or Scarlet Monestary. Just play the way you want.
I did not disagree with you on your point by point, but I would probably lean toward an 8/10. But I think you did a good job of breaking it down and I think you were fair to give it a 7/10.
Now 7/10 is not a bad score, and with a few things here and there the game could go up on the point scale.
Loved what you said about flashpoints... although i did a few none were like the first... it was really something special... If here is one thing that bioware has in SWTOR that is a step up from things, that cinematic experience in that first Flashpoint is just outstanding...
I did play all of the instances to level 30 and do not recall another one like that
Ohh and both imperial and republic versions of this seemed great.
Comments
BIASISM!!!!!
Actually by using elementary multiplication your overall score should be about 6.1
LOL.
SWTOR is quite a step down from Dragon Age Origins and ME1/2 unfortunately... and there is more to RPG than conversations and choices that make no difference in the game.
That's a pretty fair review. I think I would've given character generation a point less simply because there could be more options, and I'd probably give crafting a 7.5 because it's drawn me in, which crafting rarely does.
Good review though, you should do more.
Good review i think it would have had it slightly lower but your pretty much right on most of it.
Not sure why's character customization rated 7/10, which would indicate above average score, since there isn't many games that would do worse in this matter. Similarly, 8/10 for companions that get stuck after every few minutes, are slow to react when you send them to attack, and generally are a nuisance to fight with is a bit off, otherwise well done.
REALITY CHECK
The story of SWTOR is what makes the score for this mmo.
The upcomming patch finaly spreads the level 50's in their own brackets.
Ive notice quite some bugs with diffrent classes.
Horrible fps in busy hubs and warzone's
Doing flashpoints on off hours is almost imposible when not in a guild who want to assist you.
Looking for a spot in a flashpoint on prime time varies from 5 minutes spamming /1 to 30 minutes spamming /1
Getting the heroic quest done on planets is the same story as with flashpoints.
I was on a medium /high server 3 weeks ago and it seems some servers are getting a rough time now as the free month is almost up.
These are the most notable negatives of SWTOR at release and iam sure alot of this getting worked on.
What i notice when playing is that its hard to get things done that require groups of tank/healer as any mmo you have to be patient but limited free time and waiting a long time can be a devestating blow for a new mmo specialy when you played world of instacraft aka WoW.
OP made an excelent revieuw and hats of for that one as we dont see many posts like this anymore on the boards.
Now i needed to buy SWTOR with a 2 month timecard in The Netherlands so i got 3 months playtime and when iam being honest and critical i realy hope that GW2 is released in that timeframe.
I realy dig SWTOR singleplayer its like playing KOTOR III wich is quite cool.
But for an mmo its a little underweight in terms of things to do that are alot of fun.
Also a minor anoyance is the way Bioware do their maintanance in the morning instead of doing the EU servers in night time when it affects the least amounts of players.
Its not a biggy if done once, but calculate the amount of hours you miss when you want to play on a monthly base or year and you see that it is a realy lame timeframe for us EU players.
My verdict is around the same as the OP a 7 overal.
And that aint bad as iam a very critical person who see more of the bad then the good
There is one more thing i want to add to this witch is the textures.
For me Aion had alot of great textures even WoW have great textures when maxed out.
SWTOR has very strange textures specialy the character and gear looks horrible for a mmo made in this age.
Now i know that graphics aint the most importand part of an mmo but man sometimes when you look at your character the gear looks down right awful with vague to ugly graphics.
I seriously hope this will get improved soon as this looks more and more ugly the more you notice this.
I heared SWTOR has over 1 million players at this point, but i think the free month will drop it below the 1 million mark in a few days.
Alot of PvP players are fed up with the amounts of CC / bugs / and what not to whine over in PvP.
In Pve alot of servers already cleared all the contend, and say its way to easy.
Will they stay subbed ? or they /cancel till a new patch roll out with new contend ?
Iam sceptical that SWTOR will break 3 million players in the upcomming month and it doesnt say anything about the quality in SWTOR.
But my guts tell me that EA/Bioware are not living up to their name and serve the players with fast food in time.
GW2 is around the corner and Archage is looking very interesting to say the least.
Time will tell us what Bioware has in store for us tough so i hope for the best
If you give story a 9 our ot 10, you should comment on that because it has to be something close to perfection, and you hardly say anything about how the story is.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Epicent, I agree with your review. I think the individual ratings are on the mark as is the composite score. I give it about a 73 overall, but my feelings on the game are essentially the same.
It's a mediocre MMORPG, bolstered by it's strong story, while lacking in other aspects, sometimes seriously lacking.
I think hopes and expectations shape perceptions that edge away from the middle towards either extreme. Some will pretend it's a better game than it is, because they really want this Star Wars MMORPG to be good. Others are so frustrated by the game falling so short of hopes and expectations that they become angry.
I've been through the ups and downs with MMORPG launches so many times over the last decade+ that it's a little easier to just see a game for what it is. It's a mediocre game that should have been so much more, but you can say that about most of the AAA titles released in the last six years.
MMORPG developers, we are still waiting...
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
If the story was realy bad in SWTOR it proberly dint even had feet to walk, alot of fun i have is only from the story, and many people agreee that SWTOR story telling is what makes the game worth paying a sub for.
But once the story is told and beel played out then you know and feel empty and see how shallow SWTOR realy is.
The amount of contend is small, to small if you ask me.
But we dont know what Bioware has in store for us so we need to sit down and wait for that one
But if Bioware does not deliver in time or the next tier of contend is even smaller then i can tell you that it wont live up to the expectation of many players.
Wich reseults in sub drop and bad karma all over the place.
Remember Warhammer and Aion in the 1st month ?
Not doom talking here i just try to be realistic about the near future and the impact of fast or slow reaction of the mmo creator.
We have seen so many mmo's being great at launch and fail in the next months.
I realy hope we can have alot of fun and keep getting alot of fun.
Issues needs to be adressed asap and playerbase needs to get satisfied from all points of vieuws be it by PvP or Pve or solo and group play.
SWTOR has alot to offer but it provides small pieces of the cake wich are consumed real fast these days, and paying a sub makes a presure of developers to keep rolling out patches to fullfil the needs or people/ quit for the timebeing wich is quite bad for an infant mmo.
Still i have hope tough and still have fun atm, but for how long
?
I believe you both. I believe the reviewer.
Welcome to the real life.
yay
I'm interested to know whether this format was designed specifically for SWTOR. If it is that makes this review non-objective, slanted and biased. If you actually average out the categories you have listed you actually give the game an average score of 5, not 7.. meaning that you must be weighting some things heavier than others... making it inherently biased. It'd be less biased without numbers.
A lot of the times websites like MMORPG, IGN, Gamespot, any anything on Metacrawler are forced to give insanely biased reviews is either for advertising revenues or because they're only relating on one experience of a single class, a single leveling path and a single set of playstyle preferences.
Anyone who thinks they can give an unbiased review of an MMO is deft. An MMO gives too much of an experience to quality for a valid review.
I'm not trying to slam you I'm simply stating that you should spend more time working on completing a written piece of strengths and weaknesses in the game, weigh them off (without numbers) and give your opinion on whether it is a worthwhile buy. A lot of people who give reviews forget that their job is actually to tell someone to buy or not buy this game.
By keeoing it simple and leading it to text people are going to agree with you. If you emphasize numbers as if this is some scientific opinion it is more likely to get flak from people who disagree with it or alternatively stop people from preaching to the choir.
By making it mathematic you have me question something like, what is a 10/10 story mean vs a 3/10 quest. I mean if you define those categories that's fine and all but it just creates more work for you as a reviewer and requires more attention for a reader.
I'm not a professional writer by any means but I know that if you use numbers people are just going to look at numbers.
Website: http://www.thegameguru.me / YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/users/thetroublmaker
The one thing that everyone has in common in this world is that we are all bias.
Great review. I'd have rated some things slightly higher and some slightly lower (my personal score was a 7.5), but you hit the nail on the head. For a somewhat linear MMO, it does most things adequately and even some of them quite well.
Your overanaylzying it. The final review isn't some algorythm. Its simply what I thought was a fair rating for the game overall. If I were to be biased and put the rating that I personally think about it..........It would have been around a 5. This was nothing to do with biasism.
I don't think this will ever happen there are so many people playing MMO's and so many MMO's to be played now,. Even with the up coming releases this year, it will continue to divide everyone.
Well here is the problem with that. What you are telling me is you feel this game would get a grade of 50%, barely a pass. That you would not recommend this to a friend. Then you would go out and write a review where 'unbiased' it is a 7.
I don't think anyone ever thinks that reviews are unbiased. Everyone treats a review as what it is, one opinion.
The big reason why AngryJoe has become so popular as a reviewer is not because of his angry character and great detail in sets but his honesty in reviews.
My point on the numbers is that it makes it look like you are calculating it out scientifically. As opposed to I'm sure what it was intended, people who ask "how is its questing."
Unfortunately I believe your task of creating an unbiased review is faulty and you will find an inevitable problem that it is merely an opinion, not science. When MMORPG give this game an 8 (I think they gave it an 8) that is the opinion of their staff. Everyone is free to disagree with it or feel stronger about it. Reviews are designed recommendations for the general audience and should act that way.
A lot of review websites (just check out Metacrawler) give games higher ratings than they deserve. 7 Gamespot writers for example admitted for voting Skyrim as their game of the year even though they did not feel it is the game of the year.
If you just have honesty people will appreciate that. People in this thread are agreeing with you largely because the vast majority of the MMORPG community generally agree the same thing about SWTOR, it is not an awful game but it is not a great game.
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I'm not rewriting the constitution. 2 words. Chillax and decaf.
You hit the nail spot on with this review.
* Im though haveing trouble to find time of doing a flashpoint, because i dont wont to spend 5 min or more waiting on a HUB when i can be doing quests.. So i have skipped Hammer STation as a flashpoint.
In the upcomming patches they should make a flashpoint tool ASAP!!
Crafting: Is not fun, but ive never been a crafter so i havent really done anything with it.
Character Custom....: Is okay for me since im playing a sith and im running around with a awesome helmet on, so i cant even se my face. So why bother with this?
But im also haveing huge problems with FPS, on a hub my FPS drops down to avg. of 15-20.
Ive done some terrible things. Im lvl 31 and ive skipped every heroic + bonus series untill now and, i kinda feel missed out on something. Because ive been playing this game mainly as a single game, but now im on nar shadaar for 2nd time(CRAP!!) ive decieded to start doing the bonus series and HC if i can.
You haven't done anything "terrible". If a game doesn't encourage players to see everything through one means or another, it's the fault of the game, not you. More than most games I can think of, TOR lets you skip everything, but you also think you're missing things. The bonus missions are "kill 10 rats" without clicking an Accept button, that's the only difference, and the flashpoints I've tried so far are far and away less interesting than a typical vanilla WoW dungeon like Deadmines or Scarlet Monestary. Just play the way you want.
I did not disagree with you on your point by point, but I would probably lean toward an 8/10. But I think you did a good job of breaking it down and I think you were fair to give it a 7/10.
Now 7/10 is not a bad score, and with a few things here and there the game could go up on the point scale.
Loved what you said about flashpoints... although i did a few none were like the first... it was really something special... If here is one thing that bioware has in SWTOR that is a step up from things, that cinematic experience in that first Flashpoint is just outstanding...
I did play all of the instances to level 30 and do not recall another one like that
Ohh and both imperial and republic versions of this seemed great.