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SWTOR thoughts on the 1-10 experience (neutral towards game beforehand))
teakbois
Member Posts: 2,154
Let me preface this by saying I generally prefer games that are somewhere between Themepark and Sandbox as I enjoy aspects of both styles. I knew going in that SWTOR was pure themepark. I intended to probably buy the game to pass time in until GW2 anyway, but didnt expect it to have long term appeal. I cant know for sure if it will from playing beta for one day either, but I did find out a lot about the game (and about why I didnt like Rift nearly as much)
I planned on playing a Jedi Knight at launch, so choose to try different things for beta. Dabbled in Sith Warrior for 5 levels, and played a Trooper for 10
The classes are engaging early on. And by engaging I mean fun. I loved tossing a sticky grenade on a seperatistthen lob my other grenade so they both exploded at the same time. By level 10 I had a nice array of varied attacks. Combat may be the same old same old, but it felt more fluid than Rift (on par with WoW) and was a lot of fun. Speaking of Rift, you spend your first 10 levels there getting duplicate copies of starter attacks. You dont generally get anything that makes you go 'woah'. Its very dull in that regard. Combat got tedious in Rift early on because of spamming abilities that werent fun to begin with and continued from there. SWTOR starts strong in this regard and I went out of my way to blow shit up.
Ah, the story and voice acting. Yes, I enjoyed. Yes, I think it offers value. But the consequences dont match the system. I went out ofmy way to be a colossal asshole. Ended up with 'the Vicious' title frommaking all dark side choices. I must have made people want to be separatists so bad. I mouthed off to my superiors at every chance. Yet they still regarded me highly and I was never discilplined. Id imagine taking the light choices and being honorable pays off better from an immersion standpoint, but it was fun being an ass. Two highlights: 'So you want be to shoot the villagers?' and killing that blue Rodian hostage because he was a prick who thought he could insult me and was untouchable. Oops.
The graphics...I had no issue. Smart games will not take the highly detailed approach to their style, because the trade off in an amazing graphical MMORPG isnt worth making content tougher to develop, and lets more people play the game. This was a huge factor in WoW's early success. Now WoW hit a home run with their art style, SWTOR does not. But its serviceable. And despitethenotso pretty happenings on Ord Martell and the barren terrain, its not depressing. Rift felt depressing. Everything was so drab there. As someone fromgeneral chat said so eloquently 'I probably would have liked Rift better if I was more emo'.
One thing I did like was the codex system. I am a huge fan of WAR's Tome of Knowledge, and here was a simplified, but star wars'd up version. And a good thing? By the time I had done every quest in Ord Martell I had only 18 out of the planets 28 entries. The area may be somewhat small and linear, but theres definitely some exploration to be had regardless.
Now the game did have its share of issues. The towns seemed rather lifeless for one. Despite the story driven content, the game is NOT immersive, and thats a big negative. Im worried about the community as well. If SWTOR does indeed draw people that say they are leaving WoW 'because they are adding pandas', well those are the trade chat trolls WoW fans want gone anyway. But this was a mostly open beta so who knows for sure.
Overall I still felt the same way as I did going in. While its not the direction I want MMORPGs to be taken in, SWTOR should provide a couple months of enjoyment. It appears to be a solid game and deserves good box sales. Retention? Well I cant comment because I didnt experience the end game. While not immersive,it was more engaing than Rift by a long shot so I can see players getting attached to their characters and sticking around (a HUGE issue Rift has...people dont connect with their characters as much as other games).
Comments
Rift is one of the weaker AAA MMORPGs of the current generation. Since we have yet to start a 3rd era of MMORPGs (hopefully GW2 can do this), WoW and EQ2 remain the best of the second era.
Kind of funny (though not unexpected) that the reviews that hype the game up as the greatest MMO ever developed and the ones that say it is a colossal turd get 5 pages of posts and reviews that arent drenched in hyperbole are largely ignored.
i was going to do a writeup but after reading yours I have no reason to. Pretty much everything I thought about the beta was said in your review. Graphics are what they are I don't mind them but the animations bother me. Some of the combat ones are good but a lot of them are not. It's mostly the running animation that messes everything up and I still don't get why this game and LOTRO and many others put in such god awful jumping animations.
Overall my biggest issue is like many have said before the world just feels dead. You have random wildlife out there that just stand there and don't even have a set walk path to follow. A lot of the enemy NPC groups just stand around in clumps for no reason like many other MMO's just makes the game feel even more dated. Would really help if they put in more enviornmental and atmospheric effects in the zones to make them more life like the starter towns need more than just npcs standing in one spot doing the same emote over and over.
I think they could really bring a lot more people into the game if they just tweaked a few things here and there. Issue is I have played in last stages of beta in pretty much every single big MMO release in the last decade and the game that is showed during the final stress tests is pretty much 99% of what you can expect at launch.
No MMO is going to be released in a finished state but some things in this game seems like a step backwards in the genre not a step forward. I'm going to keep my pre-order intact and will play at launch for sure but just don't see it being the next warcraft like so many have been saying it will be.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/339443/Video-FollowUp-Guide-For-Enhancing-Graphics-and-Performance-in-SWTORSorry-still-Nvidia-Only.html
I agree with the classes being engaging from early, you feel like the lowbie noob for about 3, 4 levels, and after 10-15 minutes when you have dinged 4 and bought all your class abilities up to that point you have a couple of different straight forward attacks, maybe a grenade and something else to mix things up. Past the first few quests it gets quickly fun, usually it takes something like lvl15-20 in mmorpgs to have any variety in your attacks and abilities. I also feel the same comparing to Rift, the moves in Rift looked a tad boring and sounded a bit muffled, in TOR they look great and lights up the bastards and also sounds like they pack a punch, which they do with the "fight multiple enemies at a time" combat approach, it works really nicely.
Yeah the consequences doesent match overall maybe in the best possible way, but I loved having the choise to "shoot first" a couple of times during my smuggler story, killing some "key" characters that by no means are expected to be killed as far as it felt, it might not have an impact on the game, but they were assholes and I executed them for that biggest mistake of their lives, felt like if I'd go smuggler in release I'd be quickly drowning in dark side points ^_^
Good, genuine review. Better than most of the BS here with hidden(or obvious) agendas.
Myself, I am really concerned for the lastability of themeparks and SWTOR isn't exactly an exception. I'm afraid level cap and repeating operations is going to feel like hitting a wall. At which point the lastability is going to sink and we will wish it were more of a sandbox with endless progression.
Nice review, seems pretty spot on imo
Currently playing: N/A
Retired from: GW, WAR, Aion, LOTRO, Rift, SW:TOR, Vinductus
EQ is the only non-pure sandbox game to nail 'endless progression', and Rift is really the first game to try to build off that, but I feel their PAs were a step back and not forward. So far.
Im just looking at SWTOR as a short term experience. If it ends up with long term value, great...but I am not expecting it. I dont think its deep enough to hold me long term, but its fun enough to spend some time with.
Great review, I actually went into Beta today as I randomly noticed I was invited in my e-mail. I had some issues with the patcher, but for the gameplay your review would match mine pretty well. I plan to pre-order it wednesday when I get paid, as I should get my monies worth within the first month easily. But seeing as each race has it's own story, probably more than that. I have also seen and heard that this game has open world PvP with objectives on illum(sp?) at level 50, which is something any new MMO I have played does not have so was a draw in to play beta and see if I would like it enough to make it to 50.
My complaints match yours, the world is a bit lifeless at the moment. The graphics are eh.. but I can live with them(namely it's not really my style, never have liked cell-shaded type graphics but I can live with them if the gameplay/story is good). Though I will add that the UI is pretty bad, while functional you cannot customize it hardly at all. I am hoping a plugin comes out to fix it, but I read that is one the first things Bioware wants to fix in a patch.
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-Currently playing FFXIV, and BDO.