Non-biased review of SWtOR

Background: I have a level 20 Imperial Agent, 19 Smuggler and 16 Sith Warrior. I, of course, cannot comment on end-game

or higher levels, but I think I've played enough to get a solid impression.





Pros:



Focus on story and roleplay. This is where the game truly shines. While some of the class stories are better then others, feeling like NPCs are more then just lifeless bots regurgitating quest text is rather refreshing. You come to care about your character's motivation and background. You feel like the game actually starts from level 1. There's motivation for killing x number of whatever. If you loved the hell out of Mass Effect and Dragon Age origins, you'll derive some enjoyment here even if the stories aren't quite as good as BioWare's single player RPGs. The voice acting is almost always top-notch and really

adds to the feel you're talking to well-fleshed out characters.



Of course, this pro is going to fall flat on its face if you hate listening to story and spam the spacebar and just want to mindlessly follow objectives. You may as well stick with WoW or Rift in that case.



Love and care put into the setting: BioWare did an excellent job with lore and capturing the Star Wars feel. If you bother to read the codex, you'll learn alot,

especially if you are not familiar with the Star Wars setting like I am.



Animations are well done: It felt cool fighting with dual light-sabers. The animations just felt smooth and care was put into them. Any Star Wars fan is gonna like it.



Focus on small groups: I enjoyed the fact I could do basically all the content in a duo or with 4 people. There's definately a focus on duos in this game.



Tradeskilling: Being able to make your companions do the tedium that is tradeskilling is refreshing. (Note: It feels imbalanced right now and to be honest, utterly useless. I make weapons.  Why bother making stuff when I can get so much stuff with commendation badges. I put this as a pro because I appreciate BioWare doing tradeskilling a little differently and I'm sure this problem will be fixed over time.)



Cons:



The world is too rail-roaded:

If you thought WoW did not allow freedom of exploration, you'll feel annoyed with this game. Some of the maps are considerably large, but you still feel like you're visiting different rides on a themepark. Now, there's datacrons and lore objects to find  (some of the datacrons are rather creatively hidden and hard to find.) so its not like you can't look around and go off the beaten path. Sadly,  it still feels incredibly limited and you know, supposedly being an 2011-2012 MMORPG I kept feeling like I was playing a single player RPG.



The world is WAY too phased: Way too many instances! You'll get about 100 players or so on each instance of a server and god luck feeling like you're playing an MMORPG. The game feels like a co-op RPG with general chat.



Fugly graphics: The game really does look like a 2005 game. While there are some lovely views, but  many of the textures are very muddy and not terribly sharp or impressive, especially the character armor. 

You'll notice in cutscenes the textures switch to high resolution. BioWare have disabled High resolution textures "because it was never intended for the game to use them, only during cutscenes." The game was using high res textures during BETA and I think BioWare realized their game could not run properly on many PCs, even high end ones due to how badly optimized the engine is. I'm no tech expert, but its clear there are rather serious problem with the graphics. BioWare noted they are working towards fixing this and its clear its going to take a long time.



Tired, dated feel of the gameplay: This game feels like World of Warcraft BC-era. This may not be a bad thing for some players, but you'll get that "been there done that feeling" darn quick, that's for sure. Some like the familiar feeling, while others are going to groan, but let's be honest, we're sort of expecting alot more from our MMORPGs this day and age.

Character customization is pretty lacklustre for a 2012 MMORPG: Some may not care much for this, but I was sort of dissappointed. I guess it didn't help the alien races looked cheap. Chiss looked like humans dipped in smurf soup, for one.

(I've decided to omit lag issues. I feel this is caused by me living in Australia with a crappy connection and most others seem to run the game fine. I just hope the game will run better eventually.)

Conclusion: The game's focus is on story and roleplay, so if you don't care much of it do not get this game. Anyone who has enjoyed BioWare's single player RPGs will get some entertainment out of this. As long as you aren't expecting the revolution of MMORPGs, it may be worth looking into, even if you aren't a Star Wars fan.