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[Mini - Review], Introspection, and poll.
Shoko_Lied
Member UncommonPosts: 2,193
I'm not going to go into great detail as I'm sure those of you not interesting in the game don't care, and those of you who are already playing understand this already. This is a review I spent about 2 minutes making on metacritic on launch day while waiting in queue. It has been revised and change from the original, and in advanced, this is not a review going into great detail about mechanics.
Evil flirting
Let me get my background checked off so I can properly explain to you that I will 'try' to be as objective as possible when writing this review. For starters, I grew up playing duck hunt, and Zelda: A link to the past, Lamborghini on a floppy, and the original Prince of Persia... The first mmorpg I played was Everquest, and I have played almost every major release since then.
When I first heard about this mmorpg in 2008, I was one of the many players with a distaste for any thought of a "Theme-Park MMO", as I myself, used to be a butt-hurt SWG Vet who clamored of days long passed, of a highly buggy, yet incredibly enjoyable sandbox landscape where the adventure was defined by social interaction rather than mechanical. However, I began to accept Theme-Parks as a different form of entertainment compared to Sand-box MMOs. Thus, I must approach it as so...
Nar shadaa
"Truth be told, I was one of the first to call this a single player game with a chat room", in these very forums. After I became interested around Aughust 2010, I started saying that I would approach it as "A single player game", and enjoy it as that, because any online aspect could only serve to improve the experience beyond the already, "quality" single player feel.
SW:TOR has about as many bugs as I expected. Not a lot, but enough that everyone runs into them semi-regularly, and probably every 2-3 minutes if you are in a guild, as the entire guild interface can become bugged. No worries, Ctrl U + Ctrl U temporarily fixes most interface issues until they are officially solved.. This is negligble stuff for the most part, as much of it will be taken care of within a couple weeks to a month at most.
rocking at pvp
Now that we've found a few bugs to stomp, let me say, this is definitely not the "perfect" MMO, despite what many fanbois will claim. However, with 3 days and 14 hours logged into my level 34 Sith Assasin, and trying to mix up as much content as possible, including guild interaction. I must say, it is an incredibly engaging mmorpg.
PVP is... Well, I spent an entire 24 hours playing, and my eyes hurt, so it's good, in my opinion at least. I might be biased, because my guild is amazing at pvp, and while being as modest as possible, so am I. Something about pvp just feels right. Don't get me wrong the nerf stick will come eventually, but the combat animations have been fleshed out a lot since beta, and now pvp feels very solid.
Mind-trap... may be nerfed later
Yes, yes, but what about the open WORLD pvp?
Well, when you're an assassin like me, it's shockingly fun when you are not expecting it, and then you find an unsuspecting republic dog to carry to the slaughter. To be honest, this is one facet of the game I have not been able to play much of yet, but when it happens, it feels much more personal than warzones.
pew pew
To summarize
If you have realistic expectations, and have a guild or some buddies to play with, this should be a blast to play. As long as you can sort your way through some of the haywire of initial release, such as 500+ queue lines, and those current guild interface bugs. In the MMO's current state, I give it an 7.5/10 for sheer Theme-Park enjoyability. As MMORPG's are always evolving, expect the true-score to change as the few noticeable bugs are worked out, and major content is added.
Comments
The queue is temprary, they will increase cap of the servers in stages, and the queue is
about ~15 of ~80 servers [EU] i think.
Bioware made a statement of this queue issue in a post on their forum.
I have max 30 min queue but i'm fine, i love the game and will spend my quality time in there for many years.
nice post. but.
in terms of bugs, or gameplay imparing bugs, swtor is probably the mmo ever released with the least amount of bugs.
regarding the poll.. it is clearly a game for people to get addicted to for a few months if not years. there is a strong connection between the toons and the players in this game.. in terms of roleplay thats very powerful.
Yeah, most definitely a very polished mmorpg. I mention the bugs as they are, because some of them are quite noticeable, and I can see that distracting some.
Good rebiew but how do you think it will do in terms of lasting appeal? if it can't hook me for more than a year than I would rather play something else.
mmm pizza
I'm not entirely sure what the "Lasting appeal" will be. I think I mentioned this in the review. For now, however, it will keep me playing realistically for at least 6 months. I'll have to make the judgement later on whether the game has good content releases, and everything that I personally look for to keep me beyond that.
Edit: Have some more sceenshots lol, at least the world sizes aren't an issue for me.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
Oh, Nar Shadaa. How I love thee so
Thanks for the screenshots
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
So you are only counting the bugs that players can see/experience. OMG.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
That's a joke right?
1) Guild list of people will bug out and show just couple people or no one at all
2) when you open the Auction House it overlap your inventory window in various annoying ways, depending if you had the inventory window open or not before.. so making it impossible to drag from certain slots in the inventory. Also the windows cannot be moved.
3) When you place items in your cargo hold, they do not auto stack.
4) Certain talents do not work properly (example: Jedi knight tank tree, the Riposte talent that should lower the cost of riposte by 1/2 point, instead lower it by 0/1 point, making the first level completely useless)
5) Graphical artefacts everywhere
6) falling through the world
7) getting stuck
8) Companions abilities do not remain off or on but may randomly reset when zoning
9)Zoning from instance shard to instance shard might bug out and crash you or not work at all and leave you in the original place
10) pressing "r" does not actually reply to who whispered you, it just open a "/whisper" command in chat, sans the name of the person you are answering to
11) Creating and joining custom chat channels is really counterintuitive (you have to right click the chat window and select "create custom channel" even if you want to join an existing one)
12) No help for for chat channel commands
13) Emotes will continuosly loop. You do /bow and you guy will go on bowing forever until you move
14) Sometimes when jumping you stuck in jump mode and cannot do much until you log out.
15)Sounds and music intterupt drastically without any reasons in certain areas
16)Alien voices always say the same 5-6 sentences. that is not the bug, the bug is that the time the subtitles remain on the screen seems to be completely arbitrary, sometimes disappearing after half a second and other times remaining there for several seconds after the alien/droid has stopped talking
17)The companion tooltip, to compare items to your companion does not work if the item is too high level, weirdly enough, it work for you. It also does not work if the companion is away on mission, making it annoying to complete a "companion reward" quest when your droid is excavating artefacts for 5 mins, now how do I know if any of these is better than what he has or should I take the commendation?
18)Showing equipment on your paper doll is NOT done with the listed command of alt+right click.
19)Sometimes other people will see you running with a sheathed ACTIVE lightsaber. This does not affect you, though, that will see it deactivated
20)Melee-based companions based on the trooper archetype (like the first jed iconsular companion) use AIM as primary attribute.... even if they never shoot anything.. so do not assume what attribute is good for your companion based on WHAT he does, but check his equipment and his codex entry to know.
21)You cannot search items on the auction house by name until you have selected a category and sub-category
22) Certain mails from NPCs that imply they have sent you some gift, actually contain nothing
These are just the ones I noticed in my path from level 1 to 20 with my Jedi Knight and my Jedi Consular friend, I am sure others will have found other bugs in other paths etc.
So, least amount of bugs? Not even close. Neither WAR nor Rift nor even WoW had this amount of bugs at launch.
And yes, there are no game-breaking bugs and most of them are just annoyances, BUT they are quite visible. about 100% of the people will encounter some or most of these. The game does outshine them for the most part, so most people will not notice ,but they are still there
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
I was an atheist once, but then I took jesus to the knee.
The OP comments about bugs and pvp are pretty much on the spot. There are few bugs that need to be addressed (such as the low video settings memory leak) fairly quickly. As far as pvp goes, I have been pvping alot with friends on my bounty hunter alt (doing class story quests + group quests almost exclusively). Pvp has definitely been fun.
Yep, this here. This is the first time since 2005 when I subbed for 6 months to WoW that I have done the same. I figure it will take me most of 2012 to see all eight core storylines in succession (me being an older family man with a full time job and all)....SWTOR is my first "new" experience to really hit home in years, primarily thanks to that Bioware magic in storytelling and character immersion.
Current MMOs: Rift, GW2, Defiance
Blog: http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com (old school tabletop gaming and more)