Earlier in the year I gave my number one reason for not playing the future Star Wars MMO as the fact that most of the playerbase would play some form of Jedi. And from what I can gather in my purusings around the web, this seems to be the case. I’m not in the game myself, I’m not going to play it, but I sure as hell am going to comment on what other people are telling me. And what they’re saying is what quite a few of us predicted; Bioware copied WoW when WoW was broken. It’s going to explode out of the gates but I reckon it’ll have a 90 day life, if that. Very silly of them to release it during the holidays when players can overdose on playing time and chew through content. Because content is what this game is about, and with long storylines and lots of cut scenes, I’m quite certain that very few players will be able to stomach going through it all a second time.
And that is because this is a single player RPG slapped into a MMO universe. Gordon has come up with a bunch of flaws that are interesting in of themselves. But what is really telling are his good points about the game.
“… But I don’t want to be completely negative. The ability to select from different answers in conversations, even if they really have no impact of meaning whatsoever, is very fun and unique in the MMO world …”
In an MMO world, maybe, but in a single player RPG this is so standard as to be not worthy of comment. And it just proves my point that SWTOR is a single player RPG. And because of that it will have a definite shelf like. I mean, I love Skyrim, but don’t ask me to make a different toon and play through it all again. I know what that would be like; I’d rush through the whole thing and try to get to certain bits that I had missed the first time around. Going through the motions.
From Gordon again:
“… Likewise the whole Dark Side/Light Side mission options are very enjoyable plus the general maturity of the content is refreshing (it’s nice that you see a lot of moral ambiguity in the Republic story lines, for instance) …”
Sounds nice I suppose. But why is this so unique to an MMO? I mean really, what has this MMO done to advance the genre or improve on things that have gone before? I’m sure that everyone playing the game is having a great time, but while doing that they are ruthlessly chewing through content in a game format that was out of date three years ago. I’m having a great time in Skyrim as well, but there’s no way I’m going to be playing it in three months time.
December 19, 2011 at 5:31 am
I’d have purchased SWTOR as a single player offline RPG, as I noted *months* ago, before they even nailed down the business model. It’s just not going to do anything for me as an MMO.
… I suspect they are skating by the financials on the backs of noobs and the IP.
December 19, 2011 at 10:26 am
I have bought the game and to be totally honest i am enjoying it. I have been leveling with some friends and for me it is way more fun than wow ever was. And to be totally honest i dont see myself playing any mmo in the future without voiced over quests. I just cant go back to accepting quests without ever reading them and killing 10 boars because they are trampling the fields of farmer Joe.
December 19, 2011 at 11:33 am
As far as I’m able to understand it, there are still kill 10 rats quests in SWTOR. So what you’re saying is that you’re happy to do these brain-dead quests if someone reads it to you. Fair enough. I myself got over having my mother read to me at bedtime quite early on, and much preferred to do my own reading, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
December 19, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Ouch Adam you look somewhat frustrated. All this annoyance about a game you don’t even play ? I mean, if you don’t play it, why do you even bother writing a post about it ? Maybe you’re afraid all your gamer friend will go play SWToR and you’ll be alone in WoW or any other MMO you’re playing (and I’d certainly feel the same way if I wasn’t in SWToR myself), but if you want to express your opinion about it, it would certainly be received with more attention if you had actually played the game.
I play SWToR and it’s a lot of fun, even if I’m not a Star Wars fan in the first place (I didn’t even manage to look one single movie from the begin to the end).
Concerning kill 10 rats quests, there really different than what you’ll find in WoW. First, these are auto accepted/auto completed quests. You kill a rat and you got a new kill 10 rats quest in your log, and as soon as you kill the 10th rat you gain experience and the quest is gone. You don’t have to listen to some farmer about these rats. Then these are options and identified as such : these aren’t necessary to any subsequent quests in the zone, and the xp from these isn’t even needed for you levelling. And if you didn’t complete these when you finished the associated quests in the area, the kill 10 rats quest is automatically abandonned.
Anyway, I suggests you stop bothering with a game you apparently don’t want to play and keep having fun with other games instead (or you can actually buy and play SWToR, and you may be plaisantely surprised)
December 19, 2011 at 3:30 pm
First of all your reading comprehension is abysmal as I specifically said in my post that I am not playing the game but will still comment on what I hear and observe. So well done on rabbiting on for a paragraph for no reason whatsoever. As for your explanation of the kill 10 rats quest, what you’re saying is that you auto accept and complete a quest without having to accept or complete a quest. I see. So … what’s the point there then? Why even call it a quest? It’s so hard now to go to someone and find a quest that they’ve bypassed that stage? Why not just kill ten rats then? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s fucking stupid, that’s what it is. As far as being pleasantly surprised by SWTOR, I think that’s about as likely as hoping for a nice surprise after I bury a knife in my own chest.
December 22, 2011 at 12:59 am
“I think that’s about as likely as hoping for a nice surprise after I bury a knife in my own chest.”
Only one way to find out how many people would be pleasantly surprised if you did that. I hear the makers of SW:TOR would be among them, as well as all the commenters on today’s post that you accused of having frontal lobotomies. Be sure and post about it before doing so, wouldn’t want to disappoint them now would you?
December 19, 2011 at 2:34 pm
” Very silly of them to release it during the holidays when players can overdose on playing time and chew through content.”
Yeah, how silly of them, nobody targets their releases on holidays, they really should have targeted – say January – when usually everybody is out of money, because they’ve spend it all during holidays. No, they should really line up their release with the Heart of Swarm or Diablo 3 (at least one of these should come out in Q1 2012). Or because they don’t want their players to ‘chew through content’ they should wait till Q3 2012, when school starts, then release the game.
December 19, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Gosh, I thought Zahia’s reading comprehension was bad, but you’ve taken it to another level. Well done you.
December 20, 2011 at 11:11 am
Please notice that having reading comprehension problems and you writing as shit (as usual) are not mutually exclusive. You did well too.
December 20, 2011 at 11:46 pm
I’d write at your level but the thought of undergoing the required frontal lobotomy puts me off.
December 27, 2011 at 11:18 am
Argumentum ad hominem. I hoped you could have done better as someone writing his own blog.
December 19, 2011 at 4:15 pm
quick review incoming:
its wow in space with dudes talking shit (and no addons).
some things work diffrent – some things are new (nothing realy special – most of the “new” things just work diffrent).
it feels right (dont know if you get what i mean with this one). fresh setting (not a star wars fan so i dont give a shit about the story – skipping most of it – but pewpew works good for me).
thats it… its fun if you are into games like wow (lets call them hotkeymmos). but if you are looking for something new besides the setting (and maybe the story) you wont find it here. there isnt anything rly new to find. just some small things.
would i recommend this game to a friend? sure… its a fun game but its not the holy grail… not even close.
aaaaand… done.
wow… i rly should think about working for some gamingmag…
December 20, 2011 at 11:48 pm
Dunwich,
Thanks for that review. Keep us updated on your thoughts and I’ll buy you a lolly.
December 23, 2011 at 1:45 pm
about the lolly:
after some more days into the game and after putting away those rose-coloured hypeglasses…
classes that should be mirrored arent. factionbalance is total crap and i dont see anything they can do about this. pvp lags for me and others. gear looks like crap for the republic (at least for me). the only realy “cool” class on rep side (smuggler-gunslinger) has so many bugs that i stoped playing it. the hole coversystem seems to be fucked up.
and then there are those realy anoying things like the camera that moves behind the character everytime you move or the nonexisting target of target or the ugly ui wich you cant customize or …
send it back before i unpacked it. played it for 7 days now (before that i played the beta and it worked much better for me then the rls). thank god i didnt unpack it before the graceperiod ended.
after all the hype its just a game that is a few years late and still not ready to be released at this stage. its not 2004/5 anymore or better 2007/8. you cant put out a mmo like this one anymore. wow changed the hole mmogenre and putting in some story and voiceactors doesnt change the fact that swtor is just a game thats years behind the market. its like the burning crusade was the last thing they looked at when they thought about doing some mmo. maybe the leveling part is more “fun” cause of the story but the grind is still the same. runing flashpoints over and over again (and watching the same story over and over again cause some dickhead doesnt want to skip it) is such a pain in the ass. pvp unplayable cause of lags and the retarded republican playerbase that shouldnt play any multiplayergame.
would i still recommend this game to a friend?
no fucking way…
now… have good time over the holidays!!
December 20, 2011 at 11:21 pm
End game makes or brakes an MMO. WoW has always had pretty good stuff in the raiding scene, but what Cataclysm lacked was things out of raiding to do. SWTOR has plenty of non-raiding content, for now, but it will be consumed fairly soon. So what do level capped players do in the game? You want to have some epic battles, both PvP and PvE, but you want solo content too.
The revamped Darkmoon Faire and transmogging will help give something to do when not raiding for WoW, but that stuff alone wouldn’t be terribly interesting. You want snacks between meals, you don’t want to just snack all day long. This is something SWTOR will have to look into as well. So far, I guess it would be fun and entertaining, but I’m not at all convinced about the end game for SW, what happens after leveling is over and you’ve exhausted all of the storylines.
December 20, 2011 at 11:47 pm
Which is precisely why I call this a single player RPG.
December 21, 2011 at 8:47 am
I’ve not played SWTOR and currently don’t intend so to do, hence no comment about the game but I have thoroughly enjoyed reading through the comments and Adam’s retorts.
Have a good time over the holidays Adam and look forward to more of your gaming commentary in the new year.
December 21, 2011 at 9:44 am
Thanks Chewy, and the same to you, bro. I won’t say happy Christmas though as I hate this holiday so much.
December 21, 2011 at 6:14 pm
Some extra info from someone else who plays…
The conversation choices do matter, they can yield the gain or loss of respect of your companion and they can also move you towards the light side or dark side. Doing the quests alone do not necessarily move you one way or the other. These things have ultimate consequences in gearing etc.
They don’t have “kill 10 boar” quests necessarily. They have quests with actual meaning and objectives, but while you’re in that area they’ll frequently auto start some bonus quest counters. So while you’re going to obtain x relic for some actual realistic story purpose if you kill X while doing it you get bonus xp. It’s there, but not as absurd feeling as in WoW when you clear a cave that just respawns behind you and the town people act like you saved them.
December 23, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Bought it, playing a trooper and enjoying it. I intend to complete the game as if it were a single player game though (which means I’ll problably won’t go through the game more than once). The story is great so far and the gameplay is acceptable.
As for the game being an mmo, it’s like WoW when it launched, but without Blizzard’s smooth gameplay magic (they must have some kind of patent, why on earth is not a single company capable of creating the same smooth experience??).
It’s a nice break from WoW while I’m waiting for Diablo 3.
December 26, 2011 at 9:05 am
I see you already made up your mind, but what the hell, I’ll reply anyways
this game is for bioware fans, especially KOTOR fans, but not just them. its for the fans of the “story”, its not going to work for someone who abuses their space bar, and thinks that anyone actually enjoying the story and god forbid, may be in a flashpoint for the first time – is an asshole.
its not for power levelers. its not for majority of current WoW players. its not for impatient or intolerant, expecting perfection and everything going the way THEY want it 5 days after release.
could it use improvements? of course! are there bugs? no doubt. though considering every single patch Blizzard releases even 7 years later is virtually unplayable at start and buggy for months afterwards, I find it ironic when people react so violently when bugs are not fixed prior first post official release maintenance, during christmas time.
is UI clunky? yes. but have you tried playing WoW without UI mods lately? 7 years and I’d say its just as bad if not worse then SWTOR. at least TOR doesn’t require me to be as twitchy as WoW does.
for what its worth, I’m enjoying playing a healer. I’m enjoying healing pugs. without mouseovers, or customizable raid frames. I’m having more fun with it then I did in WoW with my custom designed and very efficient UI. Im loving the story, I’m loving my character, I plan on playing through every single class story, because each story is unique. heck, I plan on playing through each story twice, becasue they are subtle differences between genders and not so subtle differences between alignments and dialogue choices. I’m loving how smoothly grouping is integrated. I’m loving that I can help my friends, old and new with their quests even if I had finished them before, or aren’t the same class as they are.
for me the game is great. and I didn’t plan on playing it becasue while I’m a bioware fan, I’m not really a star wars fan and I’ve yet to finish KOTOR. I went into Beta and I loved it. some people didn’t and its fine. but your subjective opinion doesn’t equal ultimate fact and indisputable prediction about the future of the game.