<blockquote><i>Originally posted by h0urg1ass</i>
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<i>Originally posted by Ghost021</i><br />
<b>He's trolling plain and simple. Btw, kind contradicting when the game so obviously sucks to the point were you are retaining your Pre-Order... </b></blockquote>
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<p>I've said it at least once in my reply's that I'm mostly retaining the pre order because my 11 year old son and 9 year old daughter loved it.  All the things that I hate about themepark MMO's are just right for their age group.  When they're old enough, then they can step out of the box and play EVE or Darkfall with me.</p>
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I do play Eve.. since 2003, left it when i couldn't handle more of CCP's crap, and don't come and tell me that the game has options, you are now stuck with armchair generals who have no ideia of what their doing, while sucking in billions of ISK at the expense of others, or... the wonderfull High Sec space , with the wonderfull and fullfilling mission set that CCP has prepared for you.

And don't be unfair, the game doesn't suit you, fine, but it is not what you wrote just there, in fact i've said this a million times already, it was a beta client were we all played, do not assume that the game will see exactly like that at launch.

Plus, you don't like this kind of MMO's, thats a matter of taste and it has more to do with the gaming comunity as anything else. People wanted the game so so, and thats exactly what they are getting from the software houses.

I stopped reading as soon as I read garbage because right away I realized it was a dsgruntled Sandbox hater.

Next gen MMOs only can improve on the same mechanics that has worked in the past.   Why try to re-invent the wheel here?  What do people want from a game that actually never ends, you grind off quests/mobs or tasks to level up to fight harder stuff and accomplish others things.

I have yet seen anyone come up with game breaking features that would make a next gen MMO not feel like a past clone of any game.  And I know people are use to saying everything is a WoW-clone, but that game is far from being an original MMO.   To me WoW is an EQ1 clone.  Yes it's extremely popular and successful, but it's not an original.

If you are bored with questing, PvP, arenas, dungeons/missions, crafting, etc.   then maybe MMOs are not what you are looking for.  Maybe it's time to move on to other styles of games.

Whenever a sandbox oriented player decided to try a themepark it never ends well..maybe sometimes but not every time. But why complain when your taste is so much different? let me guess you were feeling left out so had to write a long winded post anyways.

It is the same as if a themepark oriented player goes to sandbox and starts complaining about everything. Why would anyone take him/her seriously?

Originally posted by h0urg1ass

Originally posted by Ghost021
He's trolling plain and simple. Btw, kind contradicting when the game so obviously sucks to the point were you are retaining your Pre-Order...

 

I've said it at least once in my reply's that I'm mostly retaining the pre order because my 11 year old son and 9 year old daughter loved it.  All the things that I hate about themepark MMO's are just right for their age group.  When they're old enough, then they can step out of the box and play EVE or Darkfall with me.

Eve is in the box IMO. Please don't be offended by that remark, but I have tried four times to get into that game, I still have it installed, but it is by far, the most boring space game I have ever played. And believe me, it has nothing to do with the complexity or depth. I know people love Eve, and more power to them.

What I am saying here is "to each his / her own". Your gold is anothers garbage and vice-versa.

Wow have any of you fools played SWTOR?  OP is spot on, in so many f*ing ways, and it was a great read.

The OP is pointing out that sanbox games > theme parks (if you don't agree, go look in a mirror and /reevaluate-self)

I've never played EVE, but heard great things.  My first (and most dominating in thinking about MMOs) is Lineage 2, which was much more sandbox-like, and had such an incredible longevity to it that by the end I couldn't believe I had spent years playing the game (that isn't to say there wasn't a lot wrong with it, like the REDIC leveling; but the pvp was top-notch).

Good post OP - I am basically doing the same thing w/ my preorder.  Give it a try, and see how it plays end levels and with expansions + crafting/pvp/guilds and how they work together.  TERA and Archeage both show more promise imo ... but they don't have the legacy that Star Wars carries.   Oh and L2 just went f2p so there's always that too lawl :O

Why couldn't you have just said you don't like theme-park mmo's.  You like sand-box MMO's.

That's the only thing i got from your review.  Like a 5 year old telling his school buddies Snickers suck because he likes 3Musketeers.  That's all you've done.  We get it, buddy, you don't like theme-parks, move on.

Originally posted by h0urg1ass

Originally posted by Ghost021
He's trolling plain and simple. Btw, kind contradicting when the game so obviously sucks to the point were you are retaining your Pre-Order...

 

I've said it at least once in my reply's that I'm mostly retaining the pre order because my 11 year old son and 9 year old daughter loved it.  All the things that I hate about themepark MMO's are just right for their age group.  When they're old enough, then they can step out of the box and play EVE or Darkfall with me.

Why bother wasting their time in such an obviously worthless game then? Oh I see! You're trying to raise them to hate your guts by torturing them with crap you don't even see fit to play......nice! Next time save the drama and simply man up, return the pre-order and let your kids know how it's gonna be. EvE and Darkfall in this house only!

Originally posted by wewter

Wow have any of you fools played SWTOR?  OP is spot on, in so many f*ing ways, and it was a great read.

 

The OP is pointing out that sanbox games > theme parks (if you don't agree, go look in a mirror and /reevaluate-self)

 

Yeah the success  of Sandbox MMOS clearly shows that they are > themeparks. And i didn't know that for having a different taste one has to look into mirror and re evaluate self.  Some people should be phsically stopped from logging on to internet.

Originally posted by wewter

Wow have any of you fools played SWTOR?  OP is spot on, in so many f*ing ways, and it was a great read.

 

The OP is pointing out that sanbox games > theme parks (if you don't agree, go look in a mirror and /reevaluate-self)

 

I've never played EVE, but heard great things.  My first (and most dominating in thinking about MMOs) is Lineage 2, which was much more sandbox-like, and had such an incredible longevity to it that by the end I couldn't believe I had spent years playing the game (that isn't to say there wasn't a lot wrong with it, like the REDIC leveling; but the pvp was top-notch).

 

Good post OP - I am basically doing the same thing w/ my preorder.  Give it a try, and see how it plays end levels and with expansions + crafting/pvp/guilds and how they work together.  TERA and Archeage both show more promise imo ... but they don't have the legacy that Star Wars carries.   Oh and L2 just went f2p so there's always that too lawl :O

100% opinion (one many don't share) and if you don't agree, you need to take a long look in a mirror...

And sorry but Lineage II was the grindiest, most boring POS I ever played. Nothing sandbox about that grindfest... (100% my opinion)

Originally posted by Supersoups

Originally posted by wewter

Wow have any of you fools played SWTOR?  OP is spot on, in so many f*ing ways, and it was a great read.

 

The OP is pointing out that sanbox games > theme parks (if you don't agree, go look in a mirror and /reevaluate-self)

 

Yeah the success  of Sandbox MMOS clearly shows that they are > themeparks. And i didn't know that for having a different taste one has to look into mirror and re evaluate self.  Some people should be phsically stooped from logging on to internet.

I believe he was being overly dramatic and sarcastic. At least I hope he was...

Not to say it's necessarily right or wrong, but this review could have been written without even playing the game, since it's just a list of features that are common knowledge.

Originally posted by wewter

 

The OP is pointing out that sanbox games > theme parks (if you don't agree, go look in a mirror and /reevaluate-self)

 

 

LOL

Themepark Dev looking in Mirror sees - Hot Chicks on each arm - BLING - Piles of cash - Swimming pools - movie stars

Sandbox Dev looking in mirror sees - long beard - box home - empty beer bottle

I prefer more sandbox elements myself but that is the reality. SWTOR is fun so I will keep playing.

Originally posted by Raora

Sandbox was the ONLY thing going for SWG. Beyond that SWG sucked!

 

This can't be overstated enough, SWG was more of a disappointment to me then TOR is.   SWG combat was horrible, the classes were boring and it was grindy for grindyness sake.  But the crafting was cool :)

Originally posted by h0urg1ass

 

2)  Classes.  Yay, another MMO with the class system lifted right out of 1970's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  *puke*.  Can we please let this convention go?  Are we really this imagineless when it comes to creating games?  Why can't I make a character with Attributes and Skills and then play what I want to play?  Hey BioWare, Gary Gygax called from fourty years ago and wants his antiquated and clunky character system back.  Give us Attributes, then let us choose from a list of skills and advantages. 

 I agree skill based systems rock ( see Skyrim ) however class based systems can be great, with unique classes with specific roles. 

See: eq2 / vanguard 

Or they can even allow for heavy customization:

See DDO

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What we seem to forget is these MMos today are targeting the RPG crowd and the FPS crowd and resulting in a watered down RPG experience for RPG-ers... and likely a watered down FPS experience for FPS-ers

Blizzard used this model and gave both crowds enough to chew on and we all know the numbers. Now we get everyone emulating that and doing a half ass job at it :) 

Originally posted by h0urg1ass

8)  Tab Targeting.  This is really boring.  Tab+1+2+3, Tab+1+2+3, Tab+1+2+3, Oh this ones epic so +4,+5,+6... *puke*.  There's a game that came out in 2008 that pretty much had the perfect combat system.  That, much disregarded, game was called Age of Conan, and although it failed very hard on so many levels it did give us one of the best combat systems I've ever used.  You walk up to what you want to fight, hit a combo hotkey and then you have to push some other keys to execute whatever combo you want to execute... oh and if your sword, spear, giant hairy banana manages to hit three enemies facing you, then you damage all three of them!  How novel!

you obviously didnt play a caster toon cuz its the same BS.

*pro tip - go design a game.

Originally posted by h0urg1ass

After having experienced two Beta weekends now, I have to finally say something somewhere about this game.  That something is that I'm highly disappointed in this installment of the Star Wars franchise!

TL;DR VERSION:  Star Wars: The Old Republic is simply more of the same old garbage that you've seen in every other WoW clone to date.  It is less refined, less polished and you're simply trading swords for lightsabers.  Their single point of ingenuity is an abundance of voice acting which takes the same exact dialogue options found in any other game and puts a voice to them.  It has zero longevity and will probably hemmorage the majority of it's player base within 3-4 months of release as players finish the main storylines and realize that WoW, EQ2... ect offer the same end game experience with more polish, customizable UI's and better graphics.

Back to my highly opinionated review:  This game pretty much takes the worst part of MMO's and puts them all in one place.  I work better with lists, so let me list out the issues that drive me crazy:

 

1)  Bind on Pickup, Bind on Equip.  This is one of the most immersion breaking aspects of MMO worlds in existence.  My first MMO experience was EVE and it has set the bar extremely high.  If I want to fit laser beams on my Hurricane, then I put the damn laser beams on there.  No, I don't get any bonuses for using the wrong weapon on the ship, but at least I have the choice to do whatever I damn well please.  This extends to finding a lightsaber that I don't want or need and not having the option to give it to my buddy just because I equipped it once.  Apparently there's this magic superglue in MMO land that permanently attaches items to one single player at which point your options are to use it or throw it away.  How ridiculous.  I can't believe people aren't up in arms that this convention is still being copied ad nauseum from World of Warcrap.

 

If you need people to keep questing for items, then simply give items a chance of loss on death or make it to where a weapon can only be repaired so many times before it needs to be replaced.  Poof, no need to glue everything to everyone anymore.  If game items can be lost or destroyed through game means, then people will need to keep searching for them just in case the one they have breaks or gets lost on death.  Not only that, but it creates a vibrant economy where crafters will know that there will always be a need for their products rather than selling it to someone once and now they'll have it forever and never need your item again.

 

2)  Classes.  Yay, another MMO with the class system lifted right out of 1970's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  *puke*.  Can we please let this convention go?  Are we really this imagineless when it comes to creating games?  Why can't I make a character with Attributes and Skills and then play what I want to play?  Hey BioWare, Gary Gygax called from fourty years ago and wants his antiquated and clunky character system back.  Give us Attributes, then let us choose from a list of skills and advantages. 

For instance, if  I want to create a double bladed lightsaber wielding Jedi who wears heavy armor and has a small amount of skill in blaster pistols, then I should damn well be able to.  If you're afraid that force powers and heavy armor are too powerful a combination, then give force powers a percent chance to fail that grows higher with heavier sets of armor.  See?  That took me less than two seconds worth of imagination to balance heavy armor and magic.  You think that Jedi that can use heavy blasters might be game breaking?  Well there's a way to mitigate that with a teeny bit of imagination.  If you want to play a Jedi, then you need to buy into an advantage called Force Mastery.  Different force powers and combat stances require a higher level of Force Mastery, therefore if you want to be a decent Jedi, then you won't really have enough points left over to spend on heavy blasters anyhow.

 

3)  Inventory.  Why why oh why do games still have slotted inventories?  I can carry 50 sets of heavy armor chest pieces or 50 pieces of chewing gum.  They all take up the same amount of space on my character, and when I run out of that space, well, I just couldn't possibly carry another stick of gum.  But If I take one stick of gum off of my character, then I can suddenly carry an Ewok in my left cargo pocket.  Give each item a weight and give our characters a carrying weight limit based off our combined strength and endurance attribute.

 

4)  Levels.  This goes along with classes.  The 70's are calling again and this time their getting ready to sue for plagiarism.  Levels are so boring and old school.  Oh, you're a level 50 Sentinel.  Well, I know exactly what you can do to me since you're just a cookie cutter, carbon copy of all the other level 50 sentinels in the game.  Instead, they should have quests reward us with force points that we can either invest into attributes at a high exchange rate or skills and advantages at a lower exchange rate.  Then we can make the character that we want to play instead of the one we're shoehorned into.

 

5)  Space Combat.  I'm having a hard time even trying to figure out what StarFox is doing in my Star Wars MMO.  What the crap is this pure utter garbage BioWare?  I know you guys have meetings to discuss content.  You know the guy that stood up and said "Hey, lets put StarFox in the game and call it space combat"?  Yeah.  Fire his ass.  Then fire the guy who said "Hey, that's a great idea!".  If you didn't have enough time to develop good space combat, then just don't do it!  Tell us it will be in a future expansion and leave it the hooha alone!  ... and for heavens sake, if you're going to copy someone elses game then why didn't you copy X-Wing or Tie Fighter?

 

6)  Character creation.  Honestly, if you're not going to put sliders in the game that allow us to modify our characters in every shape and size, then don't bother with character creation at all.  This system has to be one fo the worst I've ever seen in my life.  If you want some inspiration, then go download the free trial of EVE and create a few characters in that game, then redesign this crap.  The short skinny body type is absurdly short and skinny and the big fat body type is a beached whale.  Now I realize that I was just testing the beta and maybe the character creator was simply limited to a few options, but with only a couple of weeks to go until full release I don't see a lot of possible changes here.

 

7) Character progression.  Go to place "X" and kill a bajillion of "Y" and bring their lower intestines to "Z" has been done before.  In fact, it's been done to freaking death.  You've beat the dead horse so much now that it's just a pile of organic goo.  Not only that, but it makes absolutely no sense that my Light Side Jedi needs to go slaughter 50+ justicars to complete a quest... especially when I just finished another side quest that shows the Justicars treating their prisoners fairly and honorably.  "Just don't do it" some of you will say like some anti Nike spokepeople.  Well, if I "just didn't do it", then I'd never gain a level past 10 during the entire game. 

I never complain without providing an alternative, so here it is:  Instead of slaughting our way through thousands of innocent people who inexplicably attack us for walking within some arbitrary agression bubble, let us have fewer and more meaningful fights.  Give us situations where we know that there's a sith presence in the Black Sun territory, but we don't know where, so we have to talk to NPC's, hack terminals and use the force in other interesting ways in order to locate this sith operative and then we need to carfully plan our attack.  For instance, we find out that he's operating out of room X and wth a little research we discover that room X runs directly under a main hot water pipe so we send a droid in to make sure that the water pipe bursts just before we attack which distracts him and causes hot water damage... ect.  So many imaginative ways to have character progression without wholesale slaughter.

... and don't ever send my highly trained and skilled Jedi to fetch some ridiculous item that a droid could go pick up and bring back.  It IS beneath my character and his/her abilities.

8)  Tab Targeting.  This is really boring.  Tab+1+2+3, Tab+1+2+3, Tab+1+2+3, Oh this ones epic so +4,+5,+6... *puke*.  There's a game that came out in 2008 that pretty much had the perfect combat system.  That, much disregarded, game was called Age of Conan, and although it failed very hard on so many levels it did give us one of the best combat systems I've ever used.  You walk up to what you want to fight, hit a combo hotkey and then you have to push some other keys to execute whatever combo you want to execute... oh and if your sword, spear, giant hairy banana manages to hit three enemies facing you, then you damage all three of them!  How novel!

 

9)  World on rails.  What's the point of playing a game if everything is spelled out for you and you're simply guided straight down a walled in path?  That's what a movie or TV show is... you get the same experience every time you watch it.  A game should have the ability to have a different experience every time you play it.  If there's an island that we need to assault, then put it out there, let us find it and let us plan our own way in past the guards and defences.  Instead we get a straight path right to the door that we aren't allowed to veer off of because if we do, then there's this magic invisible force field that tells us we just went off the railroad tracks and how dare we try to play the game our way!  They wrote it and dammit, we're going to experience exactly what they want us to experience!  How dare you, sir, want to approach the island facility from it's less guarded western approach and sneak through the pineapple plantation unnoticed to one of the rear air ducts and crawl past the guards to drop down on the sith lord from behind!  That simply wouldn't be as fun as beating up and a bajillion pixel punching bags along a straight path to your target!

 

10) Graphics.  Again, I realized that we've only played the beta so far, but there's really only so much more they can do with the engine they are using and it's not much.  If the goal was to create a cartoony game that everyone can play, then why not go the shaded cell route like Borderlands.  If it's going to have a comic book feel, then go the extra mile and make it look like a comic book.  I'm really starting to believe that this game powered by the same engine that KOTR and KOTR II were powered by.  It doesn't look all that much better to be honest and those games were both released last decade.  If you don't want photrealism, then don't do it, but this halfway in between stuff is just painful to look at after playing Witcher 2, EVE, Age of Conan and Skyrim.

 

On a final note I'd just like to say that I'm sick and tired of playing the same game over and over with a different skin and a different name.  I pre-ordered it long ago and therefore I will play through the main quest line on a couple of characters, but then it will go right on the shelf beside all the other WoW clones while I pack up and go back to a game where I'm not shoved in a tiny box and pointed at my next target like a guided missile.

 

You say you're tired of the same old thing, but yet you support it by paying for it, thereby completely pulling the rug from under your own argument.  The game companies could care less how long winded your review is, it's your dollars that matter and that's it.  Don't like it? Don't buy it.  If the game doesn't make money, there's a good chance that said companies will observe this and NOT go down that path.

If you're looking for something new and fresh and different, forget expecting earth shaking change from a large company like Blizzard or EA.  There are far too many investors to worry about pissing off to risk on unproven game mechanics.  If you want something that breaks the mold, it's going to come from an small, independant shop who don't have idiot investors telling that what they can or can't put in their game.

Originally posted by h0urg1ass

  I pre-ordered it long ago and therefore I will play through the main quest line on a couple of characters, but then it will go right on the shelf beside all the other WoW clones while I pack up and go back to a game where I'm not shoved in a tiny box and pointed at my next target like a guided missile.

 

Waaaah this game sucks i'm only going to play it 4 times completely through and not one single time more, you devs suck.

Seriously?  I'm sure you could sell your copy of this horrid game.  Anyone that's going to play through a game multiple times should probably reconsider their negative review as you obviously don't hate it that much.  Any MMO i hated i usually didn't make it past level 10.  I think i lasted to level 6 in Aion, sure as heck wasn't going to play through multiple times.

People just don't make sense sometimes.

Originally posted by keithian

I stopped reading as soon as I read garbage because right away I realized it was a dsgruntled Sandbox hater.

I was tempted to stop there as well.  But I knew from reading the garbage part then looking at the date he joined this site to start posting...I kind of saw where this was going.  A well disquised troll from another poster trying it make look like more people hate the game. 

I bet money he never pre-ordered the game.  This was going on as well on the SWTOR forums where people with no posting history or just joined up a week ago are blasting the game with no facts.  With general blanket statements or they rip off (copy and paste) actual concerns from beta players.  Most common one is the UI which is a freaking no brainer to complain about.  The really funny ones are the blanket opinions like this game is crap, don't play it! 

Look, I totally understand that SWTOR is not for everyone, and some will post thier disapproval of it.  But when I see ALOT of these negative reviews from new posters, I start to think troll. 

Hopefully, SWTOR will fix that problem by making thier forum to pre-order accounts only and not just by having a Origin/SWTOR account which is free to get.  All you need is dummy email accounts to spam a forums with trolls from just one person.  Kind of what happens here sadly.

Originally posted by Odysses

Originally posted by Raora

Sandbox was the ONLY thing going for SWG. Beyond that SWG sucked!

 

This can't be overstated enough, SWG was more of a disappointment to me then TOR is.   SWG combat was horrible, the classes were boring and it was grindy for grindyness sake.  But the crafting was cool :)

Completely agree.  I was BORED in SWG.  Yeah it was a sandbox, but it was also incredibly unbalanced and really NOT fun to play.  Certain character skill builds meant completely dominating PvP while individuality in a character build often resulted in nothing more than repair costs and immense amounts of frustration.

Granted, the crafting system and housing bit was nice, as was the non-combat classes, but these are things that can be added to an already functioning game (see Vanguard).  The actualy star wars galaxies game itself blew chunks, and yes before the NGE.  I fell asleep grinding my toon fighting Krayt Dragons.  I guess I won?  And don't even get me started on becoming a force user.  Holy Crap!  I'd sooner remove my own eyes with a splintered wooden cooking spoon.