Originally posted by Shroom_Mage
Is this on a scale of 1 to 10 or maybe 5 to 10?

"This aspect sucks so unfortunately I have to give it a 7.5."

I'd say its on a scale of 7 to 10.

MikeB said: but we’re reviewing the game as it is now, not as it may be in a couple of months.

If that is a true change in policy that would be a VERY welcome change.   Please no more reviews based on "potential" or what a game might be at some undetermined time in the future.   As quoted, a review is reflective of the actual game.  Otherwise, it's a preview and not a review.

Originally posted by Isturi

Originally posted by DarkPony

Good review!

Their recently announced addition of a 50 warzone bracket and improvements to world pvp are very much needed though.

I simply stopped queueing solo for wz's at the moment as I haven't been able to hand in the daily pvp quest for more than a week (all losses). Getting facestomped by level 50 pre-made teams all the time is about as fun as being in a car crash.

 

Sounds to me you need to join or form a pre-made.

Yup, I will and I realize you shouldn't count on wins in random groups. But at the start of the game, when there weren't decked out 50's yet it was amazingly fun and win loss ratios around 50-50 in random groups. That fun is gone now (understandably though). Yet a level 50 bracket would improve things a lot for randoms as you want people to have fun doing WZ's, also solo queue'ers.

Originally posted by sgel

TOR’s PvP is basically a better balanced evolution of Warhammer Online’s PvP.

 

WAT?

WAT indeed. I agree to a lot in the article, my rating would be 80 of 100 rather, but that sentence reall felt... wrong. ^^

Might I also add that Value was given a 10/10. The reason: it offers more than the usual 10 hours of gameplay that other games do for the same price. Um. Isn't that the whole point of MMO's? They're supposed to last for months, sometimes even years, we're on an MMO site reviewing an MMO, not a general gaming site. If this is the case, I want every MMO reviewed to have a 10/10 for value - unless of course you can reach end game in a week and have nothing else to do.

 Sorry but you lost me at the PvP part. Not sure even you believe in 'its upgraded version WaR's pvp'. As bad as WaR pvp was back in the days of mass cc classes, it was never this bad. Id call it more of a downgrade of WaR's pvp actually, with perma cc and stuff. Other than that, if voice acting as any remotely innovative thing gives you a 8/10 rating, i have no clue why other games dont get higher rating for innovation, when even most korean copy paste games bring more innovative features than tor did. 

Its not a bad game, in fact, for someone new to mmos, or huge star wars fan, its basically fresh version of wow in space, with voice acting (which does get old, and a bit annoying after a while),  and thats not a bad thing.

But, even if fanboys will say 'it never promised anything new', i honestly did expect a bit of innovation in a game that spent millions of $, just to basically copy another game. 

Not sure how anyone can blame me for having higher hopes for this one. The truth is, it does play nice, and doesnt have any big flaws, but in the end its same old same old. For starterts that may not mean much, but for all people who played some other mmos (mainly wow?) it does get boring rather quickly, despite its voice acting.

Every single quest is click the same generator, box or terminal and kill 30 npcs. Every single one. The "bonus" missions, are just a misnomer for a kill x quest. It's the same thing, as it's required. Bonus != Optional. A real bonus mission would be something like clicking the generators in a set amount of time, and get bonus experience.

Compaions are nice, but kind of takes away the whole fun part when everyone else has the exact same companions. There's a lot of bugs, like Mako's toggle auto abilities get reset when you mount. Ths makes her useless because she just casts a crowd control entire fight, and won't heal you. I don't really understand why we could not customize our companions. Why is there no talent tree for them? Why can't we change their names? etc

Crafting is dull and boring. Whatever happened to meaninful crafting like eve, swg and vanguard? All you do is send your companions on "missions" and they return stuff back for you.

2011 (release) and with DirectX 11 out for years now, it surprises me they did not even take the basic features of it. There's no reason this game should not have anti-aliasing built in to the client, and not forced. Texture quality is reduced on players and monsters when exploring the world, but enhanced when you talk to people. Strange.

Combat is unrepsonsive. There is a massive post, with BIoWare stating it is a known issue, about delay on certain spells. Don't even try to deny this, when bioware themselves acknowledge the bug. A lot of the spells are useless.

The only quest dialogue worth mentioning is class quest. Everything else is 2 windows of dialogue and move on to clicking generators and killing 30 guys. To be fair here, there are a FEW meaningful small quests.

Space missions are basically on-rails (Starfox) point and click. There's probably about 10-15 of them, and they become boring daily quests after doing them a few times. There's no resaon to really even do space, except to relieve yourself from the click 5 generators, kill 30 droids quest you're on. I honestly have no idea why they would not have put space pvp in. This would have been awesome. Or hell even co-op space missions?! This is an MMORPG!

Lack of UI mods, macros and customizable interface really sets this game back to 2005. If you want a competitive hardcore raiding scene, you need to compete directly with the market contender. Otheriwse we're going back. I mean seriously, why was there no option to scale the UI or move things around ON LAUNCH.

Honestly I doubt this game will be anything specatular. It has less features overall than Warhammer had at launch, and the same balance issues as it. There are so many things this game could have done, but didn't. There are no mmo factors to the space missions. End game is basically outdated 4 mans, raiding and battlegrounds. The lack of LFD while leveling makes running dungeons painful.

Take off your honeymoon glasses people. If they wanted to copy World of Warcraft, they did it. Too bad they copied the 2005 version of it. Nobody wants to wait 7 years for a game to be where the others are now. Nobody would have bought this game if it did not have Star Wars on the front of it.

Verdict - 4 / 10

My honest score would be 7/10, for the game as it is now.

The loss in points is mainly down to the sheer emptiness and soulness nature of the game, the poor PvP, no meaningful reason to group or socialize (haven't chatted in days to a single person) the lack of any individuality and the mental exploits that have occured.

Ironically, if i was to do a score that included future potential, it would be 4/10, as i personally think the customer turnover will be 6 months at best, ASSUMING they continually add content, else i think the lifespan is 3 months in it's current form.

Past the RPG elements, it dies dead on its feet. Come back to me in 3 months and say i'm wrong.

Originally posted by Lowcaian

Originally posted by Shivam

Originally posted by Lowcaian

Crafting is fun? Wonder how much they got paid.

Usually when i don't agree with what critics have to say i simply throw 'you must be paid' retort. it always makes me look cool.

If it's true it makes you look even cooler.

'IF'..... prove it.

Originally posted by Lowcaian

Originally posted by Shivam

Originally posted by Lowcaian

Crafting is fun? Wonder how much they got paid.

Usually when i don't agree with what critics have to say i simply throw 'you must be paid' retort. it always makes me look cool.

If it's true it makes you look even cooler.

 

"Fun" is subjective, just because you don't agree doesn't mean they are being "paid" off. I personally find the crafting to be "fun" as a Biochemist, I like the process of working towards rare crafting items that are reusable.

With that said it's not as involving as SWG was or EQ2 back before they nerfed crafting however I still find it "fun".

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Isturi

Originally posted by DarkPony

Good review!

Their recently announced addition of a 50 warzone bracket and improvements to world pvp are very much needed though.

I simply stopped queueing solo for wz's at the moment as I haven't been able to hand in the daily pvp quest for more than a week (all losses). Getting facestomped by level 50 pre-made teams all the time is about as fun as being in a car crash.

 

Sounds to me you need to join or form a pre-made.

Yup, I will and I realize you shouldn't count on wins in random groups. But at the start of the game, when there weren't decked out 50's yet it was amazingly fun and win loss ratios around 50-50 in random groups. That fun is gone now (understandably though). Yet a level 50 bracket would improve things a lot for randoms as you want people to have fun doing WZ's, also solo queue'ers.

It would be nice if there were solo-only queues to be honest.

I like a bit of PvP now and then but it's not my main focus, I have no chance against dedicated PvP'ers - I want to play against other noobs. ;)

I do like the Pro / Con form. You leave out any kind of scoring and the ball is suddenly in the reader's court. "Are these cons bad enough to keep me from wanting to play the game?"

If they do try the game out and leave with a sour taste in their mouths you will never suffer any kind of backlash just because you gave the game a 9/10 or something silly like that (DCUO-gate, I'm looking at you!).

Great review.  People will complain about everything, and fail to realize that this is a launch title.  No other MMO launch has gone this smooth with a fraction of the subs entering.  No other launch MMO has been this polished and complete INCLUDING WoW. 

Now we get to see how fast they can update it and keep players interest.  I am loving this game and I already have one alt that makes it hard everytime I log in to pick which class to play.  They have a solid title here, and I think the potential is crazy good.

They are already planning a massive update to PvP this month, 1 month after launch.  Great game is great.  Haters can barely even hate.

The SWTOR crafting system is a joke. Took me just over 2 weeks to max everything out and you cant even craft anything usefull because of droprates/quest rewards and the speed with which you level.

Fair review, I think the score is a little higher than it reads, but it touches on everything it needs to.

The game wouldn't take much work to make it a 9, but it isn't there yet.

Excellent and IMO a spot on review.

Originally posted by BrotherD

The SWTOR crafting system is a joke. Took me just over 2 weeks to max everything out and you cant even craft anything usefull because of droprates/quest rewards and the speed with which you level.

Most of what my character and companions wear for armor is crafted by me. Craft a bunch of greens and then RE them to gain the blue version of that recipe. Craft those blues and RE them to gain the purple version. Craft those for wearing or supposedly, you can RE them for the orange version (haven't had enough purple mats to try this out yet). Plus, your companions will often craft advanced versions of the greens/blues/purples that have mod slots in them.

I got a nice orange pants last night at the completion of the Taris bonus series. It matches the chest I bought with Corusant commendations. I was pleased, but even with my current level of mods, it wasn't as good as a set of purple pants I crafted last week.

If you are leveling your crafting at the same time as you level, the crafted gear can be very useful. Especially when you are trying to keep multiple companions up-to-date.

Originally posted by MMObro

prety good game, but I already unsubbed 

The first subscriptions are not charged until 1/20.   So saying you unsubbed rofl.   You did not have to enter you cc info, all you had to do to get you 30 free days was to enter your code.  Calling you out.

If it was as good as mmorpg.com say it is why am i not playing it anymore? they have given lower scores to better mmo's.