Originally posted by Torgrim

Originally posted by Deewe

Originally posted by MikeB

By the way, to any and all of you who disagree with our score. Why not write your own review here? ;)

 

Aesthetics: 6/10

Environments 7/10:

Environments are nice still the lack of day/night cycles are making the world feel too static. Too many invisible walls. Players evolve in corridors. Games does not promotes exploration. 

Character 4/10:

Huge boobs on old fat rebel officer, hobbit hands on our charcters, weird body size proportions, lack of in between body choice, 4 choices for each face setting like 4 eyebrow, 4 makeup color, 4 jewellery choices and no way to choose how to mix them. Awful female faces options: character creation options is a miss

Gear: 5/10:

Huge shouler flaps, demonic horned hoods, brain textures on helmets, warlock robes, no gear dyes, no appearance tabs. Preset gear color for all classes. Even with the modded gear you keep levelling in mismatched gear or in twin costume

Cutscenes 7/10:

Too many off camera angles or weird ones. They should have hired a filmmaker to help them.

 

Don't forget: High textures not working and AA not even available. Just for the little story AoC was flamed for not having DX10 at launch...

 

Gameplay: 7/10

Class story 8/10:

Most class stories are nice but playing a dark sided Jedi Knight sucks. Even with the most dark sided answers the NPC don't even notice. Seems they all failed the force sense exam. Sadly too often the dialogs are pretty bland or uninspired.

 

World quests: 6/10:

Most of them are pretty generic and are getting boring on your first alt. Still better than other MMO though.

 

Combat 8/10:

Same old stuff. The lack of autoattack is annoying as it make you feel your character is dumb enough to let him be beaten to death without even trying to react. Melee is more annoying than ranged as you keep running between ranged mobs during combat. The main problem is the lack of responsivity from the combat as there is a delay between what we do and what's happen in game. Kind of frustrating, especially for PvP

 

Warzone 6/10:

Not even as good as what's being done in other MMO plus you can't choose to which warzone you want to queue and there's a major issue with Illum. Also there's no level brackets. Finally Jedi in Huttball with glowbats is ruining the lore and while, somehow fun, feels silly.

Worse to come: Same faction vs same faction warzones and no companions in "open world" PvP either.

 

Open world PvP 2/10: 

Simply put there's no open world PvP. You will be very lucky to encounter an opponent's faction player in that game but in warzones. The way the planets and space routes are designed prevents this.

 

UI 4/10:

In short AoC UI is better and that's saying something.

You can't even scale the UI, nor choose where to move your quickslot bars. The only moveable UI frames are the chat panel and the loot window and the raid UI. There's no way to disable the smart camera nor change the zoom speed. No mouse look toggle either. The default font is a bit too bold making it painful to read. In windowed mode you can't change the gama level. The trash loot and the blue loot have quite the same in game color on mobs. There's no bindable hotkey to open the Codex, nor hide the helmet slot. Splitting sacks is a pain. Items don't automatically stacks when getting them from an email of moving them to the bank. There's no weapon preview. You can't zoom in/out in the character or closet view. There's no mission tracker hotkey and it always reset to on from zoning or logging out. There's no hotkey to hide/show nameplates. On the planetary map you can't display multiple type of entries at once. When faded out the map still shows the legend and the quest tracker (useless when moving around). Also the maps get the focus when faded out meaing for example you can't mouse4 autorun on/off if your cursor is on the map. We can't even change the companion skills in its own quickslot bar, nor as you guessed by now move the companion quickslot around. We can't lock items in the inventory. All resources nodes share the same icon. No friendly vendor sorting. AH UI stinks. Space map is also lacking: can't right click to get back to previous area. Crafting missions pop up closes all open windows....

 

V.O. UI: Big bummer can't (shift?) space skip dialogs to the dialog choices

 

 

Crafting 7/10:

Light years behind SWG bit better than WoW, Rift, not even as good as LoTRO, EQII, Vanguard.

Can't queue mission, can't sort items by slots or sats. No buy mats button. No separate inventory/bank slot for crafting mats. The good stuff is you can use mats from the bank and you can send your alt to harvest. Still if you are aggroed your companion harvest is interrupted.

 

 

Space 2/10:

Even Star Fox is more fun and better made! Also kind of disturbing, in a totally scripted scenario how come the music is too often off? Starting either too late or still running high when the combat pace is getting low or off? X-wing iMuse is achieved way better in a much more random setting.

Who said multiplayer? PvP? Manly managed turrets? Space ship chassis choice? Space ship interior furnishing? Space ship exterior customization? Cockpit UI? Radar?

The space ship is a glorified, not conveniently accessible moveable bank storage.

 

Innovation 3/10

 

Only things to notice: speaking pets and totally V.O. story. Apart that TOR is the apogee of the lack of innovation and I dare saying it butchered what was being done well in other games especially in terms of socialization, immersion and giving choices to the player. In TOR you play, look like and breathe the way the devs wanted you to by taking you not by the hands but with manacles. 

 

Polish 7/10

 

Let's see: lacklustre UI, AA not working, High textures not available, many players with regular disconnection errors 9000, Black screen crashing, horrid FPS issues, Taris memory leak @launch, players that can't complete patching the game, many V.O. camera angles off, some quests story lines broken, group and guild chat that was broken, totally flawed PvP design on Illum, poor LFG system, not even dual specs

 

As reference LotRo and more recently RIFT where polished games @launch. Saying TOR is 9.5 over 10 is an insult for Turbine and Trion Worlds.

 

Now this is how you write a none biased review, focusing on all aspect of the current game not as the OPs review who based it only StarWars,Bioware and Voiceovers and rate it.

 

Looks just as subjective to me, there's no such thing as an unbiased opinion or experience, and that's what both of these reviews are based on.

An unbiased review focuses on the inner workings of a game and that's it, there are very few of these coming from gaming sites or mags or fans, almost all of these reviews are based on experience and opinion.

My experience has been nothing like what Deewe brought up in his "polish" section. So based on my experience, my review would read completely different. See how that works?

Originally posted by sgel

Originally posted by Moirae

Originally posted by LateNights

I can't believe I just saw a 9/10 for aesthetics. Come on! Characters running animations are worst than 1998 games. Graphics are cartoonish and both textures and shadows could be so much better. Environment design at desert areas is repetitive. Not to mention the UI which is everything but minimal. Good things are the cutscenes, the lightning and some color schemes. A 6/10 for me.

Clearly, you have never played LOTRO. The hobbits run like they're wearing dirty diapers and always have. 

Animations are the worse characteristic in LOTRO... but the game is miles better than TOR in almost every other topic.

Thats a matter of opinion and nothing more. 

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by Moirae

Originally posted by LateNights

I can't believe I just saw a 9/10 for aesthetics. Come on! Characters running animations are worst than 1998 games. Graphics are cartoonish and both textures and shadows could be so much better. Environment design at desert areas is repetitive. Not to mention the UI which is everything but minimal. Good things are the cutscenes, the lightning and some color schemes. A 6/10 for me.

Clearly, you have never played LOTRO. The hobbits run like they're wearing dirty diapers and always have. 

What's worse are LOTRO's walking animations.

Graphics being cartoonish is more about personal preference. There is a contingent of players who writhe in their seats if the textures are photo perfect.

So I think Aesthetics probably shouldn't be there as it's too subjective. Some people love AoC's running animations. I think they are horrid.

So I'm afraid there's not going to be any convincing for SWToR's art design.

 

Personally, I find the games aesthetics to be beautiful. Reminiscent of KOTOR but a step further. I don't expect others to share that opinion, but I do expect others to realize that THEIR OPINION is nothing mroe than that.

Good game, plan to be in it for a long long time.  But I almost always have 3-5 games I am playing to keep myself from burning out too soon on any one of them :)

Right now though SWToR is eating up all my time, hehehe.  Just too much fun.

Originally posted by Hidon

This smells about as bought as your average Funcom review. Great PvP? Yeah, no. It's currently an unmitigated disaster and PvPers are leaving in droves. At least try to be subtle if you're going to be pocketing EA's money. Is there truly no honor left in this questionable profession?

Now thats a load of garbage. Nice try though. Fear mongering doesn't work in any part of society from politics to games.

Originally posted by troublmaker

I love how people are pretending that The Old Republic is the first MMO to do fully voiced quests.  Age of Conan has had it for years now with better graphics.

Guess we're just sweeping poor little old AoC F2P under the rug.

I had an aoc account until the release of TOR. What are you smoking exactly? AoC is NOT fully voiced in any place but your head.

The only issues I have come accross is:

1. 
   PVP is highly unbalanced. While you are given the same HP everybody else has, everything else is level oriented. In other words: Prepare to be killed a lot or being a meat shield if you are level 10 by several level 50s in the same arena. Your HP maybe 12,000+ but you'll die just a little slower now... by just a few seconds.


2. 
   If you camp at the opposing team's spawn point, you get insta-killed when a bounty hunter sucks you into their "safe zone".... Oh wait, that is a GOOD thing that was DONE RIGHT! Nevermind...


3. 
   A bug in the Adderan mission could cause you to be booted from the match for loitering around too long at the spawn point, despite the fact you are trapped there.


4. 
   The fact a Sith can be max Light side, but can't be a Jedi and vice versa. That kind of wrecks the suspention of disbelief for me.

Originally posted by jeremyjodes

I feel swtor came at a time when people are starting to become very sick of themeparks in general. I admit I only played it so many hours before I said this is not for me. but this review is pretty good. it touches on just a handfull of issues that BW will be adressing in time.

But it's at least somewhat objective in the short term. now i could rant on about "what I think" but i would be wasting your time and brain cells. if you enjoy TOR then great.

I think the best idea is your enjoying it then you have the patience for BW to add to the game. I feel that if they can allow you to kind of go off the beaten path a bit more and start developing the game to allow more people to create thier own content instead of having it spoon fed. then they can start down the path of very long term retention. right now you have the blinders on and are locked and loaded. and some sand box features and open space and this game would rule them all for a very long time.

I think thats what peturbs many of us with the entire game. it has major potential but can BW realize that? and add what it needs to survive beyond 6 months?

We shall see.

Now aint that the truth. You hit the nail on the head. 

Frankly, I'm so sick of theme parks it isn't even funny. Why can't we have a theme park sandbox hybrid? Not a single game has done it and I'm sick to death of it. 

I love SWTOR and its the most fun I've had in an MMO since EQ but I really am sick of the theme park. 

Originally posted by dead2soon

The scores don't match the criticisms. I pretty much feel this way about all the SWTOR reviews. It just smells of kiss ass. Reviewers list a number of major negatives yet still give 9/10 scores. I believe that honest reviews are just dead. Sad.

Soooo... because you don't like the game, every review that says the game is great is lying. Uh huh. That's a load of garbage and you know it. Your opinion doesn't match othger peoples opinions. thats life. But it IS your opinion.

The game seems very nice. I liked KOTOR and also other Bioware games. But especially the later Bioware games never hooked me enough to play another time through it. They were just to lineair for that. What Im sensing here with SWTOR is that on a second playthrough, you better chose the opposing faction or you will end up doing the majority of same quests.

Anyway, the main reason why my friends and I wont play is the lack of a mentor system. We have different working schedules, some can play often, others not. So we find any type of mentoring system very important so that we can play together at all times (EQ2, CoH etc). The bolstering system for PVP sounds good though, but unfortunately just for PVP. For PVE the other way around would be better, so that a high lvl players can play at low lvl without 1 hit killing everything ( because that would be boring).

Originally posted by Moirae

Originally posted by dead2soon

The scores don't match the criticisms. I pretty much feel this way about all the SWTOR reviews. It just smells of kiss ass. Reviewers list a number of major negatives yet still give 9/10 scores. I believe that honest reviews are just dead. Sad.

Soooo... because you don't like the game, every review that says the game is great is lying. Uh huh. That's a load of garbage and you know it. Your opinion doesn't match othger peoples opinions. thats life. But it IS your opinion.

And what are reviews but one persons opinion?  Opinions can be influenced by many factors. Money being a big one.

Originally posted by Moirae

Originally posted by dead2soon

The scores don't match the criticisms. I pretty much feel this way about all the SWTOR reviews. It just smells of kiss ass. Reviewers list a number of major negatives yet still give 9/10 scores. I believe that honest reviews are just dead. Sad.

Soooo... because you don't like the game, every review that says the game is great is lying. Uh huh. That's a load of garbage and you know it. Your opinion doesn't match othger peoples opinions. thats life. But it IS your opinion.

That's the single most used excuse from fanbois.

-The graphics are horrid!

+No they aren't! They are amazing and immersive!

-But look at them!... they look like they were made in 1992 and are so buggy!

+Uhuuu, they suit to the style of the game dude!

-Your companion has no clothes, I'm a Sith with orange shortpants and a green cloak and the force lighning has bugged out and is a permanent feature of my character now. Graphics are horrid!

+Nah dude.. that's just your opinion! Graphics are amazing...9/10 for sure!... Sometimes 9.5/10 !!

Crafting a POSITIVE?!

Crafting in this game is simplisitc and pointless.

Well after all this game is about grinding pvp points and dungeons so not like crafting is important,but still...

Originally posted by skamper

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

 

 

 

Yep so much better of a review.

Originally posted by Nightmaare3

Ok heres my review

The game is awesome, it runs smooth plays great. The cutscenes are really cool makes me feel like im more involved. Classes are great too, love getting away from the medeival crap thats in all games. Crafting is new and pretty cool, only thing is you go through alot of money sending your companion out to harvest and craft :P The game for me is a 9.5   ...

And for all your idiots that are comparing it to WoW, or saying its just like WoW, or its an upgraded WoW.. just stfu already lol.. Its obvious its going to be like WoW.. All MMORPGs are going to be like WoW, just because WoW came out before all these new MMO games doesnt mean they copied it or are exactly like it you wow fiends get over it and enjoy the game man jeez all of these mmos are similar mainly because they are in the MMORPG genre?!? lol get real

 

i agree its nothing like wow..wow has got things to do in it..this game aint..seriously lacking content.6 months and watch the population disappear like rift..dont get me wrong..if you like a game then play it.but this game definately is no wow killer thats for sure..blizzard must be laughing there socks off...and so am i..i saved £45 ..has for the review..well the least said the better.

Originally posted by Moirae

Originally posted by dead2soon

The scores don't match the criticisms. I pretty much feel this way about all the SWTOR reviews. It just smells of kiss ass. Reviewers list a number of major negatives yet still give 9/10 scores. I believe that honest reviews are just dead. Sad.

Soooo... because you don't like the game, every review that says the game is great is lying. Uh huh. That's a load of garbage and you know it. Your opinion doesn't match othger peoples opinions. thats life. But it IS your opinion.

Its not just that. I personally havent said how tor is such a bad game. In fact its rather good one. I just find it a bit weird how game with multimillion $ budget managed to blatantly copy another game, which is by the way, good 8 years old, added voice acting and now is being touted as the bestest thing ever.

All that while it basically brings nothing new to the table, other than alraedy mentioned VA, in fact it has less features/content than some older games. While i do realize content comes with time, that doesnt mean how tor's competition is wow 7 years ago - it competes with today's wow, its 7 years of content. 

Lets face it, if it wasnt star wars game, how many people would be playing it today. I mean, other than being star wars, its really not much different to 100's of other games out there. Yes it does have voice acting, but im not really sure how exactly is voice acting going to keep people occupied for months and years to come.

I agree about the flashpoints.  Black Talon is still my favorite so far.  The others are just a typical dungeon crawl, but the social points of the conversations make BT feel more like a noteworthy event, rather than a search for pretty gear.  I hope future flashpoints model themselves more like the first ones (looking forward to playing the Republic one soon) and less like the later ones.

Originally posted by JimyHumuHumu

Originally posted by Moirae

Originally posted by dead2soon

The scores don't match the criticisms. I pretty much feel this way about all the SWTOR reviews. It just smells of kiss ass. Reviewers list a number of major negatives yet still give 9/10 scores. I believe that honest reviews are just dead. Sad.

Soooo... because you don't like the game, every review that says the game is great is lying. Uh huh. That's a load of garbage and you know it. Your opinion doesn't match othger peoples opinions. thats life. But it IS your opinion.

Its not just that. I personally havent said how tor is such a bad game. In fact its rather good one. I just find it a bit weird how game with multimillion $ budget managed to blatantly copy another game, which is by the way, good 8 years old, added voice acting and now is being touted as the bestest thing ever.

All that while it basically brings nothing new to the table, other than alraedy mentioned VA, in fact it has less features/content than some older games. While i do realize content comes with time, that doesnt mean how tor's competition is wow 7 years ago - it competes with today's wow, its 7 years of content. 

Lets face it, if it wasnt star wars game, how many people would be playing it today. I mean, other than being star wars, its really not much different to 100's of other games out there. Yes it does have voice acting, but im not really sure how exactly is voice acting going to keep people occupied for months and years to come.

What game did they copy exactly? Oh let me guess... they copied wow (wow is 7 years old btw, not 8). Hate to  blow your bubble but every game for the last 8 years has copied wow. And this game offers alot that no other game has that you are choosing to ignore. 

Look, I'm not saying its perfect, its far from that. There are alot of things missing with this game that game 8 years older have. Like proper housing. But I really hate the lies being spewed on mmo sites. 

An MMO having the ability to make you laugh, clap, and cheer while sitting on the edge of your seat... this is the only MMO I've seen since the first days of EQ that has done that. Its an important accomplishment. Whether you like it or not.

Originally posted by Rusty715

Originally posted by Moirae

Originally posted by dead2soon

The scores don't match the criticisms. I pretty much feel this way about all the SWTOR reviews. It just smells of kiss ass. Reviewers list a number of major negatives yet still give 9/10 scores. I believe that honest reviews are just dead. Sad.

Soooo... because you don't like the game, every review that says the game is great is lying. Uh huh. That's a load of garbage and you know it. Your opinion doesn't match othger peoples opinions. thats life. But it IS your opinion.

And what are reviews but one persons opinion?  Opinions can be influenced by many factors. Money being a big one.

Take a look at my website, you'll see some real reviews that include more facts than opinions.

Originally posted by JimyHumuHumu

Originally posted by Moirae

Originally posted by dead2soon

The scores don't match the criticisms. I pretty much feel this way about all the SWTOR reviews. It just smells of kiss ass. Reviewers list a number of major negatives yet still give 9/10 scores. I believe that honest reviews are just dead. Sad.

Soooo... because you don't like the game, every review that says the game is great is lying. Uh huh. That's a load of garbage and you know it. Your opinion doesn't match othger peoples opinions. thats life. But it IS your opinion.

Its not just that. I personally havent said how tor is such a bad game. In fact its rather good one. I just find it a bit weird how game with multimillion $ budget managed to blatantly copy another game, which is by the way, good 8 years old, added voice acting and now is being touted as the bestest thing ever.

Ironic that Blizzard got lucky with WoW 7 years ago, which had the backing of the Warcraft series or WoW would have never been a hit either.  BTW Blizzard and WoW is a copy of a copy of a copy etc.

Today there is much more competition in the MMO market for the consumers $$ and comparing the greatest subscription MMO with seven years of content to a game 3 weeks old is absurd.