SWTOR had an innovation or two, some more than others:

1) Story detailed environment.

2) The Music was simply hands down amazing.  I'd trade in my Darth Malgus doorstop for another disc or 2 on the soundtrack.  SWTOR had 6 hours of music in addition to previous KOTOR music.

3) The artwork was brilliant.  Any envirornment felt like Star Wars, even if the game wasn't Star Wars'y.  When you got close to objects they got clearer (you could read a computer screen if you walked up to it).

4) Added Star Fox!  Wouldn't everyone love Star Fox instead of Pokemon? (OK, but gave way to maybe other minigames?)

The rest is left to everyone else to fill in!

What made this game innovative to you?

edit comment: I'm trying to put a positive light on SWTOR.

Originally posted by Karteli

SWTOR had an innovation or two, some more than others:

 

1) Story detailed environment.

 Innovative but an unsustainable model after release.  It represented the biggest waste of their resources in terms of trying to make a compelling MMO.

2) The Music was simply hands down amazing.  I'd trade in my Darth Malgus doorstop for another disc or 2 on the soundtrack.

 How is the soundtrack innovative?

3) The artwork was brilliant.  Any envirornment felt like Star Wars, even if the game wasn't Star Wars'y.

 How is the artwork innovative?

I don't think the game was all that innovative outside of the exceptional story telling.  It was very "by the numbers" in every other regard really.  I didn't like the way they handled companions with stories though.  I just wish they let you pick the spec for each companion.

Originally posted by Karteli

2) The Music was simply hands down amazing.  I'd trade in my Darth Malgus doorstop for another disc or 2 on the soundtrack.

This so much. The doorstop was a dissapointment.

The moddability of items is nice, as the crew skills in general (though it seems to be a love/hate thing). Not sure if a game had something like the Legacy system where it rewards leveling alts either. At least not to that scale (heirloom items in other games come to mind). And of course the story aspect of it. 

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

Originally posted by Karteli

SWTOR had an innovation or two, some more than others:

 

1) Story detailed environment.

 Innovative but an unsustainable model after release.  It represented the biggest waste of their resources in terms of trying to make a compelling MMO.

2) The Music was simply hands down amazing.  I'd trade in my Darth Malgus doorstop for another disc or 2 on the soundtrack.

 How is the soundtrack innovative?

3) The artwork was brilliant.  Any envirornment felt like Star Wars, even if the game wasn't Star Wars'y.

 How is the artwork innovative?

I don't think the game was all that innovative outside of the exceptional story telling.  It was very "by the numbers" in every other regard really.  I didn like the way they handled companions with stories though.  I just wish they let you pick the spec for each companion.

2) Well SWTOR added 6 hours of music to the game. That is innovation.  Sadly the music is online and not apart of the CE .. :(

3) NO SW game, pre-SWTOR had those those types of artistic details in their game. 

When you got close to a computer screen (in game) you could read what it said, clear as day.  Actuall I can't remember an MMO that had this feature.  SWTOR was sluggish as hell, but it had some features.

Usually in an MMO, when you got close to look at "something", it got blurry.  In SWTOR's defense, it actually got clearer.

Combat -

The way the animations sinked with damage delivery. 

Originally posted by bcbully

Combat -

The way the animations sinked with damage delivery. 

That part was nice too, choreographed combat.

Music innovative?

I don't think the OP even knows the meaning of the word.

Originally posted by Karteli

Originally posted by bcbully

Combat -

The way the animations sinked with damage delivery. 

That part was nice too, choreographed combat.

that's the word I was looking for. It's been awhile. I used to use a neat little word equaution to explain what the choreographed combat was like.

Originally posted by karmath
The artwork and graphics in general were terrible. Have you seen the end game armor? It doesnt even fit in with the Star Wars 'style'.

By graphics I guess I was referring to the general art theme of the zones.

The new armor sets are lame, I must agree.  Yeah, horns on various classes "helmets" doesn't really jive much in Star Wars.  Putting stuff like that in, is, to put it mildly, stupid.

The ONLY thing differing SWToR from ANY other game was the Mulitple Choice story lines. Period.

How has that gone? Fastest game to go FTP in history.

Here i am trying to create a positive thread.

C'mere Ahnog!

Having to be level 10 to get to the fleet.

It limits the ability to switch starter zones, but it prevents a level 1 toon goldfarmer to spam in a central hub.

A rather simple but clever mechanism to dissuade gold spammers. (Especially when the trial weekends and such went live.)

Before you try and discount the innovation due to SWTOR's lagging popularity, remember, even near comatose games such as Warhammer still have gold spammers 24-7.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the companion system.

Personally I despise it, but I see how it could be viewed as innovative.

I guess the same could be said for Hutt-Ball. An intresting idea to create an "E-Sport". Again, not my cup of tea, but could be viewed as innovative.

I'm wracking my brain for other innovations in SWTOR, but I'm not really coming up with anything that isn't snarky.

Originally posted by tiefighter25

Having to be level 10 to get to the fleet.

It limits the ability to switch starter zones, but it prevents a level 1 toon goldfarmer to spam in a central hub.

A rather simple but clever mechanism to dissuade gold spammers. (Especially when the trial weekends and such went live.)

Before you try and discount the innovation due to SWTOR's lagging popularity, remember, even near comatose games such as Warhammer still have gold spammers 24-7.

A good call, SWTOR did have less gold farmers, for whatever reason.

Just to give credit though, Aion also had that feature.  The first levels were spent in newbie land, until level 10.  Upon which a new player got wings and immortality, and could go to other areas.

Aion bots found ways around everything because it was profitable.  Bots in SWTOR went out of business because credits are next to worthless (credits are needed for training, but they are easy to acquire even by noobs).

Originally posted by tiefighter25
I guess you could include the lightside/darkside points in regard to equipment and apperance; but there would be a huge asterix since the system was seriously hobbled and in my opinion implemented poorly, and is just a subset of the whole conversation wheel lightside/darkside/ (conspicuously missing) neutral side point system in general.

Yeah the lightside / darkside was interesting .. but then when you played it, it was more annoying than anything.  Players had to start picking light or dark choices in their adventures just to use an item, which really screwed up how they "wanted" to play.

Then neutral was promissed but never delivered.  Let's not count that as an innovation.

I wouldn't go so far as to say bots are useless in SWTOR.

They are used for leveling (space shooter) and pvp farming; and BW didn't/doesn't seem terribly proactive about dealing with it. (Or speed hacks and their ilk).

Didn't realize Aion had a similai system to discourage gold farming. The more you know. It was still a nice game mechanic to incorporate.

Originally posted by tiefighter25

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the companion system.

Personally I despise it, but I see how it could be viewed as innovative.

I guess the same could be said for Hutt-Ball. An intresting idea to create an "E-Sport". Again, not my cup of tea, but could be viewed as innovative.

I'm wracking my brain for other innovations in SWTOR, but I'm not really coming up with anything that isn't snarky.

Companions:  It was nice.  I didn't mind it, and the resource, collection system was neat too.  Especially since companions would run around and grab resources for you.

HuttBall - fun idea .. I wish EA could have made more maps .. like 500 (literally 500) maps, and had random maps everytime a new match formed.   But HuttBall was innovative, game wise.