Originally posted by Nephaerius

I've got to be honest I was absolutely 100% certain I would find no enjoyment in SWTOR.  I finally got a beta key for this weekend and said what the hell.  Within 10 minutes of playing I decided to purchase.  To me it was that good.  It's not that there's anything amazingly innovative about the game.  It's simply the presentation of familiar elements in a superior fashion.  The strongest example of this IMO is questing.  The voice overs and cut scenes (which prior to playing I didn't give 2 shits about) actually made what is ordinarily an absolutely boring experience one that immediately grabbed and held my attention.

I also thought the graphics would be abyssmal but the game actually looked quite nice even on my laptop that's running a Nividia 9600M (maybe equivalent to the PC's 8800).  So there you have it - 100% sure I was not going to buy this title - 5 minutes in game and I've done a 180.

*Just to clarify I did not preorder and do not plan to play at launch as I've grown to dislike MMO launches, but I will definitely be purchasing the title in the future.  Also beta'ing the greatest game I've ever played Super Monday Night Combat is eating up all my time.

Those are almost my own thoughts in the lead up to SWTOR. Following the game from afar I'd never got over hyped about SWTOR. I'd found the classes meh, the races meh and the thought of playing the game meh. The only thing I ever did find intruiging was Bioware's insistence on a story and all the voice acting they were doing.

I started hearing a bit more about the game a month or so ago and it had started to take my fancy a bit more. I still wasn't convinced though and signed up to this weekend's beta not having preordered and not even sure I would end up playing.

I really liked it though. It's actually made me appeciate that I should go in to a game open minded. I now can't wait for the 15th because I've preordered to get in early.

Originally posted by Lawlmonster

As someone who's often classified as a themepark "hater", I think it's far to say I can understand where the OP is coming from. While I don't agree with the content of his post entirely, he is right about a few things regarding player freedom in themeparks, and old design that probably doesn't need to apply to this specific sub-genre any longer (antiquated systems like BOP, BOE, hard lock classes).

 

Of course sandbox sympathizers want to see more sandbox games, that's only natural, and there are plenty of good reasons why you see some of us rant and rail on message boards from time to time. Personally, I think it's a combination of a feeling of entitlement, which causes more trouble than naught, and seeing something you enjoy slip away from you, the direct reponse to which is only human. When you love something, or are extremely passionate, you never want to see whatever that may be disappear. Even worse, you don't want to see someone else take control of that specific thing, and then see them do the exact opposite of what you would envision. Couple this with the fact that some of us losing these things have been here since the genre was birthed, and you can understand why we're so vocal.

 

Would I agree that some of us probably need to cool our temperments, and do some better fact checking, or research? Without a doubt. Do I feel we have a valid argument, and perspective regarding the future of the genre, despite this? Absolutely.

I think the big problem around here is the terms sandbox and themepark. They're so broad that any game can't hope to fall entirely in to one description. People need to stop thinking so one dimensional. No game is either sandbox or themepark. They're all a mixture of elements of the two.

Even the might SWG, one game that everyone thinks of as a sandbox, had elements that would fit well in to a themepark MMO. It had levels and it had classes and abilities.

No game is either/or.

Sith Inquisitor for me too.

I wanted a character that could dish out the damage and show off with fancy looking abilities. The lightsaber swishing was an added bonus.

I went sorceror with my advanced class because it lets me chuck in all those great looking force powers and do all that damage.

I also rolled an Imperial Agent, a smuggler and a Jedi Knight. I liked the agent/smuggler and will certainly start one of those in the full game. I expect they'll put a block on having both factions on one account so it'll end up being agent, but wanting to be an Inquisitor dictated Imperials for me anyway.

Originally posted by h0urg1ass

Originally posted by wormywyrm

What a great review!

The funny thing is, this is hardly even a sandbox vs linear game issue...  The game could have addressed all of the OP's concerns without even being a sandbox.  Maybe slightly less linear, but thats it. 

He wasn't asking for player cities, elaborate crafting systems, housing, player driven economy, conquest, scripting, or freeform skilltrees.  For the most part he is just sick of the same old classes, etc. 

And anyone who is saying the contrary is foolish. 

 

Finally someone gets it!

I want to play a character, not a class! 

I want options for completing a quest, not  a golden brick road to the front door! 

I want less pointless hacking and slashing through dozens of bad guys, and instead a few well thought out fights against powerful opponents.  Fights that require planning and preparation and not just tab, kll, tab, kill, take a sip of Mt. Dew!

I want to be able to use any weapon that I come across, even if I can't even hit myself with it because my skill is too low!

I want to be able to use one lightsaber for an hour, switch to two lightsabers for another hour and finish up my third hour of gaming with a double bladed lightsaber.. all on the same character!

I want a red lightsaber without having to be a complete dick to every NPC I meet!

Options, options, options.  Stop boxing me in with your ridiculous invisible walls!

Thanks for making me laugh because you just said well done to wyrmywyrm for getting you right, then asked for what he said you weren't asking for.

But that's a small matter. What you're asking for is what I'd love to see in a game, but it's not what SWTOR is and not what SWTOR has ever likely to have been. Yes there is a lack of big, open MMOs but you've come to the wrong place.

SWTOR at least has the gall to do something other MMOs have not been doing. They've made a proper story and they've put the story into the group game. The way grouping interweaves with the story in SWTOR's flashpoints is something none of the recent glut of themeparks have done or even come close to doing so.

I've been sick of the direction MMOs have taken in recent years. If you ever want to look up my thoughts on Rift you can do so. Rift never made its final direction clear. It kept its content so hidden that when I went in to beta I was shocked at what I saw. That really was a game that boxed you in and confined you. Watching the game as it was developed I was expecting huge open events with consequences. I got small, pointless and repeatable spawns of mobs around each rift. The same went for Vanguard. I sat with baited breath watching that game go from an idea to a game. I listened open mouthed as Brad McQuaid spoke of the openness of the game and the new direction they were taking. I jumped in to beta and cried because it was none of what they hyped. Vanguard was still open but they hadn't made the depth of game they'd been talking about for three years.

Bioware said from day one they were making a story driven MMO, but that made me think story on top of the usual. I never thought the story would be enough to save us from the humdrum. The classes and the races have never inspired me from day one of being announced, and to be honest with you I'm still a little meh meh about the races. But they have made a story. They've done what they have said they were doing. This is exactly the game they've said they were making since they started making it. And the story is good and the humdrum not as humdrum has it has been in other games.

So I'll join you in trully wishing for a game that is all those things you want, but SWTOR never was that. It's all well and good that you can say you don't like it, but you can't bash it for being something that it has always stated it was going to be. Perhaps that vegetarian cafe has a small range of sandwiches, but they're well made and tasy sandwiches. I actually think the game is nicely fleshed out though. It has walls, yes, but sometimes walls are necessary. The game play is enjoyable and I don't feel like I'm doing tasks for the sake of it. I get to group and I get to enjoy a brilliantly acted storyline.

Is SWTOR the game that will see me through the next 5 years? I doubt it, but it's well made, it's enjoyable and it does what it says on the tin.

Hehe, how does this extremely negative review of the game get 10 pages of replies and my well thought out post gets no replies? I took ages over my review and it's dropped to page 4 with no replies in less than half a day. Anyway.

As for this guy's review, well I'm not even sure he played the same game as I played this weekend. I don't remember being asked to kill a bajillion of something. I don't even remember being asked to kill 50 of something. I thought Bioware handled the questing very nicely. Nothing I was asked to do ever came across as a kill 5 or fetch 5 type of quest that is so familar in a dozen dozen MMOs. There were instructions to kill 10 of something but it was an optional add on and you were nevr required to do so. I actually found that I was fullfilling those tasks easily in the course of reaching my story based objectives.

Story based is exactly what the questing in SWTOR was. It was like one big epic quest that started at level 1 and will finish at whatever level SWTOR calls max. I always felt like I was doing something to further my character.

Ok in some ways I find myself wishing that SWTOR was as open as SWG, but I've barely scratched the surface of the crafting. I have a feel it can be as much a part of my character as it was for my SWG time. The world is perhaps not as open as what I remember in SWG, and there is certainly no housing or player cities. There is your ship though, but I haven't gotten that far in beta.

I think I saw someone hit the nail on the head earlier when they said this is a sandbox loving guy after a game to satisfy his needs. He's looking in the wrong place because I don't think Bioware have ever suggested they are making a seriously open game. I don't really like the terms sandbox and themepark because there is far too much overlap in the genre to really classify so narrowly. If I had to put SWTOR in a category it wouldn't be sandbox though. Very few games would be sandbox, or especially the depth of sandbox that the OP is after. He should perhaps be playing something such as Xsyon. Yes, I know it's a poor game with a small audience, but that's often what you get for such a narrow frame of wants from a game.

He certainly shouldn't be coming here and listing a whole page of complaints that a game doesn't have what he wants when that game never really appeared to be likely to provide that. It's like buying a sandwich from a vegetarian cafe and asking why they don't have ham. You'll get told you've come to the wrong place. At least he was constructive, even if he was angry, but that's besides the point in his case.

Yes I did, and that is exactly why I think this game is so good. I really enjoyed the choices I had to make and the consequences of those choices. I liked the choices that forced you to pick a side and really enjoyed the fact that you would likely get a mail from the party you chose at a later date.

I will say I preferred making choices for the Imperial characters I made. It seemed like I had a little more freedom than being a Jedi. I felt compelled to go with light choices then where as it was a much tougher choice for my inquisitor.

When it came to smuggler and agent, both of which I tried, I would have liked a few more "middle of the road" choices. I sometimes felt I didn't really fit the choice of response. It was almost as if I figured my character wouldn't give a damn about his or her side of the force, but was pushed into a side by their faction. I didn't want to upset my superiors, if that is the right way of looking at it.

I realised later that I can possibly just vary my choices and keep my orientation evened out. I really did regret picking good side on a few occaisons where I liked the dark side option a lot.

I think I needed to get a lot further in to the game to really discover what effect my orientationw as going to have. All I saw in the time I played was that it made a difference on the colour of crystal I could use in my weapons. I wanted something other than red for my inquisitor, just to be a bit different, but my choices appeared to be limited.

It will be fun exploring the boundaries between light and dark when I play the full version and am less inclined to make rash choices.

Oh this game is so much more than Rift. Rift was a shallow experience of boring quest after boring quest where as SWTOR is really one long, enjoyable quest. I never felt like I was having to do something innane to level up in SWTOR, but in Rift every quest felt like that.

Yes, it is a bit easy at times, but the amazing story is going to be more what the game is about for me. The way groups come together in flashpoints was tremendous and no game has done that before. It makes SWTOR so much more social than most games in the last 8 years. There's even social points that are only gained from grouping. That suggests that the game wants you to group.

I'm sorry, but if this game was anything like Rift, other than being nicely polished, then I wouldn't be so hyped about its release in the next 3 weeks.

Originally posted by VirusDancer

Waiting for the next game's beta... TSW's not until after Christmas.

And the release is before that...

...you should be playing. SWTOR will be massive.

Me? I'm going to have to be content with Football Manager and Skyrim. I'd rather be levelling up my Sith Inquisitor...as much as I love Skyrim...but man this last weekend had an effect on me.

There is a hint of doomsday stuff in the game...you'd have to find it.

My take is that even the nasty guys are reluctant to use doomsday weapons. If there's no one left to worship you then what's the good of planet annihilation? Much better to scare the populace and have the planet for yourself.

PROLOGUE

I just got the chance to join in the big stress test for SWTOR and I wanted to post how I feel so the folks of MMORPG.com can further their judgement on whether to play. I'd say go for it if you like a story. I might seem quite negative in places, and indeed I start with my most negative thougts and my biggest concern; the UI. I wouldn't let the UI get to you though. I don't intend to. It's get-aroundable. I'd be more than happy with changes in that area though.

SWTOR really is an inspiration in story-telling though, and it's the first MMO where I ever truly felt a part of the world. Everquest is the next best for me, but even that behemoth pales in comparison to how SWTOR has made me feel about my character and the choices I have made concerning his path through the game.

I'm sitting here writing this and I am finding myself drawn to parts of the story I have witnessed. I can recall seeing the the look on my character's face and the words he spoke. He's like someone I met yesterday in a pub. Name a character or NPC that has made you feel that in another MMO.

Like I said, there are some spoilers for the Inquisitor story in here. They're only minor, but don't read if you don't want to know even the minor stuff that happens. I'll mark the main spoiler section for you.

As I re-read this I am noticing I have written things in ways that seem very negative, and you might well notice that and think 'why does he recommend this game so heavily'...because I really do? To be frank, even my biggest worries (only really that UI) are overshadowed by how immense a story-telling experience this game is. The other night when I logged out I was feeling very bad about the game thanks to the UI. I had even been in in-game chat chasting aspersions on it (though not as bad as some would have thought based on their responses). When I awoke the next morning and having thought long and hard on the subject, I realised the negatives are vastly overshadowed by the positives. It's true what they say; think on a clear head. Enjoy the story and don't worry about the paper it's printed on. I will continue to say what concerns me about the UI though.

THE UI

Let's get the bad out of the way, and let's be fair; the UI is awful. You can only move the chat box and then you can't move it anywhere it doesn't interfere with another unmovable window or your sight. I moved it down to the left of the hot bars early in the game, then I got a group and the chat box obscured half of it. I guess that in itself isn't dire, but I added the left and right hot bars and I'm sure they'll be covered by group members or quests. What good is that?

Then we come to the companion skills. As it is your companion is chucked down in the bottom left of the screen and being a big mouse user it's out of the way for me. I like my pet skills central so I moved his skill set to the middle bottom hot bar where I find I can not use any of the spare slots for my skills, or move his skills about. I only hope he gets more to utilise the bar.

In the end I actually moved him to the left bar, but I don't like it. I just needed the central bottom bar for myself. I'd like to think Bioware thought we could open his bar up and set parameters, then close it and use his small UI. I don't know if it works well enough for that though. Does the companion do things automatically, because I thought one or two skills were for me to select when I want him to activate them? It will take me a bit of time to get used to it...but suffice it to say it's not ideal. I'm a big fan of pet classes in MMOs and I know what is needed to help the user.

In this day and age a UI needs to be fully movable. Someone tried to tell me in chat that WoW had an unmovable UI at release. I said 'that was 7+ years ago'. I think that says it all. I'm sorry Bioware, but the UI is a detriment to your game. It needs work, even if it is very close to release. It won't stop me playing, but I need to be able to move more windows. I hope Bioware can respond. Even if a change comes after launch then it needs to be done.


COMPANION

On to the companion. I like the idea, I really do, but he's so damn strong when you first get him (I'm referring to the inquistor companion here). It feels like I'm walking around with a 'win' button. I hope that will change as I level, but the first 10 levels have been very easy and I'm filled with a small amount of dread when it comes to maintaining my interest. Part of the reason I hated Rift so was the ease of the game. I never felt challenged, and I want to feel at least a little challenged.

Actually my companion did die against one very tough boss at the end of my time on Korriban.

Then there is his, and other player's companion's, talking. It gets on my nerves when he starts reeling off the lines. And why do I need to hear what other companions are saying? To be wondering through a tomb and suddenly hear Vette proclaim she's gonna be mad if she dies is a little annoying, especially when I look around to see no one anywhere near. Is she a force user? Does she speak to my subconcious?


QUESTS AND PROGRESSION

Those niggles aside, which aren't extensive but sadly might seem as if I feel they are (probably because I mentioned them first...but if you keep reading you'll see the good outweighs the bad), I am very much enjoying the game. I'm a big hater of quests and quest grinding but I find the progression in SWTOR somewhat relaxing. I haven't felt like I'm doing quests for the sake of it, in fact I feel like I'm a big part of the universe. I feel I have a place in the Star Wars history. I'm almost expecting to glance at the Wookiepaedia (Star Wars wiki online) and see my name in lights.

I'm a bit worried about when it comes to killing my Master though...she's a bit of a hotty. And I think she likes me (I suspect she does that to all new apprentices...she's a tease). If I do ever kill her, of course. I don't know how that progresses but I am eager to find out. Very eager. The beta is over now and I don't know how I'm going to last till what will probably be later than 15th December when I get in. I want more dark lord of the Sith. I want more death and mayhem, more scandal and intrigue and more blood, lightening and death. I'd said death, hadn't I? It's central to being a dark lord. It's also quite satisfying. Especially with lightening.

[SPOILERS]This is the section that contains story spoilers for Inquisitor[SPOILERS]

CHARACTER IMMERSION

The voice acting and the choice of answers seems inexhaustible and there's been but a very few occaisons where I've been at a loss for what to say to make me feel true to my impressions of my character; the evil scheming son of a...[insert word left to your imagination]. I feel as if I can more often than not be the person I want to be, and I grin with glee when he says something brilliant. That said, I do want to feel like my choices are hard to come to, and when asked whether I would poison or feed the creature I really ummed and ahhed over what to do with the poor wretch (see they're ambiguous spoilers). I felt the light side trying to draw me over, even if I was a little confused with why each choice meant light or dark...but I could understand the reasons. When it had come to whether to betray the young apprentice who wanted the brain I even felt a dread sense of guilt that I had done so. When she sent me a mail to say how she would repay my kindness (sarcasm, folks...sarcasm) I exhibited a giddy sense of power. A power that I could so change the life of a mere mortal. The fact that there was an after thought, and she came to me to tell me how I had ruined her life shows the power of a story and the brilliance of Bioware in that field. In no other game would I hear any more of that. It would have been cast to the recesses and forgotten.

Thank you for trully making me feel I am my character, Bioware. This MMO deserves to be played for that fact alone.

[SPOILERS] end [SPOILERS]


GETTING IN TO THE GAME/IMMERSION

I like the comings and goings of the universe too, and by that I mean the hustle and bustle and the things to do. The merchants are nicely placed, the cantina seems busy and the space station felt like a hive of business and betrayal. If I could change one thing then I'd have more people to talk to and more noise of chatter. It did sometimes feel like people were as placed as objects. It did feel much like a living universe though and I could imagine people going about their important tasks or relaxing in free time.

I notice many people are saying that the universe is static, but that's where I find using your imagination to be important. They could have overdone it so easily and you would have spent till your detah bed talking to officers in the space port cantina.

Besides, the little story telling moments make up for any hint of a static universe. When you walk in to a room expecting to talk to your Master, only to be stopped in your tracks by some guy wanting to tell you how he might kill you one day, then you really feel like the world is revolving. Getting the chance to tell him, in no particular terms, to shove it was immense fun.


GROUPING

I haven't done much grouping; just a few heroic 2 missions on Korriban and Dromund Kaas and the first Imperial flashpoint. I enjoyed them though. I was a little hindered finding a group for my first taste of grouping because general chat didn't seem to be working on my instance, but I delved in to the social tab and found people lfg. We were soon together and running to the tomb. I would like there to be a better lfg tool, even if my thoughts on this subject were pretty much ridiculed elsewhere. I don't feel it is derogatory to the game but aids in the getting together of people. I was told there was an old fashioned way to make groups, and I am all for that. I played EQ in the day and I have fond memories of 'having to talk to people' to make groups. A LFG tool doesn't change that though; you just get both, and many newcomers to the genre would be better aided by a specific tool instead of having to delve in to options. I do understand a tool is in development though, so I'll leave it at that.

My small group ended with a trip to the quest giver and what I thought was a joy to behold; my first group conversation. I would have liked to have seen some process of discussion and arguing about what to do, but perhaps that is to come in flashpoints. I was looking forward to delving in to that...

...So I did. The next day I started things off with a bang and dived in to the first Imperial flashpoint. I won't spoil the story for people, so suffice it to say I found it a blast. I'll do it again to see what happens different each time too. What do I mean by that, you may ask? Well I mean the difference the group conversations caused. I love sitting back and making my choices to then see what everyone else says and who gets to speak. When my Inquisitor popped up only to say the most hateful and maddening things I felt a sense of achievement. I felt that I was important in this game. I really did. I wasn't just a lackey running through quests and getting levels. I was in this world and I could shape its outcome. This is just a start though. I'm realistic enough to admit that changing the whole world would be a huge undertaking for Bioware, but they have managed to make you feel important.

I'll finish my thoughts on grouping by saying that I did think the flashpoint was a little too easy and could certainly be made harder without impacting on too many people. If people can't handle a little harder than that then they won't get far in the game. Even the final boss was finished off with little effort, and that was me as healer with my one paltry heal of the time.

It was fun though, and it was the first mission of however many. For that reason I'm not overly concerned.

And you know what? I'll add one more thought now that I am proof reading this. I loved the fact that the conversations slowed the group down a bit. In the games of the past 7 or 8 years everything dungeony and groupy has been so hectic. SWTOR slowed it down and made it more social. Instead of no chat and moving swiftly through mob after mob till your fingers hurt, we got on to the subject of why my pants were so tight. Conversation! It appeases me enough to hold back the lightening a bit.


CHOICES AND MORE ON IMMERSION (I LIKE FEELING IMMERSED)

There seems to be a lot that you can do when not adventuring, even though I haven't delved in to it all. I ran around the crew skills trainers and there is a wealth of those and the different kiosks were nicely presented. I hope the galactic stations become a meeting point for people in the way that Everquest's cities did back in the day. There needs to be a place where everyone goes and therefore a place that comes alive with the comings and goings of the universe.

Okay I'm not feeling overly qualified to jump in to this, because in the 4 days I played I didn't take a crew skill or get my ship. It's just my surface impressions that are good, and I really am looking forward to exploring a bit more when I get the final game.


MY CLASS : INQUISITOR/SORCEROR

The stuff in italics here is my thoughts at the end of day 4, and my corrections to some stuff I wrote at the weekend (in normal text). I decided to include it both.

I'll finish with my class; the Inquisitor. I have some plus points and some negatives but overall I'm happy with it. To start with I found the range of skills to be a bit short, and I mean where I need to be to hit someone, not how many types of skills. I started my journey in combat expecting to fire lightening from afar only to realise I almost needed to be at close combat range to do so. I know it can change with sorceror abilities but a little more range would have been nice. I wanted to run in with lightening flaring and finish off poor wretches with a lightsaber swipe. I suppose I have to be content to wait till I'm a fully fledged sorceror and I can understand the reasons, but it wasn't a good impression to start with.

By the end of the 4 days I was happily content with my range and the early skills of the 10-20 range had complemented my character nicely. I was fullfilling the role I wanted.

The range of skills was nice. I felt very much in control when it came to dealing with my foes and could incapacitate the mob whilst dealing with one poor soul. This became even more hassle-free when I discovered the option to automatically switch to the nearest enemy. I was killing like a true Sith. I really liked the fact that I could pummel my victims with blasts of the force and move in to finish them with a few lightsaber volleys, if not from afar. One skill I would have liked to have seen was some sort of defensive lightsaber wielding though, the sort that would have seen Obi Wan deflecting laser fire with his saber whilst destroyer droids fired upon him fruitlessly (sorry, I'm Sith...Darth Maul deflecting laser fire...even if he was a douchebag who couldn't beat a padawan!). The inquisitor had no real defences early in the game. I'm looking forward to exploring the sorceror and hopefully it will fill in some of my gaps.

My biggest concern of the class is where I fit in to the game though. Am I healer or a damage dealer, and what are people going to expect me to be doing? I have one heal at my current level 11, but my hope was to go all out damage and not really be a healer, but will groups be expecting me to heal because I have them? Will there be enough inquisitors that choose to concentrate on healing to provide options for groups. Currently sorceror is one of eight on the Empire side, and if half can be damage doers then that leaves 1 of 16 to be healers. Will there be enough? Do I have the right to forego healing in preference of dealing pain to all who cross my path?

I'm just a little concerned that healers are hard to come by in any MMO, and because I have heals will I be expected to fill that role? Will I even be able to if I take the damage path I want to? Will that exclude me from grouping opportunities?

Okay, I wrote the last two paragraphs a few days ago. I have since realised that I'm not the only Imperial healer and I won't have to feel like I'm going to be ignored. I also got a new heal after 11 that drastically upped my potential. I'll feel happy going all out attack and not having to worry about folks needing me to heal. If they really do need me to do so then I can feel competent doing so...or at least competent enough to try.


FINAL THOUGHTS

I'll be getting the game because I need an MMO in my life...but not only for that reason. Some of my thoughts feel overly negative to me but really I'm not overly negative about the game (must be me...or some other Sith apprentice attempting to overthrow me and take his place at Lord Zash's side). For sure I have my doubts but they mostly stem from a UI I think is awful and which doesn't compliment a truly inspiring story-driven MMO. I'll be buying the game to delve in to my life as an inquisitor of the Empire and to see where I end up. I'll get around the UI because I feel I must/can, but problems need to be stated.

I realise it is late in the day, and I'm sure all my thoughts can not be possibly put in to the game at this late stage, nor would I expect them to be so. In fact many of them are facts I can get around. I can even get around the UI, but I would put it down as the number 1 concern of mine regarding SWTOR. It's really not a UI to compiment an MMO (Lord Zash said stop going on about the UI...she had a say in it).

Difficulty is a buzzword of mine, and I do like to be challenged by an MMO. So far that hasn't happened in abundance. There were a few encounters towards the end of my first 10 levels that caused me some hassle but they were mostly centered around the slightly tougher mobs in groups. They took a bit of practice and I died a couple of times. Once I encountered Khem Val I found things got exponentially easier though and I hope that changes. I want to make use of all that the game offers, but I don't want to feel it is making my game less fun. The chatter from companions alone is enough to make me bite my lip, but if the game becomes a farce of easiness because of them then that will slowly wear me down. Despite that fact, after 10 it did get a bit tougher in places. The first fight I jumped in to on Drumund Kaas nearly wiped my arse.

I'm only level 13 or 14 (as of the end of beta), so I'll wait to really draw any solid conclusions regarding difficulty. That will come later. As the story is so good I'm not as concerned as I would be if the game had been a dull and uninspiring quest grinder like Rift.

When it comes to performance then I must say I had next to no hiccups in that regard. The frame rate was more than fine, but I made a female smuggler alt and she ran a bit funny with a weapon. Lag I barely encountered...just one fight deep in a tomb that decided to coincide with one horrendous lag spike. Just the one though.

Overall I am really quite impressed and I want to be playing the game. I will find it hard to wait till release from now. The story is amazing and will keep me playing. I can't wait to further develop my characters and see how the universe of SWTOR progresses. No other game has done a story like this in an MMO and SWTOR will breathe a much needed new life into the genre.

If you buy one game this Christmas then buy SWTOR because you won't be disappointed unless you are very hard to please. This is the best MMO on the market, or will be by Christmas 2011. It does things that no other MMO has done and it makes me feel like no other MMO has made me feel. It looks questy on the outside, but really it's not. If anything it is one long, story-driven quest. It's like one huge epic epic quest from EQ. Every quest I did made me feel like I was doing something necessary, instead of the usual emotion I gain that every quest feels like another mob...there to level rather than be enjoyed (yes I'm looking at you Rift).

I've listed doubts and displeasures, yes, but I can actually ignore all of those because the story telling that Bioware has delivered is so immense.

Buy it! Enjoy it! You won't regret it (and Lord Zash told me to tell you you'd make her angry if you don't...she'll send me to fry you with my tight pants).

Ok my view. I don't really hate World of Warcraft itself, I just don't like what it did to the genre, or how the genre became due to WoW. No one can argue that the game didn't have an effect on the last 7 years of MMOing.

I think, contrary to Tingle's feelings, EQ, DAoC and UO were different games. I didn't play DAoC and UO but I know they were different. DAoC and UO were much more PvP focused than EQ and DAoC had its factions. EQ was a straitforward explorer.

Games that have followed WoW in the last 7 years have almost always been trying to emulate the big boy in some way, or at least the majority have. There was Vanguard that tried to be a little brother to EQ until it decided it needed to have some of its brother's cousin to make it more successful. Vanguard ended up trying to be too much and didn't appeal to either...shall we call them factions...of MMO gaming.

That's what I dislike; this trend to have to be a bit of what WoW was in order to achieve. In reality WoW was another branch of the MMO tree, along with DAoC, UO and EQ. It took a different direction and that branch has become the staple taste through no fault of WoW or Blizzard. The fault lies with the developers who have followed and not been able to drag themselves in a different direction. Or perhaps the fault lies with the producers for insisting on making more dosh. Either way everyone seems to want to follow WoW's path because WoW made so much impact.

As for the community, well there'll always be opinions and, let's be frank, the internet is a better place for many voices all having their opinions. If we all sat back and said "WoW is great and I hope all new games are WoW" then we really would be in a pile of poo. Yeah, I don't like the kids and their exclamations that WoW is gay either. I still see gay as a word to describe a happy, joyous experience. I'm private Godfrey watching the gay children in their little fancy dress costumes. I don't like the word "dude" either, and I despair when a paladin runs up to me and says "wanna join my guild, dude". You can't shut them all up though, and I even find myself smiling at the "barren's chatter" we see in every game that has followed WoW. Oh look, another tip of the hat to WoW. I was playing SWTOR's beta this weekend and the number of mentions I saw of general /1 being the new Barren's chat made me chuckle. It's there as a background that reminds me I'm playing an MMO as well as being a reason why I like MMOs; the people. I join in more than a few times because I like the distraction, no matter how insane it often is.

WoW changed the genre for the last 7 or 8 years, but that's not WoW's fault. I just hold some resentment towards it for that reason. The game was good at what it did. It opened up another branch of MMOs and I even enjoyed the game for a while. It opened up my first furrows in to PvP and I enjoy that immensely now.

It's those that have followed that need to be scandalised. It's those games, such as Rift and all those free-to-play games where questing is the path to 80, where zones are so small you can't fit a grape in them and where rewards are so big you could kill a top EQ raiding warrior in one stroke of your level 1 sword. They're the fault here.

If you want to hate a game, hate Rift. I hope they're the final leaf on the WoW tree.

Say hello to the new branches on the tree. The SWTORs, the GW2s and the TSWs. Finally some games where the the developers have had some guts and tried to do something new instead of emulating WoW.

People need to keep calling out the genre as uninspiring and always a new WoW. It's certainly made the developers at Bioware, ArenaNet and Funcom take notice.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong and they haven't. Maybe they just saw the bundle of moolah that Blizzard have made and decided to do it themselves. But I do think they saw the resentment that WoW has caused and decided to do it their way instead of the WoW way. Would they have if people had all sat back and not said they hated WoW...however wrong that may be or might be?

I say keep making your feelings known and keep calling the developers out. If we find ourselves in 2020 and every game is a copy of GW2 then I think it'll all repeat, but it won't be ArenaNet to blame. As much as I might turn out to love GW2 so much that I play it for 5 years, I still won;t wnat every game that follows to be son of GW2. I wouldn't have wanted every game that followed EQ to have been son of EQ.

Variety is the spice of life. Someone once said that, and I bet they were referring to MMOs, MMO communities and the MMO community's thoughts on WoW.

Originally posted by PKJackCrow
I really dont understand this a jedi can choose every dark side choice and not become sith and sith can choose light side and not turn jedi seriousiy wtf

I'm with you on that. I'm not followed TOR at all religiously, but what I'm hearing does seem to suggest that you can be a dark side jedi. Isn't jedi, by its very nature, light side?

I'm undecided what I'll be. I'm rather taken with the smuggler, yet I like the idea of being a nasty, child-killing (j/k...bad taste?) sith. My new MMO fondness is for casting damage doers and the healing/lightening sith (class names not on the tip of my tongue at the moment) sounds right up my street.

That cinematic (that I've only just seen) made me want to be a smuggler even more, but also a nasty, back-stabbing sith.

Dare I say it?

Yes, I dare. "Ding, dong, the witch is dead".

Well, okay, not really munchkins. Just entering that final stage of old age, complete with senility and the desperate need to hang on to former glories.

WoW has had its time and it's flourished in that time. There's no harm in standing to one side to let the whipper snappers take up the mantle.

WoW changed the genre (whether it was for the good or the bad is up to the individual, but not really important), but now it's time for the likes of Guild Wars 2, The Old Republic, The Secret World and a bundle of other titles to jump in to the ring and slog it out to decide who's fit to have their say in changing the genre.

To be honest with you, I'd rather not have a best. I'd rather have a myriad of other titles all competing on equal terms. That way there's less of a target for forum goers to continually compare against or for developers to say "you know, let's just make that and call it something else".

We might just have a a buzzing MMO scene rather than a stale one dominated by a grand patriarch that is followed by a gang of rats all trying to emulate him.

Well I seem to have stated my thoughts really, even though I said that opinion wasn't necessary.

And the ruby slippers? Well they can lie in a muddy hollow for all I care, because there really should be no holder of the title 'master'.

I cant' say I disagree with any of them. I particularly hate the size of weapons in most MMOs these days. If warriors wielded those things they died fromexhasution before any mob had a chance to stab them in the back.

I'd certainly like to see more kids in the worlds of MMOs, and I don't mean inhabiting chat channels and talking crap. They don't even need to be an interactive part of the world, but just there adding flavour to things. I recall in Vanguard's gnome city there were some kids that would run around the town center and seemed to be playing a game. You could chat to them and sort of join in. It really added a feel to the world...even if no one else was in the city with you.

If Guild Wars 2 can recapture the feel of a real life hustling and bustling city, like MMOs of old used to, and add in realistic day to day lives of its inhabitants then I will be forever in the laps of NC Soft. Please make it so.

Originally posted by andre369

Just look at this video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72Efuc_0WN8

 

It looks so terribad... 

The game's not out yet...

I think it still stands that had the years since WoW not been so devoid of classic titles, then Rift possibly wouldn't have been the success it has been. Rift has been given a chance because there's not really a lot of quality out there.

There are ok games (EQ2/LotRO etc) but no game in the last 5 or 6 years has been a wonder of a game.

Once TOR and GW2 come out then Rift will be forgotten, because those two games are of a new and improved world of MMOs.

Rift will no longer be WoW's closest competitior. It's like saying Ethiopia are Brazils' closest competitors in football, on a day when the likes of Argentina, England or Spain never played. You're ignoring the true competition.

Ok the other angle...

Despite what I wrote above, I did read the the full interview with lars about Red Door and Trion's aspirations to improve the technology of MMOs. I can not deny that they have done a hell of a lot of good work in improving this aspect of MMOs, or at least they did for Rift. I do fully hope that other companies can continue to work on server stability and release betas as 'complete' as Rift's was.

If GW2 launches in as complete a state as Rift did then it will blow the former out of the water, because it offers a more complete game than Rift could ever be. The same goes for TOR.

Your tech may be changing MMOs, Lars, but if your company had made a game that changed MMOs in terms of gameplay then we might all be nodding our heads and agreeing with evrything you say about Rift as a success.

I wish for nothing more than that Rift had been an amazing game that changed the genre and turned heads, because I needed that when it shipped. It wasn't that though. Far from it.

The biggest competitior I found Rift to be was to wood. It was a toss up between those two as what to burn first.

I guess Lars has to say these things to boost Rift, but this is so far from the truth that it is laughable. Face it, Rift was a pile of baloney.

I've not been overly expectant of TOR at all and until recently I was very dubious about the game. It could never be as shallow as Rift though, so it has to have that going for it.

I suppose, actually, he does state one truth, if I'm really honest about it. He says that Rift is the biggest competitor that WoW has had. He's sort of right, but let's face it, the last 4 or 5 years in MMO land have been absolute cack and Trion could have made anything and been a better competitor (or as good as EQ2/LotRO etc) than what had come before. It doesn't mean Rift is good at all.

"Movement is easy since we played on an Xbox and the camera angles are friendly enough to explore and fight multiple opponents when they appear around you."

Aaargh this comment hurts me. I thought MMORPG.com was a PC games site and yet comments such as that can be printed.

Yet maybe there's some truth in this. I still have nightmares about the 10 minutes I spent in the Dungeon Siege 3 demo where the controls were just awful. Add to that From Dust and Fable 3 (not so much poor controls but just a very 'console' game) and I'm left concerned that KoA:R will be another game designed for the console market and ported over with little thought.

Of course maybe it's just a bad choice of words.

It's one of the better MMOs on the market, but I find myself struggling to comprehend how it can get a score of 8/10 for innovation. It doesn't really do anything significantly different from the rest of the genre, but I'll say it does do it with a bit more variety. At the end of the day it is just a solo quester though, at least until you reach the end game and people might want to group.

The overall score is a little high, but then isn't that the norm with MMORPG.com? I'd rate EQ2 at maybe 7.5 to 8.0. The big let down is the community and that is not helped by SOE's refusal to do anything to promote grouping, but instead an insistence to chuck out solo heavy zones in every expansion.

When you consider the man behind EQ2's remergence, after a dreadful release, was Rift's Scott Hartsman, then you can fully understand why it is such a solo game. The man thrives on letting people play the game by themselves.

EQ2 could be an amazing game if people grouped, but soloing from 1 to 70 just dilutes the whole experience sadly. The game has some amazing group content but it's washed away by how easy it is to get anywhere by yourself.