Star Wars: The Old Republic

I still think that the most remarkable thing about this game is how often I instinctively reach up to the top of my keyboard to quicksave. When you're not actually crowded with other players, it doesn't feel much like an MMO. The dialogue options and writing do enough to rope you into the quests that you don't just "click past it and accept the damn thing" like I often did in WoW.
 
My girlfriend just bought this for me today, have been playing for about 5 hours now.

Honestly, it's WoW but Star Wars. But somehow it's better. I can't put my finger on it, but while it's almost exactly like WoW, something about it just seems to be so much better and more playable. I would recommend anyone who is interested to play it. It's really fun so far. Very story driven, unlike WoW where you just do the quests for the sake of leveling. I find myself playing to find out what happens next. Fun fun!

Jedi Knight Human, dark side. First char. Going for a Sith, or possibly a bounty hunter or my next char. Dark Side, obvs.
 
1. Getting banned because of using the auction house for your own profit
2. Getting banned because of having high-level items in your possession at low levels
3. Getting banned because of dancing in areas where Bioware doesn't want you to dance
4. Endgame is apparently shit. If you comment on this on the Bioware forums, you'll be told "You haven't completed ALL of the storylines yet" and "Make alts to see all the quests"

I'm biased, but I'm not going pay monthly for a single player game.
 
Dog-- said:
My girlfriend just bought this for me today, have been playing for about 5 hours now.

Honestly, it's WoW but Star Wars. But somehow it's better. I can't put my finger on it, but while it's almost exactly like WoW, something about it just seems to be so much better and more playable. I would recommend anyone who is interested to play it. It's really fun so far. Very story driven, unlike WoW where you just do the quests for the sake of leveling. I find myself playing to find out what happens next. Fun fun!

Jedi Knight Human, dark side. First char. Going for a Sith, or possibly a bounty hunter or my next char. Dark Side, obvs.
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This pretty much. I couldn't bring myself to play WoW for very long, but I'm really enjoying this. The gameplay is extremely similar, but the story is just enough to keep the quests from being overbearingly repetitive. It's not a perfect MMO or even close to being the best one that I've played. As an online virtual world it's actually terrible.... very very little in the game is interactive. But I'm having fun with it for now.

As far as endgame goes, Bioware didn't design one. Fine with me. I don't intend on playing any longer than it a month or two to get through a couple character's storylines. I'll definitely do some PVP'ing but I'm not going to spend weeks grinding the same dailies and shit to get better gear. I don't know how WoW players do the same quests over and over again countless times, it's a fvckin retarded system
 
Edeslash said:
4. Endgame is apparently shit. If you comment on this on the Bioware forums, you'll be told "You haven't completed ALL of the storylines yet" and "Make alts to see all the quests"
Click to expand...

That's a problem with every MMO that has ever been made ever. No one has much endgame planned because you have no idea how long it'll take players to get there, what they'll like most, what will work and what won't. Did you play WoW when it was first released? The endgame in that was nonexistent. I'm taking my time with this, waiting to see what Bioware comes up with.
 
Edeslash said:
1. Getting banned because of using the auction house for your own profit
2. Getting banned because of having high-level items in your possession at low levels
3. Getting banned because of dancing in areas where Bioware doesn't want you to dance
4. Endgame is apparently shit. If you comment on this on the Bioware forums, you'll be told "You haven't completed ALL of the storylines yet" and "Make alts to see all the quests"

I'm biased, but I'm not going pay monthly for a single player game.
Click to expand...

1) No ones being perm banned and 2) The guys who were exploiting massively were told to politely stop it whilst the developers address the issue and got a fix in place and they chose to ignore it. The alternative would of been to have shut all the servers down until patched or reset everyones accounts. Temp banning was the least of all evils.

I'm not playing the game (I'm off new games for a year to work through my backlog), but the one thing I'm hearing a lot from my friends who are playing is that the quest/story line stuff is really well done overall, in large part due to the fact that the characters are memorable, the voice acting is good and they keep you engaged. There's quite a good interview at GB from the lead writer here: -



Albeit I might never play it, it does sound that they are taking a different approach in terms of their emphasis.
 
Too bad the gameplay is garbage. Absolutely no advancement there, which is what the MMO genre REALLY needs, not voice acting.
They can put as much pretty voice acting as they want, but a fetch quest is a fetch quest in the end.

If the only thing you can argue is 'oh well there are mixed groups of enemies..' that's not even a very good argument, because WoW already did that, and when you're fighting the same copy/paste group of enemies for the twentieth time things get a little nostalgic, in a bad way. Come on Guild Wars 2. You can break us out of this evil dps/tank/healer bullshit.
 
Nobody's getting perma banned for auction house playing, but temporarily yes. That's something that kills the economy and I really wonder why Bioware is banning for it. Oh, and from what I've seen, the voice acting is incredibly awkward. Can't find one particularly horrible video right now as I'm writing on my phone.
 
Acepilotf14 said:
Too bad the gameplay is garbage. Absolutely no advancement there, which is what the MMO genre REALLY needs, not voice acting.
They can put as much pretty voice acting as they want, but a fetch quest is a fetch quest in the end.

If the only thing you can argue is 'oh well there are mixed groups of enemies..' that's not even a very good argument, because WoW already did that, and when you're fighting the same copy/paste group of enemies for the twentieth time things get a little nostalgic, in a bad way. Come on Guild Wars 2. You can break us out of this evil dps/tank/healer bullshit.
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I don't see how the gameplay is garbage, millions play WoW and it's literally the exact same. Numbers are against you completely there.. And what other quest can there be? There are only so much types of quests that can exist in ANY game let alone this one, you either kill a guy, fetch something, or go talk to someone. What else can you do? Please enlighten me.

The quests are the same, but way better and more enjoyable because there is story and voice acting along the way that makes it way more engaging, rather then a shitty text box popping up that you just exit out of because you don't want to read a ****ing novel for every quest you do.
 
Acepilotf14 said:
They can put as much pretty voice acting as they want, but a fetch quest is a fetch quest in the end.
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Yeah it is, but the cutscenes and voice acting makes it tolerable. You really believe that GW2 won't have the same bullshit quests?
 
Mogi67 said:
You really believe that GW2 won't have the same bullshit quests?
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The thing is that all I hear SWTOR player say is how Bioware made a "revolutionary MMORPG because the real game is in the leveling process, not in the endgame!" and yet the leveling process quests are WoW-tier. Every other MMO emphasizes the endgame. I'd say that an average leveling experience is excusable in that case.

There will never be an MMORPG that will make the quests better. Cataclysm tried hard and did a pretty good job but the core remains the same. The nice thing about SWTOR is that they really made it more interesting with voice acting and the conversation wheel.
 
Edeslash said:
Nobody's getting perma banned for auction house playing, but temporarily yes. That's something that kills the economy and I really wonder why Bioware is banning for it. Oh, and from what I've seen, the voice acting is incredibly awkward. Can't find one particularly horrible video right now as I'm writing on my phone.
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I guess I could accept payment.. in kisses.
 
Yorick said:
That's a problem with every MMO that has ever been made ever. No one has much endgame planned because you have no idea how long it'll take players to get there, what they'll like most, what will work and what won't. Did you play WoW when it was first released? The endgame in that was nonexistent. I'm taking my time with this, waiting to see what Bioware comes up with.
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The "WoW was like that" excuse is getting pretty damn thin at this point. It came out 6 years ago now, sooner or later it's going to be okay to expect developers to stop repeating the same mistakes.

But you're right, it's always a problem in new MMOs, and people always jump ship before it's rectified with content patches, because the kind of people who burn through the early game are the same kind of people who are interested in end game to begin with. So why would they leave it up to chance? If the game isn't a huge success, then they've saved on some development costs at least, but if it is then they'll lose some of their player base to boredom anyway, and they probably won't get a lot of them back. It's like they're banking on their own failure.

Kadayi said:
1) No ones being perm banned and 2) The guys who were exploiting massively were told to politely stop it whilst the developers address the issue and got a fix in place and they chose to ignore it. The alternative would of been to have shut all the servers down until patched or reset everyones accounts. Temp banning was the least of all evils.
Click to expand...

I can't substantiate this, but I'm hearing a lot of people saying that they're unable to access their account management page or cancel fees via EA's support when they've been temp banned. Of course, they can still reverse the charges via their credit card company, but it's still pretty shoddy on EA/Bioware's part. Honestly their policy on bans at the moment is pretty baffling to me, especially with regards to things like swearing when there's a ****ing language filter.
 
I didn't know people were being banned for language. I've been throwing ****** around left and right. hell my name is Fagthor
 
The thing is that all I hear SWTOR player say is how Bioware made a "revolutionary MMORPG because the real game is in the leveling process, not in the endgame!"
Click to expand...
Ha. It's hardly revolutionary. The only novel feature is the cutscenes. But in many ways its a step backwards for MMOs. World interaction is nonexistent, if it isn't involved in a quest then you can't use it. There's no NPC's who aren't vendors or mission contacts. I could list a dozen reasons why this is a ****in horrible game. But it's a entertaining diversion for now. Bioware's lack of experience with this type of game is really starting to become apparent.
 
Eejit said:
What an elegant well-constructed argument.

GUILD WARS 2 DEFENSE FORCE ASSEMBLE!
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I'm sorry, it's just, the most ridiculous thing I've ever read, a light-sided sith. I mean, why do they give you choice when it doesn't really matter? If you go lightsided sith warrior, can you somehow NOT become the Emperor and turn Jedi? WHY IS THERE ALIGNMENT IF YOU CAN'T CHANGE SIDES?

It's all contrived as **** and it seems like they only put alignment in because the other games had it.

In KOTOR1, alignment didn't matter because one choice near the end of the game locked your alignment for the rest of it.
In KOTOR2, alignment didn't matter because the theme of the game was that alignment didn't matter and that people can live without it.
In TOR, alignment doesn't matter because there is so significant difference in the storyline. Maybe you kill a few more people. An evil jedi(by their standards) gets kicked out of the order. A good sith gets killed because he's weak. That's how Star Wars works. It's more plausible for the non-force sensitives, but alignment shouldn't matter to them because personality is personality. That's why Dungeons and Dragon's alignment grid is garbage too.

Not even mentioning AGAIN that they outright tell you which choices you make are good or bad. Or the complete lack of neutral options half the time. The transparency of most of the plotline doesn't help this either. As for the plot, I will never forgive them for what they did to Revan, or the Exile. Ever. Never ever.

Also, while I was playing, I almost forgot it was the Old Republic because the sith feel like the Galactic Empire and the Republic feels like it's clone-wars era. Come up with your own aesthetic. Not like the character models already look dumb enough.
 
ITT: Ace picks arbitrary things that he doesn't understand to whine about and then whines about other arbitrary things he doesn't understand when people disagree with him and present better arguments than his own.

The alignment isn't about changing sides, it's part of the colouring that makes your character feel more "real" to you. In WoW it never occurred to me to wonder what my Paladin might do, because it was just me. This feels more like you're playing as someone, as you would in a non-MMO game. It colours it, by working towards giving your character something of a personality (albeit a fairly simple one).

I think you're taking the "good Sith" / "evil Jedi" thing too far. It's not about changing sides, it's about what your character believes in and tolerates. You can be an evil as shit Sith who still has a code of honor that prevents them from killing innocents.

And in the case of TOR, you've been told this before, but you apparently don't want to listen. Having the light/dark side options highlighted in dialogue is an option.
 
I'm surprised Ace even got the game considering he has bombing it all the way up to release.
 
I didn't I played in beta quite a bit. I decided to wait till I got to play in beta to decide, and it turned me off heavily.

And in the case of TOR, you've been told this before, but you apparently don't want to listen. Having the light/dark side options highlighted in dialogue is an option.
Click to expand...

It still uses the casualized Mass Effect wheel system, aka good options are always at the top and bad options are at the bottom. Whatever happened to lists of responses that were all generally varied?
 
Well, in a solo RPG that's one thing, but I can kind of understand their need to simplify and categorise them in an MMO, especially when party choices come into it.
 
Acepilotf14 said:
I didn't I played in beta quite a bit. I decided to wait till I got to play in beta to decide, and it turned me off heavily.



It still uses the casualized Mass Effect wheel system, aka good options are always at the top and bad options are at the bottom. Whatever happened to lists of responses that were all generally varied?
Click to expand...


Actually while that's true a lot of the time it certainly isn't universal.
 
Acepilotf14 said:
It still uses the casualized Mass Effect wheel system, aka good options are always at the top and bad options are at the bottom. Whatever happened to lists of responses that were all generally varied?
Click to expand...

I don't understand, you're mad because it uses the same response wheel graphic as the other game? Who cares? You'd rather it be plain text to select from - either way what difference does it make? You still choose what answer you want to choose. And also what matters if the good choices are at top and bad at bottom? Is that really a complaint? You seem like the biggest nit-picker I've ever seen.. Who gives a shit? It clearly indicates whether the choice is light or dark, what the **** does it matter? This is honestly the worst gripe about a game I've ever heard.
 
Bad^Hat said:
Well, in a solo RPG that's one thing, but I can kind of understand their need to simplify and categorise them in an MMO, especially when party choices come into it.
Click to expand...

As much as I think the dialogue choices in Dragon Age Origins were far superior to the Mass Effect dialogue wheel, I kinda have to agree with Bat^Hat here. To get any more complicated then what they currently have and still retain MMO gameplay mechanics would be very difficult in my opinion.
 
All the fans say that what makes SWTOR a strong competitor is the story and the way Bioware has implemented it through dialogue. Watched some more gameplay videos and you know, I don't get it.

When I feel like a video game has a good story, it has nothing to do with choices. They can act as a tool, just like interaction and voice acting. The 'new' thing in SWTOR is voice acting and giving the players freedom to execute their own views through choices and karma. I would never want this to be implemented through dialogue! First of all, it's veeeery slow. Dialogue in games rarely is a good thing. You should either give the player enough options or not give him options at all. When I played Mass Effect I felt like I was weighing the different options; 'which would fit my opinion most'. Choices in interaction just don't fulfill their purpose when the player has to deliberate, even a little.

Implementation of a story doesn't work through chatting with others. How do these people think it's a particularly strong aspect? I seriously prefer selection by action and letting the player himself process the story from the environment etc. The best example for this I can come up with is Bioshock.

This might be a bit scrappy post and general rant but I hope you understand what I mean.
 
I know what you mean but Bioshock is a terrible example of it, that game is linear as ****. Doesn't matter what you do, the story still proceeds the same way regardless of what you do.
 
Well actually my Bioshock example was more about the environment and non-direct storytelling. But yeah, your opinion is completely true. Yet I don't think non-linearity is somehow a requirement for a good game.
 
No, of course not. Look at Half-Life after all!
 
Dog-- said:
I don't understand, you're mad because it uses the same response wheel graphic as the other game? Who cares? You'd rather it be plain text to select from - either way what difference does it make? You still choose what answer you want to choose. And also what matters if the good choices are at top and bad at bottom? Is that really a complaint? You seem like the biggest nit-picker I've ever seen.. Who gives a shit? It clearly indicates whether the choice is light or dark, what the **** does it matter? This is honestly the worst gripe about a game I've ever heard.
Click to expand...

No no, I'm mad because the choices don't really matter in the slightest, because it's an MMO, and for the MMO style to work you can't really cause huge differences in the environment. I mean, even WoW managed to make that work with that new tech they brought in for WotLK, the layered areas thing. That was really clever and put forward some interesting new gameplay elements. So it didn't feel like I was playing a good RPG. It felt like I was playing corridor lightsaber sim with some people I have no reason to care about because everything is so blandly written, characterizing post-ME Bioware.

I would have infinitely preferred this same style in a single player game, like how they did with Dragon Age 1, only with more care taken to making good gameplay. ****, make it all one interconnected storyline. Replayability out the ass. Eightish different classes to pick from, each one with its own unique storyline, if you do them all you get a special ending. But instead they jump on the MMO wagon and spend a ****load of money and come out with terrible character models, decent environments(which looked nice until I realized they copy/pasted A LOT and that you hardly get time to enjoy it since it's all linear, do x quests here and then move onto the next area, jesus **** I hate that style of MMO so much.)

What's so wrong with freedom? Let people do what they want. Don't funnel them through a bunch of carefully leveled areas and ban them if they go out of that specifically constructed quest line.

That's another reason why KOTOR was cool. It wasn't linear. They let you do the planets in any order you want. Imagine if Kotor1 MADE you go dantooine -> tatooine -> kashyyk -> manaan -> korriban. Hell, even DRAGON AGE managed to do this, if a little stranger because of how wonky the difficulty was across the entire game. Instead of giving you choice, TOR just gives you the illusion of choice and tells you to get to level 50 really fast so you can check out their non-existent endgame.

Maybe I just hate MMOs in general and voice acting and boring Bioware writing didn't change that. Idunno.
 
Hey those letters give me an inflated self of e-selfimportance

:V I lol'd though. 13 credits :Y
 
When will Lucas Arts make Star Wars Battlefront 3?

They need to hurry up before they go bankrupt!
 
Why not have Bioware develop it? Gay sex scenes is literally the only thing Battlefront needs.
 
I think this thread got way off track...


What characters has everyone made?

I made a human Jedi with light side tendancies (was gonna go dark side, but he's a jedi, cmon), only level 8 now. Kinda easy I'm finding it really, I tried a sith and same thing - just pretty easy. Granted I'm only level 8 though.

I also made a Bounty Hunter on the Dark Side (Dark side), who is actually pretty hard to play, but fun. There are quests that are downright retarded (those HERO quests), you NEED someone else to beat em. So far I'm finding the Bounty Hunter more fun then the jedi, I was gonna make a sith (well I did), but realized as a class jedi and sith are pretty much the same. I didn't want two characters that were the same thing to play, so I made this Bounty Hunter instead. I forget the name of the race he is, the white bald one with tattoos on his face.
 
Wow I just got off the first world, and after level 10 and into the game - shit gets ****ing confusing. Skill trees, specializations, etc, etc. I'm not an experienced MMO player, it's kind of overwhelming..
 
Loving it so far. Sith Inquisitor.

HuRSt.jpg

gGRMn.jpg
 
Dog-- said:
I think this thread got way off track...


What characters has everyone made?

I made a human Jedi with light side tendancies (was gonna go dark side, but he's a jedi, cmon), only level 8 now. Kinda easy I'm finding it really, I tried a sith and same thing - just pretty easy. Granted I'm only level 8 though.

I also made a Bounty Hunter on the Dark Side (Dark side), who is actually pretty hard to play, but fun. There are quests that are downright retarded (those HERO quests), you NEED someone else to beat em. So far I'm finding the Bounty Hunter more fun then the jedi, I was gonna make a sith (well I did), but realized as a class jedi and sith are pretty much the same. I didn't want two characters that were the same thing to play, so I made this Bounty Hunter instead. I forget the name of the race he is, the white bald one with tattoos on his face.
Click to expand...

Yeah all of the classes are pretty much mirrored on both sides. It will get harder later on, the first 15-16 levels are pretty easy. I made a human Sith Marauder, Level 33 right now. Melee dps, I use dual sabers, don't have any ranged attacks except force choke (heheh). I do a lot of damage but I die fairly easily. I just got a new companion who's a dark Jedi and it actually really fun hunting with her, we tear through mobs so quickly. I'm Dark Side right now. Have done some awesome shit, like murdering a woman for cheating on her husband and killing a girl's parents to draw her out from hiding. But I've been turning back towards the light recently because I want to use Blue and Green lightsabers. I don't like how saber colors are restricted depending on your alignment, it's not really consistent with the lore whatever George Lucas says. Having a good time with the game though.
 
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