SWTOR:

Initial Thoughts-

A quick disclaimer that I have only played about 5 levels of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and this is more a pre-review than a review, but so far I am enjoying the game and have much to already comment on.

The Good

The Good:

There is a staleness to the current MMO approach. A key feature of MMO gaming and yet the biggest anchor to its wider acceptance as a genre, is grinding. Everything else about MMOs is a recipe for success. It’s social; you and your friends get to start little clubs, which is basically an extension of childhood aspirations. It’s collaborative and strategic (raids); you and your buddies get to talk to each other over a headset setting up combat situations and then knocking ‘em down. It’s epic in scope; The story goes on forever and the environment is gargantuan! It’s always fresh; constant patching and content additions give you more and more and more reasons to keep coming back. But none of this matters to a large amount of conscientious gamers that hate grinding. The primary differences between an MMO gamer and an Anti-MMO gamer is not a love of grinding but an ACCEPTANCE of grinding.

Every MMO that has come out after WOW, and even WOW to some degree in comparison to previous MMOs, tries to tackle this issue. Most fail miserably or just try to emulate WOW. In traditional RPGs grinding is mitigated by character development, cool items, enemy variation, dialogue, etc.

In SWTOR their method of attack centers around the things that make their non-massive rpgs interesting. Dialogue and Character progression are apparent and starkly different than what one sees in games such as WOW. In-game cut-scenes and an abundance of instanced areas, as well as the concept of companions and spaceships, gives your character a degree of uniqueness in the larger game universe.

SWTOR is a lot like WOW in almost every GOOD way, but is definitely trying to solve one of WOWs central problems, with something that might actually work. Dialogue is king. The dialogue system is tied with the morality system, an addition to the MMO genre that adds some interest and interesting late game customizable differences. Like in Mass Effect the user is given a wheel of dialogue options, which usually fall into a positive, negative, and neutral category. What I haven’t seen yet, but which may or may not be seen in the future is more morally ambiguous responses, as well as responses that elicit more information or less information, giving this part of the game a more strategic quality.

Visually the game is about on par with most other MMOs, but lacks the visual polish of WOW. There is a lot of graphical popping and cutting, as well as lots of uneasy transitions between various events and story aspects, but nothing a veteran tryer-of-mmos would not expect from a first year MMO. I have had no quest bugs as of yet, which if anyone remember s from back in the WOW first days was rampant.

The combat system is fun and at first glance slightly more engaging than the wow point click repeat system. There is a cover system as well as close and long-range attacks. I haven’t messed with it long enough to see if players get into the all too familiar optimal attack patterns of WOW that so turn me off to these games (I hate predictable strategy). I’m also looking attentively for a less rock-paper-scissors role set for dungeons and pvp zones that WOW is also known for. It bothers me that WOW end-game boils down to pre-determined roles of Damage-Tank-Healer; it’s boring. These kind of nuances don’t reveal themselves until well into the game progression so its hard to comment on yet.

Speaking of progression, as I said before this is where SWTOR shines. I WANT to play through the normal story, instead of like with WOW, where I want to get PAST the story. I am currently playing an agent for the Empire, and am running though a sort of evil James Bond story line. My character has an snide British voice, and I gotta say it’s fun to hear the verbal sparring between my character and his Grand-Moff-Tarkin-esque superior, who sneers as he spits out his orders. I can’t wait to get back to the game, and that is not normal for at least my previous MMO play.

Can't Unsee; The Bad

The Bad:

It IS a lot like WOW, and I think the game releases at a time where MMO fatigue is at its worst, even the fact that it’s a Star Wars license won’t necessarily spell certain success. For me it’s the right amount of different from WOW but for others, I’m not so sure.

An MMO starts out being a lot less graphically stunning than other normal AAA games, so many players out there will be turned off by the slightly outdated graphics.

The price point is also a major hurdle for many normal players. Value-wise people  will ask themselves do I want to play Skyrim by myself for  50-60$ or the Star Wars MMO for 50$ plus 10$ or so a month. Is the game enough fun to pull gamers from the previously-non-MMO larger group of gamers, in order to make a run at paying back the enormous cost of developing an MMO. At this point there is no telling. Reviews will play a big part in the initial run, as well as how the first 3 months of updates work out.

Luckily he wasn't a big part of this.

The Transcendent:

This game will be completely forgotten or remembered with relish, based on the next 3 months of success or failure. Those are the stakes of an MMO, wild success or abysmal failure. Other than that, future MMOs may look to how Bioware attacked the problem of grinding as a smart move going forward, or at least lets hope they move more in that direction than in the direction of the “watching-grass-grow” styles of Squenix’s FF MMOs.

The Breakdown: Average score of 7.5