Star Wars: The Old Republic Review

[Starke]

Actually no I didn't see it, nor was I aware he was even in the game.
Thanks for that.
Seriously, put some thought into what you do before you do it. Maybe think that people who go to this site don't go to different sites, or that they've been specifically avoiding those sites as to not ruin the game for themselves by finding things out before they were supposed to.

Since you insist so much, I will put in quote.

But the only way to not get spoilers is not visiting any articles/topics/posts about a certain game before I finish it. And sincerely? Spoiling a MMO? Do you know how silly that sound?

I'd say about as silly as ignoring the fact that there is actual story to be had in this MMO.
Else you wouldn't have spoiled anything.
Because without stories there are no spoilers.
Seriously, what the heck.

"Tor have actual story"

Don't use that lame excuse on me, I don't buy it. ALL MMOs ALWAYS had story. And some have really fleshed out stories. The difference is that, in SWTOR, the story is sold as one of the "mainpoints" of the game, and it's apresented in a different, maybe even more pleasant way. But it still shoved down your throat.

RIFT has story, WAR has story, WoW has story. The difference is that in other RPGs you simply click "accept quest" instead of going a conversation to click "accept quest". In WoW you can ignore the story completely by just pressing "accept quest" whenever a pop up comes up. But you can read them, learn the lore of the area, read the HUGE amount of books that are all over azeroth. It may not be a shakespearean-worth play, but it's there. And it's good.

I'm sorry, I just gotta jump in here. WOW's story was never good. Never. It's all straight up cookie cutter fantasy poorly retold in boring text. I tried to get into WOW's story. I really did. I was in a heavy RP guild, and everyone else knew the lore. It was just so... boring. Reading quest text has never been and will never be interesting in this generation. Even so, it was poorly written quest text. Now in TOR, we have Bioware's signature writing and characterization introduced to the formula, and it works. Sure it's still largely gather quests, but you really feel the 'why' of it when a poor mother is begging you to find medicine for her dying son and you see him lying prone at her feet as she cries out to you. Sure the end result is different, and a thousand others will play it out exactly the same way, but that shouldn't matter to your character. Now he actually has motives, and that's a big deal to me and to lots of others.

Honestly, when looking at MMOs with good stories, I keep looping back to Guild Wars. Sure, it was cliche and formulaic, but then again, so is Bioware's writing. Hell, Champions Online told a pretty coherent narrative... granted one that only made sense if you were a writer for DC in the 60s, or had just gone on an absinthe and mescaline bender, you know, fun. Still, it told a coherent, cheesy-as-hell, silver age narrative.

Honestly, even by Bioware standards, the writing in TOR is just not up to par. And saying you couldn't get into WoW's story is, well, unfortunate, but it doesn't negate that it was there.

 

[Bigeyez]

Here is my review of TOR. If you like WoW and Star Wars or Mass Effect, you will like TOR. So for me, a dude who quit WoW after so many years TOR fills that void nicely. Sure it has flaws, but so did WoW when it launched years ago, many more then TOR does now.

Its a good solid WoW-like mmo. nothing wrong with that at all. If that combined with Mass Effect style roleplaying and Star Wars frosting on top sounds good, you will love it.

 

[Agayek]

Does it fix the need to grind and the repeated, fetch quests and kill x number of monkeys for a reward.

Kinda sorta. You still have to do that kind of stuff, but it gives you context and purpose for doing it, so it doesn't feel like a retarded grind.

 

[LetalisK]

snip

Retconing KotOR2 out of existence? How did they do that? I'm not that far along in the story, so I can't comment too much, but I do know the Exile is in TOR. I'm more afraid that they will rely too much on the Revan book to explain wtf is going on with Revan and Exile.

 

[LetalisK]

quotesies

I screwed up the quote in my initial post, and I'm fairly certain the forums don't let members know if they were quoted in an edit, so I'm quoting Agente again to let him know I have a question for him above. Edit: *facepalm* Or on the bottom of the previous page. One little typo in my first post and it all goes to hell...

 

[Agayek]

my problem with the review is that it doesn't say anything about the endgame. Because as many people already seem to suggest, it's hard to maintain story drive in the endgame.

If you devoted yourself to it and read all the text WoW had some reasonable story lines leading upto the endgame. They just where a little disjointed.

The endgame is where an MMO stands or falls. Thats where grinding becomes an issue (for the bigger crafts or getting into that next tier of raiding gear) I haven't grinded much in WoW leveling. Especially in the newest content where they steared away from samy kill x quests as much as possible. OK I stopped WoW but thats because all my friends stopped and my lack of time for raiding kept me in a loop of Heroic running that became a little to familiar. I could dream those encounters. And I fear TOR will have very similar end game problems.

What a new MMORPG should really adress is the problem of challenge. like in WoW where you had heroics, that was a good start, but what me and a couple of buddies really craved was a mode where you could really demand the max of yourself and you toon, without real extra reward but just a challenge to keep you interested. More HP on mobs more diverse attack paterns to force you to think on your feet in a way that can't be demanded from the real casual player. Would I know how exactly to do that, no but I'm not a game designer.

The end game, as it currently stands, is by far the weakest portion of TOR. My guild's currently killed 4 of the 5 bosses in hard mode Eternity Vault, and it's really rather pathetic. Both of the current raids are buggy, unpolished, and with the exception of Soa, ridiculously easy. The only reason we haven't cleared the thing and moved on to nightmare is because due to conflicting schedules we've only been able to field 4 raids thus far.

If you're looking for challenging end game, this is not the place. Yet anyway. I hold some small degree of hope that the new bosses in 1.1 will actually address that, but I doubt it will actually happen.

 

[krellen]

Not to mention a good 80%+ of the quests are solo-able. So in reality, the game doesn't require you, nor does it really foster you, to group up and form a community.

My biggest gripe with the game is the 20% that still caters to the "you must have a group" mentality of MMOs anyway, so I'm not sure this is a huge negative. Soloing in MMOs is surprisingly popular and continues to be a woefully under-served market, and with all the other options out there for MMOs where you need groups, I really can't see one where this isn't the case as a point against it.

In my experience, MMO communities aren't that great anyway, not even the ones oft-lauded (and self-congratulatory) for their good nature.

 

[Sneezeguard]

I'm still on the fence. After what Drew Karpyshyn managed to do to Revan, I don't know if I want to mix Bioware with Star Wars anymore.

I know how you feel. I'm pretending that wasn't the real Revan, that he sent a Revanite or a jedi to take his place and pretend to be him in-order to fool the empire into think he was dead so he could operate in secrecy to defeat the emperor. I don't think any one in the empire knows what he looks like part from the emperor so it's plausible.

Besides he was a master general and tactician, I doubt he could fall to the empire's plan it was too obvious.

 

[Fappy]

I actually like space combat more than most. Its rally just a minigame anyway. As for the story, I am playing a bounty hunter and loving my class questline so far. Unfortunately many of the random quests are so repetitive and shallow I find myself spacing out when the bland NPC is talking to me. Would have liked to see more actual story arcs on different planets instead of random quests spread out across the different outposts.

 

[swm934]

The problem I have with this in TOR is that I don't feel like I'm playing my character. I feel like I'm playing a character that Bioware have defined for me - kind of like Mass Effect. This feeling is massively reinforced when I arrive at a quest hub and see half a dozen other players wandering around with 'my' companion by their side.

I completely agree. Bioware tells remarkable stories but they're not my story. I prefer a blank slate character because my vision of my character isn't shattered every time a dialogue option doesn't match my intention. In TOR it would almost help role-playing better if you know the story ahead of time so your vision of your character matches with what situations you will be stuck watching.

My advice? Select a class you may like and skip quickly through the character creation to the opening story text and cutscene to get an impression of what story you're along a ride for, then create a new character with that in mind. It would save you a lot of role-playing dissonance.

 

[Lunar Templar]

eh, its star wars, only way I'd get it is if some one else gets it for me, (and pays the sub fee cause i can't right now)

 

[Agente L]

snip

Retconing KotOR2 out of existence? How did they do that? I'm not that far along in the story, so I can't comment too much, but I do know the Exile is in TOR. I'm more afraid that they will rely too much on the Revan book to explain wtf is going on with Revan and Exile.

Since people want spoiler quotes...

There is no such thing as grey jedi. As long as we are aware, Kreia never existed. Nihilus never existed, because there is no such thing as "wound in the force". No absorbing force from the living, no consuming planets, nothing. Exile exists? Yes, but pretty much everything in KOTOR was voided.

I'm sorry, I just gotta jump in here. WOW's story was never good. Never. It's all straight up cookie cutter fantasy poorly retold in boring text. I tried to get into WOW's story. I really did. I was in a heavy RP guild, and everyone else knew the lore. It was just so... boring. Reading quest text has never been and will never be interesting in this generation. Even so, it was poorly written quest text. Now in TOR, we have Bioware's signature writing and characterization introduced to the formula, and it works. Sure it's still largely gather quests, but you really feel the 'why' of it when a poor mother is begging you to find medicine for her dying son and you see him lying prone at her feet as she cries out to you. Sure the end result is different, and a thousand others will play it out exactly the same way, but that shouldn't matter to your character. Now he actually has motives, and that's a big deal to me and to lots of others.

WAITWAITWAITWAIT

Your attempting to say bioware isn't CLICHÉ? Oh my. Please, read the image and answer me afterward?:


http://rampantgames.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/bwcliches.png

While I do find some bioware writing really good, Mass effect 2 was a confusing pile of events that made no sense whatsoever. Mass effect 2 makes mo difference in the triology story. You gotta gather a team (and many of them probably will die in me3) to defeat a race that was introduced in me2 (not me1). It made no difference. Also, the council refusing to believe in you, after not only telling them about the reapers, but one of them actually INVADING the Citadel and wrecking havoc, and then YOU saving them? What? It's ridiculous.

Also, Dragon Age 2. A "How to destroy a nice franchise by rushing it". They messed with the story, making


Most bioware games follow a VERY previsible plot. They are VERY cliché. Also, you DO have texts explaining why a father wants to cure its daughter from a terrible curse (a very nice example exists in Astranaar, alliance side). What motives? You character has no motives. The character motives are YOUR motives. Getting money. Leveling up. Getting gear.

Again, the only difference between TOR story telling and WoW story telling is that TOR is more immersive, and it feels like your more unique. Apart from that, both have storylines. And Bioware didn't really created their storyline for TOR, like blizzard did for wow...

 

[Ohlookit'sMatty]

I am looking forward to playing this MMO but I'm waiting for two things to happen first // One, for the game to stop costing ?59 to buy in the shops and the other is knowing that I can afford to pay for a second subscription to an online MMO (Warcraft being the first of course)

-M

 

[nightwolf667]

snip

Retconing KotOR2 out of existence? How did they do that? I'm not that far along in the story, so I can't comment too much, but I do know the Exile is in TOR. I'm more afraid that they will rely too much on the Revan book to explain wtf is going on with Revan and Exile.

Since people want spoiler quotes...

Spoiler

There is no such thing as grey jedi. As long as we are aware, Kreia never existed. Nihilus never existed, because there is no such thing as "wound in the force". No absorbing force from the living, no consuming planets, nothing. Exile exists? Yes, but pretty much everything in KOTOR was voided.

Ahahahahaha. According to the book, it's so much worse than that.

Spoiler: crazy train of stupid

The Emperor is Drew Karpyshyn's shoddy "ICANWRITEITSOMUCHTEHBETTORZ" rip off of Nihilus. The planet the Emperor destroyed by eating the Force is textually also a rip off of Malachor V. The Exile never set off the Mass Shadow Generator, Revan did it because he's so badass. Kriea never wanted to kill the Force. She was driven insane by Dark Side Scrolls. Revan can wag his finger in Atris's face and get away with it. Bastila is a housewife who has nothing better to do than sit around and watch vids all day. Also the Exile dies in one of the stupidest ways imaginable, stabbed in the back by a Sith she and Revan trusted. Because they would trust a Sith why? An unanswered question. She has a death of less than three sentences. Revan is then captured, kept alive, and tortured for hundreds of years so he can become a Raid Boss. Also, the Exile is a Force ghost who has devoted herself to him mind and soul. And she's not a normal Force ghost either. "No...peace...while you...suffer." The Exile goes from being a strong, confident female character to being a Revanite lackey who has the "priveledge" of being his apprentice.

And people say that Bioware can write. The best I can say about Revan is that it rises to the level of juvenile fifteen year old boy fanfiction/power fantasy. Lately, Bioware being lauded for their writing falls flat for me. The voice actors though, they should be lauded for making it palatable.

They also named the Exile: Meetra Surik.

As for TOR? It felt like your average, derivitave MMO with a cliche laden plot stapled on top. Unlike other MMO games, (that have been mentioned), the only thing it does differently is force it's story straight into your face. I play Champions Online, and I do more roleplay there in the Character Creator system than I did in the fifteen or so hours I played during the TOR Beta. No, it's not perfect but I can decide everything about my character and the type of hero they are. Which adds to the replayability as I have no two characters who are even visually similar.

The combat in TOR felt static, frankly. I hear that's standard in MMOs, but I cut my teeth in the genre playing Star Trek Online and Champions Online. I can run around on a merry chase, firing off my powers, and dragging my enemies all across Millenium City with me if I want to. Circle strafing is a genuine tactic there and it makes the game more interesting to look at. The travel power mechanic made it much less of a chore to get anywhere and to sell your loot. The Warp system in Star Trek was similar. Again, it's not perfect. Yes, the maps in TOR are large, but deceptively so. I spent most of my time running while I was in game. Not running from enemy trash mobs, just running to get to one place and another. It was frustrating, especially after I got off the first planet. Combat with my Sith Inquisitor went like this: stand in one place, cast lightning. Wait for cool down. Cast more lightning. The majority of my Force powers: lightning, lightning, lightning. Jesus, just give me Force Choke early to spare the monotony.

It wasn't even like my electricity character on CO, which goes: shoot lightning from hands, continually. Call down lightning from the sky, watch enemys shake in place. Summon three balls of lightning to hit enemy while you call down more lightning. Toggle lightning to come off body and hit enemies in melee range, call down more lightning on ranged attackers. And yes, the majority of those are area of effect attacks. That was interesting, but standing in one place mashing three attacks that are very visually similar just gets really boring.

Also, TOR never felt like Star Wars to me. It had all the trappings and none of the heart.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

Though, I think, for example, doing the same with Terraria would be a mistake, as it takes the game a good couple hours to get going.

Now, I know you said you find Bioware's writing since Empire to be rather lacking and clique, but I want to pass this quote back to you; the Old Republic stories take a little while to get going. You admit you didn't like what you saw and had spent some twenty hours with the game, and that's valid. You saw some of the story and what you saw, you didn't like. Can't get much more fair than that. However, you also admit you never saw any of the stories to their conclusion and there in lies my issue. See, all of the characters' stories are muti-level; each 'chapter' takes place over several planets and they are all different. I see it as kind of like reading the first chapter of a book and deciding the book is bad. You are by all means perfectly within reason to say that what you read was cliche and tripe, but I don't think you can make an accurate summary of the entire story. You can comment on the writing style used, but the story as a whole--the actual plot--is out of your reach.

Spoiler: A huge spoiler to one of the Sith Inquisitor story arcs.

As a Sith inquisitor, you spend the early parts of your story collecting artifacts for your master. Characters come and go, plots are explored and events occur throughout. Ultimately, the end of this particular chapter: your master was gathering artifacts that will enable her to take over your body. It's obvious why someone who never gets to finishing this many, many hours of story could think it's just fetch quests and clique, but they most certainly can't comment on the actual plot, because they won't have any idea this is what it's about.

And no other MMO has anything on that. You can't compare class quests in other MMOs that *all* amount to receiving new spells or skills, to the long, sprawling, detailed and twist riddled arcs of all eight different classes. And, as I said earlier, no one else will have the same experience as you. Sure, they can play the same class and choose the same options, but your character is *yours* and they exist in *your* story.

Also, your comment about playing a character Bioware made for you seems odd to me. All my characters are, well, mine. I played them with a specific personality in mind (greedy, corrupt, kind, shallow, lawful, etc.) and went about deciding what quests to accept and how to act accordingly. That's pretty much how every RPG works; they're limited by how much programming the makers can do.

I just don't understand the criticism of 'you promised story and there isn't one'. You can't possibly expect every single player to play a story that changes the world around you for everyone else, and no other MMO has had such an involved story. Sure, in another MMO you can play an assassin and, in your mind, be something of a Robin Hood, stealing from the rich, giving to the poor and only killing when you absolutely must. But that's not reflected in your story. In fact, you don't have a story. To the game, you are just another player accepting quests. In TOR, the world's characters *know* if you kill wantingly, they know if you are greedy or corrupt, your companions *will* comment on your behavior depending on their own personal ethics.

This game, in my eyes, is a revolution, just not the kind people are willing to see. World of Warcraft copied countless numbers of mechanics from the MMO's before it, including Ultima Online and Everquest. But now that WoW is popular, every time an MMO uses these universal tools, they are called a clone, they get branded derivative and are brushed aside. I suppose first-person-shooters better stop using guns -- they all copied that. Maybe racing games better stop using a countdown before the race starts -- in every racing game there is. Look, I get that some aspects of TOR are akin to those in WoW (which in turn are akin to those in Everquest and the like), but that's how video games work; you take things that people like and you try to make them better. A world where every video game needs to change the entire fabric of the genre it's made in is absurd.

There's story here. There's character here. There's something that's never been done before here. People just need to understand that this *is* an MMO. This isn't a new genre or a single player RPG. Come to it knowing this and maybe the inclusion of a story you personally change, characters who react based on how you've played and the ability to have relationships that can become intimate will sink in. This is an MMO. The most unique MMO there's been in a long while.

 

[sir.rutthed]

snip

Retconing KotOR2 out of existence? How did they do that? I'm not that far along in the story, so I can't comment too much, but I do know the Exile is in TOR. I'm more afraid that they will rely too much on the Revan book to explain wtf is going on with Revan and Exile.

Since people want spoiler quotes...

There is no such thing as grey jedi. As long as we are aware, Kreia never existed. Nihilus never existed, because there is no such thing as "wound in the force". No absorbing force from the living, no consuming planets, nothing. Exile exists? Yes, but pretty much everything in KOTOR was voided.

I'm sorry, I just gotta jump in here. WOW's story was never good. Never. It's all straight up cookie cutter fantasy poorly retold in boring text. I tried to get into WOW's story. I really did. I was in a heavy RP guild, and everyone else knew the lore. It was just so... boring. Reading quest text has never been and will never be interesting in this generation. Even so, it was poorly written quest text. Now in TOR, we have Bioware's signature writing and characterization introduced to the formula, and it works. Sure it's still largely gather quests, but you really feel the 'why' of it when a poor mother is begging you to find medicine for her dying son and you see him lying prone at her feet as she cries out to you. Sure the end result is different, and a thousand others will play it out exactly the same way, but that shouldn't matter to your character. Now he actually has motives, and that's a big deal to me and to lots of others.

WAITWAITWAITWAIT

Your attempting to say bioware isn't CLICHÉ? Oh my. Please, read the image and answer me afterward?:


http://rampantgames.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/bwcliches.png

While I do find some bioware writing really good, Mass effect 2 was a confusing pile of events that made no sense whatsoever. Mass effect 2 makes mo difference in the triology story. You gotta gather a team (and many of them probably will die in me3) to defeat a race that was introduced in me2 (not me1). It made no difference. Also, the council refusing to believe in you, after not only telling them about the reapers, but one of them actually INVADING the Citadel and wrecking havoc, and then YOU saving them? What? It's ridiculous.

Also, Dragon Age 2. A "How to destroy a nice franchise by rushing it". They messed with the story, making


Most bioware games follow a VERY previsible plot. They are VERY cliché. Also, you DO have texts explaining why a father wants to cure its daughter from a terrible curse (a very nice example exists in Astranaar, alliance side). What motives? You character has no motives. The character motives are YOUR motives. Getting money. Leveling up. Getting gear.

Again, the only difference between TOR story telling and WoW story telling is that TOR is more immersive, and it feels like your more unique. Apart from that, both have storylines. And Bioware didn't really created their storyline for TOR, like blizzard did for wow...

Um, I never said they weren't cliche'. I said they were good. Big difference there, as the two are not mutually exclusive. Whether you like their games or not they still have some of the best writers in the business putting out some of the best writing in the business on a regular schedule. I won't open the can of worms that is DA2, but I will say that Bioware still write well above par for any development studio, let alone MMO studios. As for WOW? They're cliche to the bitter end, and the execution is just terrible. That's the difference. Bioware's able to pull it off, and Blizzard manages to be nothing more than generic flavorless fantasy land. Bioware made an immersive game immersive because the execution is near perfect, and that comes from damn good writing. While they do stick to their formula, it's a damn good formula that has led to some of the best games of the last three generations of console.

 

[Ted Christensen]

I never even considered TOR as a legitimate investment for my money and time for a few reasons, even though some of my MMO friends were all over it. I will detail them below because I know people care...

First - it's Star Wars. I'm sorry, but this continual resurrection of a 30 year old movie is just getting dumb. It had its day, it is from the 70's and 80's society where the heroes are always true and noble (and have no regrets over killing a million people just doing their job) and oh-so-evil bad guys that need to be squashed. There is much better sci-fi out there that is in-line with today's world view - the new BSG, SG-1, Firefly, Dr. Who etc.

Second - The Slick Trailers... which showed nothing but flashy lightsabre fights and lame excuses to have lightsabres yanked out for the fanboys. Or things that were taken from the original trilogy movies - such as the playing of the Emperior's March when the Sith showed up, and as the guys in Unskippable mentioned, the Not-Han Solo and the Not-Millennium Falcon. They had no originality at all in their advertising - why would I even consider they'd put any originality in the game? In contrast I would point out the live-action Skyrim trailer - the one of the guy walking and townsfolk running. That alone showed inventiveness and a real keen grasp of storytelling. Needless to say, I own Skyrim, and would have bought it on that trailer alone.

Third - Class story-lines. The moment I heard of these I just knew they were going to be a very bad idea. "Great, I'm doing this thing for this person, woo-hoo! Oh, wait, 50,000 other people are doing the exact same thing as well." Plus, putting in storylines for each class = a massive amount of work, meaning limited class choices as they try to keep costs down. I play EQ2, I like having a choice of 16 classes and 15 different races to play (or vice-versa, can't remember off hand).

Fourth - Bioware. I don't like them. I've finished ME1 and didn't get ME2 because #1 just did not feel like a game. I started DA, and never finished it, again - not a game. These are novels in the guise of a game. These are Bioware writing up a story, and telling us this story with an illusion that we have any kind of choice or real input. We just sit on the surface and watch them tell it to us. We get to do missions, sure. But if they aren't done, well the story doesn't progress. I'd rather read a book than pay $60 and have one told to me. TOR just seemed like more of the same, only with a 100,000+ people being told the same story at the same time.

Fifth - Time-freeze. This is more of a niggling thing - but still bothers me. TOR is 4000 years before ANH - and yet, they have guys in clone-trooper armor, blasters, lightsabres, etc. etc. 4000 years in a galaxy of billions upon billions of people, and hundreds of different societies - and yet everything is the same. Does time not move... oh, wait, dammit....

...sorry, back, the alarm bells were jingling on my chariot out in the pyramid's parking log, I thought the Persians were lurking around again and I'd have to run some through with my bronze knife...

They might as well have just set it in the time period of the prequels. If they had unreliable jump drives, a complete lack of blasters, swords instead of f'ing lightsabres - something, anything to show that it is truly 4,000 years in the past... yes... FOUR THOUSAND years... when we thought the sun was pulled across the sky in a chariot, the alphabet is getting its beginnings, I am not even sure the concept of zero existed, and nothing changes? Hell, EQ1 and EQ2 are about only 500 years apart, and the damn moon crashed into the planet! The entire world is split apart. But instead TOR just looked like a carbon copy of the new movies - and that is just seems lazy. And I just can't give lazy companies my money.

For these reasons, even without playing the game, I have ignored it. I have been with Everquest 2 since launch and will remain there, navigating through quests as I explore the various worlds, and roleplaying my characters as MY characters, because nobody else is telling me their stories. I make it up myself. Questing is not stories, questing is a means to an end, just as a person's job is not everything about them. If I decide that I've had enough of the Kingdom of Sky, I can go to another area and work there. What I do and where I do it is not predetermined by a story-arc that has been set down for me ahead of time.

 

[rsvp42]

I guess I have to rely on Guild Wars 2 to save the MMO genre.

I have two major irks with this review. Firstly, the claim that this introduces "role playing" elements that other MMOs lack. Well that defends on how you define "role playing". Star Wars: The Old Republic gives you a story and a biography identical to thousands of others and gives you no control, whereas other MMOs let YOU define your character and give you more freedom (and no, by defining your character, I don't mean giving you a dialogue wheel and a morality bar, I mean letting you decide your character's motivations and your character's history that isn't from a selection of in game prompts.)

I think it's worth considering how it affects players who don't usually RP though. I myself very rarely think much about an MMO character's backstory because there's simply no reason in many games to do so. For instance, I could come up with some grand tale of a loss to a rival and a desire for revenge for a Blood Elf Warrior, but there's nothing in the game that reflects that backstory unless you find other RPers and do some extra stuff together. But in SW:TOR there's dialog options that can reflect that. If you're basing your entire RP on exactly what happens in game, you're doing it wrong anyway. Here's an example from one of my characters, a Trooper: I made him look kinda grizzled and imagined he was a veteran who lost his wife and kid at one point and became a heavy drinker. He decided to join the war effort again after getting sober, but he was still bitter and heartless (except to women and children, for the most part). Later, after meeting one of the companion characters, I decided to shape him up a tad, following protocol a bit more because that's how that companion is.

Now obviously I'm not a huge RPer, but among the MMOs I've played, only TOR actually makes that kind of thing relevant in actual gameplay; I can pick dark, mean choices and be disrespectful to my superiors and it fits something I made up for that character. Sure, it's not boundless, but within the context of the story, there's a decent number of ideas you can make up for your character.

Gabe's words in this post (Penny Arcade) do a pretty good job of capturing it as well. The game doesn't offer an endless landscape of RP options, but then any game that isn't a pure sandbox will restrict an RPer with that mindset. In WoW you do a bunch of errands for people that might make no sense to your backstory, but you either adjust or ignore. RPers in Champions Online have to basically ignore every quest if they want to RP a villain or anything besides a goody two-shoes. But TOR at least supports it somewhat in the gameplay, even if it's just in terms of defining the tone and scruples of your character. And that support actually encourages people (like me, or Scott & Kara in Gabe's anecdote) to RP a little. I think that's a good thing.

 

[strongarm85]

complete focus in Republic story with complete disregard for empire story (all main characters in Empire dies, no main characters in republic dies)

Alas we Imperials will always get screwed unless it's an alternate universe setup Least they didn't portray the imperials as all moustache twirling villains and the republics as white knights of goodness. [/spoiler]

Yeah, but they could let SWTOR end in a draw, and event taking place AFTER it, in EU lore, that ends with empire getting destroyed and republic being victorious. But making it happen IN SWTOR? It's ridiculous.

Oh, and thanks for reminding me.

Spoiler

Seems like you also forgot about SWTOR retconning KOTOR 2 out of existence and you get to kill anorexic Revan (and Hk-47, which is said to have killed dozens of jedis) as a mid-level (35 or so) grindable dungeon. Also, you get to STEAL HIS PANTS.

SW:TOR 2 was not Retconned out of existence. There aren't as many references to SW:TOR 2 as there are to the original, but they are there. Voice over files in the current game that have yet to be implemented also include a companion character who originates from some of KoTOR 2's cut content.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

See, reviews like this are why I wish that more than just RPGs were so heavily story-based. RPGs are NOT about stories. RPGs have always been about numbers, purely numbers. The only reason video-game-based RPGs tend to be so story-focused is to give the player a reason to care about the numbers.

Also, given all the niggling little annoyances my friends have listed on the game (haven't played it, myself), I can't help but think there's a little fanboyism in this review's over-all opinion of "It's basically perfect, except for the space combat".