Star Wars: The Old Republic Review

[Quiet Stranger]

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.

What did he do?

I'm still wishing they just made a third game instead of this...schlock

 

[Sixcess]

I dislike big blocks of quotes so

It's quite a decent review. But I can't help but think that Mr. Butts' definition of "real roleplaying" is very different from mine.

For me, the essence of true roleplaying is being given a choice within the context of a story and then seeing the results of that choice play out in front of you.

Which is true enough, in a single player game, but SWTOR is an MMO, and the unique selling point of roleplaying in an MMO is that you can interact with other players.

This is not something that TOR delivers. The roleplaying emphasis is firmly on interacting with the NPCs in scripted sequences and that is it. 'Real' roleplayers in MMOs put more value in things like the ability to define their characters as individuals (in ways that TOR, with it's chosen one/hero of the galaxy narrative, really fails on) and worlds that feel like real living places rather than game levels, which TOR's lifeless, linear backdrops also fails on.

BioWare finally delivers an MMORPG that feels like a single player RPG.

Fixed.

 

[Nyanya]

We definitely disagree on that but, just to indulge the point, what game would satisfy your definition of roleplaying? I've yet to see an RPG on any platform where you're in charge of all of the character's animations and voice. Is there a game where you provide the voice for your character during NPC interactions? I'm sorry, but I absolutely don't get the point of your objection, which seems to suggest Baldur's Gate isn't really an RPG either.

For me, the essence of true roleplaying is being given a choice within the context of a story and then seeing the results of that choice play out in front of you. TOR does that very well, at least within the confines of the MMO genre.

For me, the essence of true roleplaying is creating a character, a personality, and interacting with that character within a world. Story, whole often present and usually the most interesting form of roleplaying, is not a requirement. One could roleplay walking down a forest path with a friend and there would not be much story there beyond one of the mundane, but it could be deeply enjoyable still. TOR doesn't do that very well at all, at least there have been other MMOs which do it much better.

In my roleplaying within computer games the character exists mostly in my head with the model within the game world being a sort of proxy that I and others can interact with. Thus when I talk about the 'voice' of a character I'm referring to what I imagine my character saying upon making dialog choices. How I imagine my character acting. But in TOR's conversation system (as well as pretty much all of BioWare's recent RPGs) the game is already providing that for me, clashing with my own imagination and thus making it far more difficult to keep a mental grasp on my character. As such one (of many) examples of RPGs where I provide the voice for my character during NPC interactions is Dragon Age: Origin (where Dragon Age 2 too that away).

For real roleplaying to work in a computer game the player character should be left as a blank slate as much as possible for the player to fill in.

I realize that it's a matter of degrees and that different people have a different cut-off point for what is and isn't true roleplaying. Just watching a movie is less roleplaying than having a movie where you get to make decisions on how the main character should act. Which, in turn, is less roleplaying than being left completely free to decide how the main character acts. Which is less roleplaying than being able to define the main character completely. Which is less roleplaying than having that character interact with equally dynamic and varied other characters (i.e. other players). For me BioWare's most recent RPGs, including TOR, fall way too close to the movie end of the spectrum.

Of course choices and consequences are also vitally important. But even in this it feels to me that TOR is lacking as it doesn't feel that any of the choices you make truly have consequences. In the end it all feels far too much on a scripted path where at most you might get a different email, a different remark from another character slightly later on, or perhaps some slightly altered events. BioWare is really good at giving the impression that your choices matter, but for me the illusion is often all too apparent.

In the end it just doesn't really feel like I own the character in BioWare's games. It feels as if BioWare owns the character and they've just been gracious enough to allow me to make suggestions as to what the character might do next. I still very much enjoy the game, just as I can very much enjoy a good movie or a good book. But it doesn't give me the same connection that actualy, true roleplaying does making it hard for me to accept when someone calls it "true roleplaying".

I hope that is understandable and makes sense.

 

[sir.rutthed]

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.

 

[Starke]

@Starke

I find it disingenuous and deceptive to report on something you've not properly experienced and my comment was aimed towards people who have played so little of the game they still have yet to encounter core components or have simply not played it at all.

Honestly, with TOR? You encounter the core game mechanics in the first 10 minutes after character creation. You experience the dialog system and experience combat. If you spend another hour or two with the combat and decide it's crap, in that time frame, then I can't say that's being disingenuous.

There are other things to do, but questing and killing mobs are the two largest time sinks in the game. If these don't appeal, there really isn't a compelling reason for someone to keep playing... I started to write something else, but honestly, that's it. That's the core of TOR. And if you're an MMO veteran, you'll be able to accurately assess how combat will scale.

It took me 45 minutes to get a feel for exactly how TOR's combat was scaled, and in the 15-20 hours I spent with the game it never deviated from that.

If you were to sit down with a ten hour game, play two hours of it and say "I found the controls and combat to sluggish, broken, unresponsive and boring" I'd think you'd seen enough of it to make that claim. When someone plays an MMO to level 9 and makes broad, sweeping comments concerning the entire game, not just the segment they experienced, I more or less consider their opinion moot. Not because of my own personal opinion, but because they are commenting on something they only know a fraction about.

Honestly? That really depends on the MMO in question. In DCUO that's 1/3 of the way through the level progression, and by that point you really have seen it all, with some exceptions. With Guild Wars, Level 9 was nearly halfway to the level cap, though your statement there is more valid, as level 20 wasn't the end game.

As for TOR? Honestly, in this case, getting to ~level 9 should be just long enough to really hammer home for you that you're not playing your character, you're playing one of eight characters Bioware cooked up for you, Commander Shepard style. In a single player game that's fine, but in an MMO, this is like stepping out the door and running into six or seven more copies of Hawke or Shepard or Cousland (sp?) Fair or not, for a lot of people that was a real deal breaker. I should say a lot of MMO players, but still. At that point they've seen the experience as... not a fraud, but a shell game, an illusion that's now broken. And then what? Grind on through?

Someone who logs into an MMO and spends 30 minutes in the character creator, logs out, and bitches out the game? Sure, that's damn disingenuous. But someone who spends two hours with TOR, sees the same "MMO style" combat they've seen since, shit, at least 2002, and logs off, and proceeds to ***** out the game for being derivative? I can't say that's genuinely unfair of them. They gave it a shot, and what they found was a familiar flavor of dreck.

Really, I simply wish people would stop trying so hard to be a fan or a hater. Sounds extreme, I know, but with just about every release you see and hear people complaining, critiquing, praising and defending games they've never played, out of pure principle. Bias is innate, like you said--you cannot ever review something objectively, as everything you see and hear is influenced by your personal experiences and view point--but to come to something or avoid something all together based on conjecture and with preconceptions and *still* offer an opinion is just... bad.

Welcome to the internet. That may sound harsh, but it's true. Though, with TOR, the variety of hate leveled at it... some of that's just knee jerk backlash, but in this case, a lot of it seems to be "you told us this would be revolutionary, instead we got a reskinned version of a game we'd already played."

As to objectivity? Yeah, you can try, and any competent reviewer (mostly in media other than games) will tell you that you need to get around that. It is possible to write an objective review of something. But, you do need to be aware of your own biases, as much as possible, when writing.

In my case, I held up the Bioware writing. It's no secret, I've found Bioware's writing since Jade Empire to be pretty hideously cliche, formulaic, and derivative. That said, even with that bias, I can say pretty solidly that the story in TOR is just not up to Bioware standards. This is a game written on autopilot in many cases. Now, true, I didn't experience those plots to their conclusions, but at the same time, I've seen these dances already.

Skyrim is a similar case. I don't like it. However, I put in a dozen hours before forming an opinion. Take a quick peek over the forum and you'll find a multitude of people bashing or defending Skyrim despite admitting to never playing it or, at the most, having played it for an hour or so. If you play ten minutes of a game and find it ugly, boring or just uninteresting, feel free to say so. But don't make comments about more than you actually played yourself.

I think I screwed up the comment pacing... see above. :\

Bandwagons, haters, fanboys -- all words I thought overused. But you know what? They aren't. And that sucks.

I'm ranting, so I'll stop. I hope my opinion was well enough expressed and you can understand what I'm getting at. Peace

I do. And, unfortunately, there is one critical issue, which is, there's a point at which you, whoever, has seen enough of a product to render an accurate assessment. That point is almost never the same from person to person. Saying someone needs to do X before they can chew out a game is a nice concept, but actually setting X gets a bit problematic. It's easy to say someone who hasn't played the game is out of line, but even on just 45 minutes, you can already start to render some pretty valid criticisms against TOR. 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.

 

[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.