The old republic
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Watch footage of the game on YouTube, see if it floats your boat. As far as I can tell from playing a few hours, it's WoW with space ships and better story telling thanks to the voice acting. If that sounds good to you, then by all means play it.
Its an easy going MMO that is still in its baby stage. Things will be changed, content will be added...
If you like the Star Wars universe, you like MMOs, and you liked Knights of the Old Republic I would say with reasonable confidence that you will love this game.
If you like the Star Wars universe, you like MMOs, and you liked Knights of the Old Republic I would say with reasonable confidence that you will love this game.
The game is absolutely worth $60.
WoW with Bioware storytelling = great.
Is it worth the subscription price after month 1? I can't say. I really doubt this will be a game that keeps my attention after the main story is done and my toons are level 50. I really doubt enough content will be released to justify an ongoing subscription cost for more than a couple months.
WoW with Bioware storytelling = great.
Is it worth the subscription price after month 1? I can't say. I really doubt this will be a game that keeps my attention after the main story is done and my toons are level 50. I really doubt enough content will be released to justify an ongoing subscription cost for more than a couple months.
Yeah i believe i've read multiple reviews that said basically this game can be considered 8 bioware RPGs in one game.. and if like the other fellow said you have free time during your free month then it's going to be worth $60 regardless.
But as a multiplayer game the most common complaint i've read is that it didn't need to be an MMORPG: The actual multiplayer component is seriously restricted right now (Flashpoints are the only parts that need groups iirc) and there is a LOT of instancing so the world feels dead. The PVP i've yet to hear much about, but i'm sure like most MMOs it's forgettable.
But as a multiplayer game the most common complaint i've read is that it didn't need to be an MMORPG: The actual multiplayer component is seriously restricted right now (Flashpoints are the only parts that need groups iirc) and there is a LOT of instancing so the world feels dead. The PVP i've yet to hear much about, but i'm sure like most MMOs it's forgettable.
If you're very unsure and have 2 hours and 40 minutes, here [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ls5L4blYM&feature=g-u&context=G265d977FUAAAAAAAAAQ] is a pretty informative discussion between three veteran MMO players. In short, they say:
It plays very much like WoW with really only 1 new machanic for one specific class (IA/Smuggler);
Everything it does that WoW also does, ToR does as well or better;
The stories (each class has its own story) are in general very good, make more sense and are more interesting than "pretty much any other MMO" they had played (rough quote, listened to it last night);
PvP is not very good right now, but the big class-balance issues should sort themselves out when people learn what they're supposed to do - AoE classes rule the day because nobody knows who to kill, so they just randomly hurt anybody and they expect that to sort itself out once people learn more about the classes and which need killing, giving single-target classes a stronger position - and the "you always play Huttball" will hopefully sort itself out once more people PvP;
It's quite buggy, some of which have been around since early beta;
There's a lot of instancing, making grouping useless/bothersome too often (but far from always) while questing;
That is solved by having companions, squadmates like in most Bioware RPGs who can also be sent off to work on professions - since you can only bring 1 with you and you get 5-6 of them, you can have 4-5 people gathering or crafting while you quest (or you can do it yourself I think);
The companions - like in other Bioware RPGs - have their own personalities, chip in on conversations with NPCs and from time to time want a private chat if you piss them off, which the people in the podcast found great and immersive;
You get your own ship (woo!) but you can't take other people on it (boo!);
Early dungeons are of wildly varying quality (the first being gailed as brilliant, the next 2-3 being called boring and unimaginative);
It's the best, most refined and most content-laden MMO on release they've ever played.
Sounds one-sided I know, but if you listen to the podcast they have trouble to keep from praising it through most of it. Kind of in closing they said that it's very much worth the buy, but nobody can say if it's worth the subscription yet.
It plays very much like WoW with really only 1 new machanic for one specific class (IA/Smuggler);
Everything it does that WoW also does, ToR does as well or better;
The stories (each class has its own story) are in general very good, make more sense and are more interesting than "pretty much any other MMO" they had played (rough quote, listened to it last night);
PvP is not very good right now, but the big class-balance issues should sort themselves out when people learn what they're supposed to do - AoE classes rule the day because nobody knows who to kill, so they just randomly hurt anybody and they expect that to sort itself out once people learn more about the classes and which need killing, giving single-target classes a stronger position - and the "you always play Huttball" will hopefully sort itself out once more people PvP;
It's quite buggy, some of which have been around since early beta;
There's a lot of instancing, making grouping useless/bothersome too often (but far from always) while questing;
That is solved by having companions, squadmates like in most Bioware RPGs who can also be sent off to work on professions - since you can only bring 1 with you and you get 5-6 of them, you can have 4-5 people gathering or crafting while you quest (or you can do it yourself I think);
The companions - like in other Bioware RPGs - have their own personalities, chip in on conversations with NPCs and from time to time want a private chat if you piss them off, which the people in the podcast found great and immersive;
You get your own ship (woo!) but you can't take other people on it (boo!);
Early dungeons are of wildly varying quality (the first being gailed as brilliant, the next 2-3 being called boring and unimaginative);
It's the best, most refined and most content-laden MMO on release they've ever played.
Sounds one-sided I know, but if you listen to the podcast they have trouble to keep from praising it through most of it. Kind of in closing they said that it's very much worth the buy, but nobody can say if it's worth the subscription yet.
The single player is great. Queues can be a bit bothersome if you choose to roll on a 'Full' server, so don't. Not as bas as it used to me. Less pressure to ZERG RUSHMAX LEVEL like other MMOs since the level up experience is so enjoyable.
Players are still jerks; human nature.
If you enjoy pointless grinding quests (kill 50 bearsloths) then the BONUS quests will tickle you the right way. Other than that you can just ignore them, they're only bonus quests that gives exp (and if a chain [feels like a personal public quest from WAR] some commendations (planet-bound currency)).
You get used to no auto attacks, particularly if you're used to playing casters in other MMOs who didn't have it. It's nice that every advance class can either Tank/Heal if you respecc as well as DPS except for the non-tank Jedi Knight. It's nice because each advance class can be useful in a group composition at end-game if you have too many DupZ, in less you're a dual-wield Jedi. Then you're screwed.
Worth buying. I haven't yet got to endgame. Not many people have due to the horrific queues at the launch.
The game feels very much like a Bioware game with MMO elements (KOTOR/Dragon Age 2). Classes feel more complex the more you level which is good. All classes in the starter zone gain a nice spread of different type of abilities to give you a taster of what each advance class might involve and if you like it (Consular gains a mix of spells and melee abilities. Smuggler gets ranged gun attacks, grenades and close-combat abilities etc.)
Players are still jerks; human nature.
If you enjoy pointless grinding quests (kill 50 bearsloths) then the BONUS quests will tickle you the right way. Other than that you can just ignore them, they're only bonus quests that gives exp (and if a chain [feels like a personal public quest from WAR] some commendations (planet-bound currency)).
You get used to no auto attacks, particularly if you're used to playing casters in other MMOs who didn't have it. It's nice that every advance class can either Tank/Heal if you respecc as well as DPS except for the non-tank Jedi Knight. It's nice because each advance class can be useful in a group composition at end-game if you have too many DupZ, in less you're a dual-wield Jedi. Then you're screwed.
Worth buying. I haven't yet got to endgame. Not many people have due to the horrific queues at the launch.
The game feels very much like a Bioware game with MMO elements (KOTOR/Dragon Age 2). Classes feel more complex the more you level which is good. All classes in the starter zone gain a nice spread of different type of abilities to give you a taster of what each advance class might involve and if you like it (Consular gains a mix of spells and melee abilities. Smuggler gets ranged gun attacks, grenades and close-combat abilities etc.)
Having played the game in the beta i honestly can not condone buying it based on the experiance i had and to me personaly it isnt worth the sub cost, but these are just personal reasons, i will say this it is by no means a bad game and if you want a "wow in space" then its pretty much the definative game for you.
A few quick points that anoyed me and ultimatly led to the decision of not buying, the dialog while nice is to my knowledge unskippable, which can be a right imbuggerance when you've just cleared an area to interact and then all the mobs respawn during the cut-scene. The combat of the game is completly lackluster its hot-key like wow but cooldowns and resource management are almost non existant so its basicly just a button spamming fest. The quests are extremely boring the actual dialog options such as betraying your client etc are far more interesting than the "game" part of questing which is always go to one end of the map kill/collect/destroy and return. The game world is hub based planets so exploration is limited to a pretty small area big enough for the quests but not much else. The elite zones, it is on one hand nice to have a more challenging outdoor area but its also irksome when you have to wait for someone else to come along and help, that could be easily fixed by playing with your friends or guildmates though.
I'll state this again its not a bad game its just not for me personaly, its too much like world of warcraft and i got bored with that years ago, it's gonna take more than fancy voice acting and a personalised character story to make the game fun for me.
A few quick points that anoyed me and ultimatly led to the decision of not buying, the dialog while nice is to my knowledge unskippable, which can be a right imbuggerance when you've just cleared an area to interact and then all the mobs respawn during the cut-scene. The combat of the game is completly lackluster its hot-key like wow but cooldowns and resource management are almost non existant so its basicly just a button spamming fest. The quests are extremely boring the actual dialog options such as betraying your client etc are far more interesting than the "game" part of questing which is always go to one end of the map kill/collect/destroy and return. The game world is hub based planets so exploration is limited to a pretty small area big enough for the quests but not much else. The elite zones, it is on one hand nice to have a more challenging outdoor area but its also irksome when you have to wait for someone else to come along and help, that could be easily fixed by playing with your friends or guildmates though.
I'll state this again its not a bad game its just not for me personaly, its too much like world of warcraft and i got bored with that years ago, it's gonna take more than fancy voice acting and a personalised character story to make the game fun for me.
You can hammer the Spacebar to skip through each dialogue lines. Or press Esc to exit completely (but you have to re-engage the npc/object again)Seishisha said:
It is like this in the starter zone and early stages of your advance class. The starter zone gives you a lot of different abilities to play with while you workout what you want to advance class as. Ability depth comes later when you specc for procs/gain certain abilities. I admit I wanted to reroll my Jedi Shadow in till I got the talents that gave me procs that kept me on my toes.
This will always be the staple code for MMOs. It's the same for pretty much every single player game as well.
It's something you have to overlook. I doubt many people would want to play a Sandbox MMO where there's great expanses of nothingness with repeated elements scattered around to hide the fact it's a desolate wasteland. At least with this approach, the game play experience is more intense and interesting. If I wanted to explore a big outdoor world I'd walk outside IRL
Or asking in general chat if someone wants to come along. Sadly this is an MMO. They do have to shoe-horn in multiplayer elements somewhere.
Perhaps MMOs are just dead to you now.
I personally find the way in which quest are given to you distract me enough from the shallow format of gaming in general. It helps that I enjoy the game mechanics behind my class.
Thanks for the reply/quotes i honestly wasnt expecting or particularly asking for it.
Didnt realise space bar skipped dialog, i honestly didnt play long enough to get much into the later levels of gameplay so the combat i experianced was pretty crap but if it gets better than hey atleast thats somthing, i can think of plenty of examples where questing in singleplayer games is different or better but yeah i do understand its a pretty standard format for mmo's, as for the exploration aspect you said not many people would want a sandbox, world of warcraft comes to mind, its a big more or less seamless world and is kind of sandboxy when you consider you can go traveling to different areas just to look at them as opposed to purely questing because its the correct level range, i think perhaps you'd missunderstood what i was getting at with the elite zones thing which to fair i didnt realy express well in the first place and im somwhat hard pressed todo so now i just dislike having to wait around for others or being forced into a group situation just to progress the story which as i breifly touched on i found far more interesting than the gameplay. Finaly i wouldnt say mmo's are dead to me im actualy realy looking forward to guildwars 2 admitatly though because it looks to be a departure from the current design models for mmo's.
Didnt realise space bar skipped dialog, i honestly didnt play long enough to get much into the later levels of gameplay so the combat i experianced was pretty crap but if it gets better than hey atleast thats somthing, i can think of plenty of examples where questing in singleplayer games is different or better but yeah i do understand its a pretty standard format for mmo's, as for the exploration aspect you said not many people would want a sandbox, world of warcraft comes to mind, its a big more or less seamless world and is kind of sandboxy when you consider you can go traveling to different areas just to look at them as opposed to purely questing because its the correct level range, i think perhaps you'd missunderstood what i was getting at with the elite zones thing which to fair i didnt realy express well in the first place and im somwhat hard pressed todo so now i just dislike having to wait around for others or being forced into a group situation just to progress the story which as i breifly touched on i found far more interesting than the gameplay. Finaly i wouldnt say mmo's are dead to me im actualy realy looking forward to guildwars 2 admitatly though because it looks to be a departure from the current design models for mmo's.
I'm kind of intrigued by TOR, but I'm not sure my computer's up to it, so I'll probably pass. I never did get into WoW, though I played FFXI almost nonstop for a month or two when it was new for the PS2.
All the heroic areas I have been to are not important to the main story of the planet. They're more sub-stories. They add depth to the world and that's it. You can happily ignore them from a story and progress-your-character point of view. I now see them as an optional side thing. Not like in WoW where I'd get distraught if I was unable to complete *all* the quests in the zone I'm in. Ultimately if you feel like you're missing out on story by not being able to do the Heroic quests, look on a TOR wiki or something.Seishisha said:
WoW used to be sandbox-like. It had pointless areas. Now it's utterly streamlined. There is very little wasted space.
Perhaps we have two different ideas to 'exploration'.
It's true that in Starwars you visit worlds instead of simply zones within a world. It must be frustrating only being able to see one slice of the planet. It's been like this in all Bioware games. You could criticise this in Mass Effect. Who says that there won't be additional content in the future expanding each of the planets?
If you want your exploration fix, then try hunting down these objects that exist in every world that buff your stats forever.
In my opinion The old republic is the best hot key based MMORPG to date and this one actually has RP in it outside of roleplayers in game. You can play it as a single player or as an MMO or as a hybrid of the two. The only real reason I can think of not to play it is if you dont like hot key based gamessoes757 said:
You also get eight, yes eight, seperate stories in the game. One for each of the classes. I think its safe to say there are hundreds of hours worth of bioware style story in the game. If you like that kind of storytelling then why are you still reading this? Go play it.
Its not a perfect game but as I said before the flaws Ive seen are like looking at specks of dust on a Lamborghini. As and MMO and even as a single player game TOR is excellent and I can not give enough praise to it. Go play it, enjoy it, and love it forever