I love it.
As a long time player of WoW (which I really also liked for the first 30 or so levels) I can appreciate the inspiration it took as well as the innovations it’s made.
So far (first 15 or so levels) it plays remarkably similar to a single player RPG that you can bring your friends into if you’d like but don’t need to (WoW was this way too). For me, it has some advantages over WoW in that I care about the Star Wars lore, find it more interesting and prefer the appeal of something that is galactic-wide.
The Sith, which I chose to play as, are interesting to say the least. Each Sith Lord is a power unto themselves. Each one behaves as if it is its own “great house” from the Dune universe. I don’t know how the Jedi play but I find the Sith very interesting.
My main gripe with the Sith is that the writing for it is remarkably uneven. Some people writing clearly decided that Sith = Evil which is not how I (or a lot of other people) view them. Strength through passion. Power through Strength. Understanding through Power. That is the Sith code that I’m familiar with. Not “Hate and random cruelty”. I prefer the Sith path to the Jedi paternalism path but that’s for another discussion.
The quests are very standard quests. Fetch this. Press these. Collect those. The difference being the story and the enjoyable gameplay of doing those quests. My biggest complaint about the quests is that there’s a lot of lazy idle animation in there which is, for a title with this kind of budget, unforgiveable. There’s a lot of “crazy” people you’re supposed to dispose of. But their idle animations are as if they’re casually conversing with one another. It makes me feel like Lancelot in The Holy Grail where people are just minding their own business and I jump in “have at thee!” and start slaughtering people in the middle of afternoon tea.
The music is particularly nice, a good blend of traditional Star Wars and some amazing original sound.
The user interface still has a long ways to go. It’s better than WoW was when it launched but that was years ago. It’s not bad but I look forward to modders getting ahold of it.
The graphics are good but I had to use my external GPU tools to turn on additional effects (such as anti-aliasing) because there are no in-game options at this time.
Character choosing. Yea, my character doesn’t look evil. Which is party of the point. The Sith aren’t evil in my view.
The green field tells you that this is an area dedicated to your story. It’s your own personalized instance.
Tired of not being able to play a lot of missions because you have to have a party? No problem. You can get companions as party members who you can even send on various tasks for you and they in turn gain skills that can be quite helpful.
If you get a real party going, you can dismiss your companions to go do something (you can’t have more than 4 people in a party and it doesn’t care whether they’re NPCs or humans).
When you launch the game, you are given a snap shot of where you are in your character’s main story arc as if it were a chapter from the Star Wars saga. The game does a good job making you feel like you are singularly important in the game universe.
If you have any specific questions, ask them here. I play on the Kaas City server as Talax if anyone’s interested.
Perhaps, but then again perhaps Lucas is always thinking in that context anyways. Only he really knows. And then there is the question if Lucas really is the sole master of his own universe. Or is Star Wars now a sort of collective fantasy of hundreds of authors, producers, video game makers etc? To be sure if it isn't now it one day will be, Lucas could die tomorrow and I know they sure won't stop making new Star Wars media to add to the lore.
I didn't want to use Revan since some of his details are a bit more complicated as for part of the time he is a player character. Granted Star Wars has used more or less the Light Side ending as canon, but still there is room for debate. Also it seems to me Revan was evil, if in a calculating instead of maniacal way like Malak was, until he got his rather long spell of amnesia and became a Jedi again. Likewise Anakin went from good to evil to good again, but I wouldn't say he was ever in the grey, not really a good or bad character. They were always either one or the other.
Kreia on the other hand is in the grey the entire time. She was also both a Jedi and a Sith, but her own philosophy by the time that KotorII starts seems to approve of doing bad things for good ends, and perhaps the acknowledgement that their must be some evil in the universe for the greater good. She doesn't like the Jedi council's dogmatic or to use frogboy's term paternalistic approach and for its failure to admit it played a role in Revan's fall, nor does she like the way Sion and Nihilus sustain themselves on the force for no reason other than revenge and their own power. She is hard to judge, and just because we don't have many examples like her doesn't mean she is the only one. After all, there are still hundreds of Star Wars stories that have yet to be written.
Probably all plans for it died with the closure of Pandemic Studios. Might take a while for Lucas Arts to find a studio to trust to do it.
No kidding, and who do we have to thank for the closure of Pandemic Studios? EA, who has done the same thing to every decent studio they have bought out, from Westwood Studios to Maxis. Battlefront III will be great if LucasArts pays attention to great mods like Battlefront Extreme, which is how I thought Battlefront II should have been from the beginning.
Yes EA ruins worlds, that is not in dispute.
I heard some things about SWTOR, but I am not intrigued by it. To me it seems like a cookie-cutter MMORPG, with less features than WoW. And being that WoW has 7 years of additional development past release behind it's belt, I very much doubt they would catch up to it in any short amount of time. I would not play another MMORPG that resembles one that I have played already, especially if it is very linear like I hear SWTOR feels. But if other people enjoy it, then I say enjoy.
Been thinking about trying SW:ToR my-self. Hey chief, how's the PvP? Decent?
SWOTOR is an MMO, but it has the potential to be an RPG. MMO tends to mean WoWish these days and I agree that there are many parts that would benefit from unique ideas. That said, I am having a great time role playing through the awesome Imperial Agent story. It feels like a game and a spy movie. I am hardlined about disregarding as much of the MMO gaming as possible. Stats and gear just don't matter as much as having a good time and immersing yourself in the characters you create. So if you just want to MMO till the cows come home, WoW is a tried and true bore fest. But if you want a story in your game and you like RPG's, give this one a try.
SW:TOR looks interesting.
I'm enjoying the story elements quite a bit as well as a bounty hunter. Not too long ago, I was hunting one of the most notorious crap heads around whose main talent was escaping after being captured. I HATED this guy. Then I had a make a big decision about someone I really, really, really wanted to kill. Interesting things happened as a result. Anyway, they do a really good job of sucking you into the story. Some folks, they really, really, really make you hate. That's a far stretch from go from point A to point B and do X thing.
Same sort of thing with the story telling from when I was playing my sith juggernaut. I followed lord baras and could not wait for a chance to kill him and take over - all at the same time continually feigning allegiance to him. I was really looking for an opportunity to off him or ruin him to better my standing. Anyway, they just do a good job of sucking you into the stories... and I have more stories for each class to try.
SW: TOR is the first MMO that deserves the three letters R and P and G.
Unfortunately WoW also has seven years of butchering the story behind it, and they've really done a good job of that in Cataclysm and the shark-jumping next expansion. At this point for people interested in plot, that game is unplayable.
Bioware seems to have invested in some people who can actually write without a retcon every patch, though.
Blizzard only did RTSs before WOW. Story is not as important in RTSs as in RPGs. Hence Blizzard's "awesome" story work for Starcraft/Warcraft was good in comparison to other RTSs but would flop with RPGs. Bioware, on the other hand, has always done RPGs so they know what they are doing.
Kinda forgetting Diablo aren't you?
You don't think maybe Pandemic and Westwood did themselves in? Mercenaries 2 was alright, but obviously didn't make money. I certainly couldn't recommend it to anyone. They probably knew C&C4 was going to bomb well before it was released, but had already put enough resources into it to keep it going until the end.
Maxis is still going as of Darkspore so not sure why you'd bring them into the conversation.
EA bought out both Westwood and Pandemic before systematically cannibalizing them. Everything after C&C Generals and Zero Hour went downhill, and after Star Wars: Battlefront 2, things started imploding, especially with the abomination that was The Lord of the Rings: Conquest.
While Maxis doesn't really exist, and by the time Spore came out, Maxis was a disaster waiting to happen.
Diablo's story was lame. Very lame. A fourth grader could write that.
I'm sadly not as happy with SW:TOR. I found the game to be alright.. storyline for me.. when forced upon you rather than discovered is not something I am overly fond of. I don't enjoy movies much.. unless they're *really* good. SW:TOR has an OK story for the most part.. the story for the individual classes is good enough. BUT I found myself getting extremely bored of the "filler" planet quests.. the quests meant nothing at all and I didn't care much for their stories. It felt very shallow for me at least. I'd prefer to grind and find audio logs around the place (or just have the ability to talk to npc's to learn about the planet. Being forced to walk to npc's (SO MUCH WALKING IN SW:TOR) and then (eventually skipped through) a shallow dialogue to go kill some monsters just felt really drawn out for me.
Not saying it's a bad game, just isn't the game for me.
Mind you maybe my opinion sucks because I enjoyed games like Mabinogi, FFXI, Ragnarok Online. =P
Note: the story in these games is never forced upon you and is an optional side task to the main game. I really like that! Also, they lack quests that disguise grinding.. and instead just require you to grind. =P
I guess that is why there are all sorts of games out there, something for all of us. I find the story driven quests the main reason I enjoy playing. It is exactly like going to mini movies, and I care about what happens next. The combat is fun, but if that is all there was, I would simply not play. To each his own I guess.
Everyone can't like everything.
QFT
It's funny that I only talk about this game on the Stardock forum because going to the SWOTOR forum means only talking to people who autoskip the cutscenes so they can powerlevel to 50 and start complaining about the lack of high level dungeons.
The thing that really annoys me about the MMO hardcore gamer is the total lack of appreciation of the immersion into the journey of an RPG. The fact that they call it dungeon shows how little they understand the game. Any attempt to point this out to them results my PVP skills being scrutinized. And since I have never done PVP, they are probably right. I mad?
Sounds horrible.
Can you give examples like printscreens from those forumconversations? I believe it will be interesting. People playing an RPG where the developers have put a lot of work into the speech of the NPCs and some players are totally ignoring it!
My first question would be why they aren't playing World of WarCraft instead.
Wasn't making a point of the story. Which by the way I agree with you. More of the point where you said all they did before WoW was RTS, which Diablo clearly isn't.
What about Rock and Roller Racers? Yall forget that awesome game?
True.
How about fixing the bonked AI in Galciv2:ToA please ? OR at least helping out the people fixing it and sharing some of the profit from the game?
huh?
I believe this thread is about the awesome sauce called SWTOR. Galciv2? what was that again? hehehehehe
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