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Star Wars: The Old Republic
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I'm pretty sure at this point we are all aware of this game. Its been the largest source of MMO hype since Warhammer Online came out a few years ago. Last weekend was their final beta weekend, and the final game is slated to be released on Dec 20. With SWTOR racking up pre-orders at an alarming rate will STO be able to stay afloat? Or will it make like a straw hut in a tsunami?
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Until then, I played TOR all weekend. It does some things really well. It does some things horribly badly.
Other than the voice acting (excellently done) and the Star Wars setting, it isn't anything you haven't done before in an MMO.
And you run. A lot.
I probably won't subscribe to it for a while, but it was fun. I think they are different enough from each other to both do fine.
Well TOR... I still believe that game is the main reason for STO going f2p.
I have played it that weekend and have prety mixed feelings...
On the one hand.... the story telling is just amazing.
Playing it never felt like playing an mmo. I never had the urge of reching the next level... just to see how the story goes on.
The Atmosphere is awsome.
But that alone would make it as much a challange for STO as Mass Effect.
But... thats it.
It is "standard" in every regard, even AOC had more inovation. WoW with lightsabers.
Classes are 100% cought in their rules, no variation in equipment f.e: A class is depending on spezialisation (wich can not be changed) always the exact same weapon: A Jedi cant switch from 2 lightsabers to a singel one or a dual blade, the smuggler will never use anything but a blaster ect.
Controlls seem sligish and..Costumisation? I didnt expect a second STO in that regard.
But when I played LTRO and AOC I always had the issue of disliking the visuals of the clothing with the best stats. Both games got a fuction to use one one Armors visuals while using another one.
You might thing... after that function was requestet obviously in mulitble MMOs that woked exactly the same way... they would bring that function here from the start?
Nope, they didnt.
And that with at parts REALLY awfull looking equipment (Male Sith inquisitors and Jedi couselors are destined to wear womens clothes... all the time... oh they call it "Robes")
So after all.... before the f2p build reached tribble.... I would have said "sto is still the far superior game". I would have played TOR for the story once, but as a side game and wouldnt have unsuscribet STO even a day for it.
With the upcoming f2p changes I'll switsh to there anyway, not because TOR is better, just becuase STO is going to be unplayable.
The ground combat was really nicely done but I felt like I was a generic character, I was really taken back by how few options to customize my toon there was. I've gotten used to being able to create ANYTHING or darn near it in the Cryptic character creation process. I felt like i looked like every other smuggler in town. It was an eye opener for me because I haven't played many MMO's since coming to STO, i forgot how many option we have as players here. From Ship to Toon we can customize everything in STO...I found that seriously lacking in SWTOR.
There are things they do well in SWTOR, the ground combat was nicely polished but I missed my star ship.
Cheers,
FyreMouse
But SW:ToR rocks, it's sad playing that game and realising just how much content and polish STO is lacking.
I'm laying down my Starfleet issue phaser and donning a lightsabre when Dec 15th hits (got my preorder early access) :-)
its nice to know they get doom threads in a galaxy far far away as well.
sto and tor will both be around for ages.
Nobody said it sucks, just that it isnt that great....
WoW didnt fail either and... well it pittifully isnt that far away from wow.
some people think it sucks. i may have paraphrased the word 'sucks' but their reviews were scathing in how much they did not like it.
i dont find that surprising and they are in the minority but some people hated it.
i wasn't overly impressed
it's fun but it's not worth $15 to me...
i had one repeatable crash (end of first flashpoint, and i wasn't the only one)
a pixel error (there is a bright orange fixed pixel on the screen that never goes away, once you've seen it you can't look away anymore)
and 2 quests that were just broken and could not be finished.
the graphics...
lets just say the graphics will not make me want to buy this game... and STO just looks better.
i did not like that in the whole time i played i did not find a single Helmet (i was on the 2nd planet already and a lvl 15 Bounty Hunter... in 2 days... but no Helmet anywhere, not on me, not on any other Players... that sux, i want my Helmet.... it's raining... my hair gets wet...)
the armor that i had made me look like a clown most of the time...
and every other Bounty Hunter had more or less the same armor pieces that if found myself...
the good about it is the *open world* you constantly run into other players, see them do their thing, sometimes you team up for a quest or two and move on (just because you see that other guy is doing the same thing as you), and i was playing a "Flashpoint" (which is something like a STF maybe?) on level 10 already together with other players... -> feels much more like an MMO
that was a bit more fun than STO's singleplayer missions all the time...
but in the end i would not want to trade.
give me some proper open world planets and a bunch of good voice overs for STO and i'm happy with STO as it is... just... add more content ASAP plz.
but
quest bugs (show stoppers)
no anti aliasing option
at the end of beta does not say quality product to me, but rather rushed development...
this all feels very familiar,
where have i seen this pattern before?
oh right... every other MMO i ever played.
first sell the most expensive Pre Order Retail Box you can justify with an unfinished and unpolished Product, then suck out the Subscription market for one or two years and when the Retail Box is cheaper then the subscription change to F2P.
Not sure it's worth the pricetag....but meh.
I participated in the most recent Beta Testing Weekend, and it was rather terrible. Yes, it is a Beta, but it is a late Beta, and should be more polished.
Getting past all the bugs, and unpolished feel of the game, I have another problem with it. It is World of Warcraft, with a different skin. No, I'm not joking. I used to play World of Warcraft, and ToR screams of being a WoW clone SO MUCH. It feels like I'm playing World of Warcraft, but with Lightsabers.
Now you might say, "But World of Warcraft was successful, why not copy its success?"
Well, that's the problem. I've PLAYED World of Warcraft. I don't need to play it a second time. And I think that many of those folks who think they'll be leaving World of Warcraft for NEW AND EXCITING ADVENTURES in the OLD REPUBLIC are sadly mistaken. They'll find that it feels just like WoW. In the first several hours of the game, I had already done 10+ "Go here, kill these, come back" missions.
It's just... boring to me. Now... STO has had a content drought for a year+ now, but I am holding out some hope that it will recover from this in February, with the new Featured Episodes, and hopefully some Klingon Content, because I sure as hell don't plan on going to ToR, or God forbid, back to WoW.
Ok but (until the point you wrote) not in this thread.
I admit... there is a lot to hate on TOR...
That cant be denied..... It doesnt look much diffrent then its predecessor, Knights of the old republic... and that was 2003...
Also, I dont really like the comic style...
Sounds like you almost played a diffrent game...
I played a lot during the last 2 weekends and beside the very begining (where I had some problems with the windows firewall) and the fact that it often crashes while logging out... I didnt encounter even a singel bug while playing.
Thats actually true, too.
Beside the voiced dialogs there is little to nothing new.
But... I hatet overdone comical elves, a Star Wars setting, even to comical too... is still much more intresting.
Apparently the developers blew their entire budget on voice acting and forgot to make playing it actually fun.
Where's the entertainment in a SW game if you can't strap on an X-Wing and go blow up some TIEs? There have been some spectacular SW flight sims in the past... to not have anything like it in TOR is a big letdown.
In STO I am the Captain. It is my Ship, with MY crew flying through space. True I go places, i kill stuff, i occasionally escort helpless idiots. But my ship, my Captain looks NOTHING like anyone else. I have two entities, a unique Captain a somewhat Unique Ship with a skill set that i can tweak to my playing style and my goals.
i just felt like other than a light saber, and some (admittedly really nifty) force powers...it was just another MMO with a (yes I said it before) a character that looked like the guy next to me....which by the way I found an NPC that looked exactly like my Sith warrior. That is not a problem that i run into in the STO universe.
I may stray to SWTOR because I am a geek and I've just got to scratch that itch, but I know I have a Starship with my name on it waiting for me in Space Dock with my nice comfy chair on the bridge.
Chees,
FyreMouse
Same here...I would say I'm putting down my Romulan disruptor...but then again, that's only a reminder that after almost two years...Cryptic has yet to release a third faction, due to still not having even enough content for the second faction, the Klingons.
Regardless, I and many others are looking forward to Dec 20th, well those of us without the pre-order, for playing a slick game in a well known universe.
I liked it for the voice acting, but polish? I didn't see much in the way of polish.
The world graphics are pretty good, with deep draw distances and lots of detail. Why they did that for the scenery and not the player characters is a bit of a mystery. Everybody looked the same. And the player toon level of detail was pretty plain.
And what is with the emphasis on tight fitting clothes on everybody? I don't need to know if my toon hangs left or right. We're close, but we aren't that close.
And my female sith inquisitor had a badonka-donk butt. I'm not kidding - I could have set drinks down on her butt and used it like a shelf.
I'll take my silly STO female I-Hate-You-Daddy run style over the Sir Mix-A-Lot female TOR toon anyday.
Really, other then the voice acting, wasn't anything to write home about.
I prefer space combat, so I'll be sticking with STO. And I didn't like the lacking character creation of SWTOR, the options were so few compared to STO.
It is nice that your character in SWTOR gets a voice, but it doesn't make it anything beyond what Bioware have already done with Mass Effect and other games they've made.
Also I'm used to STO'S controls now, SWTOR felt awkward.
SWTOR is alright, nothing truly special and it doesn't really offer anything new in many areas, it's just alright.
But I'm more of a Trek fan than Wars, and I enjoy the space combat of STO.
Flying a Galaxy class ship or an Intrepid class is just so much fun.
pros: storylines, voice acting, crafting system(though very similar to doffs)
cons: rail space combat, lack of visual and ability character customization, visual ship customization, probably crew customization...but didnt get that far
overall: not worth the money per month, the initial buy is worth the storyline...just like the kotors
The city planets seem quite enclosed but planets like Taris are quite open, once you realize you're walking through the ruined foundations of a city planet.
And lastly the combat mechanics and basic key bindings were very similar to WoW, apart from that the game doesn't really have much in common with WoW.
As to the quest of if the game is worth the $15 per month, that will depend on Bioware's ability to deliver content. I don't expect Bioware to pull a "Cryptic". I plan on buying a 6 month sub to TOR and enjoy every moment I can.
You aren't even flying your ship to be exact. you maneuver the ship....but it's locked on a set course and speed. (rail shooter)
You can aim pretty much anywhere on the screen....It does all the hard parts for ya...There's not even any leading the target...You just put the crosshairs over the target and shoot. It's rather mediocre and kinda disappointing that they went that route.
Here's a video of an early escort mission
I'm glad we aren't playing "your" STO then. I play video games for fun, not to have a second job.
And again, TOR was nice but the characters are too generic and its nothing groundbreaking. I'm pretty sure if any other MMO publisher had 3 years to turn out a game, it'd be full of storyline missions as well.
The only part of the graphics that impressed me was the detail of the environments. The characters themselves aren't any better than they were in KOTOR II - except almost every NPC seems to have a facial scar.
And the other guy above who is raving about the space combat - you can pick up Lego Star Wars and get the EXACT same space combat experience. Oh, correction - Lego Star Wars lets me flip and roll my space ship, TOR doesn't.
The thing with "my" STO is you wouldn't "have" to do anything. You'd be free to amble through the galaxy doing whatever you wanted, whether that be Starfleet missions, Maquis missions, Klingon missions, whatever. Don't feel that because the option to spend 24 hours a day mining tritanium and dilithium is there that you, personally, have to do it. Plenty of other players will supply you with the materials you need to build consoles and ships through the exchange.
That might be workable then, but in general the learning curve in Eve is brutal. STO might go a little too far in the other direction, but there is something to be said for attracting the largest possible playerbase.
My initial impression was that the gameplay is very generic as MMOs go, but also very solid and enjoyable. I'm all for innovation, but why fix what isn't broken in a proven formula? The visuals, other than map design did not impress me, mostly because of very low resolution textures, particularly on the character models... Where the game really shined above and beyond for me was the story, and it's presentation, which immediately offered a far more immersive experience than any other MMO I've played before. Nothing comes close to it in this department.
I had plenty of time to invest this past weekend, with a bad cold and a 4 day weekend on my hands. I progressed much further this time around, and participated in many team missions, including the Flashpoint: Black Talon which is probably the most enjoyable and well crafted "dungeon" I have ever experienced. It was so good that I decided to drop everything and repeat it around 10 times back to back in an effort to get some shiny gear. After 7.5 runs, and some terrible luck with players who obviously had no idea how to use a Need or Greed loot system, I finally got a rare dark robe and lightsaber. This is where Bioware (And Cryptic, while we're at it...) should take notes from Trion. I LOVE Rift's Need or Greed loot system, as it basically disables the 'Need' button for ANY player who can't actually USE the dropped item. This should be standard in any MMO. Period. Repeatedly losing rolls on shiny lightsabers to Imperial Agents and Bounty Hunters is beyond frustrating.
Moving on, after outleveling the story content available to me by a longshot via this excellent Flashpoint, I pressed on to more impressive locales and immersive stories, eventually leading to my own ship. I loved everything about this feature, except for the space combat. Not suprisingly, it's very "Meh..." and reminded me of playing the Rebel Assault FMV games so many years ago. It is a nice, arcadey diversion for a change of pace, but there is very little depth here and I dont see myself pouring much time into it whatsoever. The worst thing about this is the extremely jerky player ship movement. More Rebel Assault memories arise from that... :rolleyes:
Overrall, I've been very impressed with my testing time, and I eagerly anticipate the headstart next month. I was initially very skeptical about this game, and I didn't plan on diving in, but I can't resist after what I've sampled. Bioware has created a very rich Star Wars experience that will provide me many, many hours of enthralling entertainment in a full fledged MMO that doesn't sacrifice the presentation that could previously only be found in single player games.
Pros: Great stories and stellar presentation that really make you feel like you are part of a genuine Star Wars adventure. Excellent voiceovers & conversations that actually effect outcomes. Time tested and proven gameplay formula. Good Teamplay. Interesting classes and lots of choices within each offering. Beautiful, and plentiful maps that feel 'natural' and offer alot to explore (which yields rewards, too).
Cons: Very bland textures on character models. Not innovative at all when it comes to core gameplay mechanics. Lackluster rail shooter space combat could/should have been left out in favor of a more substantial addition post launch.
You can respec, unless you are referring to the advanced class choice. A character capable of dual wielding can ALWAYS switch from 2 weapons to one, but why would you sacrifice the damage?
Isn't the problem with Eve that due to it's skill learning system that it's impossible for new players to get an even footing with veterans? Mission-based experience points and a level cap would solve that. But I'd have no objection to any myriad of different ship load-outs for mining, hauling, combat (PvE and PvP), even racing perhaps?
The challenge is making it accessible so that anyone can pick up and play, but also complicated enough that the hardcore find a reason to stay. Different spheres of gameplay (combat, exploration, diplomacy, mining - all integral parts of Star Trek's universe really) should not necessarily have any impact on each others' levels of intricacy.