Poll: Starwars: the old republic! zero story spoilers, please.

[Rawne1980]

I've been in beta for some time now (and still am) and pre ordered it the first chance I got.

I see people complain about lag and stutter but have had none (*hugs his machine*). The best one I heard was someone saying, quite seriously, and I quote "how can I get lag on this game when I can run WoW on ultra", to which I giggled.

I'm not going to hail it as the second coming of MMO's because, when all said and done, it's a fantastic RPG but only a lack lustre MMO. It is the RPG part that i'm buying it for though. I have loved the story lines so far (maybe Trooper could do with a bit of work, it's not the best) and i'm already in a guild with decent folks all set to be ported into the game when it goes live.

 

[The Lugz]

See you say that... but you have never encountered a cloaky T3 or an interdictor... or if you stay far away from your target, my 8 gunned sniper maelstrom would like to have a chat with you.

i'm sure it would, i quit after i got my a@@ handed to me by three player pirates on my first uninsured battleship that got raped in two seconds flat by their missile boat, even when i had the highest end rolled tungsten money could buy and shields second to none in my ship

my problem was simply turret drop, i simply couldn't hit them at range and the scrambler had shield transfer missiles were owning far too-much face
and obviously they had major warp scrambler so i couldn't do jack about it
i wouldn't have minded, but just one of them could have killed me handily in seconds despite all my work ( several months to get a decent bs and skills as you well know. )

if i had infinite patience i'd go back to eve, it's a waiting man's game after all..

when all said and done, it's a fantastic RPG but only a lack lustre MMO. It is the RPG part that i'm buying it for though. I have loved the story lines so far

yah, i totally agree on that one but that's the thing isnt it they have to build that universe and the best way is with feedback i guess and fantastic rpg has to be the most solid foundation to place the building blocks on i cant think of another mmo that's had the sheer following and advantages that starwars may well not be the "second coming" but it'a a seriously good coat of turtle wax on a genre that exists mostly on it's polish imo!
if they can keep content at the same quality for a few years, i'll spend a few years in there no doubt!

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

Pre-Ordered Collectors Editor, I'm going all out. I just hope they don't screw us like SOE did in SWG. We shall see I am excited. I do with there was more group content and larger groups. But perhaps they will add that in the future.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

what i'm wondering is what is the escapist's opinion on starwars, do you even have one?

I loves me some Star Wars. I can't wait to watch the 3D remakes of the Saga on the cusp of release and, when I'm done in the theaters, I still have VHS copies of the unaltered original trilogy (I take that back...they're the mid-90's re-releases so Palpatine looks like Palpatine in episode IV and, Star Wars is called A New Hope)

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was my first Bioware RPG and the sequel provided a great RPG fix since the Xbox had relatively few anyway. KotOR is the reason I started reading books by Drew Karpyshyn and, also jumping off point for my short lived obsession with the ancient Sith Lords.

My problem is that I hate MMOs. I got into WoW for about a month before giving it up for Thousand Year Door (not a typo, I got a gamecube back in 2010 and that particular game in 2011). My thing with MMOs is a mix between the subscription fees and the fact that I can't stand playing with people who aren't in the same room as I am. WoW was alright for the first month but once it said I can either give them money or, be doomed to wander around with a level 20 Tauren for the rest of my life, I chose to go back to Fallout 3, which I bought on day one and started over from scratch as recently as 2 weeks ago.

I'm still holding out hope for a third Knights of the Old Republic. I would also love to see a new Battlefront and/or Republic Commando. Hell, Rouge Squadron is about due for another title too, isn't it? There's plenty of single-player Star Wars titles still out that I haven't completed...which reminds me, I've been neglecting Jedi Outcast...Tootles!

 

[Gamblerjoe]

I preordered a while ago. Im a in a guild with people I met playing DDO. Our guild has one ally and 2 adversaries. All 4 guilds are ready to go and will be active upon launch.

I can't wait for this game. They do the story so well. Rather than make you pick up a bunch of quests which will inevitably result in you ignoring the flavor text, they give you conversations like other Bioware games. They are interactive and interesting so they don't just boor you while you wait to get back to the killing.

The technical issues are probably being handled in the latest build. The current build is old, but it is sufficient for stress testing the servers and ticket system. Other than that their main goal is to balance loot tables and class specs. The latest build is probably being tested by paid game testers where Im sure they are working out the last of the kinks.

 

[Keava]

Okay. I tested it, and I'm really unimpressed. For a game so close to release there was plenty of small but annoying bugs. The UI is a mess and glitches constantly, plenty of geometry glitches, bugged conversations, bugged voice overs, companion voices bugging out making You hear voices of companions You don't even have... Sure those are small things, easy to fix, but the early access starts on 15. By now those should be ironed out.

Second thing is the combat. It's unresponsive, delayed, lacking the flow. It doesn't feel starwarsy at all. When You think about lightsaber fight You think about a blade-dance, fluid movements, plenty of acrobatic motions, in ToR it's just whack, whack, whack. No active dodge/block makes it dull visually.
Overall quality of animations is below expectations as well, they feel stiff, rigid and un realistic most of the time.

Third thing - Locations. Empty, lifeless and copy pasted, almost like DA2 team was in charge of environments. All cantinas and spaceports look the same, interiors have exactly same layouts no matter where You go, plenty of repetition, there is lack of variation in npcs, on Tatooine i expected plenty of colorfull aliens walking the streets of Mos Ila/Anchorhead... all I've seen was duos of droids and few troops.

Fourth - Character creation feels limited. Pre-sets instead of real sliders, lack of alien races, everything feels humanoid and the visual difference between human and cyborg is so minimal it could be a single race all together. Twi'leks can't even customize how they wear their head-tails, can't have one wrapped around neck, or hanging over the shoulder. The body builds go stupidly thin, normal, huge, obscenely fat. Haircuts are pretty much same for most of races. Way below expectations. Also classes feel very limiting, especially jedi/sith variations with. Not every jedi/sith can use dual sabres or dual-bladed sabre.

Now, all this said I did enjoy my time, thanks to the story. It had the KOTOR-ish feel to it and there is plenty of references to the old classic. There even is a questline focused on Revan. For that alone I will buy it, play through my class story and maybe an alt,but unless they will improve the game mechanics and performance in first months I don't see myself subscribing for long.

Ending points: Time killer till something more interesting comes out. If not fan of BioWare/StarWars wait 6 months for them to fix issues.

 

[The Lugz]

Okay. I tested it, and I'm really unimpressed. For a game so close to release there was plenty of small but annoying bugs. The UI is a mess and glitches constantly, plenty of geometry glitches, bugged conversations, bugged voice overs, companion voices bugging out making You hear voices of companions You don't even have... Sure those are small things, easy to fix, but the early access starts on 15. By now those should be ironed out.

i should point out, this isnt release beta it's just a build they had for stress testing that happens to be compatible with release ( ie, they upgrade you on launch ) and server load we have no way of knowing how old it is and those bugs are really obvious i'm sure they got zapped already

it would be a shockingly poor way to launch if it were anything other, i quite agree!

the locations are pretty lifeless, till you get to a jungle planet or a cityscape planet and go explore the slums and find workers, litter, rubble.. it seems reasonable to me, but the places were waaaaay too big, and underpopulated ( i assume this will come with time, i mean every actor needs a voice, motives.. ect also there will be more players buzzing around )

i felt the character customisation was limited too, one thing i dont like about tor.
now, it's interesting how people always comment on kotor,i couldn't get to grips with kotor at all, in fact i gave up an hour in because of wall of text syndrome
and there was so much dialogue.. so, so soooo much..

and it mattered too-much what i picked so i couldn't even skim read it or ignore it that's why full voice is so attractive for me, if i want to read i'll read a book or a forum, at-least i get either a real conversation, or a top notch imaginative world that way
and even though bioware are good at story they cant best the collected works of tolkien or pratchett for overall depth in a game
( the star-wars expanded universes books might, though. i should read those, someday. )

 

[Nimcha]

The only thing I'm worried about is that a lot of people seemingly have no clue what an MMO is about and are just playing as if it was a singleplayer game. Now on the lower levels there's not much wrong with that and there's probably going to be more than enough players interested in instances and group quests etc.

But I hope the game eases everyone into group play at higher levels. Endgame needs to be impossible to do solo. And needs to be focused on doing it with friends/your guild. I quit WoW because that game went the way of the antisocial Puggers, and I really don't want to see that happen again.

 

[VladG]

Was thinking about grabbing it at launch, but after the beta I have no intention of doing so. WoW clone pure and simple.

 

[tehroc]

SWTOR definitely ruins all previous recent Bioware games for me. Mass Effect 3 will be extremely disappointing if its the usual design of small maps tied together with loading screens.

I've been wanting to play WOW again, but I can't bring myself to actually reinstall a game I played for seven years off and on. New blood is exciting.

I LOVE that there are still group quests in the world. Now if only they took a cue out of EQ2s playbook and have lowbie raids.

 

[Nimcha]

Was thinking about grabbing it at launch, but after the beta I have no intention of doing so. WoW clone pure and simple.

May I ask what your expectations were beforehand?

 

[Blindrooster]

I have some thoughts.

I palyed the beta this weekend, and what shocked me was that I did it ALL SOLO! Seriously, it felt like I was playing one of the old kotor games with new combat animations.

Sure, there were ppl running around in the main cities,but main story areas are blocked and only I can enter them! It's great!

That being said, I could care less now that it's an mmo. The story was very rich, the options were great, and the voice acting was wonderful. This will consume my life for awhile.

 

[Sewer Rat]

Personally, I just don't have the time right now, being in my first semester of college and all. Also, I just really was not that blown away by the idea. The way the game presented itself was like a new installment of the KotOR series, I then tried to imagine playing KotOR with a WoW like HuD with all members of my party beside my character being controlled by other players instead of just a computer... and I didn't really like what I envisioned. I really don't see why they couldn't have simply made this into another Single player KotOR game, apart from of course the obvious "WOW is big, let's try to take advantage of that". It also really does take away from a story for me where you seem to be the be-all-end-all to the solutions of the galaxy, and yet there are about 40,000 other be-all-end-alls running about before you even started playing. This was in the end what drove me away from WoW (that and the grind... oh god the grind...) so personally I would have preferred a new single player game instead of an MMO. Well, of course that and I wouldn't have to pay for it every damn month...

 

[Autumnflame]

If you like bioware games.
and you like mmorpgs
and you like starwars.

it has something for everyone. i like the heavy story focus. and it is not just all mindless killing for no reason.

 

[archvile93]

Not interested even slightly interested. I already have little interest in MMO, which is only further discouraged by having to continue paying for a game I already paid for. I also heard it plays pretty much like WoW, which has, IMO, one of the most boring and uninteractive combat systems I can think of. Having voiced characters doesn't change everything else.

 

[Ashadow700]

I would love, LOVE, to play SWTOR, but... well, Origin.

 

[Arina Love]

after this beta test weekend where i had opportunity to test the game i pre-ordered SWTOR and can't wait to play it.
It's a somewhat fresh look in already known formula of MMORPGs. I really enjoyed voice acting companions and big story focus and it's all incorporated in MMO. MMO part of the game brings nothing new to mmo-table it's same ol dungeons and loot, but this part is made solid and it's fun even if I've seen it all before.
This game is fun and immersive, so i'm investing in it from the start and plan to stay on board for a long time.

 

[Arina Love]

I would love, LOVE, to play SWTOR, but... well, Origin.

you don't need origin to play SWTOR. just buy DVD edition and play without program.

 

[krellen]

Endgame needs to be impossible to do solo. And needs to be focused on doing it with friends/your guild. I quit WoW because that game went the way of the antisocial Puggers, and I really don't want to see that happen again.

Really? I quit WoW because I couldn't do anything unless I had five to twenty "friends" with me (and most of those were only "friends" in the most superficial terms).

 

[Keava]

i should point out, this isnt release beta it's just a build they had for stress testing that happens to be compatible with release ( ie, they upgrade you on launch ) and server load we have no way of knowing how old it is and those bugs are really obvious i'm sure they got zapped already

Sure hope they have more polished build for launch. Some of the glitches I encountered were really the sort i would not expect that late into the beta, especially with fresh memories of how polished Rift was at this stage. Vanishing counter on companion return from mission, portraits/paper doll not displaying properly and suchlike are very obvious stuff.

the locations are pretty lifeless, till you get to a jungle planet or a cityscape planet and go explore the slums and find workers, litter, rubble.. it seems reasonable to me, but the places were waaaaay too big, and underpopulated ( i assume this will come with time, i mean every actor needs a voice, motives.. ect also there will be more players buzzing around )

I leveled both faction to the point where I get a starship and then went on exploring, landing on every planet. All starting locations on every planet felt empty and dull. It's just too many humanoid characters. If You look at the scene from SW:New Hope when Luke and Obi reach Mos Eisly and compare it to what ToR shows it really is apparent how little variation in NPCs there is.

i felt the character customisation was limited too, one thing i dont like about tor.
now, it's interesting how people always comment on kotor,i couldn't get to grips with kotor at all, in fact i gave up an hour in because of wall of text syndrome
and there was so much dialogue.. so, so soooo much..

and it mattered too-much what i picked so i couldn't even skim read it or ignore it that's why full voice is so attractive for me, if i want to read i'll read a book or a forum, at-least i get either a real conversation, or a top notch imaginative world that way
and even though bioware are good at story they cant best the collected works of tolkien or pratchett for overall depth in a game
( the star-wars expanded universes books might, though. i should read those, someday. )

Well I played cRPGs since they were just simplistic text-based adventure games, I played MUDs and one of my favourite cRPGs to date remains Planescape:Torment. Wall of text doesn't scare me as long as it's interesting to read. Sure voiced over quests are nifty and that's the reason I am buying ToR. Thing is, for those who played KOTOR back in the days They will see many similarities and quite a few references here and there so hard to really avoid the mentions, even more so that it is a spiritual continuation.

Endgame needs to be impossible to do solo. And needs to be focused on doing it with friends/your guild. I quit WoW because that game went the way of the antisocial Puggers, and I really don't want to see that happen again.

Really? I quit WoW because I couldn't do anything unless I had five to twenty "friends" with me (and most of those were only "friends" in the most superficial terms).

Maybe You shouldn't play MMOs then? I mean, the core of MMO gameplay is to play in group. To socialize with other people, else why have the Massive Multiplayer part of the game? It's really not that hard to find a guild that suits Your type of play-style and Your playtime. There is always hundreds of casual, relaxed, laid-back guilds that don't requires members to sign up for every raid 7 days a week.

In WoW I was in guild of nearly 80 people, 30 of them I still have as contacts on messengers and we talk regularly, I didn't knew them prior to WoW. Can't see why making actual friends is so hard... oO