Star Wars: The Old Republic Hands On

[TsunamiWombat]

snip

I see a lot of references to "Separatists" there. Are you really sure about that??

I'm not quite the SW fanboi I used to be in times gone by, but I'm pretty sure the Separatists were the ones that got caned during the creation of the Evil Empire.

I'm also pretty sure that there were only 2 Sith around during that time.

Not to immediately call doom or anything, but I'm not sure the consistency people have got their act together on this one.

<----- Is less hopeful than ever for TOR.

It's a reference to the specific situation on Ord Mantell, not the seperatist movement in the prequels. I can't go into story details probably, but there are seperatists on Ord Mantell and they are the primary antagonists on the prologue planet for the trooper and smuggler.

While this does look like an amazing game, and I would gladly shell out 60 bucks for it, it is not worth paying a monthly subscription. Maybe in time it will be able to stand up to the massive amounts of different content available in wow, but it won't at first, not by a long shot.
In essence, I feel like this would make the greatest single player star wars game ever made, but as an mmo, I don't see it lasting. Right now you only have 4 classes so to speak, from what i have seen the light vs dark side stuff pretty much matches up across the board except for some small unique abilities added in for spice. WoW has 10 fully unique classes, each with multiple play styles and playable races to boot. This offers a huge variation for pvp and raids, and dont get me started on how shallow SWTOR seems with its flashpoints or whatever.

I just, i don't know. 15 bucks is a lot to drop every month i want to even boot the game. WoW hasn't been worth that to me for a long while, and it has from what i can see right now, waaaaay more content to go through. I love rpg's but as an rpg Not an mmo.

WoW has been out and recieving regular content update and polish for years. This game is launching.

 

[2xDouble]

If not for the monthly subscription I would be getting it day one.

This is after playing the beta too.

Can you explain why a monthly sub is a deal breaker? This may not be the case with yourself, but many cringe at the idea of paying a $15 sub, but are quick to drop 60 bucks monthly on a new release, or even 20 bucks on a sale on Steam.

It's not so much the cost, it's the value of the experience. Maybe I don't want to keep paying for the same experience. Maybe I want to shoot Covenant, or run over old ladies, or blow up buildings, or build a tower, or dig a hole to the center of the earth. TOR (or any one game) simply can't contain all experiences at once and maintain a unified, coherent theme. Not even Minecraft has everything.

 

[Daelda]

Right now you only have 4 classes so to speak, from what i have seen the light vs dark side stuff pretty much matches up across the board except for some small unique abilities added in for spice. WoW has 10 fully unique classes, each with multiple play styles and playable races to boot.

Even if you don't count the Empire and Republic Classes separately, you have to look at the Advanced Classes as full Classes...because that's what they are. Each Advanced Class has three Skill Trees (like WoW's Talent Trees) and 2-3 roles that it can fill. You can Spec within your AC, but you can't just swap ACs at will. So sure, WoW has 10 Classes...and TOR has 8 (if you don't count the *almost* mirror Classes on the opposite Faction). It is NOT 4 vs 10.

As to Races - TOR has several playable Races, just like WoW does - and each has its own Racial abilities (although the exact abilities have not been revealed yet, they *have* been confirmed). The Racial abilities in TOR, however, won't affect combat - so you won't have any of the bias of having to play a certain race in order to Min/Max your Character when playing a specific Class.

 

[Nurb]

From what I played, it's really KOTOR 3 with co-op and multiplayer options.

Story takes center stage, which is a good thing, and you can play all the way to max level without ever grouping up if you don't want to. Though you miss out on a lot of the side-content and rare items.

People expecting a wide variety of aliens to play as like in SWG are going to be disappointed. Twi'lek is about as different looking head as you're going to get, the rest look like humans with different colors and facial features, and there's only 4 body types: 12 year old boy, skinny 19 year old, body builder buff, and wide-as-a-tank fatass.

I enjoy my time, but it's obviously nowhere near the depth the hype makes it appear.

Doesn't the group thing get in the way of the conversations?

I'd be pretty miffed if I wanted to ask a character for more story content, only to have one of my colleagues hit the 'just shoot him' option.

There's a "dice roll", highest number pics what animation plays, but whatever YOU pick will still apply to your character. If your buddy wins a roll and kills someone, but you didn't, you'll see his animation play out, but you still get your lightside points.

 

[IndianaJonny]

Well this week the blast doors have been blown open, the tractor beam has been powered down, and we've been exploring the galaxy in the new beta to uncover everything we can learn about the game

Ah, that's a rookie mistake by Bioware there. If they'd only shot the control panel fron inside the room and locked you out, The Escapist could never have gotten away with this delicious review!

 

[thirion1850]

Too bad they're forcing me to be Han Solo in regards to the smuggler. Guess what, I fucking hated Solo. What makes Bioware think then that I need to dress in a jacket, have a Wookie and fly around in a god damn Millennium Falcon?

 

[Buizel91]

Too bad they're forcing me to be Han Solo in regards to the smuggler. Guess what, I fucking hated Solo. What makes Bioware think then that I need to dress in a jacket, have a Wookie and fly around in a god damn Millennium Falcon?

I'm guessing you don't need to wear a jacket, They can probably wear light armour, but i don't actually know, one of the other guys who has played the Beta can probably tell you. Is it only a Wookie? I though there were a few choices of what you get as a companion? You always had a Millennium Falcon rip off in the Kotor Games...The Ebon Hawk...so this is no different

OT: Sounds awesome! I'll probably get it a few month after release, but still, Glad to see an MMO that sounds like it will be able to stand on it's own 2 feet without getting drunk and collapsing...

 

[Nemu]

Personally, I had a lot of fun in the beta. There are some visual...issues I have with it (desktop/interface is too big, et al), but they're cosmetic issues.

Found a new favorite race to play as well.

 

[notimeforlulz]

if I remember the trailer correctly, in this game your level is represented by how many light sabers you can use at the same time, I wanna be the first guy to have 12, I'll throw seven of them, and hack away with the other 5.

 

[Nephilium]

Well, this is already a day one buy for me, but im Australian so im out in the Red Zone and have to order a Copy via amazon since EA decided to to sell it down under :-/. I do have one porblem that i would like to ask anyone who has been on the Beta, what races are there? i havent found a race list anywhere for this game so far. ive seen alot of people complaining that they dont want a game thats going to have over half the population on each side as force users, that honestly doesnt bother me as long as there not all HUMAN force users.

Personly was hoping to play a Barabel Jedi or maybe a Chiss.

 

[Darth_Dude]

if I remember the trailer correctly, in this game your level is represented by how many light sabers you can use at the same time, I wanna be the first guy to have 12, I'll throw seven of them, and hack away with the other 5.

WHAT?! Are you sure you're remembering right? There's no way Bioware would put something so ridiculous into the game.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Storyline and character development - all well and good, but what point is there to it if all the characters will ultimately have experienced the same events and have developed the same backstory? Roleplaying happens because players have different play styles and experiences during their game, not because their characters were shoehorned into the exact same plot.

This is really what I am worried about, as the game might provide a "rpg" experience, it might just kill the immersion for actual multi-player role-playing.

As a role-player myself, I've pretty much resolved this by treating the character I play in the story as completely separate from the one I play in all other situations. I just view the story as another evolution of the "theme park".

More worrying for me are the artificial character limitations that the story creates. Reportedly, you can't play, for example, a Pureblood Sith inquisitor. Why? Because in the inquisitor's story, you start out as a slave, and Purebloods aren't slaves. There are Pureblood inquisitors; you just can't play one. This is a pretty annoying limitation for anyone who actually wants to role-play.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Companions that look at your choices? Bioware have been forgiven of all my issues with them for that alone and is the first thing that has made me interested

Well it's not all that far removed from the way that companions reacted to choices that alter your good evil axis in Baldur's Gate 2 and that was eleven years ago. And there is my obligatory Baldur's Gate comparison I've made for every single Bioware game released since Neverwinter Nights.

 

[babinro]

If not for the monthly subscription I would be getting it day one.

This is after playing the beta too.

Can you explain why a monthly sub is a deal breaker? This may not be the case with yourself, but many cringe at the idea of paying a $15 sub, but are quick to drop 60 bucks monthly on a new release, or even 20 bucks on a sale on Steam.

I feel the same way as tmande2nd so I thought I'd chime in with a response. The Old Republic already costs you as much as a typical game for the first month of ownership. This means that every month after the first that I pay a subscription fee, I'm essentially buying DLC for the product. What do I get for that money? Pretty much nothing new. Not only am I barely rewarded for my monthly subscriptions, but I also have to pay for expansion games on top of that should I want to get some real content additions.

The design of an MMO is such that I cannot experience the entire game in one month and as such owning the game with the intent to beat it with multiple classes means that I'll likely be paying well over $100 when it's all said and done.

Do I spend spend $20.00 here or there on Steam sales and $60.00 to buy new games? Of course. But I'm not willing to sacrifice those games to simply keep playing the same game I already own.

Personally, I would buy into the subscription model if the game and all expansions were entirely free to begin with. I'd admittedly still spend more on the MMO than I would a typical game, but at least I wouldn't feel as though I'm being ripped off as soon as I enter month 2.

 

[Vrach]

Too many half ass good F2P MMO's have started to blur the vision in regards to pay to play titles.

Frankly I could care less about sub fees or not, if the games good, I'll pay, if the game sucks I won't even play it for free...and the games I won't play for free is getting to be a pretty long list.

Agreed 100%. I'm just wondering what it is that blurs the vision of the F2P enthusiasts. I haven't seen one remotely good MMO you could play for free. It's like comparing free titles to triple A ones and saying the triple A industry should be giving games away for free and include a donation button, it's just silly.

If not for the monthly subscription I would be getting it day one.

This is after playing the beta too.

Can you explain why a monthly sub is a deal breaker? This may not be the case with yourself, but many cringe at the idea of paying a $15 sub, but are quick to drop 60 bucks monthly on a new release, or even 20 bucks on a sale on Steam.

Because you could get GW2 and not have to pay for a sub? XD

That's a single game, quite literally the only example on the market (or I should say, coming to the market, at some point). Don't get me wrong, I applaud ArenaNet for GW2, but frankly, we're talking about two completely different games. Yes, some people see GW2 as superior for certain innovations (dynamic content, combat system etc.), but I for one wanna see those innovations in action before I declare the game superior to something that has already been proven to work, because if it doesn't, GW2 won't have anything else to make up for it (no end game raiding outside dynamic content).

I've played dynamic content in Rift and quite frankly, I'm not impressed. It's a great idea, but needs a LOT of work. If GW2 put that work in, great. But I got tired of Rift's dynamic content by level 15 or so. I'm just wondering, how much would it need to be improved for that sort of thing to replace a model I was happy with for years to last quite literally the whole lifespan of the game?

I'll be giving it a shot, GW2 may end up having a billion problems, but the one thing that will stand true is that it'll be great value for the money. But honestly, I'm can't get excited for the game whatever it does. Partly it's the setting, partly it's the fear of bad storytelling (GW's responsible for that and the way they're doing "dialogue" isn't exactly putting my fears to rest), partly I'm concerned over how the combat will feel (I've seen a lot of "innovative" combat systems fall flat on their arses), but mostly I'm just not feeling the game.