Star Wars: The Old Republic

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Delsana

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BloatedGuppy said:
Delsana said:
Innovative story and sense of heroic gameplay is what is selling SWTOR.
Whoa whoa whoa, whoa cowboy. Whoa. Innovative HOW?

This is not innovative. This is Bioware applying their extremely time tested formula that they've been aping since KOTOR to a MMO. Katamari Damacy was innovative. Minecraft was innovative. The original Guitar Hero was innovative. This is as safe as safe gets.

That's not a slam on the game, I like what they've done. But INNOVATIVE? GTFO.
Putting an actual focus on story and making that the premise of PvE and getting people attached to it in a way that other MMO's have not, as well as making every line of 2 million total put into voice acting, as well as numerous other factors relating to such story... is the definition of "innovation" when it comes to an MMO.

TOR is putting the RPG back in MMOrpg.
 

Blondi3

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I have been stupid excited about TOR for years. I still didn't bother with this weekend. I'm waiting for launch and that's it. I have my CE preorder and I'm happy. Skyrim and Saints Row 3 have been keeping me MORE than occupied.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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I played an earlier round of Beta but didn't have time for this one.

My basic opinion is that TOR is a good game, but not an overwhelmingly great one. When I played it, it felt extremely linear and like there wasn't all that much of a world to explore, I mean you could move around and such, but it was pretty much "follow the main plot, and deviate for these specific sidequests". It was a persistant world, but pretty much I felt sort of like I was in a single player game, with a chat client attached, where I could team up with some other people from time to time for specific challenges.

While the technology is better, I think as an MMO it's inferior to either Star Wars Galaxies or World Of Warcraft in terms of things to do. You don't have a lot of the activities and focus on "do it yourself" exploration of SWG, and really in WoW you get this impression of being in a huge, epic world, even right from the beginning when you walk into say Elwynn Forest and can like go plowing off in wierd directions killing stuff and have a substantial amount of space. On say Ord Mantell, which is the equivilent of say an Elwynn forest it's kind of like walking out of your intro cinematic, following a path to a little shoot out area, following another path to a quest hub, following a path to the next shoot out area, etc... Arriving on Corsucant it's more of the same where you say go get your advanced class, follow the path... WoW did a much better job of concealing this. That said I think ToR is better for the casual crowd. If this changes, I have not gotten to a point where it had so I have to judge it by what I've seen.

This is not to say that it's a bad game, just that it's not an incredible one. It will hopefully fill my needs for a while because admittedly I've kind of exhausted the games I personally felt were better.

I anticipate that the game might suffer some of the same problems as DC Universe Online, albiet it will probably take longer to get to the same point. That is to say that it will be awesome the first time you do a storyline, but become reperitive other than the differant storylines as you play other characters due to shared side quests. Once people have played through the areas a couple of times with slight variations (largely amounting to which "plot doors" you walk through... you'll see what I mean when you play) I expect they are going to lose interest... unless the endgame really rocks, and really I haven't seen a while lot of solid information about that other than advertisements (which are going to make anything they want to sell sound awesome). The lack of hard information on the most important part of the game is a bit disturbing at this late date. It's sort of like DCUO where a big question from the beginning is "what is going to want to keep me playing my maxxed character, and how is the endgame going to encourage me to grind it" that was glossed over, and it turned out to be a catasrophic weakness especially in a game with only 30 levels and the game seems like it deserves a speed record for transition to FTP. I've pre-ordered and paid off my TOR collector's edition, and will play it, but right now I am expecting the worst here while hoping for the best.
 

2xDouble

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I'll say the same things I've said in every other SW:TOR thread: it looks like a fun game, I'd rather it was KotOR 3, it hasn't caught my interest anywhere near the level that Guild Wars 2 has and the reviews/previews I've seen of it have yet to change that opinion.

I have no intention to buy this game, but I got my hands on a free beta key so... we'll see how that goes.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Jove said:
Delsana said:
Jove said:
Delsana said:
Jove said:
Delsana said:
Jove said:
Pre ordered the collectors edition months ago and can't wait...but Skyrim is holding all my SWTOR hype away for the moment. I loved the beta, but now I'm just going to play Skyrim until it comes out.

Damn I feel so damn lucky. I went from Dark Souls...Skyrim...Now SWTOR. Im the RPG King! XD
I'm not sure Dark Souls can be called an RPG... doing that would open a bag of worms that could start labeling almost everything as "RPG" just because of class mechanics... Hello RPG Modern Warfare.

Did you do Deus Ex? That's a type of RPG.

---

No Thanksgiving beta or early access for you?
I was going to take your post seriously until I saw you calling Dark Souls not an RPG and calling human revolution one. There both RPGs but its laughable that Dark Souls is as RPG as you can get when human revolution is basically gears of war 3 meets splinter cell. But both are great games never the less.

I got the email for thanksgiving beta access but again, won't do it because of Skyrim. But I will do early access :D
I still disagree that Dark Souls is an RPG, all it has is a basic RPG and class mechanic system, which would allow far too many things to be called RPG's if it was labeled one as well. As for Deus Ex, its current iteration is definitely RPG-style if you look at it.
If I look at it? Ok let me try.



What...in the blue hell kind of rebuttal is that?! If I look at Deus Ex Human Revolution, it's definitly an RPG...but Dark Souls is not an RPG because it has ALL the RPG mechanics in it, therefore, it is not an RPG...Look I'm not usually this type of guy but because you have the worst defense for your argument I have ever seen...

YOU DON'T MAKE ANY SENSE! DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOES...NOT...COMPUTE!
It wasn't a defense. I tend to learn things, find they're true, and then make the poor assumption that other people found that out too. So here it is:

In game design, Dark Souls is not an RPG, it fits the characteristics of another genre far too much, in essence it can have mechanics but if the style focuses on another thing, then it is that instead. Kind of like an override. Dark Souls is an adventure. You could call it a thriller adventure to be more accurate. In all honesty though, you could make an argument that it is an entirely different genre.
Wow...If Escapist allowed posters to have sigs...this would be it. And I don't mean that in a good way. And what's worse here is I can't even be mad because you seem like a nice poster here...your head is just not in the right place :(.

What a shame. (Dark Souls not an RPG...hehe can't wait to hear the laughs from people at work haha).
It's not an RPG, the guy your laughing at is right, though he's wrong about the specifics. Deus-Ex is not an RPG either. The term is heavily mis-used, largely for marketing purposes.

What makes an RPG an RPG has to do with the prescence of statistics and how they determine success or failur rather than the abillities of the player. In Dark Souls or Deus Ex there are stats, but they largely just make things easier with the primary determining factor being the skill of the player rather than that of the character. People are beating "Dark Souls" and "Demons Souls" using nothing but unleveled characters with defauly equipment through their reflexs and mastering the game patterns, people even made let's play type demonstrations of this with Demon's Souls.

To be an RPG the game has to involve indirect control, and more of an expression of intent. While this does not HAVE to be turn based, that's typically the way it's achieved. Basically saying "my character attacks" and then having the numbers and stats determine the outcome rather than your abillity to directly control the game and determine the outcome by say lining up the sword and swinging it yourself with the game's controls.

A lot of people like to argue the definition of "role playing" and what it means to "play a role" but in doing so miss the point entirely since by definition nearly everything would be an RPG. You have to understand where the term came from to put it into context.

RPGs are the offspring of wargames, where people in colleges and such would use statistics and dice (to represent chance) to refight historical battles as a learning exercise. This lead to people using those mechanics to engage in battles of their own creation... say changing the details of the Battle of Waterloo to see how things might have turned out differant with differant positioning or unit compositions, to total fantasy with people coming up with systems for armies from their favoriate fantasy novels so you could say have knights fighting orcs.

As time went on the scale of such combat became reduced for some people and instead of dealing with massive armies (which was expensive and time consuming) they worked on skirmishes with smaller groups of troops, which lead an an increased focus on individual equipment. From that sprung the idea of people simulating personal combat purely through statistics... then fantasy got involved to create enviroments for those battles to take place in.

The first RPG games were just simulations by hardcore nerds who thought it was awesome to be able to mathematically simulate a sword fight. Just the fact that they could do this was the thrill. Things like storylines and explanations as to why the fights were taking place, the creatin of fantasy worlds for these adventures, treasure and the enhancement of gear, these were all added in later.

The term "Role playing" comes to specify the players controlling a single unit or role, as opposed to a unit of troops or army.

At any rate, these things became more story based and complicated, and it's inevitable that things moved from paper and pencils into computers that could handle the work, especially given the brainiacs that were doing this originally were also among the first serious computer geeks.

Truthfully despite the label there are very few RPGs made due to the way the gaming market has changed and gone casual. Your typical player nowadays wants to do something himself as opposed to deal with things through an intentional disconnect. The differance between say playing football yourself, and just making the plays for other people and hoping they can pull it off.

Your typical "Final Fantasy" game is an RPG, not because of the story, but because you tell a character "attack" and then the computer makes them attack and handles all the work, the success or failure, and the degree of that success or failure. You did nothing but issue the command. In Demon's Souls for example you don't tell your character to dodge an attack or swing his sword, you actually do these things with the controls themselves, while the stats in the game might change how much damage your doing (or taking) they are secondary and don't determine the actions or gameplay on a fundemental level.

See, the idea in an RPG is that a clumsy person could take on the role of a super-agile and coordinated swashbuckler, and he would do things just by me saying I want him to try and do them. In comparison in say Deus-Ex, or Demon's Souls, how agile my stats or implants say my character is, if I don't fiddle the controls just right my character is going to plummet off a catwalk because it's about me, and the game doesn't care how agile my character is. In an RPG I'd select the option and the computer would tell me if my character made it, or I'd tell the GM and he'd say ask me what my character's agility score was and whether or not it was high enough. In a PNP RPG dice might be involved to represent the role of chance, such as whether there is a gust of wind or a draft right as my character is crossing, the catwalk snaps, or any one of a million things that could result in some degree of failure. In a PNP RPG the higher the character's stats the less likely something would go wrong (or if something fir for flavor that he would deal with it), it's the GM's embellishment that makes these games live in describing the success or failure, and why and trying to make it exciting. In many cases if you succeed or something like that the GM would tell you something happened, but you made it anyway if you made the roll. :)
 

Delsana

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Jove said:
Delsana said:
Jove said:
Delsana said:
Jove said:
Delsana said:
Jove said:
Pre ordered the collectors edition months ago and can't wait...but Skyrim is holding all my SWTOR hype away for the moment. I loved the beta, but now I'm just going to play Skyrim until it comes out.

Damn I feel so damn lucky. I went from Dark Souls...Skyrim...Now SWTOR. Im the RPG King! XD
I'm not sure Dark Souls can be called an RPG... doing that would open a bag of worms that could start labeling almost everything as "RPG" just because of class mechanics... Hello RPG Modern Warfare.

Did you do Deus Ex? That's a type of RPG.

---

No Thanksgiving beta or early access for you?
I was going to take your post seriously until I saw you calling Dark Souls not an RPG and calling human revolution one. There both RPGs but its laughable that Dark Souls is as RPG as you can get when human revolution is basically gears of war 3 meets splinter cell. But both are great games never the less.

I got the email for thanksgiving beta access but again, won't do it because of Skyrim. But I will do early access :D
I still disagree that Dark Souls is an RPG, all it has is a basic RPG and class mechanic system, which would allow far too many things to be called RPG's if it was labeled one as well. As for Deus Ex, its current iteration is definitely RPG-style if you look at it.
If I look at it? Ok let me try.



What...in the blue hell kind of rebuttal is that?! If I look at Deus Ex Human Revolution, it's definitly an RPG...but Dark Souls is not an RPG because it has ALL the RPG mechanics in it, therefore, it is not an RPG...Look I'm not usually this type of guy but because you have the worst defense for your argument I have ever seen...

YOU DON'T MAKE ANY SENSE! DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOES...NOT...COMPUTE!
It wasn't a defense. I tend to learn things, find they're true, and then make the poor assumption that other people found that out too. So here it is:

In game design, Dark Souls is not an RPG, it fits the characteristics of another genre far too much, in essence it can have mechanics but if the style focuses on another thing, then it is that instead. Kind of like an override. Dark Souls is an adventure. You could call it a thriller adventure to be more accurate. In all honesty though, you could make an argument that it is an entirely different genre.
Wow...If Escapist allowed posters to have sigs...this would be it. And I don't mean that in a good way. And what's worse here is I can't even be mad because you seem like a nice poster here...your head is just not in the right place :(.

What a shame. (Dark Souls not an RPG...hehe can't wait to hear the laughs from people at work haha).
That's fine, but in game design universities such as Full Sail, DigiPen and the University of Advancing Technology... it isn't considered one. So honestly, it doesn't matter what you consider it, the people who make games decide that, not you... and that's what they teach.

I may seem nice, but you're the one who wants to laugh at me.
 

Woodsey

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Aug 9, 2009
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viranimus said:
Bah, this is making me mad. Ive yet to get access to try the game yet. Even with preorders. Feeling sort of punished with preordering when it seems beta keys are fairly free flowing right now. Oh well, not like I have time to play anyway.
Beta access isn't determined by you pre-ordering. If you signed up for beta before 11/11/11, you should be in the next beta test. If you pre-ordered and redeemed your Early Access code, you will be put into Early Access at some point during the 5-day period before the game officially launches. Early Access is the full game, not a beta.
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
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Jove said:
Therumancer said:
Jove said:
Delsana said:
Jove said:
Delsana said:
Jove said:
Delsana said:
Jove said:
Pre ordered the collectors edition months ago and can't wait...but Skyrim is holding all my SWTOR hype away for the moment. I loved the beta, but now I'm just going to play Skyrim until it comes out.

Damn I feel so damn lucky. I went from Dark Souls...Skyrim...Now SWTOR. Im the RPG King! XD
I'm not sure Dark Souls can be called an RPG... doing that would open a bag of worms that could start labeling almost everything as "RPG" just because of class mechanics... Hello RPG Modern Warfare.

Did you do Deus Ex? That's a type of RPG.

---

No Thanksgiving beta or early access for you?
I was going to take your post seriously until I saw you calling Dark Souls not an RPG and calling human revolution one. There both RPGs but its laughable that Dark Souls is as RPG as you can get when human revolution is basically gears of war 3 meets splinter cell. But both are great games never the less.

I got the email for thanksgiving beta access but again, won't do it because of Skyrim. But I will do early access :D
I still disagree that Dark Souls is an RPG, all it has is a basic RPG and class mechanic system, which would allow far too many things to be called RPG's if it was labeled one as well. As for Deus Ex, its current iteration is definitely RPG-style if you look at it.
If I look at it? Ok let me try.



What...in the blue hell kind of rebuttal is that?! If I look at Deus Ex Human Revolution, it's definitly an RPG...but Dark Souls is not an RPG because it has ALL the RPG mechanics in it, therefore, it is not an RPG...Look I'm not usually this type of guy but because you have the worst defense for your argument I have ever seen...

YOU DON'T MAKE ANY SENSE! DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOES...NOT...COMPUTE!
It wasn't a defense. I tend to learn things, find they're true, and then make the poor assumption that other people found that out too. So here it is:

In game design, Dark Souls is not an RPG, it fits the characteristics of another genre far too much, in essence it can have mechanics but if the style focuses on another thing, then it is that instead. Kind of like an override. Dark Souls is an adventure. You could call it a thriller adventure to be more accurate. In all honesty though, you could make an argument that it is an entirely different genre.
Wow...If Escapist allowed posters to have sigs...this would be it. And I don't mean that in a good way. And what's worse here is I can't even be mad because you seem like a nice poster here...your head is just not in the right place :(.

What a shame. (Dark Souls not an RPG...hehe can't wait to hear the laughs from people at work haha).
It's not an RPG, the guy your laughing at is right, though he's wrong about the specifics. Deus-Ex is not an RPG either. The term is heavily mis-used, largely for marketing purposes.

What makes an RPG an RPG has to do with the prescence of statistics
It's a shame all that huge wall of text you wrote was for nothing because of this line right here. RPG=Role Playing Game. Stats have little to do with an RPG if any at all.
... and your wrong, if you bothered to read that wall of text I explain it. :)

Things like the old "Dragon Magazine" explained the history of RPGS and how they involved in detail which is where I get this from. It's not really a debatable point because it comes directly from the guys who invented them and coined the term, like Gary Gygax who started out as a wargame fanatic and publisher rules for fantasy battle called "Chainmail" before he moved on to doing D&D.

Unless your trying to troll by saying something intentionally ignorant given the time I put in explaining it and why that term is used. :)
 

Fidelias

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Nov 30, 2009
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I played the beta, got up to a level 11 Trooper.

So far, I LOVE the game. I love how dialogue is handled, and the story (for the Trooper, at least) is VERY good. Much better than I expected.

It does copy a lot off of WoW, but I don't care. I loved WoW, I had fun, but I got bored of the quests because I never cared about them. I didn't even read them, just looked at the objectives and went "K, this'll take a day". Also, I got bored of the world. Azeroth is kind of bland and boring, the only interesting parts of the world are the silly stuff Blizzard threw in for laughs.

Anyways, I'm psyched for the upcoming SWTOR beta!
 

Delsana

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Zetion said:
Delsana said:
Ascarus said:
DRes82 said:
I think the fact that there is no innovation in the actual mechanics and gameplay that might hurt it in the long run.
i completely agree. i started rift and decided that although the rifts were interesting the game was still "do this for that" for the most part. i didn't last a month before i bailed.

the only thing that works in TORs advantage in that aspect is the SW universe. people may be willing to forgive quite a bit just to finally play around in that universe provided the rest of the story is compelling.
Innovative story and sense of heroic gameplay is what is selling SWTOR.
Skyrim.

Until I can FUS ROH DAH someone in an MMO, there's no going back.

Never been much of a social gamer myself, and Im too cheap to pay monthly.
Isn't that shout really just the Force Unleashed over-charged force push? Lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWXffD8t45k
 

viranimus

Thread killer
Nov 20, 2009
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Woodsey said:
viranimus said:
Bah, this is making me mad. Ive yet to get access to try the game yet. Even with preorders. Feeling sort of punished with preordering when it seems beta keys are fairly free flowing right now. Oh well, not like I have time to play anyway.
Beta access isn't determined by you pre-ordering. If you signed up for beta before 11/11/11, you should be in the next beta test. If you pre-ordered and redeemed your Early Access code, you will be put into Early Access at some point during the 5-day period before the game officially launches. Early Access is the full game, not a beta.
Fair enough, and if youve done both? I think that is more of my meaning is that Ive done both and it seemed as if anyone who wanted to beta the game has gotten to by now. Sorry, not trying to imply a causality there.
 

Dr. wonderful

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I got a Beta Invite!

I GOT A BETA INVITE! What do I do? How long do I got? AWESOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOME./
 

Woodsey

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viranimus said:
Woodsey said:
viranimus said:
Bah, this is making me mad. Ive yet to get access to try the game yet. Even with preorders. Feeling sort of punished with preordering when it seems beta keys are fairly free flowing right now. Oh well, not like I have time to play anyway.
Beta access isn't determined by you pre-ordering. If you signed up for beta before 11/11/11, you should be in the next beta test. If you pre-ordered and redeemed your Early Access code, you will be put into Early Access at some point during the 5-day period before the game officially launches. Early Access is the full game, not a beta.
Fair enough, and if youve done both? I think that is more of my meaning is that Ive done both and it seemed as if anyone who wanted to beta the game has gotten to by now. Sorry, not trying to imply a causality there.
Then you should have had an email if you signed up for testing before 11/11/11. I got one like an hour ago, make sure to check your spam folder, etc. etc.

If not, look through this: http://www.swtor.com/community/devtracker.php

There's bound to be something recent in relation to you not getting it.
 

Delsana

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Dr. wonderful said:
I got a Beta Invite!

I GOT A BETA INVITE! What do I do? How long do I got? AWESOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOME./
Go to SWTOR.com/tester

log in with your account for that website, see what it says.
 

Delsana

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urprobablyright said:
First thing's first, WoW is dead.

The developers considered WotLK to be the last hurrah, they think Cata is a serious expansion to squeeze the last of the life out of the community, and mists of pandaria will be a lightweight piece of fluff that they can leave free-to-play and let the game die on.

The Old Republic will either resurrect the grand MMO formula - GMs with values, well made zones varied and interesting without being interactive cutscenes (read: WoW quest from WotLK onward) - or it'll be a boring pile of crap like LOTRO. I'm not going to find out; I'm not gonna play it.
That very blatantly ignores what makes TOR a unique experience--their story. To ignore that is just... illogical.
 

viranimus

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Nov 20, 2009
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Woodsey said:
There's bound to be something recent in relation to you not getting it.

LOL

Monday, November 21, 2011 7:08 PM
I didnt even have time to respond and I get it. Damn you Lucas... Making me eat m words while I am still saying them!!