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Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO [Bioware]

Started by HappyTree, September 25, 2011, 12:03:25 AM

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#30
I bought this a couple of weeks back and I thought I'd do a little review.

Story: Good, very much like KOTOR with a unique story for each of the 8 character classes. However, it also shares the weaknesses of the writing in the KOTOR games. When the writers do that Bioware thing of padding out the story with cosmic dream beings and mystical visions, you'll probably find yourself skipping through much of the hokey dialogue, but most of the time things are on the right track with only the occasional abberation. My first character was an Imperial Agent who stayed on the light side, trying to do good within the Empire, and it was quite interesting getting into confrontations with my superiors, some of them sith, who didn't approve of my milksop methods. I felt that my decisions had importance; entirely an illusion, but a convincing one. Sadly though, things were slightly soured by my ending, which had one of the most idiotic, uncalled-for, just-for-the-sake-of-it plot twists I've ever encountered. A real "...biiioooOOWAAAAAARE?" moment.

It must be said that the world of The Old Republic can be a bit of a bleak, depressing place. As an agent, I was presented with opportunities to inflict injury and misery on the undeserving right from the very start. Of course, I always made the "good" decisions, but more often than not you're choosing the lesser of two evils and the outcomes are not particularly happy ones. On the spectrum of SW, it was much closer in tone to some of the darker comics than to the feelgood adventuring of the films. I think the same is likely to be true of all the Imperial class storylines. I recently started a Jedi Knight and that storyline seems to offer something closer to a classic SW experience.

Outside of the class quest lines, there are a ton of side quests and some of the dialogue in them is very dull. There is endless discussion of shield generators, vaccines, components, control consoles, switches, valves, keycards and a lot of other mundane crap that lacks a human touch and a sense of fun. It will absolutely do your head in should you choose to listen but fortunately it can all be skipped through. It's a shame that Bioware's writers treated these quests as negligible and low-priority because in practice people will end up doing them multiple times as they play alts, unlike the class quests which they will only do once. In these side-quests, they quite like to use aliens as questgivers so they can use interchangable clips of alien-language speech with subtitles, rather than recording new VA (they did this in KOTOR too).

Companions: An innovation that I'm very happy about. You can have one NPC companion alongside you whenever you are playing solo or in a group of less than four. You acquire 5 of them as you make your way through the class quests, and the characters are unique to your class. They have two main purposes. The first is to allow players to level in their proper combat role. A problem in WoW was that it was not really viable to level as anything other than a DPS if you were only doing the quests, and LFG levelling was too slow. That problem has now been resolved. If you're playing as a tank, you can have a DPS or healer companion to make up for your weakness in those areas. The second use of companions is in your crew skills (professions). Rather than crafting and gathering yourself, you spend some credits and your companions do it for you, working away in the background. You can have multiple companions working at the same time, all on different professions, returning to you after their timer has ran out with your materials and crafted items. It's an oddly satisying process and a much more generous alternative to the profession system used in WoW.


Voice Acting: The crowning achievement of the game which makes WoW's approach to storytelling look stale and sad. A high standard of voice acting is maintained throughout although there are some exceptions, mostly among the sith Lords and Darths who are even more over-the-top, self-consciously EVIL! and pantomimic than Palpatine himself.

Community: Polite while being economic with their time and staunchly pragmatic. Most have been playing since the game's release, it seems, and they have a jaded, seen-it-all-before attitude to the story content. If you want to watch cutscenes while you're in a group, there's a good chance you will be treated as a nuisance. That said, I've had a lot of practical help from other players. Social points, used to buy novely items and outfits, are awarded for everything you do when grouped up and the game can get quite tough if you're on your own, even outside of heroics, so there are effective incentives bringing people together.

Peeveepee: I've never been much good at PVP so I'm not the best person to judge, but I find it reasonably fun and a lot more noob-friendly than WoW. There's no arena, which is a strange omission but also a good thing for new players because it makes the gear gap much easier to close for a fresh level 50. You can get full Battlemaster gear by grinding warzones for badges which are awarded even when you lose a match, although obviously in lesser amounts. I bought myself a sexy PVP sniper rifle on my first day as a 50, having acquired enough badges while I levelled. There is a tier above Battlemaster, the War Hero gear, which can only be earned in ranked warzones. It's powerful but I don't get the impression that it's as brutal as the top-tier PVP gear in WoW.

The bad news is that there are only four warzones at this point and one of them is a marmite ball-passing game called Huttball. Personally, I hate Huttball, but it cannot be avoided because the game chooses warzones for you. Dueling with friends is probably the best form of PVP the game currently offers, though it brings no material rewards.

Flashpoints (dungeons): Quite impressive, these. For example, the first flashpoint involves boarding a ship, taking over the bridge, making a jump to light speed, then boarding another ship where you have a dramatic showdown with a Jedi. Moral choices are made along the way. It's really much more dynamic and cinematic than the dungeons of WoW.

One complaint would be that there are too many droids with huge health pools. These damage sponges don't offer much in the way of a challenge but they do waste a lot of your time, which I find more than a bit cynical and not very Star Warsy at all. Would Luke have to slash one simple droid over 200 times while Han and Chewie both blast away at it over a period of three minutes, just to take that one droid down? Nope, and the films would have been crap if he did.

A Looking For Group system was recently added for Flashpoints. It's inferior to the one in WoW because it isn't cross-server and the queues can take forever. It can also be a bit buggy at times. But it's good that they put it in and it's the sort of thing that will probably improve over time.

Ops (raids): Available in 8-man and 16-man. I haven't tried any of them yet because the whole process of gearing up at level 50 feels just like I'm playing WoW again, a game I chose to quit over a year ago. Other people seem to enjoy ops well enough but I'm happy playing through my stories for now. Of course, for many if not most players the ops will be the real meat of the game but it all seems suspiciously like World of Star Warcraft to me and I'm not as yet inclined to step back into the world of arguments, ragequits and all the rest of it.

Playable Races: They're crap, frankly. Check it out: http://www.wikiswtor.com/Playable_species

Leave your dreams of being a Rodian or a Trandoshan at the door. You cannot be Greedo to the many Han Solos of the Republic. You can't even be a Wookie, despite the fact that there is a Wookie companion with all the requisite combat animations. The playable races are all very human-like, the most disappointing of them being the cyborgs who are exactly like humans but with little attachments on their faces. It's a similiar deal with the Miraluka race, who are for all intents and purposes humans wearing blindfolds. The Chiss are blue humans, the Mirialan green humans, the Rattataki pale and bald humans, and all of them only exist in the Expanded Universe. The Twi'leks are really the only aliens here with good Star Wars credentials. The differences between the races, such as they are, are purely cosmetic: There are no racial bonuses in this game.

World Design: This aspect of the game produces mixed feelings. There are pockets of impressive design to be found. They are in the canyons of Hoth, the grandeur of Coruscant and the loom of Kaas city. I might have included Nar Shadaa, but behind the tantalizing neon exterior of that city there lie only bland, cut-and-paste corridors. You spend a lot of time in bland corridors in this game. There is altogether too much repetition in the world design. Setpieces and visual variety are mostly provided by the flashpoints.

Each faction has their own fleet which serves as the hub where the auction house and various vendors and trainers are found. Disappointingly, the two fleets are mirror images of each other. The textures and lighting are different, but the structural layout is exactly the same. An efficient but boring design choice.

Planets are sectioned off behind multiple loading screens which can make transitioning a bit of a bore. On the planets, there is no swimming as all rivers are only knee-deep, and there is no flight except in taxis. With the game engine being what it is, it seems certain that we won't ever be seeing flying mounts in SWTOR and that's a real pity because this is supposed to be Star Wars. The ground vehicles, the STAPs and speeders, seem much too slow when compared to their equivalents in the films.

What you do get is your own ship, which is like your little house, and here you have a holoscreen from which you recieve missions and messages, a vault for storage, and opportunities to talk to your companions, who have their own storylines which unlock as you gain affection points with them. Space travel is conducted on a galaxy map. You only get to pilot your ship manually when you take part in the space combat, which is third-person and on rails. It's okay, about the standard you would expect from a Bioware minigame, but apart from dodging the occasional asteroid there isn't much of a skill challenge. It's mostly determined by the ship upgrades you have installed; in other words, by your gear. Successful space missions award credits and experience points, but as far as I'm aware there is nothing essential to be gained by doing them and they can be completely ignored without consequence.

Depite my many criticisms I have enjoyed the game immensely and will probably continue to enjoy it as long as I have class storylines left. I am much more emotionally invested in my characters than I was in WoW or indeed in many single-player RPGs, for that matter. For all the little things that don't quite feel like Star Wars, there are a lot more which evoke the source material perfectly well and the camaraderie between fellow SW fans creates a special atmosphere. I recommend trying to find a levelling partner if you can, preferably one who doesn't object to watching cutscenes, because questing in a team is a real pleasure.

Quote from: Ignatius_S on July 20, 2012, 12:33:07 PM
Nope, you can't do that. Although the Sith and Republic disagree on many things, the subject of not allowing hitchhiking is a rare point of distinct unanimity.

I believe you can do this. I've had other players on my ship. The red barriers which prevent others from entering class-specific areas like your ship hangar will change colour and unlock for your party members after you have passed through them yourself. My passengers were of a simliar level to myself though, so there may be some kind of level restriction for passengers, but I doubt it. As you say, there is little point in going to a planet you aren't levelled for and doing so would not make it possible to cheat the system in any way.

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Default to the negative on July 22, 2012, 12:13:56 AM...I believe you can do this. I've had other players on my ship. The red barriers which prevent others from entering class-specific areas like your ship hangar will change colour and unlock for your party members after you have passed through them yourself. My passengers were of a simliar level to myself though, so there may be some kind of level restriction for passengers, but I doubt it. As you say, there is little point in going to a planet you aren't levelled for and doing so would not make it possible to cheat the system in any way.

It used to be (or this is what's reported) that another player had to be a ship owner in order to step foot on another player's vessel - I was really referring to players trying to get round the no-ship issue, but didn't make myself very clear!

Interesting write-up, btw.

Slaaaaabs

Just announced that this will be going Free-To-Play this autumn. All classes available up to level cap, with the obvious microtransaction shop ("Cartel Coins" how fun!) for other shit.

I blame George Lucas.


They're giving away quite a lot in the F2P version. There will be a limit on how many warzones and flashpoints you can do in a week but hey, you can still do them. With this, you could play through all 8 of the class stories and then stop without paying a thing. That's a lot of solo content for free.

wasp_f15ting

I have a level 43, so this is going to perfect when it goes free.. I want to see his endgame!

Slaaaaabs

Yup, I'll be finishing my Imperial Agent story when this goes free I think.