Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Yet another Opinion ...
demarc01
Member UncommonPosts: 429
Background.
Middle aged male, Married etc. Been playing MMO's since M59 and I've sampled most of the games that have come to market in the past 15 years (MMO and RPG wise - I dont play FPS anymore) I've Beta'd several MMO's in the past few years and try to keep an even perspective.
Star Wars.
I never applied for the SWToR beta initially. Figured I'd just wait for it to go live with some kind of trial before I bothered with it. So it was a happy suprise to find an open beta weekend (lets be real, 90%+ used it as a free trial, I did and I'm a previous beta tester, no shame in that and Bioware knew that going in) Of course I signed up for me and the wife and we spent the weekend tooling around in the game.
Now bare in mind that I was'ent overly instersted in SWToR initially, I've been burned too often in the past. Yup I was a pre-order (CE's too!) of AoC, Rift, WAR to name but a few ... So I had deceided to wait for the fallout then decide if I was to buy a copy or not. I'm no fanboi, but I'm also no hater .. I was intent on waiting for community feedback before commiting this time !!!
Now the TLDR version is this = I pre-ordered 5 copies for myself, wife and family on monday. Take that as you will.
Now for the why-for's and how-to's.
Preconceptions.
I went into the beta weekend knowing full well the game was a themepark (I happen to like themepark's). I also went in knowing that it would probably be pretty heavily based on WoW for mechanic's and with a fair idea of how the *story* would unfold. (Having played ME1 / 2 and DA it's not hard to get an impression). I've seen the vid's (I may not have been intersted in buying right away, but I do track upcomming game news) so I had a fair impression of the GFX.
I had recently rebuild two PC's so I knew my Rig's were way ahead of required. I built them specifically with GW2, Tera, AA and SWToR in mind ..obviously SWToR is low man on that list for requirements so my rig's are fine.
Being a *beta stress test* I expected lots of Lag, frequent CTD's and such-like.
These were my preconceptions going into the game.
I expected to enjoy it, but find it very linear, somewhat unstable and honestly quite abit of the *same-old* as far as gameplay was concerned.
Beta experiance.
I played a JK (Guardian) to 21, JC (sage) to 21, Trooper (Commando) to 10, Sith Warrior (Marauder) to 11 and Bounty Hunter to 5. Logged alot of hours over the past 4 days. (I was a friday - monday tester)
First Impressions.
I'm not going to bother talking about character selection and the limited customization options, been played to death and I hope in future it will be addressed. Suffice to say customization for body models is poor, the rest is adaquate. Nothing stellar here at all.
Logging into the game was a joy, when the floating SW text scrolled past and my story started to unfold. Props to BW for opening the game exactly how a SW game should open. You were dropped right into the story and the it *felt* great.
The GFX were actually better than I was expecting, I of course turned all settings to max right away and still kept 100-70 FPS depending on the area I was in. At times my FPS did drop to the 35-40 region as expected due to the massive amount of folks running around. Over all though, for settings on max I felt the frame rate was good and stable. There were maby 5 incidents of lag spikes over the weekend (3-5s stops in packet transfer) but I cant be sure this was the game and not my ISP. Several people in /general were complaining of lag all weekend .. appart from the aforementioned incidents I had none.
I had zero CTD's all weekend. I did have to log out a few times due to bugs, Conversations not starting, inability to loot etc, but this was expected going in. Having 0 CTD's suprised me tbh. So its my opinion that the game is very stable, sure there are still a few bugs but nothing that I could'ent work around.
The gameplay is what I expected. Its is very linear and the themepark nature is apparent. The combat although akin to WoW's plays out with more fluid animations (IMO) although I do feel the GCD is abit long and seemed to spend alot of my combat time waiting for it to end.
The quest conversations we're fun, although its apparent in all of the *side missions* that quest dialog (appart from refusing the quest) has little to no impact in game. You may get some DS/LS points but assuming you accept the quest it will play out the same way no matter how you approached the conversation. This was to be expected. I have some hope that some of the later quests offer more options in this reguard but I doubt it.
The *story* quests however do seem impacted by *some* of your desicions. Note the *some*. Alot again seem to play out the same no matter what you say (just with more LS/DS point options) but some dialog options do change the outcomes of future quests etc. Theres not *alot* of freedom and I'm not saying that there is massive replay value in a given character types story quest ... but there are some options in these questlines.
PvP was as I expected, very WoW BG like .. although combat seemed slower (not insta-gibs unless FF'd) which was refreshing and made you feel like you were participating even if you were losing bad. This is a good thing since walking into a BG to be spawn camped and killed withing 2s of resing is NOT fun.
Final Impressions.
As I said earlier I pre-ordered copies so obviously I was impressed enough to drop cash on the product. Do I have some reservations? Sure.
The way I see it if I play for 2-3mo's its money well spent. I feel that I'll at least get that from the game based on my beta weekend.
Is the game the next comming? No. Its another (well done) Themepark with a neat story aspect. I do have some gripes with the game. IMO it really encouraged you to solo alot of the time. With a companion and the fact the each classes story quests are in different locations and people of the same class cant enter each others story phases it seems more solo aimed.
OTOH there are heroic area's that really require you to (at level) group to compleate them. So its a strange kind of mix. Most of the questing you will probably want to solo, then join quick groups to knock out the heroic objectives. Of course you can ignore the heroic quests (they are not required) or come back to them over-level so there is no *forced grouping* in order to level or compleate your story quest.
I would like to see the ability of same-classes going into each others story phases to help out and participate. For example 3 of us played this weekend. 2 JS and me on a JK. Both of them could access my story phases to help and see it. I could access thier story phases too .. but they could not access each others story phases since they have a limit of 1 person from the associated class to each story phase. Seemed odd to me and forces us to split up when working on thier storys.
The leveling curve is slower than recent MMO's, which I actually enjoy (assuming there is content to support it) and the FP's were alot of fun the couple of runs we made.
How will FP's be in 3 mo's? I dunno. I can see people screaming for spacebar pushing ASAP and that will sux. Maby they can add non-dialog versions of FP's for people who just wanna scream through them, where dialog trees are broken down to end results only. Ie - Kill captian / dont kill captian ... so those who want to rush wont bother those who dont and visa-versa?
Bottom line it will be the same as the other themeparks out there. If they can release new content at a reasonable rate, expand on class story quests post 50 and bring in new BGs / FPs etc in a timly manner then the game should flourish, if new content post 50 is slow or a rehash of daily quests / rep grinds, the flood of QQ will be epic.
My Final opinion. If you like Themeparks and are willing to gamble on them adding content at a decent pace, buy the game and give it a try. As long as you go in with the opinion that at least 2-3 mo's is good value and anything more than that is a bonus you wont be dissapointed. If your expecting the next-gen second comming MMO, then you wont enjoy TOR, thats just not this game.
Comments
Thanks for the write up
5 copies, wow ...
The + side is you don't have to go out so often to spend time with your family in less appealing ways, hehe. If you all play on the same server, that is.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Hehe we do.
Everyone from my 70 year old Mother-in-law to my 23 year old son plays together. I bought those copies, my brother's in law's (3 of them) will buy thier own and one's wife plays too. My sister-in-law as well.
I married a gaming chick in a gaming family apparenlty LOL.
Add in the few RL friends we play with and theres usually 10-12 copies sold of each game we play together !
That sounds so cool, man. I only wish my father and brother would ever think of videogames with anything else than contempt at the obvious waste of time (in their eyes). At least my mum plays bubbleget.
V_V
My brand new bloggity blog.
Honestly for a gamestyle (100% themepark) I am not interested in I did enjoy myself this weekend. I'll pick it up when it drops in price or goes on sale for the storyline its just not for me as an MMO.
My biggest complaint, taking the game for what it is, is the UI. I've been pretty outspoken about it on the beta forums, these forums, and my feedback during the weekend. Maybe I'm expecting to much maybe not. But if thats my only major complaint I have to say they did someting right. I was actually VERRY impressed with the stability of the game concidering the amount of people testing this weekend. And it wasnt like there where so many servers that people where spread out. They had a large selection of servers and most of them where on heavy/full load ALL weekend.
Thats actually really cool lol. It also plays verry well with TOR and the conversations. That and the fact you wont have much (if any) wife agro when you play and its dinner time
The UI is'ent great true, but its not a total fail either. Its a workable UI although I do miss the ability to change it as I see fit.
I'm sure in time this will change and modding options will be available. WoW did'ent start with a moddable UI, and Rift was (as I recall) opposed to it origionally but they have since recanted and are allowing UI mods now I believe.
Hell even LotRO allows Ui mods now, its becomming pretty standard so I expect it in future, esp with biowares history of allowing Mods in thier games.