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Star Wars: The Old Republic: The Official SWTOR Review
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The day has finally arrived and we are ready to publish our official MMORPG.com Review of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Sit back and get ready to read THE most comprehensive and authoritative review of the game that has taken the world by storm. Enjoy!
Three years since Star Wars: The Old Republic was officially announced and countless articles later, it’s finally come time to put this behemoth of a game through its paces and give it our official review. If you’re somehow unfamiliar with the game, Star Wars: The Old Republic is RPG powerhouse BioWare’s first foray into the MMO genre. The game is based on the wildly successful Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic RPG series and is set around 300 years after the events of the original games.
Read more of Mike Bitton's Star Wars: The Old Republic - The Official SWTOR Review.
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Comments
prety good game, but I already unsubbed
For me SWTOR is 8.5, changes to UI and it is 9. So yeah i agree with what ever you wrote in the review. I am still waiting for IGN.com because that is my last stop for all reviewing needs.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty -- Mahatma Gandhi
Crafting is fun? Wonder how much they got paid.
Usually when i don't agree with what critics have to say i simply throw 'you must be paid' retort. it always makes me look cool.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty -- Mahatma Gandhi
I do find the crafting a lot of fun, actually.
And the review is fair in my opinion.
Is it like WoW? Yes. It plays and feels like an upgraded WoW though.
And that is a pretty great thing when you've been playing WoW for 6 years.
The game is a lot of fun and is a step further for the genre. With additions over time for things like UI custimization, LFG improvements, and expansion of space combat it'll be quite the game.
Yes, crafting is fun. For once in an MMO I'm not bored to tears by it and every character I play utilized it to the highest degree.
Replayability I thought would be rough, but after hitting 50 with my BH and skipping all heroics I now am 20 on my Marauder and loving it and I've come to Balmorra and realize I can level on Heroics alone.
you described the cons of SWTOR in the text, but then you rate it with 8 or 9. that does not fit.
there are 2 things which are outstanding and may change the industry:
1. full voiced great stories: i am sure, that other AAA games will follow this path. even if in sandbox-type-quests and also in a good dynamic-event system there is less need for voice or text at all, which makes it less cost-extensive to produce new content.
2. the companion system: we saw extensive and flexible pet-systems already in some asian games, but Bioware made it ecen better. full voiced, full equippable and highly interacting pets will also survive in game industry.
looking to the rest of the game, especially the endgame, SWTOR missed the future badly. i expect some sandparks launching this year. either sandboxes with additional theme-park elements (e.g. ArchAge) or theme-parks adding more dynamics and getting rid of this unholy linearity (e.g. GW2). what i am missing in an extreme theme-park like SWTOR is:
- dynamic content, especially for endgame but better from the early beginning
- player driven economy
- largescale, open and mostly unregulated territorial pvp in huge dedicated zones
- player build and controlled cities ( i dream about something detailed like Minecraft, but doubt its possible in anMMO)
- an open skill-system instead of levels with talentrees (pseudo freedom)
combine these sandbox elements with the great stories from SWTOR and have an idea to overcome the conflict between good story and sandbox-neccesarities (e.g lootdrops vs. player-driven economy) and you got the so called NextGen.
SWTOR is nice, and i will play it for a month or two. like i played Skyrim for a while. would i play this game, 5 years, like i played EQ or 3 years like EVE? Never!
played: Everquest I (6 years), EVE (3 years)
months: EQII, Vanguard, Siedler Online, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2
weeks: WoW, Shaiya, Darkfall, Florensia, Entropia, Aion, Lotro, Fallen Earth, Uncharted Waters
days: DDO, RoM, FFXIV, STO, Atlantica, PotBS, Maestia, WAR, AoC, Gods&Heroes, Cultures, RIFT, Forsaken World, Allodds
I sense a lot of anger coming to this review
TOR’s PvP is basically a better balanced evolution of Warhammer Online’s PvP.
WAT?
..Cake..
"you're fooling yourself if you don't believe it
You're kidding yourself if you don't believe it
How can you be such an angry young man
When your future looks quite bright to me..." Styx
Or in anouther word the future for TOR dose look quite bright to me.
Good review!
Their recently announced addition of a 50 warzone bracket and improvements to world pvp are very much needed though.
I simply stopped queueing solo for wz's at the moment as I haven't been able to hand in the daily pvp quest for more than a week (all losses). Getting facestomped by level 50 pre-made teams all the time is about as fun as being in a car crash.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Sounds to me you need to join or form a pre-made.
The review doesn't go into any of the games problems.
Was fun for awhile, got bored and unsubbed already like all my friends have, kinda like DCUO.
Good game, I know more people joining everyday.
If it's true it makes you look even cooler.
Seems to me, especially considering the pros and cons put forward, that those ratings are artificially inflated. Take innovation for example: The pro is it's brought in conversations instead of quest text. The con is it's brought nothing else, yet it still gets an 8/10 in that category.
Same again in Aesthetics, the pro is the worlds look decidedly Star Wars, the cons state the character quality is bad, the armor designs aren't great, and the visual progression isn't good either. The other pro is the characters look great in conversations, but the con is the UI is terrible and canned lines are repeated too often. Yet this somehow got a 9/10.
Seems to me like the reviewer loves the conversations to the point of overlooking the rest of the flaws.
Good, just like WAR was good, Rift was good, etc, etc.
All amazing for first few months, with some niggles.
Long term playability? Nil, and SWTOR is the same unfortunately, unless some Dev here can tell me about a mechanic i don't know about that isn't about story?
SO if you give it an 8.5, and IGN gives it, say, a 6.0, will you stop playing the game because of your "Last Stop For All Reviewing Needs"? I enjoy the game as a PAYING nerd. I don't need some PAID nerd's opinion on it.
"This aspect sucks so unfortunately I have to give it a 7.5."
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
I'd say its on a scale of 7 to 10.
MikeB said: but we’re reviewing the game as it is now, not as it may be in a couple of months.
If that is a true change in policy that would be a VERY welcome change. Please no more reviews based on "potential" or what a game might be at some undetermined time in the future. As quoted, a review is reflective of the actual game. Otherwise, it's a preview and not a review.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Yup, I will and I realize you shouldn't count on wins in random groups. But at the start of the game, when there weren't decked out 50's yet it was amazingly fun and win loss ratios around 50-50 in random groups. That fun is gone now (understandably though). Yet a level 50 bracket would improve things a lot for randoms as you want people to have fun doing WZ's, also solo queue'ers.
My brand new bloggity blog.
WAT indeed. I agree to a lot in the article, my rating would be 80 of 100 rather, but that sentence reall felt... wrong. ^^
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Might I also add that Value was given a 10/10. The reason: it offers more than the usual 10 hours of gameplay that other games do for the same price. Um. Isn't that the whole point of MMO's? They're supposed to last for months, sometimes even years, we're on an MMO site reviewing an MMO, not a general gaming site. If this is the case, I want every MMO reviewed to have a 10/10 for value - unless of course you can reach end game in a week and have nothing else to do.
Sorry but you lost me at the PvP part. Not sure even you believe in 'its upgraded version WaR's pvp'. As bad as WaR pvp was back in the days of mass cc classes, it was never this bad. Id call it more of a downgrade of WaR's pvp actually, with perma cc and stuff. Other than that, if voice acting as any remotely innovative thing gives you a 8/10 rating, i have no clue why other games dont get higher rating for innovation, when even most korean copy paste games bring more innovative features than tor did.
Its not a bad game, in fact, for someone new to mmos, or huge star wars fan, its basically fresh version of wow in space, with voice acting (which does get old, and a bit annoying after a while), and thats not a bad thing.
But, even if fanboys will say 'it never promised anything new', i honestly did expect a bit of innovation in a game that spent millions of $, just to basically copy another game.
Not sure how anyone can blame me for having higher hopes for this one. The truth is, it does play nice, and doesnt have any big flaws, but in the end its same old same old. For starterts that may not mean much, but for all people who played some other mmos (mainly wow?) it does get boring rather quickly, despite its voice acting.