Gave a 9.. Was actually going to give a lower note, but then came to realize that the flaws of the game, in my opinion, are going to get fixed shortly after launch. I believe Bioware are listening to their playerbase and are commited to fix the problems accordingly. So I decided to rate the game based on my experience during the testing weekends, but also on what the game may look like in a short period after launch.
After participating in a few betas, and seeing bugs from early beta, remain long into release, I have very little faith to assume things are just going to 'get fixed soon'.
Unless I see action around it -- dev posts, patch attempts to fix it, etc -- I assume it is unlikely to improve until it becomes a $$$$ issue (people are leaving because of it).
7/10 : File under awesome single player game with multiplayer options.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Well polished and the combat looked nice and cinematic. Other than that it just felt like more of the same to me, but then I dislike themepark games in general so it was always going to be a hard sell.
At what it is "a themepark game" with story. It is as good as it gets on the market at the moment. But for me I felt very closed off and everything just felt small.
5/10 overall in my opinion, 8-9/10 as a themepark game.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
My expectations are realistic, its a themepark MMO based on the WoW model with some nice additions like stories and crew skills. It does exactly what it says on the tin and it does it better than most.
I still wish MMO developers would try and do something different for a change though
3/10. Same shit different fashion. If i wanted indept story line i would play a single player game. Or better yet read a book. Playing a MMORPG for me is to have my own story, Not a predefined story line thats dictated by the devs. Whats so special in having a background story that 1000 other people have lol. Thats just crap.
So yeah 3/10. Btw, i love starwars. Would rather watch the movie than play this one.
Considering this is a story-driven MMO, I thoroughly enjoyed all of the NPC interactions. I've seen complaints that the dialogue can last a bit long but if you consider how much of a reward you get for these missions it's well worth it. The character creation was one of my bigger concerns. There were very small differences between all of the races and nearly all races shared the same hair styles with a few acceptions here and there. The familiarity of the combat controls helped and it felt very fluid compared to a great deal of other MMOs out there that make it seem as if your character is skating around. I could go on and on but like any game, hit has it's flaws. The good out-weighs the bad by a tremendous amount and it's certainly no show stopper. I'm ready to get this game started!!!
Taking the game for what it is, and what the developer set out to do, I think it's a great game from what I played. It has a lot of improvements to be made, and I have no idea if the PvP holds up, but I liked what i played quite a lot.
It does not fix many of the quirks I have with MMOs(but I hope GW2 will) but this game seems story, alignment, companions and flashpoints, crew skills seems to make it fresh enought to be engaging.
Some things are iffy thou. Immersion killers are the Space Combat. I like games like Star Fox, but even for an arcade game I found the space part of TORs Space Combat extremely mediocre. I felt like I couldn't hit anything. It was like playing the gummi shop missions from Kingdom Hearts... Only worse.
Another one is the linear world, lack of change, no day/night cycle, straight paths, Corosaunt(downright dissapointing...), lifeless NPCs, limited Character creation, good graphics but very low rez textures(but apparently this is a beta bug?), music has some so-so moments, etc etc etc...
While wildly generic in its mechanics and largely mediocre I still feel swtor is actually a pretty good game. Maybe thats due to the fact that there hasnt been a halfway decent mmo release in so long. I mean, its easy to win if no one else tries, right? The game isnt without its glitches or faults, but it isnt without a fun factor either.
Im guessing there will be a huge influx of players with the release of swtor, however I see a lot of players returning to their previously played mmos 1-2 months into release after maxing out their favorite flavors leaving swtor with a healthy but not enormous playerbase which is when I may think about purchasing it. After all the asshats and babydicks go back to playing wow... sorry.
My only complaint is they tried to be too much like blizzard and too little like bioware in the development of this game which leaves a bad taste for many star wars fans expecting something ... else.
Another thing i did forget to mention, is that the new voiceovers and cutscenes for quests are in my opinion... making me want to roleplay, and thats saying something. I'm normally a big time PvP fan but i think this game will be suit the "Single Player RPG's" in the fact that it still feels like the good old Kotor we've completed hundreds of times over, but it now comes with people stealing your quest kills / mobs
So far I think that 8/10 is a pretty down to earth rating and from some of the reasons given as to why it should be are quite noteable.
And to the person who said there isnt any mirror classes, go and read some more reviews and posts about it please. The Storyline is what is making the classes seem so differant.
Did anybody get to play in the "Space Combat" at all?? wouldnt mind hearing some thoughts on that if there is anyone here who has played it.
7/10 : File under awesome single player game with multiplayer options.
When did all themepark mmorpgs out there become just "games with multiplayer options in them" - what removed the mmorpg from them I'm kinda curious?
Some MMO vets are so jaded now that anything that caters primarily to solo play is single player.
I find it odd how a game can be called a single player with multiplayer options when it has: Thousands of players simultaneously out there, group "dungeons", pvp warzones, open world pvp and areas, group quests, raids/operations/whatever, and many activities where you need other people to get full advantage like crafting or heck just socializing in a guild, the same content that makes many other games mmorpgs and not "singleplayer games with multiplayer options". And then these guys are so butt-hurt when they are being called haters "for no reason" - they are just being critics.
I guess these days you can be a critic of anything you dont know anything about.
I give it 7/10 right now. What I saw in beta I feel more positively about than that, but the highest I got was level 6. There's too much of the game I haven't seen yet to give it an 8 or 9. I thought WAR was going to be a very good game too from the lowbie experience in beta (and it was in fact very good until I got up into the 30s and especially 40). TOR certainly appears to be a game that should entertain me for the next few months. Beyond that we'll just have to see.
I gave the game a 8/10 from what little I played, so I am only basing that off of about 5 hours in beta and 2 toons I got up to level 5(one to 7). That score may and probably will change once I play it in 2 weeks. Here is a breakdown of how I came to that score:
Graphics - 6/10(I dislike the use of cell shading and cartoon stylized graphics, but the environments were great).
Story - 10/10(not much to say other than awesome, loved the cutscenes and how it was not a generic questing system).
Audio - 8/10(great epic music in the rights spots, but the environmental ambience sounds was non existent).
Gameplay - 7/10(Very similar to any other MMO out there, however I did like the companions and how smooth combat was if a bit slow).
I played my IA to level 22 (last world I got to play in was tatoonie.) I played several classes to level 10(ish) with the second highest class being my SI which was at level 14.
The game is very fun from a single player perspective: strong storyline, good characters, etc. The gameplay is a little lacking as the game has a lack of Unique resource systems per class (half of the classes are energy based, and are identical in use and recharge rates.)
Some classes feel much stronger at the start while others feel much harder for a long time (Bounter Hunter Vs Agent)
Professions are pretty interesting, no mini game or random stats though, so crafting might feel a little limiting in the end for those of you that call your self "crafters." You gain patterns in two ways: buying them from trainers, or learning them from deconstructing items in to mats. leveling up your professions is also done in 2 ways: random nodes / deconstructing mobs you have just killed (much like WoW skinning.) or sending your companions on short missions (3-9min) where they will collect loot if successful, and can "crit" on a mission to gain double mats, or really good mats. This is nice in case you leave a zone but still havnt fully leveled up your crafting skill to be usable in the next zone.
Quest are 80% of the time fun, everynow and then you end up doing a quest that either: A. doesn't make sense for your character to do, B. you realize is just a badly rewritten WoW quest (go find a bunch of items on the ground and charge them up to give them to some people) Also while most quests don't have a whole lot of effect on the story progression a few in the game radically change your path in the game.
Companions are great, they are more than just pets as they not only have their own gear, but if you make a comment that they don't like they lose influence with you. You can send them to sell grey (junk) items while you are questing (takes 1 min.) or best yet while you are taking a taxi flight point) and of coarse I already said the thing about crafting.
Space combat is just ok, its a mini game and should be treated as such. Its Star fox.
Giving the game a score I gave it a 8/10 for being a beta: It had a few bugs, but nothing really noticable. UI and a few of the character customization options left a bad taste in my mouth though.
Something that greatly increased my enjoyment: as I went through on my Jedi Knight I noticed that I took all the choices that would give me alignment. So on my Jedi Knight I decided to be evil.. and a big jerk, to get as many dark side points as possible. On the conversation wheel you can see what is dark and what is light. After a while I stopped paying attention to what I actually wanted to say, because it became points hunting.
When I played Imperial Agent afterwards, I disabled this indication in the options. Suddenly I didn't know what was light side and what was dark side. Most of the early choices have option 1 as light and 3 as dark, but sometimes further into a conversation light and dark switches places, and this increased my enjoyment and engagement in the story greatly.
I suggest everyone to disable this if they want to care more about the story. If you are worried about becoming a gray character remember that you can redo flashpoints and do crew skills related things to get infinity points of whatever alignment you want/need.
It's also my hope that BW will create gear for neutral gray alignment characters.
Well I voted 6/10 because I dont believe in some of the ranking I normally see around gaming sites. It boils my blood when I see the game was average, had some issues, graphics and bugs were existant but playable and yet the game gets a 7. 7 out of 10 is not a bad score, 7 out of 10 is pretty damn good. 7 out of 10 is basically 70% and is a passing grade. Not everything has to be a 9 or a 10 for it to be great, soemthing that is a 7 can be good.
I give SWTOR a 6 becasue I am leery of the endgame, the leveling game was pretty damn fun and I was really immersed in my characters story but I am stil lamblivalant towards Holy Trinity based gameplay and Raiding as the sole source of endgame PvE content.
Playing: GW2 Waiting on: TESO Next Flop: Planetside 2 Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
One thing I'll say above all is that I had fun. I really think people need to see the whole picture there. If you had fun and enjoyed the game then that is what counts.
Why isn't a perfect score? Well there are design decisions that I disagree with which detracts my score (some examples would be the static world and corridor like world design). But overall I had a positive impression of the game. I went into the beta not planning on buying it, and I ended up preordering it after the weekend. If it only lasts a month for me then so what, then it will be just like every other single player game I've purchased.
Comments
After participating in a few betas, and seeing bugs from early beta, remain long into release, I have very little faith to assume things are just going to 'get fixed soon'.
Unless I see action around it -- dev posts, patch attempts to fix it, etc -- I assume it is unlikely to improve until it becomes a $$$$ issue (people are leaving because of it).
7/10 : File under awesome single player game with multiplayer options.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
10,
Would have givin up on MMOs if this game didn't turn out the way it did for me.
Well polished and the combat looked nice and cinematic. Other than that it just felt like more of the same to me, but then I dislike themepark games in general so it was always going to be a hard sell.
At what it is "a themepark game" with story. It is as good as it gets on the market at the moment. But for me I felt very closed off and everything just felt small.
5/10 overall in my opinion, 8-9/10 as a themepark game.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
8/10
My expectations are realistic, its a themepark MMO based on the WoW model with some nice additions like stories and crew skills. It does exactly what it says on the tin and it does it better than most.
I still wish MMO developers would try and do something different for a change though
3/10. Same shit different fashion. If i wanted indept story line i would play a single player game. Or better yet read a book. Playing a MMORPG for me is to have my own story, Not a predefined story line thats dictated by the devs. Whats so special in having a background story that 1000 other people have lol. Thats just crap.
So yeah 3/10. Btw, i love starwars. Would rather watch the movie than play this one.
Considering this is a story-driven MMO, I thoroughly enjoyed all of the NPC interactions. I've seen complaints that the dialogue can last a bit long but if you consider how much of a reward you get for these missions it's well worth it. The character creation was one of my bigger concerns. There were very small differences between all of the races and nearly all races shared the same hair styles with a few acceptions here and there. The familiarity of the combat controls helped and it felt very fluid compared to a great deal of other MMOs out there that make it seem as if your character is skating around. I could go on and on but like any game, hit has it's flaws. The good out-weighs the bad by a tremendous amount and it's certainly no show stopper. I'm ready to get this game started!!!
<a href="http://www.enjin.com/"; alt="gw2 guild hosting"><img src="http://sigs.enjin.com/sig-gw2/0373e9d4bd309bce.png"></a>;
Taking the game for what it is, and what the developer set out to do, I think it's a great game from what I played. It has a lot of improvements to be made, and I have no idea if the PvP holds up, but I liked what i played quite a lot.
It does not fix many of the quirks I have with MMOs(but I hope GW2 will) but this game seems story, alignment, companions and flashpoints, crew skills seems to make it fresh enought to be engaging.
Some things are iffy thou. Immersion killers are the Space Combat. I like games like Star Fox, but even for an arcade game I found the space part of TORs Space Combat extremely mediocre. I felt like I couldn't hit anything. It was like playing the gummi shop missions from Kingdom Hearts... Only worse.
Another one is the linear world, lack of change, no day/night cycle, straight paths, Corosaunt(downright dissapointing...), lifeless NPCs, limited Character creation, good graphics but very low rez textures(but apparently this is a beta bug?), music has some so-so moments, etc etc etc...
Still looking at it as a whole, I was impressed.
9/10!!!
Not perfect, bugs r bugs.
beta is beta.
they got time 2 iron it out for the release date :-)
For delivering a solid traditional mmorpg that would do well under any other circumstances: 6/10
+1 for adding a morality based story driven leveling path: 7/10
+1 for adding player housing and the complex but simple companion system: 8/10
+1 for delivering a solid sci-fi setting within the Star War universe: 9/10
Solid traditional mmorpg that succeeds in delivering the sci-fi goods in a Star Wars setting. Overall score for me is a solid: 9/10
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
When did all themepark mmorpgs out there become just "games with multiplayer options in them" - what removed the mmorpg from them I'm kinda curious?
Some MMO vets are so jaded now that anything that caters primarily to solo play is single player.
7/10
While wildly generic in its mechanics and largely mediocre I still feel swtor is actually a pretty good game. Maybe thats due to the fact that there hasnt been a halfway decent mmo release in so long. I mean, its easy to win if no one else tries, right? The game isnt without its glitches or faults, but it isnt without a fun factor either.
Im guessing there will be a huge influx of players with the release of swtor, however I see a lot of players returning to their previously played mmos 1-2 months into release after maxing out their favorite flavors leaving swtor with a healthy but not enormous playerbase which is when I may think about purchasing it. After all the asshats and babydicks go back to playing wow... sorry.
My only complaint is they tried to be too much like blizzard and too little like bioware in the development of this game which leaves a bad taste for many star wars fans expecting something ... else.
Have fun ingame
PRX
9/10 for me, and I'll go ahead and file it under awesome MMO with Single Player options.
Another thing i did forget to mention, is that the new voiceovers and cutscenes for quests are in my opinion... making me want to roleplay, and thats saying something. I'm normally a big time PvP fan but i think this game will be suit the "Single Player RPG's" in the fact that it still feels like the good old Kotor we've completed hundreds of times over, but it now comes with people stealing your quest kills / mobs
So far I think that 8/10 is a pretty down to earth rating and from some of the reasons given as to why it should be are quite noteable.
And to the person who said there isnt any mirror classes, go and read some more reviews and posts about it please. The Storyline is what is making the classes seem so differant.
Did anybody get to play in the "Space Combat" at all?? wouldnt mind hearing some thoughts on that if there is anyone here who has played it.
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/4093/userbar759160.gif
I'm rage quitting, cus I didnt got invite to beta!
I find it odd how a game can be called a single player with multiplayer options when it has: Thousands of players simultaneously out there, group "dungeons", pvp warzones, open world pvp and areas, group quests, raids/operations/whatever, and many activities where you need other people to get full advantage like crafting or heck just socializing in a guild, the same content that makes many other games mmorpgs and not "singleplayer games with multiplayer options". And then these guys are so butt-hurt when they are being called haters "for no reason" - they are just being critics.
I guess these days you can be a critic of anything you dont know anything about.
6/10 from what I saw. Mediocre in everything except the story which gets 8/10. But then I want a mmo and not a single player story driven game.
Good luck to SWTOR guys, I bet some will have fun with it.
No fate but what we make, so make me a ham sandwich please.
I give it 7/10 right now. What I saw in beta I feel more positively about than that, but the highest I got was level 6. There's too much of the game I haven't seen yet to give it an 8 or 9. I thought WAR was going to be a very good game too from the lowbie experience in beta (and it was in fact very good until I got up into the 30s and especially 40). TOR certainly appears to be a game that should entertain me for the next few months. Beyond that we'll just have to see.
DAOC Live (inactive): R11 Cleric R11 Druid R11 Minstrel R9 Eldritch R6 Sorc R6 Scout R6 Healer
I gave the game a 8/10 from what little I played, so I am only basing that off of about 5 hours in beta and 2 toons I got up to level 5(one to 7). That score may and probably will change once I play it in 2 weeks. Here is a breakdown of how I came to that score:
Graphics - 6/10(I dislike the use of cell shading and cartoon stylized graphics, but the environments were great).
Story - 10/10(not much to say other than awesome, loved the cutscenes and how it was not a generic questing system).
Audio - 8/10(great epic music in the rights spots, but the environmental ambience sounds was non existent).
Gameplay - 7/10(Very similar to any other MMO out there, however I did like the companions and how smooth combat was if a bit slow).
--------------------
-Currently playing FFXIV, and BDO.
I played my IA to level 22 (last world I got to play in was tatoonie.) I played several classes to level 10(ish) with the second highest class being my SI which was at level 14.
The game is very fun from a single player perspective: strong storyline, good characters, etc. The gameplay is a little lacking as the game has a lack of Unique resource systems per class (half of the classes are energy based, and are identical in use and recharge rates.)
Some classes feel much stronger at the start while others feel much harder for a long time (Bounter Hunter Vs Agent)
Professions are pretty interesting, no mini game or random stats though, so crafting might feel a little limiting in the end for those of you that call your self "crafters." You gain patterns in two ways: buying them from trainers, or learning them from deconstructing items in to mats. leveling up your professions is also done in 2 ways: random nodes / deconstructing mobs you have just killed (much like WoW skinning.) or sending your companions on short missions (3-9min) where they will collect loot if successful, and can "crit" on a mission to gain double mats, or really good mats. This is nice in case you leave a zone but still havnt fully leveled up your crafting skill to be usable in the next zone.
Quest are 80% of the time fun, everynow and then you end up doing a quest that either: A. doesn't make sense for your character to do, B. you realize is just a badly rewritten WoW quest (go find a bunch of items on the ground and charge them up to give them to some people) Also while most quests don't have a whole lot of effect on the story progression a few in the game radically change your path in the game.
Companions are great, they are more than just pets as they not only have their own gear, but if you make a comment that they don't like they lose influence with you. You can send them to sell grey (junk) items while you are questing (takes 1 min.) or best yet while you are taking a taxi flight point) and of coarse I already said the thing about crafting.
Space combat is just ok, its a mini game and should be treated as such. Its Star fox.
Giving the game a score I gave it a 8/10 for being a beta: It had a few bugs, but nothing really noticable. UI and a few of the character customization options left a bad taste in my mouth though.
Something that greatly increased my enjoyment: as I went through on my Jedi Knight I noticed that I took all the choices that would give me alignment. So on my Jedi Knight I decided to be evil.. and a big jerk, to get as many dark side points as possible. On the conversation wheel you can see what is dark and what is light. After a while I stopped paying attention to what I actually wanted to say, because it became points hunting.
When I played Imperial Agent afterwards, I disabled this indication in the options. Suddenly I didn't know what was light side and what was dark side. Most of the early choices have option 1 as light and 3 as dark, but sometimes further into a conversation light and dark switches places, and this increased my enjoyment and engagement in the story greatly.
I suggest everyone to disable this if they want to care more about the story. If you are worried about becoming a gray character remember that you can redo flashpoints and do crew skills related things to get infinity points of whatever alignment you want/need.
It's also my hope that BW will create gear for neutral gray alignment characters.
Well I voted 6/10 because I dont believe in some of the ranking I normally see around gaming sites. It boils my blood when I see the game was average, had some issues, graphics and bugs were existant but playable and yet the game gets a 7. 7 out of 10 is not a bad score, 7 out of 10 is pretty damn good. 7 out of 10 is basically 70% and is a passing grade. Not everything has to be a 9 or a 10 for it to be great, soemthing that is a 7 can be good.
I give SWTOR a 6 becasue I am leery of the endgame, the leveling game was pretty damn fun and I was really immersed in my characters story but I am stil lamblivalant towards Holy Trinity based gameplay and Raiding as the sole source of endgame PvE content.
Everything you need to know about Elder Scrolls Online
Playing: GW2
Waiting on: TESO
Next Flop: Planetside 2
Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
I'd give it around 7.5/10.
One thing I'll say above all is that I had fun. I really think people need to see the whole picture there. If you had fun and enjoyed the game then that is what counts.
Why isn't a perfect score? Well there are design decisions that I disagree with which detracts my score (some examples would be the static world and corridor like world design). But overall I had a positive impression of the game. I went into the beta not planning on buying it, and I ended up preordering it after the weekend. If it only lasts a month for me then so what, then it will be just like every other single player game I've purchased.