A Gut Reaction to SWTOR Beta Test Up to Level 14

[Prag]

People are just stating their feelings or thoughts about the game and discussing it, that's what the forums are about, be it people saying good or bad things about it they should still be valued equally.

And ya, personally, terribly dissapointed about the game, playing it myself and watching countless videos and streams of it, it has so many flaws that are obvious to the critics eyes, it's just the generic pre-release mmo hype all over again, a week or two after it's been out, lots of peoples oppinions will change, as always.

What critics and what flaws?

You're right. It does sound like the generic pre-release hype where all the haters pour en mass to try and convince everyone that WoW is the true MMO and everyone else is just copying from them.

[Kumashy]

What critics and what flaws?

You're right. It does sound like the generic pre-release hype where all the haters pour en mass to try and convince everyone that WoW is the true MMO and everyone else is just copying from them.

Just like all the pro-swtor fanboys are pouring en mass to try and convince everyone that STWOR is the next best thing and EVERYONE needs to play it.

See what I did there? Opinions are like ass holes, everyone has one. Yours ain't any prettier than the guy next door. Sorry.

[Prag]

Just like all the pro-swtor fanboys are pouring en mass to try and convince everyone that STWOR is the next best thing and EVERYONE needs to play it.

See what I did there? Opinions are like ass holes, everyone has one. Yours ain't any prettier than the guy next door. Sorry.

Except I'm not in the WoW section telling them how bad WoW is.

See what I did there?

I made sense.

Way to back your findings, though. Still waiting for a citation of these critics, or for you to tell me what the obvious flaws are.

[Deleted]

Except I'm not in the WoW section telling them how bad WoW is.

Plenty of other people doing that for you.

Just accept that people will have different oppinions sometimes then you do.

As far as the "citation of these crititcs", all I said was that from a critical eye point you see flaws a lot more easy then from that of someone caught up in the hype.
The flaws being what most others are saying, and I've said it more then once already on these forums, stale models, combat that leaves a lot to be desired of a 2011 year game release and so on.

If you are so interested in my personal thoughts just look up my posting history and what I've written.

[Glorious Leader]

So innacurate. There was massive amounts of group quests back in vanilla/early TBC. They just moved away from that during mid TBC/wrath because noone likes feeling like they NEED to group up in order to get something done. Hence pretty much everygame has copied that formula and only have group content here and there WHILE leveling up. Blizzard or any other company out there understand the real game in an MMO starts at cap. How you get there SHOULD be your choice, not the choice of the developer.

In Star Wars The Old Republic you can level up:
- Instances alone
- PvP your way to 85
- Only questing/professions.
- Mix and match of any of those.

OPTIONS. People like them, people love em. I hope they have the same options in every other MMO out there from here on out. I like deciding how and doing what I'll level my character with.

Fixed for you. If anything star wars at least gives you the option of still doing group quests instead of wow where you don't have that option anymore.

[Faroh]

My gut reaction? It's a single player game where you can MMO. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving the storylines for the classes, but I'm hating the linear mode. I don't like the lack of freedom to get out of the starting zones.

It just doesn't feel like an MMO to me: It feels like I'm playing a single player game with a lot of other people int he same game. That's not a negative criticism, just the way the game feels through level 14.

Does this change at any point? Is there a point at endgame where we're in full blown MMO mode?

Don't get me wrong, I like the storylines, and, hell, I'd like to play all 8 of them to max level, but, it just doesn't feel like an MMO yet.

Not to sound snappy or anything, but how many MMOs have you played that required a whole lot of grouping in the starter areas/first 10-20 levels?

[Belars]

So innacurate. There was massive amounts of group quests back in vanilla/early TBC. They just moved away from that during mid TBC/wrath because noone likes feeling like they NEED to group up in order to get something done. Hence pretty much everygame has copied that formula and only have group content here and there WHILE leveling up. Blizzard or any other company out there understand the real game in an MMO starts at cap. How you get there SHOULD be your choice, not the choice of the developer.

In WoW you can level up:
- Instances alone
- PvP your way to 85
- Only questing/professions.
- Mix and match of any of those.

OPTIONS. People like them, people love em. I hope they have the same options in every other MMO out there from here on out. I like deciding how and doing what I'll level my character with.

"The Journey is half the fun"

[Beet]

Are you serious OP? While leveling up in SWTOR you do WAY more things with groups than you do in WoW these days. WoW has NO group quests anymore. SWTOR is literally filled with them. I think I did over 15 and I only got to level 23 in the SWTOR beta. I mean WoW used to be like this. But people cried that group quests weren't fair so Blizzard killed them. Now the only quest that requires a group is the ring of bloods added every expansion and some people still complain about that.

[zealous]

Class story elites will put you to the test, need to interrupt, stun and CC at appropriate times to get through them.

I was rushing through class quests asap as it was beta and I was interested to advance the story as far as I could. So I got to class quest elites too early twice, being 1-2 levels beneath them.

And two times I got my ass handed to me.

I had to go back and get at least another level in the world quests. And even then, when I came back killing those dudes took planning my CDs, using my consumables, using a decent rotation and managing my companion (one of the JK story elites CCs you for half the fight and proceeds to screw the hell out of your companion, basically 4-shotting her...).

Even if you're careless with pulls in world questing, you can easily die. Past level 20 or so, the "strong" type mobs put out some serious hurt and if one patrols into you while you're killing a pack... it hurts.

Elites and Champions are obviously even worse, but they can often be avoided and mostly don't patrol but stand still somewhere.

I found it all very fun, it's been a while since I had to face something even remotely challenging while leveling in an online game.


As to the group/MMO element:

People who have no imagination or have experienced nothing but the Random Dungeon Finder in WoW that spoon feeds them content through an instant zone change and groups them with silent NPC-like strangers... these people might have some trouble.

People who aren't lazy and have a desire to group will do so and will have a blast. I did three flashpoints and a ton of group quest and it felt like a solid online experience, reminded me of TBC in many many ways.

Even the group quests felt like pre-WotLK dungeons. You mostly needed CC and correct pulling or your group would get owned, you would wipe sometimes and try to understand what went wrong.

And I was just beyond happy when people didn't start raging and leaving after a wipe which has become the custom in WoW. The guys I grouped with ressed and started talking how we coud improve so we would down the trash group or the boss.

PvP is tons of fun and definitely felt like an intelligent group effort too, especially Huttball.

[Vulpei]

I palyed the Beta weekend, and while the group quests were there and the 2 I could do were awesome, it took me about an hour spamming /1 to get a second person to help me. I don't know if it was cause it was just a beta weekend and everyone was just powerlevelling to their ship/class quests or if 6 months from now I have to drop every group quest like I have to in WoW.

The crafting set and forget system seems fun though and I did have fun with the class quests and the bounty hunter exploding enemies all over the place has got to be the most fun I have had in an MMO in a long time, I just have serious misgivings about the viability of the grouping mechanics, especially since I can't explode group-quest mobs all over the place

[zealous]

I don't know if it was cause it was just a beta weekend and everyone was just powerlevelling to their ship/class quests

That was often the case with me. I did some group quests for variety, but often I skipped some too because I wanted to see as much of the class story as possible and I had limited time.

I finished one of the major plotlines 30 minutes before the beta closed.

[Grids]

I wanted to reiterate two points that have been made here so that I can make a third point that no one else has made (yeah I read all 15 pages because I am bored) and cant play SWTOR right now.

1) Reaffirm - yes WoW did have these style group quests back in the day... they were removed because they were a pain in the ass.
2) reiterate - These style quests work a lot better in SWTOR with the companion because you can probably accomplish 2 person quests at a slightly higher level w/ the companion and 4 person quests with only one other player.

3) My point. In SWTOR there is a slightly different mechanic with healing and tanking. Some people are having trouble adjusting to it and complaining when it comes to the flashpoints but it's actually quite awesome for the group quests. Think about wow, nobody specs tank or healing until endgame because it inhibits leveling. Well the sorta throw everyone in, everyone has a healing or tanking class thing that's going on with SWTOR means that (with the more blurry group roles) it's easier to just find someone to party with. You don't really need to be so strict with your group structure to accomplish the group quests so it makes just hitting up someone nearby or a guild mate to help bang out the quests really easy. For this reason (and the points I listed above that other people already made) even when the areas are less crowded later down the line, I think the group quest mechanic will continue to work in this game and thats AWESOME. It (and the great storylines) makes me want to create alts where in WOW I just couldn't stand the thought of doing all that work again and again (although I did get 3 toons to endgame in wow). I really like swtor and if they play their cards right with the continued development, I think I can see myself enjoying it a lot more than I did wow which was basically just a social thing for me since many of my friends played. I haven't felt like this about a game since Dark age.