I've read dodgy things about this game

[Windry]

It's really sad and pathetic that there are SSSSOOOOO many people who are spreading lies to try to bring this game down.
It's like they're afraid that if people enjoy a MMO that's not WoW, the world might end.

- There was a bug that people exploited to create massive credits (gold) from nothing. People were making several millions in an hour. These people got banned. For how long? I don't know. Some people claimed it was a 1yr ban.
- There are constantly people who are saying how many subscriptions are being lost from the game. All of these are straight up lies. They have no access to the actual numbers, and quarterly reports (q1 2012) will be the only true indicators.

- Bioware did drop the ball in a change to Ilum PvP (which is like wintergrasp or tol barad), on Jan 18th, in which, one side could spam AoE on a GY and continuously instantly kill their opponents for massive arena ratting. Worst part about it, the losing side players could not leave the zone because you can't choose which GY you go to in this game, you just res at the nearest GY. The servers were taken down that night to fix this issue. They did fix the issue that night, and on Jan 20th, the developers made a post and launched an investigation promising to roll back the gains on that day from people who had clearly abused the system. Whether or not it ultimately happened....? Well people can claim conspiracy theories and say it didn't, and I can't disprove them, but I'll take Bioware's word on it.

- Is Ilum "fixed?" Well it is working as intended, but honestly it's a very bad world pvp. It's not fun at all, but then, honestly, I hated Wintergrasp and Tol Barad just as much.

- The LAG ISSUE: SWTOR was released with some poor programing that made it seem like you were lagging when in reality, the game was having some delays with the graphics and casting of abilities. This problem severely affected some classes, while others didn't have any problems at all. Bioware's been working on this a lot, making a lot of fixes every week, and as of today, I really don't see any issues at all, and I pvp quite a bit with 4 different classes.

I hope that helps clarify some things.

[Daswolfen]

I'm maintaining two subs atm. I raid heroic DS 3 nights a week and play TOR when I'm not raiding. I'm part chinese gold farmer and that's probably the only reason I'm still playing, I haven't made enough credits yet. I got a marauder to 50 but my guild only has 5 50s in it and we're never all on together anymore so we can't even really pug people to do OPs or even HM FPs. Just leveling a BH right now with a friend and hoping that the game becomes more fun. Admittedly I'm not the best at pvp but I do ok in WoW but just get rofl-stomped in TOR due to how clunky everything is.

I know it's unfair (somewhat) to compare this to WoW since it's had 7 years to clean everything up but with so many MMOs out there to build off of and compare to, they could've done TONS better at release with some stuff. The AOE looting is honestly the neatest thing in the game cuz the auction house sucks along with 1 of the 3 skill trees being vaguely pvp but not enough that you'd notice until you start getting raped by elites. Biochem is apparently the only Op-worthy profession because none of the others have bonuses that affect the user only (like BS sockets or JC gems). The UI sucks and so does control over your companion, I wish it was more like pet bars in wow.

Last complaint is the difficulty of some of the questing. As I said above, I raid heroic modes in WoW and have 7 85s so I'm quite familiar with how to play a lot of classes and how to level. Doing quests AT LEVEL in TOR sometimes required me asking my guild or friends for help. Required quests should not be so hard that you die 5-6 times in the process while using medpacs, stims, cds, and a companion. I'm glad quests aren't easy cuz that would make it mindless, but I did not enjoy the frustration that accompanied some of my class quests and end of the planet quests.

I want to address a few things here...

The auction house is clunky (But so is the default WoW one) but you can still find everything you need. As far as figuring out the specs and which one is the "PVP" spec, well you would have had no idea in WoW either without people figuring out what works best in PVP and then posting that information on the web. Plus, if you take the time and ACTUALLY look at the spec and read each ability, then you can probably figure out what the best PVP spec is, particularity since you claim to be at least mildly experienced at it in WoW. As far as the crew skills go, yes Biochem is the best for raiding/PVP, however even WoW has the 'must have profession' for raiding, and the extra sockets in blacksmithing and gems of jewelcrafting didn't exist in Vanilla WoW (heck, JC didnt exist until BC).The UI is poorly designed, but this is the first MMO created by Bioware and they are addressing the issues with the UI as fast as possible so I am willing to give them a pass on that one(this coming from a guy who has exactly zero percent of the stock WoW UI left). As far as companion control, you can keybind (it is defaulted to Ctrl 1-=) your companions bar (and use it minimized) so you can use companion abilities when you want. On my sith sorcerer I often turn off Khem or Xalek's autotaunt so I can use them myself and ping pong harder elites between us.

As far as the quest difficulty, well I can't speak of your skill, class, faction or spec (I play Empire because that is what the guild voted for... I wanted Republic). What I can tell you is every quest is doable at level. You may need to swap out companions or adjust tactics, but since you claim to be a heavy raider in WoW, this should be no big deal. I had a problem with melee mobs on my sniper, but with a swap of companions, encounters that I was having a problem with my favorite companion suddenly become cake. The only real encounter I have had a problem with and I feel is overtuned is the the last quest in the main Voss story line "A Long Forgotten Evil". It is a pain in the ass, but it is doable, sometimes you just have to find the right balance of tactics and companions skills to compliment your class and spec.

Long story short, you might want to re-evauluate whether your issues with the game are really the games fault, or the fact you have played WoW for so long in a certain way that you are finding issues adjusting to some things that aren't exactly the same mindset as a typical World of Warcraft encounter.

[Acidd06]

You should try it, but the same thing kinda appended to me a bunch of friends left WoW for SWTOR, said it was great. I tired it out it was (IMO) absolutely terrible. I hated the questing and story was horrible and what I heared about end game just made me unsub after about 2 weeks.. Within about a month all of my friend quit SWTOR and went back to WoW.

[Deleted]

At the moment, SWTOR is by far the best single player leveling experience I have ever encountered in an MMO. 1-49 Can be solo'd effectively, and probably should be due to a shortage of players on heroic quests mid game on even the most highly populated servers. 1-49 Is a gem, unparalleled in the industry.

50 Is lackluster. It provides no time sinks and content can be cleared in record time. People sitting at 50 are better off rerolling alts until Bioware adds more content updates.

[Standing]

The game is fun, but you have to have realistic expectations. It's been out for less than two months, so naturally there won't be an abundance of content to do right away (like in WoW). The Devs are definitely pumping content out at a respectable rate, though. Much quicker than WoW, hopefully it'll be about on-par with Rift.

If you come to the game with grand expectations of ten raids, you're going to hate it. If you come with the expectations of it being a new game with content still being developed, you'll probably like it.

I've heard reports of massive lag in WZ, but there have been FEW true game breaking bugs (if any). Mostly people just spreading propaganda. Because that's fun for people.

I found almost no bugs or problems with the game personally, from 1 to 50. After 50 it is a different matter. There are/were some pretty bad bugs to name a couple so that the original poster has a fair perspective:

The bounty hunter storyline was bugged for several weeks, where doing the darkside choice during the last encounter would make it so you couldn't do your Ilum dailies.

The IA storyline still has a boss bugged in the storyline, though it's random.

Taris had such a bad memory leak people were locked out of the game for days after crashing while in the zone.

There was a bug where people couldn't talk in general chat, party and/or guild chat, and affecting people for days in many cases.

There was also a bug where people couldn't join a party for some reason and thus were blocked from doing end game heroic flashpoints for up to a week at a time.

Raiding is horribly bugged, but has been improved. Chests and bosses would bug out so you couldn't get loot, people would drop dead out of combat, there were operations bugs making it so people couldn't get into the instance, boss encounters were horribly over or under tuned, or simply didn't work right, including the puzzle boss in EV and KoA, and the first boss in Karagga's Palace.

Recently, the patch this week as stated elsewhere caused valor gain in Ilum to be broken. Patches fix some bugs but tend to introduce others.

edit: All of those bugs are based on personal experience through myself or with interactions with guild mates (such as the party bug where we couldn't do a flashpoint).

[Usurper]

You'll find in fun for a short ammount of time, but then you'll realize you're just doing stuff you've been doing in wow forever, once you hit 50 it's not really anything special that makes you want to play it, And I'm sure people will realize it, and just go back to good ol' WoW.


SWTOR is definetely a solid game within the MMO genre, but WoW is still the reigning champion.

Right cause there's so much more to do in WoW atm xD. Also the next wow expansion is a slap in the face. Shows how blizz want to attract more idiots to the game cause theyre losing subs fast. Next xpac after the panda idioticy will be what ? my little pony themed ? pokemon ? sigh...

[Deleted]

There are still bugs. If it was a SP game, it'd be getting large, monthly/bi-monthly patches. This is nothing unusual. Being an MMO, it's getting patched quite often.

Also, does anyone other that me remember the amount of bugs in Kotor? Or the fact Kotor II had more AND was unfinished? What's with the rose tinted spectacles around here in reference to Kotor? It was god damn amazing (If I had a camera, I would post the fact I have both Kotor game boxes in a rack beside my monitor) but holy good jesus it was buggy. Much buggier than SWTOR.

Also, it didn't like FSAA when it was released either. Wonder what it is with Bioware and Anti-aliasing?

[Koalachan]

Also, it didn't like FSAA when it was released either. Wonder what it is with Bioware and Anti-aliasing?

You kids today and your anti-aliasing and hating on jaggies. Back in my day, there was no such thing. When we got 8 bit we thought it was the coolest thing ever.

[Deleted]

Now we're already comparing KOTOR to SWTOR.

Compare their respective budgets son, then come back to me.

Budgets? You can simply state the TOR had a larger budget than KOTOR on the basis the fact it required a new team and a much larger game. MMO's cost far more than linear RPG's buggy or not buggy.

[Deleted]

You kids today and your anti-aliasing and hating on jaggies. Back in my day, there was no such thing. When we got 8 bit we thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I'm 37 :P I remember getting my NES and not being able to jump on a spring with mario without half jumping myself to time it. Loved Mario 3. Majorly. I was a complete addict.

Compare their respective budgets son, then come back to me.

Seriously "son"?

Who said anything about comparing them? I was mentioning the comparison people are making between the 2 and reminding people that Kotor was no better when it came to bugs.

[Legion]

I would like to buy TOR since most of my 5+ year old wow veteran friends left for it, and cause blizzard pissed in my face with their next expansion announcement, so I don't have much left to do in wow.

HOWEVER, my friends' praise of the game notwithstanding, I've read how EA/Bioware shut down the "Cancel subscription" feature in the last day of the first month, released the PVP part of the game filled with bugs and exploitable features and banned people for life in the first month of the game.

From an outside reader's perspective this looks like a mafia controlled MMO. Is the gameplay and service better from players' perspectives or are these faults spot on?

Thanks

Most of that is not true, and I can't blame you for thinking otherwise, because there are a lot of trolls out there that have made it their mission to spread false information to those less knowledgeable. The "cancel subscription" link was not available for a couple of hours on the Subscription page, but the link worked just fine, and it was fixed rather quickly. The game had its share of bugs, and there sure are a lot of them, but they're being addressed. People have been banned, but not for retarded reasons (read this: http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...131354&page=19).

I'm not a fanboy, and I'm not trying to convince you of anything. The game has some problems, like some people getting low fps, and it's not that well optimized. But I can honestly tell you, that I haven't encountered ANYTHING gamebreaking, at least not for me. I am quite positive that within the first year, the game will have been far improved. I have canceled my subscription, mainly because my computer, especially my graphics card is utter shit. And while I never get under 40 fps, I want to enjoy it on at least high settings, and that won't be doable until I get myself some new gear. As soon as that happens, I will definitely resub. Within the next month, or so. Hope this helps.

[Deleted]

Most of that is not true, and I can't blame you for thinking otherwise, because there are a lot of trolls out there that have made it their mission to spread false information to those less knowledgeable. The "cancel subscription" link was not available for a couple of hours on the Subscription page, but the link worked just fine, and it was fixed rather quickly. The game had its share of bugs, and there sure are a lot of them, but they're being addressed. People have been banned, but not for retarded reasons (read this: http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...131354&page=19).

Thanks for that link, I was trying to find it earlier to prove to a guild mate that playing the GTN isn't an offence.

[Mifuyne]

Tried it for a while and pretty much wish I could get my money back.

It's massivly overhyped, the graphics are "meh" at max, the UI is a abomination.
Loading screens take forever (even with a SSD) and it's really laggy (most likely due to a shit engine).
The profession stuff is nothing new (hell - it's DULL to not have to work for it), the worlds are small and boring.

Only good thing about it is the voice-overs, even tho they are pretty low quality.
Story is pretty dull if you actually read any books.

inb4 "omg u hater" - I stopped playing WoW also, it's just my fair opinion on this game that would have been "good" if it was released 4 years ago.
They had a HUGE budget and years of creating a game - they screwed up, big time.

Happy some people like it but make a char on a friends account first to see if you like it.

[edit]
Worst part is whenever someone is "negative" about the game, fanboys start flaming, calling it lies, etc.

[Devilyaki]

It's nothing game breaking or exciting, the voice acted leveling mission get boring and you skip most cause you know it's another go kill a pack of mob quest. The prices on everything in the game already at stupid level, repair bill 40k, training 50k a move, mount training 330k not including the mount anther 55k to 1.5mill. There also no que system for instances so if your not on at peek time good luck . You played wow, this is wow in space, very little of the game even feels like star wars, I was greatly disappointed in this. It's a wow clone don't bother with it.

[Deleted]

Tried it for a while and pretty much wish I could get my money back.

It's massivly overhyped, the graphics are "meh" at max, the UI is a abomination.
Loading screens take forever (even with a SSD) and it's really laggy (most likely due to a shit engine).
The profession stuff is nothing new (hell - it's DULL to not have to work for it), the worlds are small and boring.

Only good thing about it is the voice-overs, even tho they are pretty low quality.
Story is pretty dull if you actually read any books.

inb4 "omg u hater" - I stopped playing WoW also, it's just my fair opinion on this game that would have been "good" if it was released 4 years ago.
They had a HUGE budget and years of creating a game - they screwed up, big time.

Happy some people like it but make a char on a friends account first to see if you like it.

[edit]
Worst part is whenever someone is "negative" about the game, fanboys start flaming, calling it lies, etc.

Not to appear fanboyish here, but I find it odd you find the voice-overs low quality. Do you mean in terms of the quality of the voice actors, or sound quality?

I don't think you're likely to find a better lineup of experienced voice actors.

[Mifuyne]

Not to appear fanboyish here, but I find it odd you find the voice-overs low quality. Do you mean in terms of the quality of the voice actors, or sound quality?
I don't think you're likely to find a better lineup of experienced voice actors.

quality. It all felt like people just read lines from a paper without any emotion in it.
Some were fine and fun but most that I've came across while leveling were just..horrid.

[Rooflesstoofless]

OP, I would take 90% of the 'wrong doing' claims against Bioware with a grain of salt...and this is coming from someone who is routinely pretty hard on them.

There are a lot...and I mean a lot...of newbies to the MMO scene because of this game and if one makes an ignorant comment about something they don't understand you can bet the haters, the 4chan droolers, and the reddit assholes are going to bastardize it run with it for as long as they can.

lol, can't blame them wow does suck currently and people are upset to have wasted chunks of their lives playing a game that degraded to garbage and seems to be going that way even further... ON PURPOSE. What this game really did for me is open up my eyes to better mmos and gave me some of m RL back, since i can just log in and enjoy the game for a bit at my pace.

Looks like someone found Jesus or something. If you were losing your RL over an MMO then YOU were the problem; not the MMO.

[Vexies]

It's nothing game breaking or exciting, the voice acted leveling mission get boring and you skip most cause you know it's another go kill a pack of mob quest. The prices on everything in the game already at stupid level, repair bill 40k, training 50k a move, mount training 330k not including the mount anther 55k to 1.5mill. There also no que system for instances so if your not on at peek time good luck . You played wow, this is wow in space, very little of the game even feels like star wars, I was greatly disappointed in this. It's a wow clone don't bother with it.

I would just like to point out that those prices are not extreme at all really. Credits are stupid easy to come by with a little effort. For instance I made 160K credits just doing Illum and Belsavis dalies last night. that is more than enough to save up and buy what I want AND keep me in raid consumables.

[Fannyd]

Step 1: Buy and install SW:TOR
Step 2: Play SW:TOR
Step 3: Don't visit/ignore all SW:TOR related forums
Step 4: Enjoy

Don't let other people's moaning spoil your fun.

[noteworthynerd]

I actually agree with all of this...except...I think crafting in SWTOR is dogpoo. I actually enjoyed crafting (and gathering) in WoW with a few exceptions. SWTOR crafting feels like it takes life out of the game and doesn't feel like any kind of achievement like it does in WoW.

I think that there should be a better option for those who want to go out and gather and then craft items, but I personally like the profession system (I don't like the actual professions all that much, especially the rewards) in SWTOR, it is kinda nice being able to level to 400 while practically AFK. =P

This is one thing I don't agree with. I highly appreciate WoW's standard UI a lot more now with what they've done to it. You know you can right-click the portraits --> Unlock frame, right? :P

Yeah, I know that you can move the portraits/healthbars around, but that doesn't make them any bigger, I like the way the stock SWTOR UI stretches across your action bars.