SWTOR "review"

[Komie]

So I've recently read a little personal review on SWTOR by creator of my favorite online comic CTRL ALT DEL. I wanted to know, is SWTOR really like this? I stopped leveling my toon at level 33. It was just the same ol' stuff every other mmo has, except the voice acting, but I skipped that anyways because I watch movies on my 2nd monitor while playing MMO's and the voice acting got in the way. But I was recently thinking of picking it back up, until I read this reivew. If what he says is true, they really dropped the ball on this game.

I've received my share of "come back to us" emails from MMOs over the years, but the one I recently got from SWTOR was by far the most personally tailored. It cleverly played on SWTOR's strongest attribute, the story, by featuring one of my trooper's main companions (I imagine other classes would receive emails with their companions in them).

I applaud the extra mile they went to tug at my heartstrings, but if they'd put as much effort into SWTOR's endgame they wouldn't need to be sending me this email in the first place. Don't get me wrong... Level 1-50 is absolutely the most fun I've ever had leveling up in an MMO. Bioware set the bar pretty high for questing and leveling in that regard, and I'm spoiled for every other MMO.

Unfortunately all of that enjoyment hit a brick wall once I got to level fifty and the storyline ended. PVP was fun for a little while, but it was bogged down by an arbitrarily obtuse reward system that still makes no sense to me. PVP to get points, which you then use to buy two types of other points, then use those two types of points to buy a chest, which gives you another kind of points that you trade in for items.

Raiding didn't do it for me either. The very first night my raid team walked into Eternity Vault on normal, we cleared the entire raid except for the last boss, and the reason we didn't get him down wasn't that he was difficult, but rather that we were fighting too many bugs and glitches with the encounter (platforms that wouldn't respawn/wouldn't drop, all the tanks getting mindtrapped even though they weren't supposed to, etc). We went in the following night and downed him.

So we moved on to Hard Mode raids, and just about one-shot all of those as well. And while doing so, it became abundantly clear that the raid reward system was no better designed than the PVP reward system. With three levels of gear (Tionese, Columi and Rakata), you'd expect that they'd be applied to each of the three raid difficulties (Normal, Hard and Nightmare). Yet after only two weeks of raiding the hard mode ops, I was in 80% Rakata level gear. So what's the incentive for doing Nightmare? I guess for the achieveme-- oh right, they don't have those.

It certainly does seem like Bioware is at least aware of the problem areas with their game, and from all of the interviews and videos I've seen over the past month, they definitely have a solid plan for fixing it. Unfortunately, it's all just going to be too little too late for me.

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/

[Leonard McCoy]

I've had no problems with SoA in terms of bugs. The platforms will not respawn sometimes after a wipe but a simple reset will solve them. His feeling about the raids being to easy and one shotted is being looked at for 1.2 apparently. However mark my words if they make it harder people will complain. Also they have achieves in the codex.

[RoninaThorstone]

So I've recently read a little personal review on SWTOR by creator of my favorite online comic CTRL ALT DEL. I wanted to know, is SWTOR really like this? I stopped leveling my toon at level 33. It was just the same ol' stuff every other mmo has, except the voice acting, but I skipped that anyways because I watch movies on my 2nd monitor while playing MMO's and the voice acting got in the way. But I was recently thinking of picking it back up, until I read this reivew. If what he says is true, they really dropped the ball on this game.



http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/

Most of it isn't true anymore.

And the parts that are aren't true on the PTR.

Oh welllllll.

People will just read this assume its true and get panda flu.

Edit: Yeah, the codex is achievements so I get the feeling these guys didn't look very hard into this game.

[Leonard McCoy]

Edit: Yeah, the codex is achievements so I get the feeling these guys didn't look very hard into this game.

I have an honest suspicion that many of them don't play the game and just repost comments made by others. Even the few that do go into it with such a negative mindset that they don't bother to explore the full functionality of the game and then ask "WHERES MY ACHIEVES" even though guess what.. they exist

[RoninaThorstone]

I have an honest suspicion that many of them don't play the game and just repost comments made by others. Even the few that do go into it with such a negative mindset that they don't bother to explore the full functionality of the game and then ask "WHERES MY ACHIEVES" even though guess what.. they exist

And when they repost it then 20,000 other people read it and repost it... say, on mmochamp?

And then... my friend.

It has come full circle.
From troll post
To blog
To troll post once more.

Obligatory:
--REMOVED MEME--

[noahjam326]

I can understand if people feel there isn't enough to do at 50, and they are entitled to their opinion. What I don't understand is this idea that because an MMO isn't perfect within a month of release it is to be forever shunned. I continue to enjoy my subscription, but I also don't just sit at 50 with 1 character. I try to do a little of everything (I did the same when I played WoW). WoW has this same problem. You do the content at 50 and you're done. I don't see what the issue is if you just wait a few months, resub, do the new content, and then unsub. People have been doing this with WoW for years now, and I don't understand why other MMO's don't get this same treatment. The whole "Game is dead because the first month wasn't perfect" mentality is just really stupid to me, especially in the genre of MMO's when we're talking about games that are meant to last for years and years.

[Chuwero]

CAD is quite possibly one of the worst web comics around. It is a Penny Arcade / PvP Online Frankenstein that is notorious for posting things like the above in order to generate controversy for additional hits (not to mention its horrible attempts at addressing real life drama - miscarriage storyline anyone?). The comment about SW:ToR not having achievements is a great example of Mr. Buckley conveniently ignoring the truth for a completely biased and self-serving Fox News'ian style ad-revenue generating review. I would take anything said by him with a continent of salt.

[Koalachan]

Hit L, click on Codex tab. First four catagories:

Achievement: Datacrons
Achievement: Epic Enemies
Achievement: PvP
Achievement: Titles

Looks like achievements to me. Let's delve further into the Epic Enemies choice.

Ancient Pylons
Ancient Pylongs (Hard Mode)
Annihilation Droid XRR-3
Annihilation Droid XRR-3 (Hard Mode)
etc
etc
etc

Well, I don't have the Nightmare I admit, but I assume there is a Ancient Pylons (Nightmare Mode) too.

[GeekyArcher]

I can understand if people feel there isn't enough to do at 50, and they are entitled to their opinion. What I don't understand is this idea that because an MMO isn't perfect within a month of release it is to be forever shunned. I continue to enjoy my subscription, but I also don't just sit at 50 with 1 character. I try to do a little of everything (I did the same when I played WoW). WoW has this same problem. You do the content at 50 and you're done. I don't see what the issue is if you just wait a few months, resub, do the new content, and then unsub. People have been doing this with WoW for years now, and I don't understand why other MMO's don't get this same treatment. The whole "Game is dead because the first month wasn't perfect" mentality is just really stupid to me, especially in the genre of MMO's when we're talking about games that are meant to last for years and years.

It's because the gamer community has changed since the "Messiah" WoW came out.
I remember playing at launch for WoW, and HOLY &)#*$ the bugs.
Let's see:

I fell through the world.
I couldn't release when I died.
I couldn't log on for DAYS because the servers were down.

People forget the trials and problems they had with the old game when a new one comes out.
In Cataclysm I recall wasting millions on trying to discover that ONE schematic for gloves and the profession being bugged. I recall Customer Service telling me that it had been fixed over and over and to just keep trying, 2 million gold later it had never worked. Finally Blizzard announced in a patch it had been fixed. Was I compensated for the gold I spent due to misinformation provided to me by numerous in-game CS and forum CS? Nope.

People forget the portal humping that happened in WOTLK "too many instances."
People forget that they couldn't get a group in WoW before the Dungeon Finder due to "LOLZ LOOKS AT UR GEARZCORE....LAWL."
People forget the bugs that wouldn't let you loot certain bosses.
People forget the bugs that didn't allow hunter pets to get off the platform in Arena
People forget the bug that made hunter pets spawn at half health
People forget the you know what there are a ton of things that went wrong that people have forgotten.

How can anyone forget the way Blizzard has out right lied as well?
Ghost Wolf!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Still angry about that.
How about the Ruby Sanctum fiasco?

SWTOR will survive just fine and be better off without the people who want to jump on the hater bandwagon.

[Frenegade42]

despite that fact that I agree with most of what was said and have myself unsubbed, wasn't the CAD guy the one who got caught out grooming a minor in his forums? Or was that another webcomic artist?

[gualdhar]

despite that fact that I agree with most of what was said and have myself unsubbed, wasn't the CAD guy the one who got caught out grooming a minor in his forums? Or was that another webcomic artist?

WTF? I've read the comic for a while, I've never heard anything like that before. I thought he was married (not that that precludes someone, but it would be well known among fans, and doing something remotely like that on the forums would be odd).

To be fair, he was pretty into the game before release, and even started a monsterous mega-guild for readers. I have mixxed feelings about his comments though. He was right about the difficulty of ops, and the pvp reward system is structured in a very strange way. But I don't think he gave the game enough time. If after 1.2 things still suck, well it's been 4 months, and enough time (for me) to see the direction the game is going at that point. Usually 3 months is my limit, but I'm at least going to wait for the giant jesus patch to see how things go.

[ipaq]

I have an honest suspicion that many of them don't play the game and just repost comments made by others. Even the few that do go into it with such a negative mindset that they don't bother to explore the full functionality of the game and then ask "WHERES MY ACHIEVES" even though guess what.. they exist

Biggest issue with SWTOR is the lag it takes them to fix their damn bug...

They don't feel in control of their game, like they just sub-contracted most of it...

I still have stuck quests and NPC hanging out on my ship after reporting them since pre-beta

PS: That's beside the shitty population wish is a result of WoW cascual-care(tm) attitude.

[pyrostorm9001]

Would people please stop comparing this game to WoW?
WoW is pushing 7 years (iirc) SWtoR should be better than a 7 year old game, with a 2012 attitude towards game play and its fans.
Sadly it doesn't, the game was rushed out, the so called god patch 1.2 should have been the launch patch (if it lives up to the promises)
and CAD is right end game and pvp had far less polish compared to the 1-50 game.
It took WoW 7 years to get to this point in time with this many subscribers. its time for other companies (not just bioware) to learn from WoW's mistakes (there are hundreds of them) and push forward to a more enjoyable mmo future.

[Deleted]

This is a totally different MMO compared to WoW

Mostly story driven and you could say that it even felt like a SP game with co-op elements... I don't think it wants to be like WoW since next patches will mostly be with more story content

I personally didn't like it since I expected more out of endgame and I canceled my sub but some ppl really like it - I don't see ppl subbing for SWTOR like in WoW for years but that's not a bad thing IMO

[Redblade]

I see it's time for the weekly "Lets make a thread where everyone that doesn't play TOR can bash on it." thread. Don't like it? Don't play it, and really, don't come here to whine about it.

[Venziir]

Having tried SWTOR all I can say is; I can see why people like it, but I honestly felt it was a stale singleplayer game from the mid-90's with forced co-op and forced cutscenes (come on EVERY damn quest!?) and the so called "amazing story" I found very "meh" at best. BUT I can still see why people enjoy it, this was just me not doing so heh. I could easily go on, but that would result in silli bashing... So all-in-all: If you like SWTOR - power to ya and enjoy. If you don't - power to ya and enjoy whatever you do like.

[bcbully]

I have an honest suspicion that many of them don't play the game and just repost comments made by others. Even the few that do go into it with such a negative mindset that they don't bother to explore the full functionality of the game and then ask "WHERES MY ACHIEVES" even though guess what.. they exist

It certainly does seem like Bioware is at least aware of the problem areas with their game, and from all of the interviews and videos I've seen over the past month, they definitely have a solid plan for fixing it. Unfortunately, it's all just going to be too little too late for me.

^^^That is the most important line. 1.2 pushed back to april was a mistake. I love the feel of my toon. swtor has the best feeling toons bar none in the industry. Just like OP I have nothing at all worth doing. I've done thousands of warzones, and can't stand to do another. I have logged in twice in the past 5 days for a total of 15 mins.

It's sad. BW has a chance to grab a stagnant market and make the place to be for mmos, instead the added to that stagnation.

[quras]

Now I know why I no longer go back and read things from CTRL ALT DEL.

There a joke.

What it appears to be is this:

I have an honest suspicion that many of them don't play the game and just repost comments made by others. Even the few that do go into it with such a negative mindset that they don't bother to explore the full functionality of the game and then ask "WHERES MY ACHIEVES" even though guess what.. they exist

[Profyrion]

Basically that entire "review" is a lie.

Ctrl Alt Del is made of shameless liars.

[Alka]

Basically that entire "review" is a lie.

Ctrl Alt Del is made of shameless liars.

It's more true then it seems. I felt the game had burnt out only after about 350 hours of game play, which is pretty weak for a MMO.