bbc uk view on SWTOR

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Old republic Star Wars video game prepares to launch

The familiar combination of Jedi, lightsabers and robot companions feature in the game
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Budding Jedi masters and Sith lords will soon have somewhere else to hone their lightsaber skills.

Star Wars: The Old Republic launches on 20 December and lets gamers play as characters from the iconic SF series.

Reputed to have cost more than $130m (£87m) to develop, SWTOR is a bid to grab a chunk of the lucrative gaming market for publisher EA.

It faces stiff competition from established titles, such as World of Warcraft, and many free-to-play games.

The Old Republic is set 3,500 years before the events depicted in the Star Wars films but uses many familiar elements from the movies.

Many aspects of the game involve moral choices that push players towards the light and the dark sides of the force.

The Old Republic (SWTOR) is a massively multi-player online (MMO) game and resembles World of Warcraft (WoW) and many others in that it asks players to go adventuring to turn their relatively weak starting character into a powerful hero.

Players can choose to play as many different races including human, Sith pureblood, Twi'lek and cyborg. At the start of the game players must choose whether to be part of the Galactic Republic or Sith Empire.

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Start Quote

Playing dark side, you can do some horrible things, which is fantastic”

John Walker
Rock Paper Shotgun
Different species adventure as one of several different classes including Jedi knights, smugglers, troopers and bounty hunters. Players also get a starship to explore the many different planets making up the SWTOR galaxy.

The game goes on sale on 20 December in the US and Europe but people who pre-ordered the game got access from as early as 13 December.

In the UK, the basic edition costs £45 and this includes the first month of online play. Continuing to play requires payment of an £8.99 monthly fee.

Other editions, deluxe and collectors, are available and include items for use in the game as well as a security module to help prevent an account from being stolen.

John Walker, a journalist at PC games news site Rock Paper Shotgun, gave a cautious welcome to the game. He said it was an "interesting confusion" of WoW and classic PC game Knights of the Old Republic.

Mr Walker said visually the game resembled a smartened up WoW and borrowed many of the well-known mechanics from that and other online role-playing games.

"However, and crucially, there is this huge amount of story in there, with every line of dialogue recorded, and genuine moral choices to be made, with long-reaching consequences on how you experience the world," he told the BBC.

'Distinctive and alternative'
"WoW has never offered anything close to that," he said. "And playing dark side, you can do some horrible things, which is fantastic."

He said there was an obvious tension in the game between the involving, story-driven solo titles that its creator Bioware is best known for and the populist multi-player experience required to attract subscribers and recoup development costs.

"I think there is a great deal that makes SWTOR distinctive and alternative enough to be interesting," he said, though he added that it was too early to say whether the game would be a hit.


Entrenched titles such as World of Warcraft will be big competition for SWTOR
"I'm hedging my bets at this point, as anyone should in the early days of a new massively multi-player game," he said.

Joe Martin, games editor at Custom PC, was less impressed with his time testing the game.

Mr Martin said "glaring technical inconsistencies", such as the fact that lightsabers do not cut through anything, robbed the game of the attraction of its setting.

"Jedi are supposed to be rare, but a massively multi-player game is naturally going to be full of them, which robs them of their rarity and potence," he said.

While playing, Mr Martin was struck by the divide between the complex single-player content and what he dubbed the "MMO-style filler".

"All the talk about this being the first MMO to put storyline into an MMO conveniently skips the reason why single player and multi-player games operate as discrete entities," he said.

With SWTOR, publisher EA is hoping to tempt players away from well-known titles, such as WoW, which also charge a monthly fee.

But it will also have to outdo the many free-to-play online games titles that started out with monthly charges but have been forced to drop fees to survive.

The launch of SWTOR comes barely a week after the closure of the Star Wars: Galaxies - one of the pioneering online role-playing games.

[vizzle]

Okay review, both positive and negative opinions. Seems like your usual arguments - "Jedi are supposed to be rare, lightsabers should be able to cut things, it feels like a single-player game". Not that I'm bashing the second reviewer, but not stuff we haven't read before

[Hoticehunter]

Mr Martin said "glaring technical inconsistencies", such as the fact that lightsabers do not cut through anything, robbed the game of the attraction of its setting.

Heh, "My lightsaber doesn't kill everything in one shot and let me cut through anything I want to just for fun, what gives bioware?" Yep, that's totally a technical problem. His computer just isn't strong enough to handle the awesome that is a lightsaber.

[Semihage]

Okay review, both positive and negative opinions. Seems like your usual arguments - "Jedi are supposed to be rare"

I don't understand why people need to believe this.

This is 3500 years before Skywalker saga.. And if we watch the prequel, there is plenty of evidence that even the new Republic got tons of Jedi..

The Light Saber not cutting through stuff.. well that's just being unnecessary picky

[Askyl]

Pretty good review, and I agree with vizzle. Not much new to read.

I think the game is brilliant.

[Moon-Man]

Keep in mind that Jedis may have been alot since its 3500 (or 3700) years before the Rise of Darth Vader.

Between that time, there may have been an almost jedi extinction just like with KOTOR II.

Jedis are rare at the Galactic Civil War, since of the Order 66. Even Before Order 66 they had a handful of jedis (not all masters, few knights, but heeps of padawans).

Mr. Martin does not have a clue about anything in the OLD Republic, which was at approx 3700 years before Vader, there may have been millions of jedis, siths alike.

I am not trying to Defend TOR, I know where Mr MArtin is coming from, but if he want a jedi to be rare, he should go play(or try) SWGemu, where jedis are EXTREMELY rare.

[endersblade]

In every game I've ever played involving Lightsabers, not a single one of them allowed you to cut through 'anything', nor did they one-shot your enemies. Even in SWG they acted more or less like they do in TOR. From a gameplay standpoint, and from an MMO standpoint more importantly, if they DID act that way, they would be god items and there'd be no point to NOT roll a Jedi/Sith. Roll a Jedi/Sith, get a one-shot weapon. Win. Trooper, BH, Smuggler, wut?

Sounds to me like they've never played a Star Wars game before, much less any real experience with MMOs.

[RoninaThorstone]

I don't understand why people need to believe this.

This is 3500 years before Skywalker saga.. And if we watch the prequel, there is plenty of evidence that even the new Republic got tons of Jedi..

The Light Saber not cutting through stuff.. well that's just being unnecessary picky

This. There were a lot more jedi back in the day.

Lightsabers 1 shotting people... sigh... How would that work in mmos? What a dumb issue.

[Glorious Leader]

In every game I've ever played involving Lightsabers, not a single one of them allowed you to cut through 'anything', nor did they one-shot your enemies. Even in SWG they acted more or less like they do in TOR. From a gameplay standpoint, and from an MMO standpoint more importantly, if they DID act that way, they would be god items and there'd be no point to NOT roll a Jedi/Sith. Roll a Jedi/Sith, get a one-shot weapon. Win. Trooper, BH, Smuggler, wut?

Sounds to me like they've never played a Star Wars game before, much less any real experience with MMOs.

I seem to recall cutting through shit in jedi knight 2 and jedi academy

[lunaspike]

In the lore there are several things that lightsabers can not cut through. Some of those things were "gasp" used to defend against lightsabers. It's always easy to spot the guys who have no clue about SW lore.

[Agoonga]

Of course the UK won't like ToR, all of the bad guys talk like them.

[Strah]

In every game I've ever played involving Lightsabers, not a single one of them allowed you to cut through 'anything', nor did they one-shot your enemies. Even in SWG they acted more or less like they do in TOR. From a gameplay standpoint, and from an MMO standpoint more importantly, if they DID act that way, they would be god items and there'd be no point to NOT roll a Jedi/Sith. Roll a Jedi/Sith, get a one-shot weapon. Win. Trooper, BH, Smuggler, wut?

Sounds to me like they've never played a Star Wars game before, much less any real experience with MMOs.

As a matter of fact BH can burn jedi with a flamethrower, trooper can electrocute him, Smuggler can throw different kinds of grenades at him.
Either that or rockets to the feet.

[Glorious Leader]

In the lore there are several things that lightsabers can not cut through. Some of those things were "gasp" used to defend against lightsabers. It's always easy to spot the guys who have no clue about SW lore.

The armor made by the mandalorians uhh cortosis i think? YEA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortosis#Cortosis

It shuts lightsabers off

[Apexeon]

Yeah, I canceled my preorder because I found out when you die, you can just respawn.

I almost missed the sarcasm... and then it hit me with the force of an aircraft carrier. Simply delicious.