How is SWTOR holding up?

[sleekit]

its an ablity in the general tab of the ablitys window

[Glorious Leader]

I'm 48 and do not have a 16 hour fleet pass cooldown or a 1 hour fleet pass item.

Yes you do. Check your general skill tab, 16 hour fleet pass. The one hour fleet item is if you have an authenticator any android smartphone or IOS device will give you on for free.

---------- Post added 2012-01-07 at 01:13 AM ----------

It's still 10 minutes of wasted time any time you have to travel. Have you reached a level yet where your class quests go like this? Nar Shadda ---> Dromund Kaas ---> (some fuck spaceship in the outer rim) ---> (some shit world like Quesh where you skipped all but your class quest)? Because, as you've admitted yourself, that's 40 minutes of wasted time for 6 fights and 2 minutes of stilted dialogue. Might as well be AFK on a wind rider.

Lvl 35 SI and haven't had it yet. 10 minutes is only a generilzation I might add in some cases depending on what cooldowns you have available it may be less or it may be more. Use the tools available to you wisely and its not an issue. Or come and rant on forums instead. Could care less at this point.

[Svetyac]

Personaly I do not play SWOR cause I can't find the time to play two MMO's though I'd like to.

But SWOR is actualy the first game that is able to coexist with WoW and pull out respectable number of subscribers which I think is feat on it's own.

[Semihage]

Higher level mounts makes your harder to get dismounted.. BW confirmed this as well.. So you are actually getting a lot more than 10% speed increase.

It seems like some people are too used to the WoW flying mount galore.. The truth is, before Cata, you can't even fly in Azeroth/Outland/Northrend until you pretty much almost reach max level.

Didn't they say you are not gonna be able to fly during 85-90 in Panda continent?? Better get used to it

[LordBalkoth]

The fact that this thread exploded to 40+ pages is an indicator of SWTOR's popularity. I am concerned that some of the people posting here have not actually played SWTOR (some were called on that. One poster foolishly mentioned SWTOR having an autoattack while the opposite is true.). I became interested in the game after reading threads on this website, I went to SWTOR.com and thought the game is worth buying which is what I did. I have no reason to log into WoW now. The game does not play like WoW the combat is more fluid, more fast paced, no auto attack means every action is controlled by you. The storyline feels personalized. Even at low levels you feel more important. Things that I like about SWTOR:

Med Probe resurrection (beats corpse running) You resurrect in stealth mode for 8-10 seconds and can haul ass. Anybody can res you out of combat,
Equipping Companions
Voice Over Quests with meaningful choices
Far superior profession design Currently I have scavenging/slicing/armstech Reverse engineering is brilliant. Imagine if disenchanting had a chance of getting you the schematic for a superior design instead of just dust/crystal/shard.
Your own f'ing starship (i listened to I am on a boat when I got mine)
Fun abilities. I like throwing grenades and certain abilities knock people off their feet. Smugglers even get "slice droid" which is a CC ability. Although I am jealous that bounty hunters get a bona fide hacker as companion.
It's Star Wars.
I love the Star Wars movies and I chuckle at comments about smuggler being "galaxy's errand boy". That is what you are. Han Solo was not fighting for the cause, nor was he a great resistance leader. The classes in game trace their roots to the movies. I am on a whitebeam run east coast server and in general chat I see people getting in groups doing dungeons (have yet to see raid lfg posts) I was concerned about this game being a fad, but now I think it is one of those games that truly has the potential of knocking wow off its pedestal.

[KrazyK923]

Higher level mounts makes your harder to get dismounted.. BW confirmed this as well.. So you are actually getting a lot more than 10% speed increase.

It seems like some people are too used to the WoW flying mount galore.. The truth is, before Cata, you can't even fly in Azeroth/Outland/Northrend until you pretty much almost reach max level.

Didn't they say you are not gonna be able to fly during 85-90 in Panda continent?? Better get used to it

Until you hit 90 you cannot. And it's funny because everyone was nearly screaming for flying mounts in Azeroth after we got it in BC and Wrath. Blizzard, before announcing Cataclysm, said it would take too many resources to do because they essentially had to rebuild the entire world.

Cataclysm comes out, people can fly, and what are the reactions? "WAAAAAAAAAA WORLD PVP IS DEAD BECAUSE I CAN'T CAMP SOMEBODY AFTER I'VE KILLED THEM."

but now I think it is one of those games that truly has the potential of knocking wow off its pedestal.

No...it really does not. Why? Because it's the exact same game without the innovations Blizzard added to make life easier for everyone taken out.

[Semihage]

Until you hit 90 you cannot. And it's funny because everyone was nearly screaming for flying mounts in Azeroth after we got it in BC and Wrath. Blizzard, before announcing Cataclysm, said it would take too many resources to do because they essentially had to rebuild the entire world.

Cataclysm comes out, people can fly, and what are the reactions? "WAAAAAAAAAA WORLD PVP IS DEAD BECAUSE I CAN'T CAMP SOMEBODY AFTER I'VE KILLED THEM."



No...it really does not. Why? Because it's the exact same game without the innovations Blizzard added to make life easier for everyone taken out.

Just wait.. MMO usually takes 3-4 months to mature.. hate to say this but I started vanilla WoW 1 month after release.. There were plenty of ppl that were playing both FFXI/DAOC/EQ while doing WoW.. heck.. my guildie had to regularly disappear just to raid in DAOC. (WoW had ZERO end game in first 3 month).. MC was so bugged you would get people go into someone else's instance it was funny (some alliance actually was in horde's MC instance).

All these initial panic I am seeing right now is pretty much the same as WoW first launched.. Granted if the game stay exactly like this for next 3 month.. then SWTOR is doomed.. but until then.. the story/class quest alone will keep me busy for awhile.

[Lazertrooper]

that going into other people's instance bug lasted even all the way into tbc. i remember a dwarf holy paladin getting into a horde raid in black temple.

[fishoa]

I feel cheated.

So many promises yet this is just another reskinned default MMO. To be honest, this game made me resubscribe World of Warcraft. If I'm going to pay for a copy I might as well just play the original.

Anyway, here's my rant.

I leveled up a Bounty Hunter in a PvP server. I had to say, the first two planets were a blast until I realized what was going on. The gameplay is trying to be the the same as World of Warcraft. Sure the new resource system says otherwise, but you still have a 1-5 rotation and the same cooldowns. I specced Bodyguard to heal some FlashPoints and it's exactly the same as playing my Resto Shaman. Seriously, even Earth Shield and Tidal Waves are there. Not cool.

The story is just so bland. I feel like they tried to accomplish something, but after the first two planets, the decline is obvious. As a Bounty Hunter, I thought I was going after big targets, for the Empire and the Republic. I thought I was going to kill influential people for money and only money. That's almost what I got. What I got was a revenge driven story where I participate in something called the Great Hunt. In this "Battle Royale-esque" hunt where we hunt for targets first then we hunt hunters, there are no cheap tricks and you're still looking for revenge. Of course, you win the hunt and you're the saviour of the day. It may sound cool from my synopses, but in-game, it looks just as shallow as like any other story on fanfiction, classic Mary Sue. There's no gray-ground in TOR, you're either a Mary Sue or less than nobody.

Since we're still talking about the story, let's talk about how a "story-driven" MMO like TOR works. It was sold as one, but it doesn't deliver. The dialogue options are just badly written. It seems to me that BioWare doesn't know what are the dark and light sides. For example, one of the first quests on Smuggler. Medicine was stolen by refugees. As you go to get the medicine back, the refugee says she needed it for a child and the rebel forces took it from her. You go kill the rebel soldiers and when you come back to her you have the option to give her the medicine or just ignore her. Giving her the medicine awards you with Light Points while ignoring her and giving the medicine back to Republic soldiers awards you Dark Points. Serisouly. There isn't a neutral ground. In The Told Republic, the Dark Side choices are either "kill because I want to see you die lol" or "suffer! so dark&edgy xD" while Light Points are the classical White Knight, spare everybody, no harm allowed. If Luke Skywalker destroyed the Death Star on this game, he was going to receive Dark Points for that. Oh, and you can't be neutral in this game or you're going to lose gear. Some gear may only be equipped if you have Light x or Dark y. If you're neutral, that is, above Dark or below Light, you will miss on some pieces of gear. In that 2h podcast TotalBiscuit did praising TOR, Jesse Cox said that he was only picking dark choices because of the gear.

Oh, choices. What choices do we have again on this game? Extreme rudeness, I don't care or Polite. Three choices that doesn't change anything at all. The only choices that matter are the dialogue options that awards you with Dark or Light side points. In the end, this is just another mechanic that makes you think you're different from the other player but it's not. You're doing the same missions and the choices you make doesn't change a thing in your story. There is no personal story as the game was telling us that was going to be. It's not there and probably never will. This was a major letdown.

On questing, I need to say that this is exactly like World of Warcraft... with a 3 minute cinematic for every kill-and-fetch quest. They said it was going to be different but it isn't. Instead of killing 10 boars and finding Mankrik's wife you have to find a slicer and as a bonus quest, kill 30 thugs. How is this any different? To break it down, you have a major chain quest, the acts. In each act, you're have to go through different planets and to "complete" that planet, you have to so side quests for either the Empire or the Republic. Some side quests have bonus quests. They're usually grind the some NPCs type of quests. This is exactly the same as World of Warcraft: Go to Hyjal, do the major quest line. Good boy. Now I heard that the Warchief wants you in Deepholme, go do that zone now.

About zones... Oh, where do I start? I'm not trying to compare here, but it's impossible not to. I have two major complaints about zones. The first one is about instancing. Everything is instanced. While I thought this was amazing in the first days, it got pretty annoying later on. The zones can't handle a lot of people on it at the same time, so you have the same zone but in different phases. For example, to do a Heroic 4+ in Dromund Kass, I had to change phases to see my group. This isn't warned anytime in the game. This is also one of the reasons you always feel like there's nobody in the zone, even though there are over 200+ people in that planet. My second complaint is the art direction. For a game that had over $300mi invested, the art direction is lackluster. You can say whatever you want about Blizzard, that they're jews, that they suck and can't do a decent game, but don't you dare say that they can't do scenarios. BioWare zones makes old Tanaris look like paraside. You can say that this is my opinion and that "art direction" is subjective, but seriously, there's not a zone where I can drool over. Even the fleets are the same. The Impearl Fleet and the Republic Fleet have the same design. C'mon BioWare. World of Warcraft at launch had major cities, and I mean major and god damn different. Stormwind was huge, Thunder Bluff was amazing, Undercity has one of the best city designs I have ever seen. What are you guys offering here? A copy of Ironforge for both factions? Another huge letdown. This one actually pisses me off.

Also, to get to the fleet, I have to leave my planet to a spaceport. From the planet to the spaceport, I have a 10s loading screen. From that spaceport, that adds nothing in-game, there are no vendors and nothing except my ship, I have to take another "port" to get inside my ship. Another 10s loading screen. Inside my ship, I can travel to the fleet. This takes another 10-30s, easily. After that, I have to leave my ship to get inside the fleet. Another 10s loading screen. I waste more time on loading screens and useless spaceports than actually travelling. This is an example of how much thought BioWare put into this game. No, this isn't immersion because loading screens and filler spaceports are not immersion. Having to get inside my ship just to go to a fleet isn't immersion. Ironically, in Hutta, I can just go to the planet and get a port straight to the fleet. Amazing.

Let's talk about classes, shall we? The Told Repubic has 4 starter classes. On level 10, you can choose an advanced class. So, in theory, this game has 8 classes. One may argue that this game has 16 classes, but the Republic classes are the same as the Empire classes, with different names and animations. And this is bad. If you think about yourself, this sounds cool, of course. It wouldn't make sense if a Bounty Hunter has the same moves and animations as a Trooper. Now, if you think about PvP, that's a whole different story. Classic example is the Jedi Sage vs. the Sith Sorcerer. While the Sedi Sage has to wait for the projectile to hit the target to deal damage, the Sith Sorcerer doesn't. While this seems minimal, this can make or break a battle. The originality in class design is just despicable. Bodyguard is copy and paste Resto Shaman. Earth Shield? There. Riptide? There. Tidal Waves mechanic? There. It's doesn't look like a Resto Shaman, it's the same. One may argue that it isn't the same because you don't use mana. I would say he's right and wrong at the same time. It might not look like I don't have a restriction, but it's the same. If you spam your fast and expensive heal, you will run out of mana and you won't be able to heal, right? Well, in TOR, if you spam your fast and expensive heal, you will overheat / run out of force / etc and you won't be able to heal. You are still restricted, just like in World of Warcraft. I'm not saying that doesn't make sense, it does: if you do stupid things, you should get punished for it. What I want to say is that this isn't any different from World of Warcraft like BioWare says it is. To be honest, it's worse. We had a huge mana pool in World of Warcraft, so we could "afford" doing "stupid" things like spamming Chain Heal because we had to cover for a healer dc. In TOR, you can't. Also, healing isn't dynamic as some people say it is in this game. Healing "rotation" is still there. To be honest, It's the same thing we're tired of playing... without mouseover heals. The fact that EA had the audacity to ship a game without macros is unbelievable. We are in 2012 and every f2p in the god damn MMO market has macros. Get your shit together, Tyrone.

The Auction House... please, fire the retard that designed this piece of crap. Even fanboys have to agree that this is the most terrible designed Auction House ever. Comparing to World of Warcraft's default Auction House (because this game doesn't support addons so we have to compare default vs. default), TOR's AH is clunky and not user-friendly, thus driving new users away from it. To buy something, you have to choose a category. You can't just put "cobalt" there and press enter. The number of items per page is also ridiculous. If I remember correctly, it's 10 per page. On the other hand, they almost hit the spot when it's about selling. You can just move your item to the AH and it will give you a pre-set price on that item. Notice I said almost, because that's the only thing they did right in the entire system. Major flaws with this Auction House are: 1, you can only post 50 items on the AH. That's ridiculous, why would you do something like that? This caps players that actually use the AH to get some money. I usually sell every BoE I get on the AH for some extra cash. of course, if I sold it, somebody is going to use that BoE for something, either for alts or for Reverse Engineering, it doesn't matter, money was traded. That won't happen in The Old Republic because of the bad design of the Auction House and because of that cap. You are obliged to sell the "important" items. The second major flaw is that the default listing price. In WoW, the cost to list an item is part of the vendor price of said item. In TOR, the cost to list an item is a percentage of the listing price. That's insane. Players just list items for the default price because raising the price for an item it's bad by default. If you list an item for 1000 credits, the AH takes 100c away from you for 2d. If you list it for 100000, it takes you 10000c away. And by listing by the default price, you don't have an undercut market. It just doesn't work BioWare, it's first grade economics for gods sake. This leads me to the final point on this topic: you can't buy low, sell high. Do that and you're warned. Welcome to The Old Republic, comrade. All hail Darth Stalin and the glorious Socialist Empire. Seriosuly though, you can do that, but don't you dare "control" the market. Somebody is dumb and lists a product A for almost half of it's price? Sure you can buy one or two to re-list, but you can't monopolize the market. That's... sigh. Quality Bioware design, gentlemen. If you don't believe me, just google it. Also, dear BioWare, you ripped off World of Warcraft this whole time but you couldn't ripoff Auctioneer? Really? Is it that hard?

Moving on, moving on. Let's talk about the revolutionary crafting system. BioWare, thinking controlling the market isn't enough to disrupt the economy, completely destroyed it with companions. No, really. Thank you BioWare. I'll explain it. In The Old Republic, you can send your companions away to get crafting materials for you. Of course, you pay a small fee for it but it's much better than farming it and much cheaper, in theory, than buying them from the auction house. You can also get crafting materials from something they called Mission Professions, that works exactly the same as Gathering Professions (pay, send, get), but they have different materials. But what does this all mean? This means that BioWare destroyed the value on crafting materials. In World of Warcraft or any other MMO in the god damn market, you have to spend time to gather materials. This actually attaches a certain value to said material because somebody spent time to grind it. In The Told Republic, you don't need to farm it, because everyone can just afk while their companion do the grinding. This cheapens the value of said material to a point where it's not worth farming it, you can just create an alt with that profession and afk while you play your main. On crafting professions, BioWare just did it all wrong. First of all, all the crafting items are damn hard and expensive to craft. That's would be something good if the vendored PvP items weren't better, cheaper and easier to get. They don't add any stat bonuses to the player, except... Biochem. Biochem is so overpowered that you get a "flask" that you can use how many times you want and it gives you +150 in one stat (if I remember correctly, it's aim). Oh, and that "flask" is also better than any "flask" in the market. So, in theory, if you want to raid any end-game content, Biochem is the only viable profession. Quality Biow... etc.

I already talked about what this game has. Let me tell you what it doesn't have:

Looking for Group tool / Looking for Group global chat. Even Rift has one. This is probably one of the best things it happened for new players or for alt levelers. It gets them started on PvE without any hard work and you don't have to waste time looking for people. I think it was one of the Rift devs that said once that "Players want to group, they just don't want to start one". I agree. In TOR, this is one of the biggest complaints, after the 0.5s delay on abilities. I support this tool because in that game you have to go back to the fleet to look for a group. It's annoying and also a huge waste of time. One may said that this "destroys" server communities. I say that's a huge lie. First of all, there are no server communities in a game that has no server forums. Second, going back to the fleet to look for a group isn't what I would call social. I get social in guild, in a dungeon, not while I'm looking for players. The tool has no downsides and it saddens me that BioWare added the flashpoint hub attached to the main city but they failed to add a LFG tool.

UI and Addons. Okay, it's launch and they "might" add addons. I would be fine with it if the UI was decent enough for people to raid with it. The UI is terrible designed. If you're a healer in TOR, you know what I'm talking about. You can't see durations on your buffs, you don't have target of target nor focus target. The raid frames are a joke. They're not even refreshed every second. You can't see your friend's "energy". The UI only has 2 bars in the center of the screen and two side bars. There are no aggro meters in the stock UI. There are no chat bubbles. So many basic things missing that I feel like BioWare didn't pay enough money for the UI guys. This part of the game is seriously lacking and there's no ETA in a remake of the UI.

I think I wrote too much and I'm pretty sure I forgot a lot of things, but anyway, here's the tl;dr:
If you feel like paying for an alpha phase game, go ahead and buy this game. This game was clearly not ready for release. It's a total trainwreck, but hey, if you have fun and you feel like paying for it, who am I to say something? Just don't say this game is any good because it isn't.

I will save my money for Guild Wars 2 and / or Final Fantasy XIV 2.0. BioWare is never going to see my money again.

[Karnige]

I think I wrote too much and I'm pretty sure I forgot a lot of things, but anyway, here's the tl;dr:
If you feel like paying for an alpha phase game, go ahead and buy this game. This game was clearly not ready for release. It's a total trainwreck, but hey, if you have fun and you feel like paying for it, who am I to say something? Just don't say this game is any good because it isn't.

I will save my money for Guild Wars 2 and / or Final Fantasy XIV 2.0. BioWare is never going to see my money again.

no this your opinion and everyones is different. like it or not this game is selling well and will continue to do well in the future. you are saying something. in the end let people play what they want. The fact you are so upset over a game from bioware and never playing a game from them again seems petty. the game is 3 weeks old of course there are problems

[fishoa]

no this your opinion and everyones is different. like it or not this game is selling well and will continue to do well in the future. you are saying something. in the end let people play what they want. The fact you are so upset over a game from bioware and never playing a game from them again seems petty. the game is 3 weeks old of course there are problems

no this your opinion and everyones is different.

See why this doesn't work? Now go back and read my post.

[Bayhas]

I will save my money for Guild Wars 2 and / or Final Fantasy XIV 2.0. BioWare is never going to see my money again.

Nice that you are giving that failure of a title (Final Fantasy XIV 2.0) a second shot and then judging everything you've done in TOR after a total of 3 weeks out of launch. Did you play World of Warcraft on it's initial launch? Did you ever play EQ, DAoC, UO... ANY MMO for it's first few weeks? Months? Anything?

Also.. the phrase, "Bioware ripped off World of Warcraft" is the most -asanine- phrase in existence of MMOs. Bioware took ideas from an MMO STANDARD MOLD that Blizzard ripped off, that Sony ripped off, etc etc so on and so on. Making that statement alone discredits quite a bit of the whining you did above it.

Is TOR perfect? No, especially after 3 weeks going live.
Is WoW perfect? Far from it, after 7 years of live.
Is Rift perfect? Nope.

I could keep going on but it boils down to this. If you are curious, try it out and figure things out on your own. Don't listen to anyone else, they aren't the one behind your keyboard, they won't be the one playing it.


Enjoy your time in the known Galaxy, Azeroth, and beyond.

[Yseraboy]

Oh, choices. What choices do we have again on this game? Extreme rudeness, I don't care or Polite. Three choices that doesn't change anything at all. The only choices that matter are the dialogue options that awards you with Dark or Light side points. In the end, this is just another mechanic that makes you think you're different from the other player but it's not. You're doing the same missions and the choices you make doesn't change a thing in your story.

Why does that remind me of Mass Effect 2?

Except this is an MMO, not a single-player game where you can get your companions - and yourself - permanently killed.

The choices can't affect the main story, because they can't let you turn down a dead-end street - and leave you to rot, or roll a new character.

They can let you miss-out on minor plotlines, but nothing that will keep you from progressing.

[Callax]

no this your opinion and everyones is different.

See why this doesn't work? Now go back and read my post.

As much as I agree with your post, prepare to get bashed, flamed, and trolled into oblivion for posting something that doesn't say that SW: ToR isn't awesome.

That is something you are not allowed to do in the SW: ToR forum (without being bashed, flamed, and trolled), so when it happens, don't say I didn't warn you.

[Beavis]

starcraft would like a word with you

Yep, Starcraft is so ubiquitous over there that Blizzard doesn't even need a Japanese language website. Every Japanese person just gets a buzz in their brain and is immediately aware of all Blizzard news and happenings. OH WAIT YOU MEAN KOREA NOT JAPAN.

[leviathonlx]

I'd imagine SW:TOR would probably stand a better chance in Japan than WoW, if only because people there actually know and like Star Wars whereas Blizzard products are just more "shit Western games."

Sci-fi settings fail miserably in the East with Starcraft being a rare exception with Korea. But when it comes to MMO's they greatly favor fantasy settings.

[hulkgor]

Fantastic game, in my opinion. Has some minor and major issues to resolve, but overall it has an incredible amount of potencial and is extremely enjoyable and fun.

I was, and still am a Blizzard fan, and played WoW since early us beta. purchased and played us retail for 3 months before the european launch and been part of a hardcore raiding guild (20 h\week for raids + a lot more on alts\other stuff), and i consider TBC to be the best 'version' of WOW.

That being said, i am completely at awe with SW:TOR, and i have the same feeling i had when wow was released and never looked back. Ever since i got early access i never logged back on wow (which is going downhill, rapidly).

Will i still feel the same for swtor in 3 months? who knows. but right now? lovin every single minute of the game.

[Dryc]

I feel cheated.
.

Give this man a trophy , pretty much Swtor current state . +1

[fishoa]

double post.

[Deleted]

Unsubbed - Oh wait I need to re enter my code for some fucking reason to unsubscribe crafty move Bioware - I am currently away at uni. the post that is long but pretty bang on pretty much is my view on this "game" I spend so much travelling and listening to pointless fucking cutscenes to kill x it is just a time sink rather than enjoyable. Yes wow has it's problems but my god it has done a lot right.

I hate to use the wow with lightsabers but the game IS in so many ways. I was healing Sith Inquisitor healing and realised hey this is druid healing not similar is IS druid healing.

As for locations my god are the unforgettable wow planet looks like a big rectangle WOOOOOOOOOOOOW, exciting.

Graphics suck ass as does art style characters look like play dough, considering they spent 400 million its so dated I logged back on WoW and rift and aOc AND DCU and thought. This is actually an art style.

All in all, don't believe hype Bioware are becoming shit which makes me worry that ME3 will be crap which it certainly looks like in the little I've read and EA are degenerating to their old ways. Not gonna waste by time

P.s. to the long review guy just went into ironforge and yes they are the same.

bring on the flames, seems this game is ran on hype alone