Combat animations are one of the first things that struck me in TOR ... no generic waving hands around, your avatar does the abilities you fire, react to cc. For some reason ppl mist the spam fest of WoW and call it great feature. I would find it difficult to go back to it.
My part in this story has been decided. And I will play it well.
Most of wow's "levelling" armour is from years ago.
I'll play your game though.
http://i.imgur.com/kWRjO.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/9KlgP.jpg
WoW's texture is higher resolution, doesn't mean it looks better overall.
To OP:
The walking/running animation/feel doesn't seem as fluid as in wow, but its still decent. I prefer the wow style art, even though its lower poly_count, but thats just a personal perference. Of the style of art that swtor has, its very well done.
I've found character control and targetting to be a lot more awkward in close melee fights against multiple targets. For example in wow as feral cat, I can pounce one, throw out bashes and cyclones, its all very fluid and fast, swtor doesn't have the same fluidity, but that will improve a lot once they introduce mouseover macros.
Overall, if the movement feel is very very important to you, then you might want to wait until they introduce mouseover macros, but other than that its close enough to be worth trying. Personally the game isn't for me, will play out the first month but definitely won't be renewing (not going back to wow either, playing aoe online for the moment), wish they had a trial account or something so I could have saved myself the money, but oh well, lesson learnt.
My part in this story has been decided. And I will play it well.
Which caster classes in swtor have better animations, in your opinion? Cuz my inquisitor just has a million variations on "point and lightning shoots out". My demo lock is way way better if variation is your thing. I didn't check, but do different races have different casting animations in swtor?
My PC is almost 3 years old and runs the game on 45-60FPS on High/Medium Settings. What's your point? Note that if you're basing this on Beta experience, the retail game is smoother and has better and more consistent frame rates.
Lol, that's actually an option. The default option is to queue abilities for 0.5 seconds (similar to WoW's latency compensation). You can turn that off, for abilities to go off instantly.
One thing that were buggering me was the looting, the delay made me go insane at times.
If you expect it to feel and move exactly as WoW, then you will be disappointed.
If you don't have any specific expectations and are open to the idea of giving it time to get used to, then you won't mind it after a while.
The char has a slight feel of being to stiff in the torso part, as if he had a stick attached to he's back, it's mostly a feeling though, one that passes with time. Other than that the movements are just as responsive as WoW and I personally have not had any issues with the combat animations, the people who do might run on to high graphics settings for there own good I suspect.
Also, brand new MMO not being perfect 2 days after launch, SHOCKER.
I personally think that SWOTR is gonna be another "Rift-situation"... Everyone thinks that it's going to kill WoW, yet the opposite happens..
That's precisely what I think as well. WOW has a really nice response and feel to moving around and interacting with the UI. It has very solid feedback. SWTOR still has that feeling the UI is running a split second ahead/behind what is taking place on screen. It's difficult to describe. . . it's like trying to touch type on a keyboard with one of those plasticized protector films? It's not exactly bad, I found it more an issue on RIFT and it was a HUGE problem in Warhammer Online. Hopefully when/if they give the UI another polishing pass and unlock it to modification things will be better.
I agree with those saying that the character looks a bit stiff when moving around. So far (and I played in Beta as well) it's more of a visual factor than an actual one when playing. Just moving, that is. Add combat to it and it's a bit different. Then it actually feels slightly "clunky" when playing. Comparing it to other, more recent MMOs, SWTOR in this regard ends up alongside WAR, AOC, Rift etc. From good to very good but not the perfect score I would give WOW. It's just one of those things Blizzard just does really, really well.
Apart from hoping for slight improvement to movement animations ahead - which probably is not high on the agenda - there are two annoying things though in SWTOR that bothers me in regards to movement:
1. The camera auto adjusts to "from behind" when moving. You can't leave it at another angle. At least, I haven't seen such an option.
2. On some surfaces the sound for running is very much like the sound of two coconuts banging together, Monthy Python style. Quite far off the actual sound of footsteps and something that bugs me every time I hear it.
All of these threads will attract fanboys. You title invited it with SWTOR vs WOW in the title. You are going to get the WoW folks trying to bash it unfairly which makes the SW folks over defend it.
Unless you absolutely can't afford $60, juts buy the game and play if for a month. Look at it as any other game that gets played a ton the first month then shelved. Since buying it includes the 30 sub, you can judge yourself
You will get WoW people saying the textures are better in WoW (which is a complete fallacy) and the SW folks claiming the animations are seamlessly smooth (another fallacy)
"Peace is a lie"
The movement in SWTOR definitely feels a lot more stiff than WoW. So in the movement and feel department WoW wins.