Star Wars: The Old Republic

Title: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: December 20, 2011
Date Played: December 2011-March 2012
Time Played: 150 hours
Completed (Y/N): N/A
Score: 4/5



Opinion:
It is hard to express an opinion on MMOs. It is a genre that is always under development and as such it constantly evolves while patching up old problems and spawning new ones. So this is my opinion of SWTOR after its first 4 months of release.

I am pretty dissatisfied with the direction WOW took after its first year and so a prospect of a new MMO from a developer that is almost as good as Blizzard (BioWare) was very appealing to me. I am not a Star Wars fanboy (I appreciate the universe but dont really care for it), nevertheless I picked up two copies of TOR (for myself and my girlfriend) on the day of release. The plan was to play together, and so we did. Almost every minute of the 150 hours or so that we played, we played together. Running instances, questing, and leveling.

The Old Republic innovates on the MMO genre by brining single player (Mass Effect like) fully voiced and acted out character interactions. Unlike most other MMOs where quests are broken up by race, in TOR each class has its own epic questline that takes them from level 1 all the way to level 50. These quest lines are well done and do indeed feel like something you would experience in a well crafted single player RPG.

The game utilizes a beautiful and smooth running engine (although it does require a PC from the last 2 years to run well). Each planet has its own theme and style. This adds a good variety to the environments. We found ourselves spending about a night or two of playing on each planet and it was pretty exciting to find out what the next planet's environment would be like.

The Item Modification System

However, the focused planets and the linear storyline is where The Old Republic begins to fall apart for me. While the actual story is good, and the personalized fully voice acted NPC interactions are engaging, I found that as I gained levels I had no reason at all to explore the world. I found myself running from objective A to objective B, and eventually I realized that there isnt much that makes TOR an MMORPG. The way I was progressing through zones was strikingly similar to the heavily instanced Guild Wars. The vast planets started to feel like an illusion as the actual gameplay started to feel like running down a corridor.

The Old Republic makes some interesting changes to the standard MMO tropes. Every character gets to have several companions that they meet though the personalized epic arc. These companions are quite handy as they can go to town and sell your junk items (like the pets in Torchlight), they can fill in a role in a group (DPS, Tank, Healer), and they also do all of your crafting for you.  Bottom line is that the companions are pretty awesome. No longer are you by an anvil crafting 1000 of item X, no longer are you leaving white items on the corpses, and no longer are you stuck on a quest because you are unable to find a tank or a healer. While the companion is not nearly as good at filling in the class roles as a real player would, most of the time its enough to get the job done. These are great additions, but they reduce your reliance on other players even more, making it seem even more like a single player (or small scale multiplayer) game.

Character Sheet

As far as the actual substance of quests, it has not really changed. It is still go kill 10 of X and bring me back 5 of Y. Same could be said about PVP, it is a slightly modified version of Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley (both are on a much smaller scale). And the 3rd arena called "Hutt Ball" is sort of like football. All three of these got boring fairly quickly especially since there were some major balance issues when it came to PVP. Bioware did make a step in the right direction by auto leveling everyone to one level for PVP, but they omited the skills you would gain from all those levels, so even though you are the same level as someone else they will easily kill you because of the skills (spells if you will) that they have.

Instancing (flashpoints) is another interesting innovation in The Old Republic. For the most part its an instance like in any other MMO; however, at certain points, and usually multiple times per instance everyone involved will engage in some sort of conversation with NPCs and depending on the outcome of that conversation the instance can lead the group to a completely different area, with different bosses, enemies and story. This adds at least some (although admittedly not a lot, but more than most other MMOs) replayability to the instances.

Character gear and equipment is approached rather interestingly as well. If you see something that you like but its for a different class, you simply strip it of its "modifications" and plug in the ones that are suited for your class. Same applies to out-leveling gear. If you really like those pants you got at level 5, you can plug in better (high level) mods and keep using those pants all the way to the end game. This system not only allows you to "dress" your character as you like. It also means that if an inferior item drops you can always strip it of its mods.

Gryphons

If there is one thing that other MMOs should take away from TOR its the way group questing works. When talking with the quest NPC everyone in the group gets to participate. Everyone gets the same choices on the screen, and once everyone picks, a die roll determines who's choice will be picked as the primary. There are some exceptions to this, for example the epic personalized story arc. While others will be in the cut scenes, they will simply observe.

The Old Republic was fun while it lasted. It however felt more of a multiplayer RPG than an MMO. Due to heavy quest line instancing and easy (and early) mount acquisition it was rare to run into another human being even on a heavily populated server (Rakata Mind Prison). TOR introduced some neat ideas to the stale MMO formula, it however is far from being the next big thing.

For a Star Wars fan (or even a Sci Fi fan) The Old Republic is a good WOW alternative; but for those that would rather loose themselves in a medieval fantasy, World of Warcraft is still the best thing out there. If you are remotely interested in playing an MMO set in the Star Wars universe I would highly recommend grabbing a trial. When all is said and done The Old Republic is one of the better MMOs to ever grace our monitors. In my opinion its just not the best.

PS - I got my Sniper to level 37 (cap was 50) before stopping. I felt that I saw everything The Old Republic had to offer, and the linearity and repetitiveness of it was starting to bore me.

My Sniper