I have put a considerable amount of time into Star Wars: The Old Republic over the last almost 2 weeks now. I am sure my wife wants to kill me, but the time spent in game was for a good cause. In that here is my updated experience around the game.
Okay Bioware who do I have to kill to have this as my mount?
Overall I stand by my original comment that this game is not a World of Warcraft killer. But it is an amazing MMO set in the world of Star Wars. I am a fan of Star Wars and having a MMO that ties into the universe and hits every single nail on the head from the ORIGINAL movies is great. The overall in game experience has been amazing and Bioware’s track record for keeping servers up and having a well-rounded game is on the path to the light side… I remember when WoW launched and all the server issues and down time that followed, but Bioware has done a great job of keeping down time limited. They have also addressed most of the wait times to log into a server. Which overall, was my biggest complaint.
As most of you know I am playing a Bounty Hunter and can only comment on the game from the perspective of a Bounty Hunter and even at that it is from a perspective of a Bounty hunter who is at level 37. Yup! Still shy by 13 levels of hitting the current level cap. So below here is my best overview of what I have done.
Leveling:
Originally I felt leveling was slow and turning into a grind. I will ½ way take back some of my words as I step back and look at the entire picture of the game. Overall leveling has taken sometime within this new game. But the story telling components of the game make it feel like an epic adventure and allow you to lose yourself in the Experience grind.
Running basic quests are not simply grab a quest and run around mindlessly and return for a reward. All quests have different outcomes based upon how you interact with them. Overall this has the down side of getting a new quest takes a minute or two. But it also rewards you with a rich gameplay experience and ties you into the game allowing you to feel a true sense of ownership around everything you are doing. It also allows you to build rep with your companions. Overall every choice you make can change the way the game reacts to you. Weather it is NPC’s you work with down the road or your own companions and what they think of you. So make sure you commit to what you’re doing and learn about your companions and know what they like and dislike. It will make things run much smoother down the road.
The other aspect of the game that I have neglected to take a look at so far is PvP. Many of you play MMO’s for the PvP aspect of the game. For me it has always been about PvE. For those of you reading who are not MMO Lingo friendly… PvP = Player vs. Player which is fairly self-explanatory and then we have PvE = Player vs. Encounter which is Dungeons, heroics, Flashpoints and Raids/ Operations. Basically playing with other people but attacking big monsters, aliens or people.
Space Encounters:
So by leveling you gain access to your very own Space Ship! Damn right! You get a space ship and its awesome. With a space ship comes cool space missions which you can gain credit, experience points etc… Overall these are an awesome addition to the game. It allows you to leave a world and doing something new. It could be an escort quest, kill 1,000,000 objects or down a space station overall it is a nice way to break up the grind of your typical questing.
Now your spaceship is also an extension of you… which means you can upgrade it and simply make it bad ass. Getting more missiles, Photon Cannons, shields etc… all become important as you unlock new missions. While each one can only be played once for a massive amount of experience points, Bioware has also rolled them into double dailies so you can keep earning points and credits by doing 2 combined missions. Overall I give this a solid A++ as an addition to the game.
I should also mention your ship is your primary way to navigate around the galaxy… which is fairly vast.
Companions:
Companions are your bread and butter when it comes to doing things. If they are not by your side healing you, fighting bad guys with you or interjecting their dry sense of humor into conversations, you have them working hard for you making money, collecting things or simply crafting new gear.
You gain access to your first companion fairly quickly, but as you progress you gain more. I believe you get up to 5 different companions. I am currently at 4 within my progress in the game. Overall each one has their own strengths and weaknesses which can help you in questing, sending them off to do Crew skills etc…
The down side in having 4 or 5 companions is if you use them to fight, you will want to upgrade their weapons and gear along with your gear. Fairly useless to have a companion shoots monsters for 1 or 2 damage… but overall gives another item to have to do within the game.
Crew Skills:
Unlike MMO’s like World of Warcraft, your professions in SWToR are called Crew Skills. In all honesty they are named appropriately as your character never works on the professions, your companions or Crew do them all for you. As a Bounty Hunter I picked up ArmorTech, Slicing & Scavenging. Overall Scavenging works well with ArmourTech as I am able to collect all the materials to create gear. Slicing is mainly and Crew Skill that yields you in game currency or credits.
Basically you open your Crew Skills and task your companions to working on stuff to increase the level of your skills. For Slicing you send your companions off on missions, same with Scavenging. ArmorTech you simply have them craft gear that you have the materials for. Overall each Crew Skill has it perks. Slicing yields credits, patterns and item modification upgrades. Scavenging gives you all sorts of materials. And ArmorTech allows you to create new gear, you can reverse engineer gear to learn how to make it for others or simply try to make exceptional gear that allows you to add modifications to it.
No Breaks! Get back to work Dammit!!!!
The game has a ton of different Crew Skills that play well to each type of class within the game. Best bet is to look up what Crew Skills will play well for your character and start leveling them up.
Vast Landscapes:
This game is HUGE! And the landscape and views at points and breath taking. Some shots below to show you what I mean.
Current Issues:
Every MMO launches with bugs but some issues stand out more than others that simply make the game frustrating. A few of the issues I am still seeing are listed below.
Item Upgrades for Companions: When upgrade gear the game give you a quick comparison of the new piece of gear and the old piece of gear so you can see what sort of upgrades it will offer. But when you simply switch to your companion to upgrade his gear the hover over comparison is still your main characters gear and not the companions gear.
Ships Locker: When you input items into your storage locker they are nice clean stacks, but when adding new stacks of the same items to the locker they do not combine stacks and you are forced to combine the stacks on your own. Small issue but annoying when you have Crew Skills like Scavenging.
Guild Chat, Party Chat: Every few levels the Guild Chat and Party chat simply stop showing up. It is now fixable by reloading your UI by hitting Ctrl+U 2 times
This bug is also a major issue for players who have created a Guild. They have to take more drastic steps to get their chat channels to work again. I had to leave my guild and be re-invited to get my chat channels to work properly again.
Cut Scenes: Every now and then a cut scene will go haywire. Most often the text and audio work fine, but the cut scene will show things that have nothing to do with the conversation. One example was on a Class quest, I killed a big Monster and after killing it the cut scene went back to the introduction of that monster rather than the final scene showing him dead.
Doubles? WTH???
I swear I just killed him… I swear!
Killer Knees: Every now and than My character will spazz out and continue blasting things shooting only from the knees with her arms crossed.
Well this was a long winded update, but I hope it gave you a little insight into SWToR based on how I am playing. I am deeply enjoying the game and would recommend the game to both MMO fans and non MMO’s fans across the board.
