Why I won't be playing Star Wars: The Old Republic
I tested Star Wars: The Old Republic this last Friday as a republic Jedi Knight (how edgy is that?). What you'll see here is from just about 4 hours of game-play, which, yes, is not enough time to truly test everything in the game. I'm going to be quite candid, and while this may seem very negative, my overall rating for the game (well, RTM candidate beta) would be a B-, 74%, 3.7 out of 5, whatever. I'll just go straight down the list of the focus areas I generally care about.
Graphics: Sub-par. It's somewhat cartoon-like, but not as cohesive or stylistic as World of Warcraft. It's kind of in-between, and doesn't really pull it off well. I was suspicious of Bioware since Dragon Age 2, and it seems that their art team is functioning at about 80% capacity. It's not horrible, it's not bad, it's blah. Animations are decent, and at first glance seem a lot more "matched" than WoW (when you hit a guy, they parry or have a hit animation) but it eventually breaks down and you notice that your moves have one or two animations and that's it.
2017 Addendum: The graphics and animations are much better than the beta, and have been improved over the years. It's actually fairly pretty now, as the screenshot above shows.
Sound: Sound effects are good. Music is, of course, Star Wars and good. Voice acting is, for an MMO, good - but doesn't have a lot of passion or immediacy. I guess it's hard for a voice actor to be passionate about "hey, I'm a refugee and need some help with creatures" but this is not Mass Effect caliber by any means.
User Interface: This was one of the worst parts for me. You can't customize it. You can't re-size it (can you? I couldn't find an option). You can't move elements on the screen. It's bulbous and ugly. Text is stylized with this halo effect that just makes it look fuzzy. It takes up way too much of the screen (even at 1080p). It's just really, really bad. I don't know how they made it through play-testing thinking it was okay - it's WORSE than the NGE from Star Wars Galaxies.
Gameplay: It's WoW. Mechanics are exactly the same (rage, energy/mana, cooldowns, etc.), level progression is the same (talents at level 10, etc), you name it and it's in WoW. That's not bad, but unlike WoW it doesn't feel as silky smooth (even Rift felt better in gameplay). How, you ask? You fight 3 mobs at a time. Always. Or at least that's what it seems like. Spawn points are pretty much 90% static (there is no randomization to the spawn points, so monsters will pop right on their corpse) and there is barely any roaming or moving mobs (they just stand in place). So you just stand on top of the quickly respawning mobs, and kill the same ones so you don't have to fight other players for other mobs. The personal instances are a nice touch, though, but they're lifeless and dull - group of mobs, 20m of emptiness, group of mobs, 20m of emptiness, CURVE, boss.
Questing: Boring. It's WoW quests (fetch that, run to this place, kill 10 of this) except with 3 minutes of extraneous voice acting. The only real choices you have are what your response is going to be (light, dark, neutral) and the choices are ridiculously overdone. I swear, at one point a mission's dark side choice was "I think you Jedi Masters are IDIOT LOSER DOODIE HEADS!" and your light side choice was "I bow and submit to your humble teachings, Master Jedi!" Oh, well, I guess your other choice is "I refuse to do this quest." Yeah, like anyone will ever choose that. It's basically WoW + voiceovers and a veneer of "choice" to be the HORRIBLE EVIL NASTY dude or an AMAZINGLY NICE ANGEL person. Or, play a neutral guy and get jack squat for light/dark perks.
I did get some enjoyment from the 3 instances of the "your quest-giver is now an ant" bug. It was quite refreshing to hear grandiose speeches about political alliances and Jedi stuff from insect sized NPCs. Something I'm sure they'll fix prior to launch.
Grouping: Didn't do any, but apparently the group size is (4?) and your NPCs take up slots. No one was grouping because it was the noob zone. There's no group finder or anything like that anyway. I expect general chat will be flooded with LFG requests a few hours into launch.
Player Housing: Only your ship. Oh and space combat is an on-rails minigame only, so don't dust off the joystick.
Mounts: Speeder bikes or Segway equivalents. Starter mount is 100% speed increase, level 50 mount is 120% speed increase (so about WoW-epic + paladin speed boost aura). They control like WoW mounts (it moves like a player), not SWG mounts (weird physics based). Meh.
Performance: Besides all my other gripes, game performance was sub-par and un-optimized. Performance was super fast with no players around, with sprawling draw-distances and tons of repetitive grass polygons as far as the eye could see. With 10 or more players in my view, performance started slowing. Turning around to the starting point of the Jedi Knight zone, with 60-80 people milling about asking each other how to auto-attack (there isn't any) or enable area-loot (nod to Rift there), brought the framerate to the mid-20's. This was on the highest detail settings, but for reference my PC (Intel Core i5 750, nVidia GTX 570 OC) could play WoW:Cataclysm at max settings with Anti-aliasing (it's disabled for ToR, at least in the beta) and no slowdown in New Orgrimmar during peak times. And I daresay that looked much, much better than ToR did...but opinions are like arseholes, right? The client never crashed though (except there was a funny bug where you had to Alt-F4 to quit the game, since logging out didn't work right for the test) and the launcher is lightweight and speedy.
In summary... Overall Star Wars: The Old Republic feels like a great concept (WoW + Star Wars + Bioware? AMAZING!), spread too thin and rushed to market to make Christmas. It will probably be a lot more finished in a year or so, but I'm sure it will sell well for the holidays (Bioware, Star Wars, mega-marketing campaign...how can it not?). I guess I loved KoTOR 1 and 2, Mass Effect 1 and 2, and Dragon Age so much that I thought ToR would be that pedigree of game - but it's not. It's a valiant attempt, but it's just not there yet (and this is the pretty-much-RTM version of the game, so it will have to be patched from release to improve). The mechanics, feel, questing, combat, etc. are all 2004/2005 era WoW. That just isn't good enough for me anymore.
That said, if you're really hankering for an MMO and aren't nearly as picky as me (remember I'm the guy that plays one game for like...months, and I have to choose wisely!) or just plain disagree with my assessment, it's a decent MMO fix. But don't, like me, expect anything more than a WoW imitation (even more so than Rift, at least that had "new" things like the very customizable skill trees and...Rifts) with a Star Wars veneer.
Graphics: Sub-par. It's somewhat cartoon-like, but not as cohesive or stylistic as World of Warcraft. It's kind of in-between, and doesn't really pull it off well. I was suspicious of Bioware since Dragon Age 2, and it seems that their art team is functioning at about 80% capacity. It's not horrible, it's not bad, it's blah. Animations are decent, and at first glance seem a lot more "matched" than WoW (when you hit a guy, they parry or have a hit animation) but it eventually breaks down and you notice that your moves have one or two animations and that's it.2017 Addendum: The graphics and animations are much better than the beta, and have been improved over the years. It's actually fairly pretty now, as the screenshot above shows.
Sound: Sound effects are good. Music is, of course, Star Wars and good. Voice acting is, for an MMO, good - but doesn't have a lot of passion or immediacy. I guess it's hard for a voice actor to be passionate about "hey, I'm a refugee and need some help with creatures" but this is not Mass Effect caliber by any means.
User Interface: This was one of the worst parts for me. You can't customize it. You can't re-size it (can you? I couldn't find an option). You can't move elements on the screen. It's bulbous and ugly. Text is stylized with this halo effect that just makes it look fuzzy. It takes up way too much of the screen (even at 1080p). It's just really, really bad. I don't know how they made it through play-testing thinking it was okay - it's WORSE than the NGE from Star Wars Galaxies.
Gameplay: It's WoW. Mechanics are exactly the same (rage, energy/mana, cooldowns, etc.), level progression is the same (talents at level 10, etc), you name it and it's in WoW. That's not bad, but unlike WoW it doesn't feel as silky smooth (even Rift felt better in gameplay). How, you ask? You fight 3 mobs at a time. Always. Or at least that's what it seems like. Spawn points are pretty much 90% static (there is no randomization to the spawn points, so monsters will pop right on their corpse) and there is barely any roaming or moving mobs (they just stand in place). So you just stand on top of the quickly respawning mobs, and kill the same ones so you don't have to fight other players for other mobs. The personal instances are a nice touch, though, but they're lifeless and dull - group of mobs, 20m of emptiness, group of mobs, 20m of emptiness, CURVE, boss.
Questing: Boring. It's WoW quests (fetch that, run to this place, kill 10 of this) except with 3 minutes of extraneous voice acting. The only real choices you have are what your response is going to be (light, dark, neutral) and the choices are ridiculously overdone. I swear, at one point a mission's dark side choice was "I think you Jedi Masters are IDIOT LOSER DOODIE HEADS!" and your light side choice was "I bow and submit to your humble teachings, Master Jedi!" Oh, well, I guess your other choice is "I refuse to do this quest." Yeah, like anyone will ever choose that. It's basically WoW + voiceovers and a veneer of "choice" to be the HORRIBLE EVIL NASTY dude or an AMAZINGLY NICE ANGEL person. Or, play a neutral guy and get jack squat for light/dark perks.
I did get some enjoyment from the 3 instances of the "your quest-giver is now an ant" bug. It was quite refreshing to hear grandiose speeches about political alliances and Jedi stuff from insect sized NPCs. Something I'm sure they'll fix prior to launch.
Grouping: Didn't do any, but apparently the group size is (4?) and your NPCs take up slots. No one was grouping because it was the noob zone. There's no group finder or anything like that anyway. I expect general chat will be flooded with LFG requests a few hours into launch.
Player Housing: Only your ship. Oh and space combat is an on-rails minigame only, so don't dust off the joystick.
Mounts: Speeder bikes or Segway equivalents. Starter mount is 100% speed increase, level 50 mount is 120% speed increase (so about WoW-epic + paladin speed boost aura). They control like WoW mounts (it moves like a player), not SWG mounts (weird physics based). Meh.
Performance: Besides all my other gripes, game performance was sub-par and un-optimized. Performance was super fast with no players around, with sprawling draw-distances and tons of repetitive grass polygons as far as the eye could see. With 10 or more players in my view, performance started slowing. Turning around to the starting point of the Jedi Knight zone, with 60-80 people milling about asking each other how to auto-attack (there isn't any) or enable area-loot (nod to Rift there), brought the framerate to the mid-20's. This was on the highest detail settings, but for reference my PC (Intel Core i5 750, nVidia GTX 570 OC) could play WoW:Cataclysm at max settings with Anti-aliasing (it's disabled for ToR, at least in the beta) and no slowdown in New Orgrimmar during peak times. And I daresay that looked much, much better than ToR did...but opinions are like arseholes, right? The client never crashed though (except there was a funny bug where you had to Alt-F4 to quit the game, since logging out didn't work right for the test) and the launcher is lightweight and speedy.
In summary... Overall Star Wars: The Old Republic feels like a great concept (WoW + Star Wars + Bioware? AMAZING!), spread too thin and rushed to market to make Christmas. It will probably be a lot more finished in a year or so, but I'm sure it will sell well for the holidays (Bioware, Star Wars, mega-marketing campaign...how can it not?). I guess I loved KoTOR 1 and 2, Mass Effect 1 and 2, and Dragon Age so much that I thought ToR would be that pedigree of game - but it's not. It's a valiant attempt, but it's just not there yet (and this is the pretty-much-RTM version of the game, so it will have to be patched from release to improve). The mechanics, feel, questing, combat, etc. are all 2004/2005 era WoW. That just isn't good enough for me anymore.
That said, if you're really hankering for an MMO and aren't nearly as picky as me (remember I'm the guy that plays one game for like...months, and I have to choose wisely!) or just plain disagree with my assessment, it's a decent MMO fix. But don't, like me, expect anything more than a WoW imitation (even more so than Rift, at least that had "new" things like the very customizable skill trees and...Rifts) with a Star Wars veneer.
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