I'd like to preface this by saying that I did not partake in the beta, nor did I allow any prior spoilers before I received my early game access. I wanted to go into this game without any preconceived opinions to fully experience the game as the developer intended.
Pro's:
Intro cinematic's are surprisingly exciting and have a wonderful "in canon" feeling to them, they really made me want to slice through some stuff with a light-saber. Solo questing for a healing class (I picked heals this time around) is normally a painful, time consuming process, but in swtor, it doesn't feel like I was hindered in any way by spec'ing heals. I have a plethora of damage dealing abilities and a companion that tanks everything perfectly. The storyline. What can I say about this. I have heard that a lot of people playing this game are put off by the Mass Effect style of NPC interaction, but I couldn't be more happy with this. Honestly, in other mmo's I'd click the npc, hit accept, and head off to the area where I have to kill 15 of *place mob name here*. Though there are plenty of go and kill x number of these quests, I find myself caring much more about the story with this kind of interaction. Game Sound. What can I say about this, the voice over and in game sounds are the best I have seen in an mmo. Normally I don't care about this kind of thing, but I think that is because up until this point I had not been exposed to this kind of sound usage. Space Combat. Even though this portion of the game is on rails, the more you play it the more you find out that skill does play a role in this portion of the game. As you get into the high level content you find out that you can't just hit ships once to kill them and things really start to get interesting. I have been having a blast with this. Crafting. I really like the fact that I don't have to spend hours running around worried about getting ganked to gather for my professions. Being able to send my crew out to do it for me, not having to memorize a specific path through a zone is really great. Depth. The planet's are huge, perhaps not the starting planet's, but everything after that, really awesome feel to each of them. I always liked the idea of theme planets in star wars, and they did a great job capturing each planet's uniqueness. Class Quest line. I went with a Jedi Consular for my first toon, and I have to say the class storyline up through act 1 is really engaging. In most MMO's while I quest I would be listening to a podcast, or watching tv while questing but I noticed since I started playing swtor, I've not had anything going on in the background, because all of my attention is focused on the game and the current story content. This adds a certain immersion that I have been missing in previous mmo's.
Now the Con's:
As with any new mmo upstart, there will be bugs, most notably for me was the green flashes around almost every bind camp. I don't know if it has to do with the green towers or just my video card, but it happens. Also, there's a bug with unclickable gathering nodes, and a few quests that are broken, but really, for a new game, I've seen A LOT worse, believe me. Unmovable UI. I am very aware of the debate going on right now between having, or not having mods and macro's in the game. While I understand and agree with both sides of this argument, I don't see the harm of adding a movable UI into the default settings of the game. As a healer, I do have the option of raid style bars even in a 4 man, but when I am solo'ing, I have to keep clicking on the companion portrait at the bottom left to heal my tank, and it gets a little tedious. I think being able to move the different tables around would really go a long way with allowing people some customization. Of all my con's this is my biggest issue with the game at this point. Not enough action bars. I have so many skills, so many in fact that I have been forced to put some of them on the left or the right action bar, which I usually use for the less used skills in other mmo's. Even one more bar in the center would go a long way. Companions get Stuck. This is not a HUGE problem but it does happen. Usually around elevator's or large changes in elevation. Dismissing the companion and re-summoning doesn't help as they just spawn back where they were when you dismissed them.
Overall I have to say that this was one of the smoothest MMO launches I have been a part of. Though there are bugs and some issues with the game, in the grand scheme of things I couldn't be happier. I was hoping that this would be my wow replacement (im so terribly sick of wow) and I'm happy that Bioware has delivered a truly awesome experience! A-!
Lazy~
