I checked the game for some weeks now and was really happy about the Star Wars theme and hoped to see a lot of stuff from KOTOR and KOTOR 2 but i am really disappointed in meantime.
Two fractions republic and sith. First i tryd republic as jedi and it was a really interesting start and many nice planets but grr what the hell it lags on every flashpoint and place were are more then 10-20 players (like that). Ok waiting for some patches but even 1.2 didn't fixed minor performance problems or anything that's really needed like balanced pvp for lowlevel and highlevel characters. (the buff isn't enough, its easy to fix this if you allow only level 1-10/10-20/ etc). Ok then i realized playing republic as jedi is very childish because they wanted to serve the young generations. (Here in Germany its sold for age 12+).
Lets stop the republic odyssey and switch the side to the sith imperium. Welcome at the dark side. Ok lets test the story environment and play a bounty hunter as evil as possible. Nice designed gfx at most places and (oh nice) you are able to decapitate people (errr why its sold for children's 12+). So now it starts to get annoying again on every mission they return to a childish way of story (even if you want to play it real evil) and your companion "Mako" acting like a 14 year old teenager. (Why oh why if you allow to decapitate people etc then continue a dark grown up story and environment).
Lot places and maps are strange designed. You running to marked points and you can't find stuff or the entrance to the area. Elite mobs that not dropping anything, lot of bugged farming points. Even level to enemy balance is very poor. Finally i realize there is nothing done with real love in this game. It feels as if the developers just worked on another "project" that must be finished and just for the money, not for a good outstanding game at all or for George Lucas vision of Star Wars.
Thousand of details are missing. The world is lifeless and sterile (i.g. empty casinos, no real interactive npcs) with a linear motion story without the essential liberty that makes a RPG interesting and a milestone in history.
I feel like in a big jail that needs to get payed.
Then i started some research. Production costs about 300-500 millions of dollars. That really disappoints me! For such a product??? What you did all the time long?. Buying cars and party?. Compare this pretty weak result to the world that Richard Garriot created once with Ultima 1-9 / Online and the small budget George Lucas created Star Wars IV-VI. This is inexcusable. Then i found out you buyed a engine called Hero-Engine. (Oh i feeled it since the beginning...something is real wrong. I know this kind of stuff since the legendary 3D Construction Kit). That means the game will never run smooth with full servers without coding the whole engine from scratch again. And that won't happen. Great job!
So as MMORPG with thousands of people, PVP and flashpoints where every ms and frame is important its a disaster beyond all expectations. I won't continue to buy gamecards for another strategic marketing product.
For me the story is already over.
In my opinion BioWare is soon history if they continue delivering products like Dragon Age 2/Mass Effect 3 and SWTOR.
You must wake up and you need to start real communication with the CEO's of EA. They know what they did in the past with gamestudios like Westwood, Bullfrog, Origin etc. And you are next on the list.
Fight for more room and time for your creativity to deliver REAL good games again.
Thanks for your time!