I feel cheated.

[zardosbacon]

So many promises yet this is just another reskinned default MMO. To be honest, this game made me resubscribe World of Warcraft. If I'm going to pay for a copy I might as well just play the original.

 

Anyway, here's my rant.

 

I leveled up a Bounty Hunter in a PvP server. I had to say, the first two planets were a blast until I realized what was going on. The gameplay is trying to be the the same as World of Warcraft. Sure the new resource system says otherwise, but you still have a 1-5 rotation and the same cooldowns. I specced Bodyguard to heal some FlashPoints and it's exactly the same as playing my Resto Shaman. Seriously, even Earth Shield and Tidal Waves are there. Not cool.

 

The story is just so bland. I feel like they tried to accomplish something, but after the first two planets, the decline is obvious. As a Bounty Hunter, I thought I was going after big targets, for the Empire and the Republic. I thought I was going to kill influential people for money and only money. That's almost what I got. What I got was a revenge driven story where I participate in something called the Great Hunt. In this "Battle Royale-esque" hunt where we hunt for targets first then we hunt hunters, there are no cheap tricks and you're still looking for revenge. Of course, you win the hunt and you're the saviour of the day. It may sound cool from my synopses, but in-game, it looks just as shallow as like any other story on fanfiction, classic Mary Sue. There's no gray-ground in TOR, you're either a Mary Sue or less than nobody.

 

Since we're still talking about the story, let's talk about how a "story-driven" MMO like TOR works. It was sold as one, but it doesn't deliver. The dialogue options are just badly written. It seems to me that BioWare doesn't know what are the dark and light sides. For example, one of the first quests on Smuggler. Medicine was stolen by refugees. As you go to get the medicine back, the refugee says she needed it for a child and the rebel forces took it from her. You go kill the rebel soldiers and when you come back to her you have the option to give her the medicine or just ignore her. Giving her the medicine awards you with Light Points while ignoring her and giving the medicine back to Republic soldiers awards you Dark Points. Serisouly. There isn't a neutral ground. In The Told Republic, the Dark Side choices are either "kill because I want to see you die lol" or "suffer! so dark&edgy xD" while Light Points are the classical White Knight, spare everybody, no harm allowed. If Luke Skywalker destroyed the Death Star on this game, he was going to receive Dark Points for that. Oh, and you can't be neutral in this game or you're going to lose gear. Some gear may only be equipped if you have Light x or Dark y. If you're neutral, that is, above Dark or below Light, you will miss on some pieces of gear. In that 2h podcast TotalBiscuit did praising TOR, Jesse Cox said that he was only picking dark choices because of the gear.

 

Oh, choices. What choices do we have again on this game? Extreme rudeness, I don't care or Polite. Three choices that doesn't change anything at all. The only choices that matter are the dialogue options that awards you with Dark or Light side points. In the end, this is just another mechanic that makes you think you're different from the other player but it's not. You're doing the same missions and the choices you make doesn't change a thing in your story. There is no personal story as the game was telling us that was going to be. It's not there and probably never will. This was a major letdown.

 

On questing, I need to say that this is exactly like World of Warcraft... with a 3 minute cinematic for every kill-and-fetch quest. They said it was going to be different but it isn't. Instead of killing 10 boars and finding Mankrik's wife you have to find a slicer and as a bonus quest, kill 30 thugs. How is this any different? To break it down, you have a major chain quest, the acts. In each act, you're have to go through different planets and to "complete" that planet, you have to so side quests for either the Empire or the Republic. Some side quests have bonus quests. They're usually grind the some NPCs type of quests. This is exactly the same as World of Warcraft: Go to Hyjal, do the major quest line. Good boy. Now I heard that the Warchief wants you in Deepholme, go do that zone now.

 

About zones... Oh, where do I start? I'm not trying to compare here, but it's impossible not to. I have two major complaints about zones. The first one is about instancing. Everything is instanced. While I thought this was amazing in the first days, it got pretty annoying later on. The zones can't handle a lot of people on it at the same time, so you have the same zone but in different phases. For example, to do a Heroic 4+ in Dromund Kass, I had to change phases to see my group. This isn't warned anytime in the game. This is also one of the reasons you always feel like there's nobody in the zone, even though there are over 200+ people in that planet. My second complaint is the art direction. For a game that had over $300mi invested, the art direction is lackluster. You can say whatever you want about Blizzard, that they suck and can't do a decent game, but don't you dare say that they can't do scenarios. BioWare zones makes old Tanaris look like paraside. You can say that this is my opinion and that "art direction" is subjective, but seriously, there's not a zone where I can drool over. Even the fleets are the same. The Impearl Fleet and the Republic Fleet have the same design. C'mon BioWare. World of Warcraft at launch had major cities, and I mean major and gosh darn different. Stormwind was huge, Thunder Bluff was amazing, Undercity has one of the best city designs I have ever seen. What are you guys offering here? A copy of Ironforge for both factions? Another huge letdown. This one actually pisses me off.

 

Also, to get to the fleet, I have to leave my planet to a spaceport. From the planet to the spaceport, I have a 10s loading screen. From that spaceport, that adds nothing in-game, there are no vendors and nothing except my ship, I have to take another "port" to get inside my ship. Another 10s loading screen. Inside my ship, I can travel to the fleet. This takes another 10-30s, easily. After that, I have to leave my ship to get inside the fleet. Another 10s loading screen. I waste more time on loading screens and useless spaceports than actually travelling. This is an example of how much thought BioWare put into this game. No, this isn't immersion because loading screens and filler spaceports are not immersion. Having to get inside my ship just to go to a fleet isn't immersion. Ironically, in Hutta, I can just go to the planet and get a port straight to the fleet. Amazing.

 

Let's talk about classes, shall we? The Told Repubic has 4 starter classes. On level 10, you can choose an advanced class. So, in theory, this game has 8 classes. One may argue that this game has 16 classes, but the Republic classes are the same as the Empire classes, with different names and animations. And this is bad. If you think about yourself, this sounds cool, of course. It wouldn't make sense if a Bounty Hunter has the same moves and animations as a Trooper. Now, if you think about PvP, that's a whole different story. Classic example is the Jedi Sage vs. the Sith Sorcerer. While the Sedi Sage has to wait for the projectile to hit the target to deal damage, the Sith Sorcerer doesn't. While this seems minimal, this can make or break a battle. The originality in class design is just despicable. Bodyguard is copy and paste Resto Shaman. Earth Shield? There. Riptide? There. Tidal Waves mechanic? There. It's doesn't look like a Resto Shaman, it's the same. One may argue that it isn't the same because you don't use mana. I would say he's right and wrong at the same time. It might not look like I don't have a restriction, but it's the same. If you spam your fast and expensive heal, you will run out of mana and you won't be able to heal, right? Well, in TOR, if you spam your fast and expensive heal, you will overheat / run out of force / etc and you won't be able to heal. You are still restricted, just like in World of Warcraft. I'm not saying that doesn't make sense, it does: if you do stupid things, you should get punished for it. What I want to say is that this isn't any different from World of Warcraft like BioWare says it is. To be honest, it's worse. We had a huge mana pool in World of Warcraft, so we could "afford" doing "stupid" things like spamming Chain Heal because we had to cover for a healer dc. In TOR, you can't. Also, healing isn't dynamic as some people say it is in this game. Healing "rotation" is still there. To be honest, It's the same thing we're tired of playing... without mouseover heals. The fact that EA had the audacity to ship a game without macros is unbelievable. We are in 2012 and every f2p in the gosh darn MMO market has macros. Get your **** together, Tyrone.

 

The Auction House... Even fanboys have to agree that this is the most terrible designed Auction House ever. Comparing to World of Warcraft's default Auction House (because this game doesn't support addons so we have to compare default vs. default), TOR's AH is clunky and not user-friendly, thus driving new users away from it. To buy something, you have to choose a category. You can't just put "cobalt" there and press enter. The number of items per page is also ridiculous. If I remember correctly, it's 10 per page. On the other hand, they almost hit the spot when it's about selling. You can just move your item to the AH and it will give you a pre-set price on that item. Notice I said almost, because that's the only thing they did right in the entire system. Major flaws with this Auction House are: 1, you can only post 50 items on the AH. That's ridiculous, why would you do something like that? This caps players that actually use the AH to get some money. I usually sell every BoE I get on the AH for some extra cash. of course, if I sold it, somebody is going to use that BoE for something, either for alts or for Reverse Engineering, it doesn't matter, money was traded. That won't happen in The Old Republic because of the bad design of the Auction House and because of that cap. You are obliged to sell the "important" items. The second major flaw is that the default listing price. In WoW, the cost to list an item is part of the vendor price of said item. In TOR, the cost to list an item is a percentage of the listing price. That's insane. Players just list items for the default price because raising the price for an item it's bad by default. If you list an item for 1000 credits, the AH takes 100c away from you for 2d. If you list it for 100000, it takes you 10000c away. And by listing by the default price, you don't have an undercut market. It just doesn't work BioWare, it's first grade economics for gods sake. This leads me to the final point on this topic: you can't buy low, sell high. Do that and you're warned. Welcome to The Old Republic, comrade. All hail Darth Stalin and the glorious Socialist Empire. Seriosuly though, you can do that, but don't you dare "control" the market. Somebody is dumb and lists a product A for almost half of it's price? Sure you can buy one or two to re-list, but you can't monopolize the market. That's... sigh. Quality Bioware design, gentlemen. If you don't believe me, just google it. Also, dear BioWare, you ripped off World of Warcraft this whole time but you couldn't ripoff Auctioneer? Really? Is it that hard?

 

Moving on, moving on. Let's talk about the revolutionary crafting system. BioWare, thinking controlling the market isn't enough to disrupt the economy, completely destroyed it with companions. No, really. Thank you BioWare. I'll explain it. In The Old Republic, you can send your companions away to get crafting materials for you. Of course, you pay a small fee for it but it's much better than farming it and much cheaper, in theory, than buying them from the auction house. You can also get crafting materials from something they called Mission Professions, that works exactly the same as Gathering Professions (pay, send, get), but they have different materials. But what does this all mean? This means that BioWare destroyed the value on crafting materials. In World of Warcraft or any other MMO in the gosh darn market, you have to spend time to gather materials. This actually attaches a certain value to said material because somebody spent time to grind it. In The Told Republic, you don't need to farm it, because everyone can just afk while their companion do the grinding. This cheapens the value of said material to a point where it's not worth farming it, you can just create an alt with that profession and afk while you play your main. On crafting professions, BioWare just did it all wrong. First of all, all the crafting items are damn hard and expensive to craft. That's would be something good if the vendored PvP items weren't better, cheaper and easier to get. They don't add any stat bonuses to the player, except... Biochem. Biochem is so overpowered that you get a "flask" that you can use how many times you want and it gives you +150 in one stat (if I remember correctly, it's aim). Oh, and that "flask" is also better than any "flask" in the market. So, in theory, if you want to raid any end-game content, Biochem is the only viable profession. Quality Biow... etc.

 

I already talked about what this game has. Let me tell you what it doesn't have:

 

Looking for Group tool / Looking for Group global chat. Even Rift has one. This is probably one of the best things it happened for new players or for alt levelers. It gets them started on PvE without any hard work and you don't have to waste time looking for people. I think it was one of the Rift devs that said once that "Players want to group, they just don't want to start one". I agree. In TOR, this is one of the biggest complaints, after the 0.5s delay on abilities. I support this tool because in that game you have to go back to the fleet to look for a group. It's annoying and also a huge waste of time. One may said that this "destroys" server communities. I say that's a huge lie. First of all, there are no server communities in a game that has no server forums. Second, going back to the fleet to look for a group isn't what I would call social. I get social in guild, in a dungeon, not while I'm looking for players. The tool has no downsides and it saddens me that BioWare added the flashpoint hub attached to the main city but they failed to add a LFG tool.

 

UI and Addons. Okay, it's launch and they "might" add addons. I would be fine with it if the UI was decent enough for people to raid with it. The UI is terrible designed. If you're a healer in TOR, you know what I'm talking about. You can't see durations on your buffs, you don't have target of target nor focus target. The raid frames are a joke. They're not even refreshed every second. You can't see your friend's "energy". The UI only has 2 bars in the center of the screen and two side bars. There are no aggro meters in the stock UI. There are no chat bubbles. So many basic things missing that I feel like BioWare didn't pay enough money for the UI guys. This part of the game is seriously lacking and there's no ETA in a remake of the UI.

 

I think I wrote too much and I'm pretty sure I forgot a lot of things, but anyway, here's the tl;dr:

If you feel like paying for an alpha phase game, go ahead and buy this game. This game was clearly not ready for release. It's a total trainwreck, but hey, if you have fun and you feel like paying for it, who am I to say something? Just don't say this game is any good because it isn't.

 

I will save my money for Guild Wars 2 and / or Final Fantasy XIV 2.0. BioWare is never going to see my money again.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Paralassa
Inappropriate Content (Pm'd) "That they are Jews" + content

[ihateyouall]

sucks to be you I guess

[LoL-K-Noob]

And not a single damn was given.

[Bob-ombaFett]

man that's a lot of ranting for a game that is very not WoW-like.

[BadgerTheJ]

Its a genre, not much they can do different to make a good mmo.

[StarControler]

I am glad you found your original mmo, and I wish you well in it.

 

in my eyes SWTOR has developed an aspect that lacks in the mmo world and MADE things a better way than wow with this aspect. that is STORY and SHARDING (I do NOT mean the multiple instances of planets and with that I had no issue for it.) here is what i mean:

 

in WOW I played a Wargen, and it allowed me to progress my character through and group with those only on my current "shard" if i grouped with someone that isn't in the story line at all they couldn't join or help. SWTOR: I can group with another character and as long as I choose the option that lets me in same class shards or another class, I'm there watching the cutsceens as well as there for any fighting needed. I find this VERY refreshing.

 

as to your original statement of going back to the original mmo, the only way that statement is true is if you only started playing WoW. becasue Eq1, UO and a couple others released long before WoW did. and UO doesn't exist and EQ probably doesn't exist to you as you never mentioned it. again i wish you well in your game, sorry you didn't like this one but many do and most play the game not post here.

 

Darth Freki

[Kandorr]

You need a wall of text (WOT) warning in the thread title.

 

[Oriox]

Many of the problems you have mentioned have long been noted and discussed, but good insights nonetheless.

[Astron_]

man that's a lot of ranting for a game that is very not WoW-like.

 

Funny, it's WoW in space with a VO-gimmick. You must be blind.

[tindin]

any one have short version of it?

[BrambLed]

man that's a lot of ranting for a game that is very not WoW-like.

 

Combat is identical, although SWTOR's is a worse version.

 

Zones structure is the same, quest hub to quest hub. Less Zones

 

Endgame is 100% identical

 

Quests are worse than WoW

 

Voiceovers and story delivery is better

 

Crafting system is better, but lacks recipes so it's ruined.

 

With a few differences, how is the game "not WoW-like"

[rrroberts]

Star Wars is WoW with Lightsabers, except not as polished.

 

People say that the game is less than a month old, we have to give it time, etc. Why? Why should I pay $15 a month waiting on them to polish a game that is inferior to what I was playing before? At least when WoW came out, it beat the pants off of EQ in every category. SW is just WoW with a slightly better story. Everything else is either the same or worse.

 

 

Go back to WoW? When Mists goes beta, sure. I'll probably play Skyrim till then.

[Darquenova]

This has been discussed and posted about many, many times. The game is currently very, very rough and not very engaging outside the weak story elements. But hopefully we'll see some improvements soon.

[BrambLed]

So many promises yet this is just another reskinned default MMO. To be honest, this game made me resubscribe World of Warcraft. If I'm going to pay for a copy I might as well just play the original.

 

This is hilarious. I did the same today.

 

I actually was burned out on WoW, part of the reason was because I just KNEW this game was going to replace it. Now that I know that this game (which is the final nail in the coffin for me in terms of getting hyped over MMO's not made by Blizzard) fails, I am enjoying WoW more.

 

Hell I took the LFD tool for granted and even bashed it at times. I didn't realize how great it was until now.

[Calitri]

any one have short version of it?

 

Stuff

[Kemosobe]

Combat is identical, although SWTOR's is a worse version.

 

Zones structure is the same, quest hub to quest hub. Less Zones

 

Only MMO I have ever played that did not do this was Final Fantasy XI as there were no "quests" as we think of in it.

 

Endgame is 100% identical

 

Have not played a single MMO that does not have some form of high end "raiding" in what ever form the developers make it. This does no mean they are 100% identical.

 

Quests are worse than WoW

 

Opinion and I will leave it at that.

 

Voiceovers and story delivery is better

 

Also and opinion and I will leave it at that.

 

Crafting system is better, but lacks recipes so it's ruined.

 

Is another opinion and I will again leave it at that. The lack of recipes is in fact debatable, but the fact it ruins crafting is an opinion.

[ihateyouall]

if it was the same as wow, blizzard would sue bioware.

 

I see no lawsuit.

 

Logic dictates that they are not the same. wewt

[SnoggyMack]

So many promises yet this is just another reskinned default MMO.

 

Lies. I've read hundreds of threads so far proving this game isn't an MMO.

[BrambLed]

Kemosobe

 

I really don't understand why people find it necessary to point out that others are sharing their opinions. No joke. That's what this board is for. No reason to do that.

 

Also, the point was directed towards the person that said this game is not WoW like at all.

 

It's more like WoW than it is different, that's all I'm saying.

[origional]

Actually I think its a very good posting. I dont necessarily agree with a lot of if but its not your normal rant and whine troll posting, though sadly thats what the majority of responses have been.

 

At the end of the day if you go round trying to compare this game to other MMO's then you are going to be unhappy.

 

Look at questing. People complain its the same as WOW just in a different skin, and people dont want that they want something new. Then in the next breath they complain the Aution system is bad because it doesnt work like WOW and now they want the same thing.

 

Your looking for things to be unhappy about.

 

Ok, there is some genuine issues in the complaint. The story line isnt going to please everyone, I dont think its that great, - too star trek voyager for me - but there are going to be constraints as to what they can do in a dialigue driven game. You cant have infinate options. Yes, its a little too MASS EFFECT and they could have tweaked the system somewhat instead of cut and paste but accept it for what it is. It may not be amazing, but its a long long way from being bad.

 

I suggest people try and look at the game as if its the only MMO in existance and then decide if you like the content and gameplay or not. Comparisons to wow, war, lotr, rift, aion, star trek, hello kitty, etc etc will always gravitate towards the negative.

[Crogga]

I can't read all of that right now- it's late and I've had too much scotch. But skimming it I will say that i agree with you like alot of people have on lack of functionailty with say LFG tool. Hell even the critics are complaining about that.

Class story- try another. I found the BH not to my tastes either about midway.

The JC was more my style and trooper.

 

Class design- it''s transferring SW into a traditionally Dnd MMORPG. NOt an easy task.

I think they did pretty well considering.

[SnoggyMack]

Actually I think its a very good posting.

 

How can you say that? The OP very clearly states this game is an MMO. And yet I keep reading here in thread after thread that this dead, lifeless, soul-less, comunity-less game is not an MMO.

 

This game can't be a WoW clone. Or some default reskinned MMO, when it clearly isn't even an MMO.

 

The OP is way off base here. The General Forum has already spoken on this topic, and the consensus of flame has already determined that this game is not an MMO. So threads that complain that this game is a hackneyed clone of some other MMO need to just be shot out the airlock with the rest of the refuse.

[Krobon]

So, be honest? who actually read all that? *Scroll to bottom and post* "Who cares" because it's another rant.

[BrambLed]

I suggest people try and look at the game as if its the only MMO in existance and then decide if you like the content and gameplay or not. Comparisons to wow, war, lotr, rift, aion, star trek, hello kitty, etc etc will always gravitate towards the negative.

 

This is the most horrible thing I've seen posted.

 

Pretend the game doesn't have competition and you'll like it better. That's dumb.

 

You've got a filet mignon and a mcdonalds hamburger patty in front of you. If the patty is there alone you'll eat it. The filet mignon is there and you'll think twice about even sniffing the patty.

[DarthKhaos]

My eyes!!!