WOW really made me appreciate SWTOR

[SnowVeliers]

The only thing i can say is my spacebar is broken.

[Icebaron]

Just to be fair, I will list what SWTOR has the WoW does not. Even the things I don't care about because I don't assume that everyone likes the same things as I do.

 

VO multiple choice dialog

Tunnel shooter space combat

Social modable gear (really like this idea)

Pet quests (companions = pets to me)

Player housing (ships, although they defeat the main desire in having it by not letting us customize them)

Different body types of the same race

Huttball (really good ideas went into this warzone)

Reactive NPC romance (in wow you have to find a real person to flirt with and marry, what a pain)

Legacy names (another idea I like, but would rather have it at level one on first character)

Multiple bind locations rather then the one hearthstone in WoW.

 

see, fair I am.

[Morthis]

Bwahahahaha! um no. Your not done. Not by a long shot. For someone who plays at minimum 5 hours per day then no MMO would sustain you for very long. For WoW endgame the thing is to hang around the capital city all day and socialize like a 3d chat room. Cant get in any instances because you lack gear score. so no soup until you get the proper gear score to enter. Thats right. your not allowed in at max level because you need higher level gear to play.

 

Gearscore is one of those funny things. It's a decently good idea gone wrong by the players who misuse it. There's nothing wrong with the notion of gear score, gear does matter, and raids are tuned around specific gear levels (and while skill > gear, there is no way to measure someone's skill with a simple addon). The problem is the raid leaders who want to get carried to loot and set their gear score requirements so absurdly high that anyone with that number won't care about the instance in the first place.

 

Before gearscore it was inspect at portals, which was slower and more annoying for the RL so they were less strict.

 

Im sorry, but WoW will NEVER see my money again. Not only because of what i've just mentioned. but for many many more reasons. SWTOR beats it hands down in every way i can think of. Including bugs unfortunatley... FYI voice acting in an mmo should be the next step in mmo evolution as it becomes a standard feature going forward.

 

Hey if you prefer SWTOR, by all means. I find it odd you mention bugs though. This isn't even a point that can be argued, SWTOR has far more bugs than WoW. I disagree that voice acting is the way going forward though. It's expensive and time consuming, and I'm not sure it pays off. I just don't think the leveling experience is a big enough part of an MMO to justify the expense.

Edited February 29, 2012 by Morthis

[Marmerus]

Social modable gear (really like this idea)

Transmog. Works better than in SWTOR because you don't sacrifice the base stats of the object. For an example a tank loses LOTS of armor from changing mods in social armor so he can't use it for raiding or doing dungeons. But in WoW you can transmog your tanking gear into RP gear so you look cool every time without losing any stats.

[Marmerus]

Exploring what exactly? This game has no exploration. If I see a trail or boxes I can jump on, I KNOW they lead to a datacron. Every single inch of this game has a purpose and is used.

Thats because this game is not open world. WoW is open world and adding flying mounts ruined the exploration.

[DarthKhaos]

Transmog. Works better than in SWTOR because you don't sacrifice the base stats of the object. For an example a tank loses LOTS of armor from changing mods in social armor so he can't use it for raiding or doing dungeons. But in WoW you can transmog your tanking gear into RP gear so you look cool every time without losing any stats.

This is only because there isn't much or any medium and heavy social armors in the game.

 

Also I disagree with the customer service. They do talk to you in SW:TOR. Problem is most people place tickets that the CSR can't help with. I don't need them wasting their time trying to cuddle me because I had a boo boo. If I report a bug I do NOT need them responding to me unless they want more detail surrounding it which I already do by e-mailing them with screenshots of the event to supplement my ticket.

[Rotny]

Just to be fair, I will list what SWTOR has the WoW does not.

 

VO multiple choice dialog

Tunnel shooter space combat

Social modable gear (really like this idea)

Pet quests (companions = pets to me)

Player housing (ships, although they defeat the main desire in having it by not letting us customize them)

Different body types of the same race

Huttball (really good ideas went into this warzone)

Reactive NPC romance (in wow you have to find a real person to flirt with and marry, what a pain)

Legacy names (another idea I like, but would rather have it at level one on first character)

Multiple bind locations rather then the one hearthstone in WoW.

 

Fair enough, and these are things that make SWTOR cool. Unfortunately it's a short list. and it's going to need to be a lot longer to keep a thriving player base.

Not to mention all the things that WoW has that players expect SWTOR to have: Custom UI, LFG tool, little quality of life things.

Also the game is a buggy mess. Do they need to add the ability to sit in chairs? or fix the bugs first?

Both.

Edited February 29, 2012 by Rotny

[DarthKhaos]

Fair enough, and these are things that make SWTOR cool. Unfortunately it's a short list. and it's going to need to be a lot longer to keep a thriving player base.

Not to mention all the things that WoW has that players expect SWTOR to have: Custom UI, LFG tool, little quality of life things.

Also the game is a buggy mess. Do they need to add the ability to sit in chairs? or fix the bugs first?

Both.

A buggy mess? Man you really haven't played a game @ launch have you?

[darthtoph]

SWTOR really made me appreciate Aion.

 

Did I just say that?

[Elyx]

Why are we even comparing the games? what a waste of time. I personally love ToR, and coudl care less about going back to WoW (though I quit it in early wrath..played other quality games out there).

 

But when I first started WoW, I loved it. as it progressively changed, I liked some aspects of what they did, and hated others. It eventually killed itself IMO because it simply grew away from what I enjoyed in a game. ToR still has much of what I enjoy in a game. My hope is that as it progresses, it doesn't lose those aspects.

 

Most of the posters here that are dynamically one sided (either direction, take your pic) are either tunnel-visioning on purpose, or woefully ignorant of both games. you can't limit your vision to only your preference, and expect others to accept it.

 

WoW early game is dead. they decided long ago that their focus is going to be on PvP and end game progression. Naturally, those who played and enjoyed WoW will see those things as good. WoW's popularity was as much a product of their capability to develop addicting aspects to a game as anything involving their approach to design.

 

Having said that, there's plenty of games out there that are developed on different criteria. A game does not need to emulate WoW to be successful. I think the problem with ToR is that is emulates allot of WoW style mechanics, making it very easy for those who are attuned to WoW (perhaps its the only MMO they've played), to make the comparison.

 

WoW isn't horrible. But it simply isn't the game i remember. ToR has picked up on many of the mechanical developments that MMO's have done in the past, but still has rough edges to smooth out. I think it will do quite well

[Icebaron]

This is only because there isn't much or any medium and heavy social armors in the game.

 

Also I disagree with the customer service. They do talk to you in SW:TOR. Problem is most people place tickets that the CSR can't help with. I don't need them wasting their time trying to cuddle me because I had a boo boo. If I report a bug I do NOT need them responding to me unless they want more detail surrounding it which I already do by e-mailing them with screenshots of the event to supplement my ticket.

 

Whatever guy. If you open a ticket for a serious problem you get a reply in the mail a week later at best.

[Icebaron]

Fair enough, and these are things that make SWTOR cool. Unfortunately it's a short list. and it's going to need to be a lot longer to keep a thriving player base.

Not to mention all the things that WoW has that players expect SWTOR to have: Custom UI, LFG tool, little quality of life things.

Also the game is a buggy mess. Do they need to add the ability to sit in chairs? or fix the bugs first?

Both.

 

I wouldn't say they are all cool, I hate some of them. But others might like them. Like romanceable companions, hate em. The failrail shooter in space. Hate it.

 

I just recognize optional alternative gameplay as good for the game being that someone will like them. Something the fanboys here fail to grasp.

[Horridioes]

People saying wow has good endgame really don't know what they are talking about. It has become quite clear that Blizzard stopped caring about pvp long ago so the pvp part is much more instable and unbalanced than SWTOR.

 

Even though it seems they "focus" more on pvp. Quite ironic. The problem lies with their stupid changes they make every 3 months to change "Flavour of the month" classes. So every class can be OP at a certain time in the year. Really cheap tactic and their way to evade decent balancing.

 

Then there is the pve aspect that totally ruins pvp. You can acquire powerful pve trinkets in pve and use them in pvp, literally tripling mages their damage for example. This creates situations where people get bursted down in a few seconds without it being their fault that they died. Completely unfair.

 

Blizzard knows how bad pve items ruin their pvp but they don't do anything about it. In fact, in one of the cataclysm beta builds, pve gear was unusable in arena but it didn't make it into the official game. Hmm, weird ... No not weird. They just want to keep the roads open so people with time (hardcore raiders, our stupid pve heroes) can compete with or even own people with skill.

 

Then the battlegrounds, wow has more battlegrounds than SWTOR has warzones. So some say, wow has more pvp content (arena's are horrible like I made clear above, so those don't count). But really I'm not going to play a game over another game because it has some cheap new maps with recycled mechanics or the stupid vehicles mechanics from the wotlk bg's. Huttbal owns all bg's from wow when it comes to the fun.

 

Open world pvp in wow --> dead. The game almost obliges you to stay in the city.

 

The open world battlegrounds (Wintergrasp and Tol Barad) are massive zergfests and will be nothing compared to the World vs World from Guild Wars 2. Tb and Wg aren't even slightly fun.

 

So in short, pvp aspect in wow: horrible

 

Pve aspect ... gonna keep this short. You have a raid (e.g. deathwing). They change the parameters for health and damage 5 times for 5 different difficulties. 10 man normal, 10m heroic, 25m normal, 25m heroic and the new piss-easy "looking for raid" difficulty which makes it possible for every noob and his mother to clear all content.

 

Nice feel of progression there , I mean higher numbers really give the impression that you're somehow moving forward right? Oh and they have the habit of utterly destroying older pve content and rendering it useless. So new raids and gear are rather replacements than additions.

 

No WoW is junk, the worst form of commercial ******** you will ever play. Trust me, as a 3 year long WoW player, I can tell you. If you're not a mindless sheep, you will NOT like WoW. Anyone reasonable will easily see through blizzard's cheap moneymaking tricks, which kill the immersion.

 

Even though this game isn't perfect and certainly not innovative. It's better than WoW and I would even say it's the best mmorpg out now (tells how f***ed up the game industry is). But the story,star wars theme and the stable combat balance is what makes me stay. I haven't been killed by someone in a few seconds because he used his ten damage boosting things all at once to get an insane damage boost (typically wow, even in arena's).

 

Can't say this enough, WoW is crap. Wait for Guild Wars 2 if you want something innovative.

[DarthKhaos]

Whatever guy. If you open a ticket for a serious problem you get a reply in the mail a week later at best.

We have had different experiences. I have spoken to in game GM on multiple occasions. Twice the same day I placed the ticket once with them asking for some more information. All I can go on is my own personal experience.

[Seisaan]

What WoW has that SWTOR does not

 

Arena True

Flying Mounts True, but SWToR's current structure wouldn't benefit from flying mounts at all.

Rated Battleground True

LFD finder I can see why some people feel its necessary, but, aside from the first flashpoints, none of them are really worth doing. And who wants to PUG an Operation anyway?

Open World FeelTo an extent, but any reasonable person could see WoW wasn't much more open world. Comparitively, WoW's zones are the same size as ToR's planets, there's just more zones in WoW.

Smooth reactive gameplayI know Bioware has been fixing the responsiveness of their game and is still tweaking it. I, personally, only have occasional issues with my Sniper, otherwise my gameplay is smooth as can be.

SwimmingWas never really necessary in WoW. Yes, it had swimming, but how often was it utilized effectively?

Chairs to sit inWell, ToR does have chairs, WoW just has more chairs you can sit in.

Day/Night cyclesTrue

Vastly different racesThe differences in races for WoW are about the same as SWToR. They're all humanoid with slight differences; WoW's being some are smaller and others have pointy ears. If by differences, you meant the stats and abilities, ToR had those two in beta, but the testers were up in arms about it since it defeated the purpose of mirrored classes. Bioware changed it so races were aesthetic rather than, "In order to be the best X class you need to be Y race".

Factions you can supportAnd you always had to grind out rep with those factions which was horribly tedious. If Bioware could do this but eliminate the long grind or at least give the illusion its not a grind, then this would be fine.

Leaders worth followingNot sure what you mean with this point.

Dual SpecIs coming to SWToR.

Weapon choicesYes, the choice is there, but each spec just ended up using 1 or 2 weapons anyway.

Crafting professions that matterMaybe for the extra stats, but it matters about as much as crafting does in SWToR when it boils down to it.

Economy that worksSubjective per server for both SWToR and WoW.

Multiple Hubs people gather atWoW had capitol cities then...Goldshire. SWToR has the fleets and Im more than okay with no Star Wars version of Goldshire.

Decent framerates in hubs mentioned aboveThats just based on Hardware (not saying bad hardware, just certain ones dont work well with SWToR).

Capitol city raidsMeh? If you're really looking for a way to kill some guards and random people questing, just raid a spaceport. Plus, from a story perspective, it doesn't make sense for any random guy to just stroll in to the capitol worlds of the factions. If they could do it, the war would have been over by now.

Modable UITrue

Multiple zones to level in (1-60 anyways)And most people always just went to the same zones regardless of race anyway because certain leveling zones were "better" than others.

Target DummiesTrue.

HolidaysBioware plans to implement those. I would assume they're just making it so the holidays make sense rather than just renamed RL holidays.

Choice of petsTrue

BarbershopTrue

ArmoryReally just a way to measure e-peens.

Sever TransfersTrue

Faction TransfersIn SWToR's current state, this could just end up making the faction imbalance even worse.

Name/Race ChangesName changes are fine, but race change? Just reroll if you're really itching to play a certain race.

Forums that link to characters in gameTrue

GM's in game that come talk to you when you open a ticketDon't know about this one since I've never logged a ticket in SWToR before.

Vibrant healthy economyAgain, subjective per server for both games.

Guides and fansites galore for every aspect of gamingSWToR has those too. Plus, not really a Bioware thing to handle.

Moonguard Goldshire ERPLol

Guild TabardsTrue.

Choice of Battleground/Warzone enteredIm almost certain Bioware said this would come in 1.2 or a future major content patch. Thing is, WoW has more warzones and a larger player base so they can afford to let players choose. If SWToR had this feature now, pretty much no one would ever get into a WZ.

Combat LogTrue

Rare SpawnsTrue

Achievements Im, personally, glad SWToR doesn't have this. I've never liked achievements in any game. I've always felt it was just a way for developers to get lazy and artificially add on more content without actually developing more content.

Class specific mountsTrue

Factions to gain affection withAlready made a point about this one.

Easily accessable dueling centersDueling centers? Do you mean like common places people like to duel, or areas catered to dueling? If the latter, I don't really see the point since players can really just find a cool place to duel and start bringing in people.

Restrictions on mounts at Auction HouseDo you mean ones being sold or allowed inside the auction areas? Either way, not really a big deal.

FishingSure, its something SWToR doesn't have, but why would it be needed? Its just another time sink and, judging by how much people already QQ about the time sinks that are orbital stations, these wouldn't be received well.

Cooking^

Organic AND mechanical mountsTrue

Classes that can teleport other playersThis wouldn't really make sense from a lore standpoint. To my knowledge, there aren't any force powers that can teleport other people nor have there been any actual teleporters. This could also get out of hand with people asking to have the ability to no-clip since there's a force power that lets you walk through solid objects.

Classes that can summon other players^

BeerSWToR also has beer, but I only just now noticed it at the cantine on Ilum. The drink sold there also boosted a stat for a small amount of time, I believe.

Macros True.

 

Both games have features the other doens't, but most of the features listed above I could see getting added in within the next couple major content patches. If Bioware wants to make sure these extra features work before adding them in and not compound all the bugs, Im okay with that.

Edited February 29, 2012 by Seisaan

[Icebaron]

We have had different experiences. I have spoken to in game GM on multiple occasions. Twice the same day I placed the ticket once with them asking for some more information. All I can go on is my own personal experience.

 

First person I have talked to that actually spoke to a GM in game. I stand corrected. Guess my problem wasn't good enough =/

[JadedSinner]

I love the fact that SWTOR has introduced something new (VO, Choices) and copy/pasted other things (still has come kinks) and they are still ONLY 3 months in. I am excited about the future of TOR.

 

 

The future of WOW is Pandas...........PANDAS?!?!?!

[Lostkitty]

The thing is, what will keep gamers from cancelling their subscription is how good the endgame is. And while SWToR's 1-50 gameplay me be better than WoW's, once you hit 50 you are pretty much done. Raids are easy, getting full battlemaster is easy, and there is no competitivity at all since we don't have tools to measure our own performance, let alone others. On the other hand you have WoW, which lacks something completely unnecessary for an MMO(Voice Acting), and instead put more effort in balancing the time you take to complete the endgame.

 

 

I actually have more to do in this game at end game then WOW.... I currently sit around towns in WoW bored as hell because there's nothing to do, I've maxed every prof atleast once, Raids are easy as hell and Blizzard is hell bent on making them even easier with their % nerfs

[Iraas]

To address your first point I quoted though - end game is the most important part of a MMO. It's the only thing that keeps huge subscription levels going for multiple years. If Bioware doesn't start tuning their end game better and at least making it marginally hard so people aren't 1-shotting everything they're going to lose a lot of people once their playerbase has had enough of the same story lines.

 

If you can remember back to the very early days in WoW, there wasn't actually that much in the way of endgame at first. It took Blizz a couple of months to start introducing Raids such as Molten Core etc and most of those were put on "farm" by hardcore guilds within a couple of weeks.

 

After that further raids were added every 6 - 8 weeks, if my memory serves me right, plus Battlegrounds etc.

 

SWTOR is still only just over 12weeks old. Plenty of time of time for end game to be developed.

[Icebaron]

I actually have more to do in this game at end game then WOW.... I currently sit around towns in WoW bored as hell because there's nothing to do, I've maxed every prof atleast once, Raids are easy as hell and Blizzard is hell bent on making them even easier with their % nerfs

 

Let me correct you right there. You have more that you WANT to do in SWTOR then you have in WoW. No way in hades you could mean there are more activities you can actually do in SWOTR.

[Aegeryen]

Played wow since Beta , and yes it has a lot of bells and wistles , a lot of those haven't been around since launch , and the end game now is sort of blah .... but it is more accessable to to the casual player than ever before .

 

However at launch , WoW really didnt have an end game , it didnt have any kind of organised PvP like battle grounds . MC was great when they released it , but not that many people could access it because the difficulty in forming 40 man raid groups , it honestly wasnt easy to get a guild built up to that point .

 

SWTOR is similar in those respects to WoW at lauch . WoW was a hugh upgrade in the lvling experience over everquest ( accually having the questgivers marked , believe it or not , was hugh ) , but there was no end game to speak of , some pretty easy 10 man instances , that was about it , oh and world pvp that was just worthless .

 

The difference is WOW didnt have a truely thriving competitor at its launch , you can say EQ , DAOC , or any list of other games that had already begun to die out , and to be honest you can still see threads on blizzards forums of old EQ people whining about the content being to easy , or whatever .

 

The games are at different stages , and yes Bioware has a lot of work to do to this game to make what WoW is now . If youre playing this game to have a space version of wow , you are going to be disappointed , its just not where wow is , and its not the same .

 

I imagine for a first time gamer , SWTOR is a much more engrossing game than WoW is at this point in time . And I imagine that if Bioware realises whats its up against they will put more effort into endgame and fixing organised pvp at lvl 50 ...... if not then , well I hear SOE is working on another MMO in the everquest line , and maybe they learned from the debacle that was eq2 .....Because honestly blizzard fans , nobody stays on top forever .

[keatonb]

It feels like the ones defending this game are the 'new kids in the block' that never really played MMOs, or the ones that haven't reached max lvl yet.

 

I am max level in SWTOR and I raid every friday and I will defend it. I am also a seasoned WoW vet and by seasoned I mean closed beta. World of Warcraft was the most amazing fancy smancy thing any RPG or MMO fan could get their grubby hands on. I absolutely loved the game. I have done all the content in the game from grinding the old pvp ranks to the new deathwing encounters. World of Warcraft has gone down hill since BC. I main tanked in vanilla in 40 man raids and there was nothing like it. Everything just seemed to keep dwindling to appeal to the masses, which is fine, that makes money. But you people who keep bashing SWTOR need to use your brains. I've said it plenty of times and I'll say it again. World of Warcraft has had 7 years to implement and add new gizmos and gadgets to make things more fun/easy/accessible.

 

SWTOR may not have the most end game, but it has the most to offer right now in the market for MMO's. Every Star Wars fan (even if just a little) knows that there is an infinite amount of expansions that could be done for this game to make it grow and grow, and in my opinion it will, and it will have so much content and lore that it will make World of Warcraft look dwarfed.

 

Furthermore, SWTOR has quite a lot of content considering how young it is. 2 raids, Hard mode dungeons, pvp ranks, pvp gear. All of which World of Warcraft had none at launch. At launch WoW had a whole lot of nothing, and the launch was horrid.

 

Anyways, if you are so bored with this game, play another or go back to any other MMO that you were playing before this one until SWTOR releases content that suits you. Good day.

[DarthKhaos]

First person I have talked to that actually spoke to a GM in game. I stand corrected. Guess my problem wasn't good enough =/

Well for me I don't look for, expect or want a response to a bug report. It's basically to let them know what happened, where and how it happened so that they have more data to work on. I tend to add to the end "There is no need to contact me unless you require extra information." The rest I either say "Contact me if you need any additional information." or "Please contact me so we can resolve this issue." The latter in cases where I cannot play which hasn't happened yet. I also send an e-mail to support@swtor.com with screenshot, technical information like PC specs, driver information, direct X information etc etc etc and a more detailed account of the problem because the in-game ticket has a limited amount of characters.

 

I was very impressed one time that within 2hrs of reporting an afk farmer in warzones a GM contacted me so they can confirm the account because apparently the player deleted the character or the name had a special character I wasn't noticing. Because of the screenshot I e-mailed them they were able to track the account down through his legacy name. The GM stated they cannot discuss what actions will be taken which is fine with me. The fact that they are looking into it means they are going to do something about it.

 

This is just one account of an interaction I had. I tried to keep my conversation with them short because I am not the only player that they need to deal with.

[DarthKhaos]

Let me correct you right there. You have more that you WANT to do in SWTOR then you have in WoW. No way in hades you could mean there are more activities you can actually do in SWOTR.

But isn't this what it comes down to in the end? What players want to do? You cannot say there is nothing to do end game here. It's just you do not want to do it.

[Ghaiana]

First person I have talked to that actually spoke to a GM in game. I stand corrected. Guess my problem wasn't good enough =/

 

I have spoken twice with a gm, the second time over 2 hours with some impossible stuck problem, that they eventually solved. They are quite fast with reactions nowadays and they do take their time for you. Very much appreciated.