A Tale of Two Games: ToR and WoW - Review!

[thebent]

I didnt know Bioware made Warhammer Online. Well there goes any chance of this making it.

[Valceanu]

Im sorry OP but even with its flaws i prefer TOR to WoW any day and i played WOW from vanilla all the way through untill shortly after WotLK launched. After playing WotLK i decided that the game had been dumbed down so much that it wasnt worth it anymore. Besides that game only promotes laziness in players.

 

As far as im concerned TOR brought real RPG back to the mmorpg genre and thats the part i value most. Story, choices, companions...all classic RPG elements and i love them all. WoW just seems bland these days. Im not gonna bash on WOW to much though since it did offer me a fair number of years worth of entertainment...however TOR as it is today shows more promise then WoW ever did to me. Having the BW and SW brands attached is a bonus really...i would have been happy with almost anything sci-fi and/or sci-fantasy. Tired of the same old pure fantasy setting with elves and orcs and crap.

 

just my 2 cents...

[Scar]

Your car analogy is irrelevant.

 

Off course your new car will be better then the Ford Model T.

 

The poster said the game that has been tuned over 7 years, 7 years of patches, expansions, upgrades. WoW in its current form is nothing like Vanilla WoW.

 

TOR in its first month has been great, but the main thing it's been playable.... something Vanilla WoW was not, SEVERE server issues made the first month unplayable to the point where blizzard offered play time credit and rested xp to make up for the time lost.

 

TOR on release is a far superior product when compared to WoW on its release.

 

If you want do a compare, check out what improvements have been made to TOR after 5 years vs where WoW was after its 5 year anniversary.

 

oh the OP... stopped reading after he credited wow for those horrible action quests... so annoying.

 

What's with the necro?

[ChrisMJH]

I disagree with the OP. The game is amazing. I am having a blast and plan on staying. Also I am sick to death of game comparisons. If WoW is so fantastic then stay there and play that. I played WoW for a long time and there was a time where I enjoyed it. I will not be going back.

 

This guy said it all for me. Well done. WOW is WOW, this is something different. All things must pass, and frankly WOW is in it's twilight years. Perhaps TOR is not the perfect finishes product, but it is certainly the next step along the MMO path.

[AsheraII]

When OP added WoW, and even worse, WoW Arena, to his credentials, as if those things even mattered (if true) in the slightest way, he basically voided all his credibility to me. If you're looking for WoW in Space, go to outlands from the Burning Crusade expansion.

 

For people who want KotOR turned MMO on the other hand, this is the perfect game.

[Toonasty]

Tor blows its soo damn boring lol.

[corelina]

Yes, I do agree with you that WoW is a better game, has better features. If WoW and Tor were both releasing at the same time, in it's current WoW state and Tor state, I'll jump on WoW in a hearbeat, but the fact remains, WoW is freaking 7-8 years old. I've been playing WoW since release and I want something new, so I am cool with Swtor with it's minor setbacks.

[Anthelios]

I remember a month after WoW's release where people were sitting in an hour and half queues and in order to amuse themselves they'd go to the forums and beat their chests about how the game would be dead in three months.

 

Good call.

[Tewnam]

WoW is relevant to SWTOR discussions because almost every single feature in this game copies something in WoW, and does it worse.

 

The area where Bioware actually strayed tends to get positive reviews. Crew skills(while useless) is an innovation, and despite being completely useless, people LIKE IT.

 

You say that as if WoW originally innovated everything it did. False.

 

In fact, I can't really think of anything truly innovative that WoW did. I would say perhaps instanced dungeons, but Dark Age of Camelot released its Catacombs expansion which also used instanced dungeons only two weeks after WoW released, so they were both in development at the same time.

[DarthNemis]

I'm sorry OP. But Huttball is the greatest thing ive ever played in my entire life, and im a 8+pvp vet. Best battle ground ever. Edited January 25, 2012 by DarthNemis

[Deathsmanzero]

hmm... part of me doesn't feel like replying to the biased post for want of doing something more productive with my life... like stare at a wall.. or try to eat my neighbors cat >.> but unfortunatly my walls havn't changed over the years and im pretty sure my neighbors cat is already dead so ill give it a shot...

 

throughout your "review" you failed to list a single thing in the game you disliked that could be backed by facts. you only gave your opinion with no other explanation for it other then "im pro at wow" and "it was a bad idea". I'm not bashing your opinion, im just saying an opinion without factual evidence to support it doesn't really mean much to anyone... im not saying your wrong, i mean its an opinion after all, im just saying that you need to explain your reasoning for WHY you dont like it. for example i love the PVE experience BECAUSE of the voice acting, and i love huttball BECAUSE of the new pass innovation, it gives more room to be tactical in the game instead of taking turns killing the other person carrying the ball. you like wow so ill give you an example why i think its better. in warsong gulch you grab the flag and try to run it back to your base yes? well what ends up happening is the entire team goes after you, and all you can do it try your best to walk with all the snares, and stuns, and pulls while your team desperatly tries to kill all of them before they kill you. in huttball its the same thing but with more options, now you can pass it to another team mate if your getting focused, and the map has different levels across the map. the main level the rails above the main level and the pits in front of each factions spawn area. its a mroe tactical game instead of a zerg, the traps are set on a rotation they dont fire off at random so it allows for planning. if you cant kill an enemy player in the middle of a group, thats fine, stalk them and wait for them to walk over a fire trap and then stun them, let the trap kill them, be smart and pick your fights.

 

ahh.. long post >.> sorry for the wall of text.. my point in short is look at this realisticly. yes it is 2012, but this game is also new. if it were a consul game id understand the outrage for all the bugs and fixes it needs. but this game gets patched every 2 weeks, they are already giving more content, giving guild features, more pvp, more flashpoints, more bug fixes every week, customizable UI, and they are listening to what people complain about and fixing it, and they are doing all of this in less then a month after release? props to them for busting their butts to keep gamers happy. yes the level 1 starting zones are static and dead, but is that really important compared to fixing bugs and bigger problems? they have a lot of work ahead of them and i feel they are prioritizing their work very well right now. give it 6 months and all these thread complaints will be fixed, gone, or replaced by new content. just give it time guys =) the game has limitless potential right now, just sit back and watch for a bit before we all jump to conclusions =P

[Galbatorrix]

I have three 85's in WOW and I haven't touched that game once in a month thanks to TOR. TOR is simply way more fun for me. It's WOW with an awesome story line.

[Dantragk]

I have three 85's in WOW and I haven't touched that game once in a month thanks to TOR. TOR is simply way more fun for me. It's WOW with an awesome story line.

 

Wait til you make an ALT. And then it's the SAME STORY LINE EVERY TIME.

[DarthNemis]

Wait til you make an ALT. And then it's the SAME STORY LINE EVERY TIME.

 

But then you go opposite alignment lol.

[Dantragk]

But then you go opposite alignment lol.

 

Without any of the resources you had on that first character =(

[VinnieDaMac]

I largely agree with your post. The only thing I disagree with is your view on Huttball. It's one of the few things BW didn't copy from WoW and I found it pretty innovative. Granted, I don't play Huttball all day because I'm Republic. The one thing I do hate about Huttball is the seemingly random vents and the map layout.

[Taurusaud]

I wouldn't say the game will completely die. There's no way it will ever garner the sort of mass-audience that WoW attracted but, there are a dedicated few out there who enjoy this game enough that it should sputter along for the foreseeable future.

[Dominemesis]

Why do people insist on comparing games? Play both if you want to, or don't...nobody really cares.

 

Because SWTOR is in the same genre as WoW, competing with WoW for MMO gamer subs, and therefore logical to compare. WoW is the 100000lb elephant in the room that SWTOR cannot realistically ignore in the marketplace it has entered. That said, I think given a little bit of time, some good patches, and most importantly good decisions and direction from the devs, SWTOR could compete just fine. Its a brand spanking new MMO though, and therefore, expectations somewhere in the range of reasonable and sane on some of this stuff would be good. Although I gotta admit things like cross server queues, ui customization, and dungeon finder shoulda been no brainers imo, also bracketing the lvl 50 population by itself for pvp was kinda derp derp.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Dominemesis

[Barathos]

But then you go opposite alignment lol.

 

Ok make 4 alts...

 

There, NOW it's the same quests.

 

And I <3 Huttball, although cover is probably the stupidest thing in PVP. >_>

[Amenian]

Wait til you make an ALT. And then it's the SAME STORY LINE EVERY TIME.

 

You mean like WoW? Actually, it's even less of the same storyline every time than WoW because of your class storyline.

[otterscrubber]

Why do people insist on comparing games? Play both if you want to, or don't...nobody really cares.

 

Exactly. Sometimes I'm in the mood for movie quality quest lines, other times I want to claw things to death with my man/bear/derud. These games are not exclusive.

 

This OP seems a little over impressed with himself (or herself). Playing WoW enough to be on 2 major guilds does not a good game reviewer make. Playing every game in existence to the best of your ability and being able to compare strengths and weakness in different genres is something else. Have any of your reviews been published? If not then that's a good indicator of your relevance in providing good feedback. Labeling others who like this game or disagree with your negative perception as zealous fans is condescending and takes away from any credibility you might have to carry any weight as a "reviewer".

 

As far as I am concerned, this is the first game in a long time to try something new in an MMO and I think they did a brilliant job. I can think of few things harder than to break into Blizzards dominance of this industry, but I think they have done it. Only time can tell but the level of detail they put into this game I find truly amazing. I know some hardcore pvp'ers or folks who managed to be level 50 a day after official release seem to think content is lacking, but you will never please them anyway so I'm not sure how effective it would be to throw large amounts of limited resources into meeting their endless fountain of issues. I'm not sure how you can make enough content to satisfy folks who can play 60+ hours/week. And I personally think they missed some of the "content" to be found between levels 1 and 49. Of which there is quite a bit. On the whole I really love this game and think WoW will be taking a little holiday at least until I get bored. It's a nice change, and who doesn't like blasting things in space or slicing them up with a laser sword. I mean, c'mon.....LASER SWORDS here people!

[AsheraII]

Ok make 4 alts...

 

There, NOW it's the same quests.

 

And I <3 Huttball, although cover is probably the stupidest thing in PVP. >_>

Now, also make each alt a different class. Hey, different story!

So that's 2 (alignment) x 8 (class) = 16 different stories

 

Next, change your gender as well

2 ( gender) x 2 (alignment) x 8 (class) = 32 different stories

 

Even changing your species has some effect, though I'd agree that that difference is extremely minor.

 

And even then you can add more variation by the degree of how far you take your alignment decisions, which results in several million story variations.

 

Compare that to WoW now:

2 factions x 2 zone alternatives = 4 "story" (as far as you could call that story) variations, but no more than that, not in any way, no decision making or anything. Just get 15 boresnouts in STV or collect your 15 boresnouts in Desolace. The story is exactly the same regardless. There is no "class story" whatsoever. They considered it, made a half hearted start on it, reduced it to a 1-hour grind (which most people skip anyway), and that's it. Not even worth mentioning.

[Syrellaris]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. For ToR, unfortunately, mostly the worst. This isn't my first review - I reviewed the game during the beta several times, but I was shunned by incredulous and overzealous fans. After all, it was "just" a beta. Well here we are, at the dawn of release - no longer in the beta. So where does this game stand in the grand scheme of things? How does it compare to WoW, SWG, Rift, GW2? Lets find out.

 

Who am I? I'm some dude that led a top-US CS:S team for many years, was a part of two top-10 WoW guilds, and played in several WoW Arena Tournies (including the CGS invitational) and many many CS tournaments, including the CPL. I also had a stint working for an indie game developer several years ago. I like to think that I know what I'm talking about, and usually, I do.

 

Story

Story. Story. Story. We've heard it over and over again. Bioware has really hammered this home - much how Vincent Chase is Queens Boulevard, The Old Republic is story. And story is one of the few battles ToR wins. The voice over quality is top notch and primary class quests are mostly interesting and engaging. Some may be deterred by the incessant use of family drama as a plot device since it gets old pretty fast. With that said, don't expect Chaucer, but the writing is sufficient.

 

Unfortunately, the side quests are problematic and suffer from trivial subject matters ("blah blah click some turrets") or endless fetch questing (go to X, come back to Y, go to X again, now back to Y). This wouldn't have been a problem 10 years ago, but 2012 is almost here. WoW has moved us past the trivialities of fetch questing and now we do cool stuff like lassoing dragons, bombing runs or mind-controlling giants. ToR pretends like there hasn't been an entire generation of MMORPGs since KOTOR and suffers for it greatly. Bonus quests are an interesting touch, but more often than not, they insult the player. Here you are doing the most trivial of tasks (ex: clicking control panels - a Bioware favorite) and a bonus quest pops up that asks you to kill 30 of the same type of mob. And just like that, we're all sent back to the late 90s. Bioware has a lot to learn from Jeff Kaplan.

 

On many levels, however, the VO is a technical achievement. Ordinarily, I'd have no problem with pouring so much money into something like voice over, but the gameplay significantly suffered from it. To me, that's unforgivable.

 

Combat

The crux of a good MMORPG is solid combat. I expect combat to be fluid, responsive, and logical. ToR has a pretty good grasp of what it wants to do, but doesn't quite reach the bar set by better MMOs. First of all, the "heroic" combat Bioware preached for years and years isn't as heroic as they made it out to be. Animations are often choppy and blocking animations seem to happen at random times (as opposed to having weapons make contact). But lets face it, it's not a big deal. What is a big deal, however, is the lack of an auto-attack.

 

This quizzical gameplay choice hurts more than it helps. It means that the gamer needs to manually press 1-1-1-1-1 (or right-click like a madman) to use the regular "white attack" ability and to generate resources that one may use (in the case of the Warrior-archetypes). Not only is this boring, but it literally provides zero gameplay improvement - what is the reasoning behind no auto-attack? Who knows.

 

Stealth and cover are very underwhelming. Cover, in particular, is nigh worthless in PvP. The conical radius, the spent GCD, the fact that 4 classes can easily close range, and the fact that almost every class has a knock-back should be very clear indicators that a mechanic like cover is a terrible, terrible idea.

 

Stealth, as mentioned, is very odd. On one hand, it tries to mimic what stealth is in WoW (a fundamental mechanic of classes like rogues and feral druids), while more often than not it becomes merely a trivial escape mechanism. It needs to be fundamentally reworked - stealth should be a game mechanic, not a novelty.

 

PvE and Leveling

Admittedly, a high point of the game are the instances (known as flashpoints). Black Talon, Athiss, Hammer Station, etc. are all fairly well-designed. Mechanics are tried and true: get out of the fire, interrupt heals, kite bad stuff. This is where ToR really does feel like "WoW in space" and it's also arguably the best part of the game. As a matter of fact, the only reason I'm still playing is because I'm curious to see if the large-scale Operations will be as good as Flashpoints.

 

Leveling is fairly smooth, but the fact that the world is sharded can be distracting and does discourage grouping. Heroic 2+ man quests can be fun, but I found myself skipping them more often than not - the time invested doesn't seem worth it. During hardcore leveling periods, I also found myself skipping all VO. I don't care about your life story, I just want to get this quest out of the way. I feel somewhat guilty about it, but these are the scenarios that make me feel like side-quest VO is a swing and a miss - a very expensive miss.

 

PvP

PvP is a joke, there's not much more to say. It's an insult to any form of competitive activity. Huttball is one of the worst ideas I've ever seen implemented in an MMO: Warsong Gulch with a passable flag? Really? What irks me most is that someone actually made money coming up with such a terrible idea. Inconsistent traps, obnoxious commentators, bad layout, Huttball has it all. There are 15-year-olds that designed better Unreal Tournament maps. Sure, there may be some occasional mindless fun to be had with Huttball, but there's no real value here.

 

Alderaan is significantly better, but doesn't even compare to the wide variety of BGs present in MMOs like WoW or Rift. Ignoring WoW's trailblazing here, Rift's "Black Garden" was a particularly awesome innovation. World PvP is more or less nonexistent.

 

If ToR was Communist Russia, PvP would be human rights.

 

Companions

Companions were lauded by Bioware as being an evolutionary step as far as the genre is concerned. Unfortunately, they turned out to be glorified pets. They even have an ability pet bar just like in WoW! Some companions are interesting, some are boring. They do seem to break up the monotony of the often morose landscapes, but they are basically just pets.

 

Companion crafting is a great idea, however. Not having to worry about crafting stuff yourself is pretty neat. ToR sometimes surprises you with interesting and progressive innovations. Unfortunately, these moments are far and few in between.

 

DOA

Does The Old Republic have a chance? Not with what we see on day 1. No chance. Fanboys and fangirls may try to make a case for ToR, but the reality is that there is no case for ToR. There are many changes that need to make their way into ToR for it to be a competitor to 2nd tier MMOs, let alone giants like WoW.

 

UI mods have been requested since beta. A combat log has been requested since beta. There are absolutely no features that even begin to address the social element of the game: guild achievements, guild skill trees, etc. There's a need for competitive PvP, LFG finders, etc, etc. These shouldn't be post-release patches, this is 2012! These are basic elements of modern MMORPGs. I don' think ToR is finished.

 

The only reason ToR won't die in 6 months is "Bioware" and "Star Wars." Will these two names carry the burden for a year? Two? I doubt it. But then again, I could be wrong. http://warhammeronline.com/ is still going. Don't fool yourself though. It's dead.

 

You may berate me now, but don't forget this review 1 year down the line. ToR is dead. Long live Titan?

 

Red part :

 

CS died with the release of 1.6 and source. They are trying to renew it with the new Counter Strike but fact is, leading a top CS team after 1.5 is not an impressive feed.

 

Being in the top 10 wow guilds, with raids being as easy as they are, is neither an impressive feed nor really worth mentioning. Ive been there for 3 years before I finally said screw it. The same with WoW arena's every decent pvper knows that Blizzard ****ed up, hell they said so even, with Arena's and the Resilience pvp gear. SO again not really impressive.

 

 

The only real thing Ive read in your review is the same stuff we have been hearing from others. Its nothing but your glorified Opinion on matters that you try to give some merit by saying you "Think" you know what you are talking about. It is the same Nonsense that the doom sayers on these forums have been posting over and over.

 

Fact is, all the professional reviewers, magazines etc disagree with you. Hell even the Free little ones that mostly write honest reviews (the ones I read) agree that the game is good.

 

One of those things you talk about is "Warsong Gulch with a passable flag" news flag, any decent pre-made warsong gulch team, passed the flag all the time. Its not new.

 

One of the few decent things I agree with in your review is the UI Improvements. Yes there should be UI mods. UI mods only though, that change the aesthetic view of the UI, Nothing else. Boss mods or anything like Recount or DPS meters do not need to be added to the game. They serve no purpose and only dumb down the gameplay. Looking at WoW should tell you that, when developers saw no other option but to cater the raids around Boss Mods.

 

Also regarding PvP these are just 3 standard maps. WoW had nothing at the very start but world pvp. Fun, but nothing competitive. I am Sure Huttball will gain much more exciting maps later on with different type of traps and maybe even random traps.

 

The same counts for voidstar and the civil war. Basic maps. just like how warsong was a basic map. more interesting maps will follow soon enough.

 

I do agree they should not have instanced the worlds but its not a breaker either. AoC had sharded zones and it worked out fine.

 

THere is plenty of other things I could comment on that I either dis agree with or agree with, but you get my point.

[Vengeful_Deity]

I stopped reading when you said Cover is worthless in PvP.

 

You sir are a troll or just really, really, really bad.

[Vengeful_Deity]

Red part :

 

CS died with the release of 1.6 and source. They are trying to renew it with the new Counter Strike but fact is, leading a top CS team after 1.5 is not an impressive feed.

 

Being in the top 10 wow guilds, with raids being as easy as they are, is neither an impressive feed nor really worth mentioning. Ive been there for 3 years before I finally said screw it. The same with WoW arena's every decent pvper knows that Blizzard ****ed up, hell they said so even, with Arena's and the Resilience pvp gear. SO again not really impressive.

 

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.