NO ONE will care about the voice acting in one more month.

[Comradebot]

Clearly, OP, this just isn't the game for you. I'm not being a troll, not trying to be a jerk, it's just the truth. If you just skip the dialogue (the dialogue I absolutely love for the most part), then you're skipping most of TOR. Do yourself a favor and play a different MMO, cause this isn't the one for you.

[DarthSabreth]

You heard it here first

I've started to skip every conversation at lvl 22 and pick my answers at random now, only paying attention to good / light side points.

Everything you say will be pointless after the conversation ends. Everything! I have yet to see a consequence that adds more than more voiceover and in the rarest cases killing one insignificant dude. The stories of the sidequests have the quality of a c-movie at best.

And this is where the major part of the budget went? Sorry, but this makes me laugh.

Will the decisions change your quests? Nope.

Will the decisions change the world or parts of the map? Nope.

Will the decisions change following decisions? Nope.

All they do is adding more pointless, boring textlines.

Will parts of your gear change based on a soulless number counting how "good" or "evil" your decisions were? Well yes, I have to give that point to Bioware.

I'm finished with this boring, pointless abomination called a story.

I really hope the gameplay gets better, but honestly I don't have much hope.

 

This is an MMO, let us write our OWN stories! Not follow a pointless path some underpaid or just plain bad writer sucked out of his fingers.

If I want a story, I'll go watch a movie or read a book. Gameplay is what counts in a game.

 

Speak for your self, i think the story is the best part of the game. in my opinion it makes this game great... in fact i cant wait to roll all of the alts just so i can see all the story arcs.

[Gunfox]

Let me guess, disgruntled SWG vet who was hoping for SWG 2 right?

 

I never played SWG (R.I.P. though) but I'd definately try it out now.

[Comradebot]

I never played SWG (R.I.P. though) but I'd definately try it out now.

 

Good luck with that.

[TheJediCouncil]

Speak for your self, i think the story is the best part of the game. in my opinion it makes this game great... in fact i cant wait to roll all of the alts just so i can see all the story arcs.

 

+1 - I love the story too. I will eventually have a lvl 50 for each class just to see all the stories.

[Arkimor]

OP is right. The voice acting is GREAT, and leveling feels awesome (from someone who used to hate leveling), but this is all useless at end-game (this is a MMO, remember?).

[alink]

You heard it here first

I've started to skip every conversation at lvl 22 and pick my answers at random now, only paying attention to good / light side points.

Everything you say will be pointless after the conversation ends. Everything! I have yet to see a consequence that adds more than more voiceover and in the rarest cases killing one insignificant dude. The stories of the sidequests have the quality of a c-movie at best.

And this is where the major part of the budget went? Sorry, but this makes me laugh.

Will the decisions change your quests? Nope.

Will the decisions change the world or parts of the map? Nope.

Will the decisions change following decisions? Nope.

All they do is adding more pointless, boring textlines.

Will parts of your gear change based on a soulless number counting how "good" or "evil" your decisions were? Well yes, I have to give that point to Bioware.

I'm finished with this boring, pointless abomination called a story.

I really hope the gameplay gets better, but honestly I don't have much hope.

 

This is an MMO, let us write our OWN stories! Not follow a pointless path some underpaid or just plain bad writer sucked out of his fingers.

If I want a story, I'll go watch a movie or read a book. Gameplay is what counts in a game.

 

Speak for yourself.

[lastrights]

You heard it here first

I've started to skip every conversation at lvl 22 and pick my answers at random now, only paying attention to good / light side points.

Everything you say will be pointless after the conversation ends. Everything! I have yet to see a consequence that adds more than more voiceover and in the rarest cases killing one insignificant dude. The stories of the sidequests have the quality of a c-movie at best.

And this is where the major part of the budget went? Sorry, but this makes me laugh.

Will the decisions change your quests? Nope.

Will the decisions change the world or parts of the map? Nope.

Will the decisions change following decisions? Nope.

All they do is adding more pointless, boring textlines.

Will parts of your gear change based on a soulless number counting how "good" or "evil" your decisions were? Well yes, I have to give that point to Bioware.

I'm finished with this boring, pointless abomination called a story.

I really hope the gameplay gets better, but honestly I don't have much hope.

 

This is an MMO, let us write our OWN stories! Not follow a pointless path some underpaid or just plain bad writer sucked out of his fingers.

If I want a story, I'll go watch a movie or read a book. Gameplay is what counts in a game.

 

 

I will say after reaching level 40 now without giving anything away that your later story references earlier decisions you made along the way and I am pretty sure it in some way affects your rewards.

[Gruug]

Star Wars and the story is the ONLY thing that draws me to this MMO in the first place. I have played months in BETA and have yet to find the story as "trival" or "meaningless". If there is one thing that sets SWTOR apart from any other MMO it IS the story and the voice acting. Where else can you find an MMO that has eight classes with their own seperate storyline that has some pretty decent voice acting? Where? No where is the answer.

[Rotant]

Your post operates under the false assumption that people think precisely the same way you do.

 

1) Grow up.

 

2) Grasp 'Theory of Mind.' Most people are capable of this at the age of 5 years.

 

3) Understand your importance within the universe.

Edited December 27, 2011 by Rotant

[_Skyanne_]

OP is right. The voice acting is GREAT, and leveling feels awesome (from someone who used to hate leveling), but this is all useless at end-game (this is a MMO, remember?).

 

I disagree, I'm looking forward to story driven, voice acted raiding. This is from someone that hated raiding in WoW.

[Jaick]

I never played SWG (R.I.P. though) but I'd definately try it out now.

 

Game was shut down on the 15th.

[Kerplode]

The Voice Acting pretty much makes the game.

 

You ACTUALLY FEEL like you're playing your character.

It's what actually MAKES the RPG aspect in MMORPG.

 

WoW will never be as fun as this because you can't control your character's life or story. You're just a mindless killing machine, accepting orders from everybody.

[Gunfox]

Good luck with that.

Game was shut down on the 15th.

 

That's why I said "RIP" and "I'd" as in "I would" O.o.

Edited December 27, 2011 by Gunfox

[vVv_LiThiuM]

Nope been playing beta since July and I still find voice acting important in this game.

[Scelerant]

The class story are really cool but the majority of the normal quest story's are all very lame and can mold into each other easily. basically what i got out of every single quest that isn't part of the class story.

 

Some guy ****s his job up or cant handle it and tell you to do it. 90% of the games normal quests right there with little or no twists in there.

 

after my first play through i am def gonna skip all of the normal quests voice acting.

 

The thing for me was, that as a Sith Inquisitor who is generally greeted as "Lord" throughout most of of the storyline the narrative lacking a better word is "wack". How can I reconcile the idea of my character being one of the most powerful Sith in existence yet is running around in downtown Nar Shadda stabbing pickpockets?

 

The narrative is kind of like the Stieg Larsson trilogy, half the time you are following a 5 foot tall, 100 lbs, computer savant with an eidetic memory and the rest of the time you follow a 50 year old man making sandwiches.

 

Its like watching a porno movie where they cut to a depends advertisement mid-coitus.

 

In WoW, in SWG, in WAR this was kind of fine because for the most part you were at max "mid-tier" this game has elevated you to the level of Saurfang, Drek'Thar and so on in the narrative, yet for some strange reason you are still collecting rat rails in Westfall.

 

As a Sith Lord, I more or less have command over Imperial Troops right, in a sense I'm their superior, their boss really. In effect I'm akin to a executive that comes to visit the office, or a colonel visiting an army base. Now, for some reason I have a hard time imagining the guy responsible for handing out the mail asking such a person to help or the grunt responsible for unloading trucks asking the colonel to do it for him.

 

I guess what I'm saying is that when you write fiction your narrative has to be congruent as to avoid breaking suspension of disbelief and immersion. It creates a similar problem when you fairly easily defeat a Dark lord of the Sith or a Jedi Master and then an hour later get your rear-end handed to you by 4 NPC rebels.

[Darth_Grissom]

Im level 24 and still anjoy every quest I do.

[_Skyanne_]

As a Sith Lord, I more or less have command over Imperial Troops right, in a sense I'm their superior, their boss really. In effect I'm akin to a executive that comes to visit the office, or a colonel visiting an army base. Now, for some reason I have a hard time imagining the guy responsible for handing out the mail asking such a person to help or the grunt responsible for unloading trucks asking the colonel to do it for him.

 

You might not have realised this, but you can say no to these quests!

[BenBamBoo]

My wife and I were discussing the voice acting the other day as I was saying how much it added to the genre in a big way. The genre being MMORPG, not just MMO which most people prefer to ignore. Or perhaps two different genres are emerging - the MMORPG and the MMO...

 

Point is, in a lot of recent MMOs (only going to cite the ones I have played, I won't speak for any others) - WoW, Aion, Rift - the MMO came first and the RPG could be easily skipped over. Undoubtedly there was always a storyline running in the background, I just didn't really care about it. It very rarely sucked me in and gripped my imagination. The only recent exception I have played was Warhammer which was a fantastic game story wise (a fantastic game generally in conception, just not in execution).

 

In SW:TOR the RPG element comes first, with the MMO bit secondary (in my experience so far). Honestly, I have been so sucked in by my character's story that I have generally ignored the other players around me unless I need help in a flashpoint/group quests. Even small quests have me listening to the plight of some poor sucker whose child has gone missing, or had their heirloom stolen, etc. The cut scenes make me care about the people in the quest, and breaks up the monotony of grinding and fetching (I know that's what I am still doing, it just has more purpose)

 

In essence, all Bioware have done is replaced the quest text from previous MMORPGs with voice acted cut scenes, all other elements seem pretty run-of-the-mill MMORPG stuff (except the companion/crafting which is a great idea - more of a micro management mini game than the boring grinds that crafting seems to have become in other MMORPGs). It is such a minor change in the grand scheme of things yet it makes such a difference.

 

If the story is not much interest to you, I can see how SW:TOR feels like a step backwards in MMORPGs, it doesn't have the fluidity in combat, interchangeable specs, adjustable ui, macros (I hate these) etc, which in terms of gameplay means it lacks any real depth. But this is Bioware, this is story driven content, this is a game revolving round conversations, dialogue options and consequences. This is not another WoW-race-to-end-game-and-roll-out-endless-meaningless-grinds-for-gear type game, not yet anyway. I imagine it will end up there but for now; slow down, take your time, enjoy the story.

 

It will be intersting to see if cut scenes take over from text in MMORPGs. Personally I doubt it, very few companies will be bothered to put in the effort when typing out some text is much cheaper and to the masses has the same effect. Nonetheless, I am glad it has been done and brought some RPG back to the forefront of MMORPGs. It has ofc highlighted other issues as so elequently pointed out by the above poster regarding supposedly powerful characters being asked to do lowly tasks but that is another discussion.

Edited December 27, 2011 by BenBamBoo

[BawssMcgee]

Troll successful!

[BenBamBoo]

Troll successful!

 

Even trolls can [inadvertently] create good talking points

[Gunfox]

My wife and I were discussing the voice acting the other day as I was saying how much it added to the genre in a big way. The genre being MMORPG, not just MMO which most people prefer to ignore. Or perhaps two different genres are emerging - the MMORPG and the MMO...

 

Besides all your other points (I will write an answer to that another time, I wanted to bring this out quickly), I must see that our point of what makes a RPG a RPG heavily differs. IMHO, just adding Voiceover to a game doesn't make it a RPG. A MMORPG lives through it's players. The classical MMORPG is more of a sandbox game and I think it wouldn't even need any built in story AT ALL. EVE would be a good example, SWG sounds like one, too. SWTOR is NOT a MMORPG just because they built in some soundfiles. To me, it seems more like a coop button smasher focused heavily on interactive cutscenes. Or you could call it a OIM, an online interactive movie (yeah, I just made up that term )

[ObiQuixote]

No sympathy for you. If you weren't living under a rock for the past 5 years then maybe you would've realized this game revolves around choices and dialogue. I think the story is quite good, and I'm sorry you cant manage to pay attention to it. If it bothers you so much you can continue playing your conversation version of Russian roulette.

I think his point is for the most part it's just bad dialogue and absurd or pointless stories.

 

My class story..... Master tries to steal my body, screws it up and gets stuck sharing a body with my companion, her master tries to kill me, dead father tells me I need to steal power from ghosts to protect myself, confront the guy and he kills me but it turns out I was only mostly dead......

 

And I'm not kidding... That's the plot summary to my class quest. Absurd unbelievable story, absurd and unbelievable characters, absurd and unbelievable character motivations. A lot of people are saying you can't enjoy the game without the story but I'm with the OP on this one, after my class story shot off in that bizarre direction I had to quit listening to the stories just to salvage any enjoyment from the game.

[Tembian]

You heard it here first

I've started to skip every conversation at lvl 22 and pick my answers at random now, only paying attention to good / light side points.

Everything you say will be pointless after the conversation ends. Everything! I have yet to see a consequence that adds more than more voiceover and in the rarest cases killing one insignificant dude. The stories of the sidequests have the quality of a c-movie at best.

And this is where the major part of the budget went? Sorry, but this makes me laugh.

Will the decisions change your quests? Nope.

Will the decisions change the world or parts of the map? Nope.

Will the decisions change following decisions? Nope.

All they do is adding more pointless, boring textlines.

Will parts of your gear change based on a soulless number counting how "good" or "evil" your decisions were? Well yes, I have to give that point to Bioware.

I'm finished with this boring, pointless abomination called a story.

I really hope the gameplay gets better, but honestly I don't have much hope.

 

This is an MMO, let us write our OWN stories! Not follow a pointless path some underpaid or just plain bad writer sucked out of his fingers.

If I want a story, I'll go watch a movie or read a book. Gameplay is what counts in a game.

 

Its is still an opinion, means nothing

[BrambLed]

So much money went into voice acting that you can see how poorly the other aspects of the game suffered because of it.

 

I don't understand how this game has been released. It screams unfinished.