Is Star Wars: The Old Republic the next great MMORPG to hit store shelves and live up to the hype? Read on to find out.
I’ve been spending a lot of time playing MMORPGs lately. I’ve always been interested in the genre, and have played numerous MMORPGs throughout the years. However, I’ve yet to find one that I can truly get invested in. The closest I’ve come to finding the perfect MMORPG that appealed to my gaming tastes was World of Warcraft, and it remains one of my all-time-favorite MMORPGs to date. Despite this, I still couldn’t truly get into the game. Part of this is due to the fact that I have “alt-syndrome” or “alt-itus”; I make a character I think I’ll enjoy playing for months on end, only to change my mind a week or so later and create another character. The best times I’ve had playing World of Warcraft were when I was playing the game with real life friends in a guild one of us started, which made it easier for me to really get into the character that I was playing and learn how to play the character more effectively. Grouping was also a lot easier, especially since most of us were around the same level. However, I would wind up rage-quitting the game because my friends insisted on playing in WoW’s PvP servers. I don’t have anything against PvP in general, but getting ganked by max-level characters repeatedly while trying to quest in the higher populated zones (I’m looking at you, Stranglethorn Vale) is not my idea of fun.
Perhaps the biggest reason I initially stopped playing WoW a few years ago was because of it’s fanboys. I’ve never seen a group of people bitch so much about a game they play constantly. The general chat in WoW is full of people whining about recent changes Blizzard made to their favorite class, or gripes about the latest expansion. Hypocritically, whenever a new, hyped-up MMORPG gets announced/released the WoW faithful love nothing more than to trash the new game, it’s fanbase and gloat about how WoW is the best MMORPG ever and will never go free-to-play. Star Wars: The Old Republic is the latest MMORPG to receive nerd-rage filled insults from the WoW community, and that is all the more reason to play it.
Blasters rock
I pre-ordered a digital copy of SWTOR in early December of last year, and was fortunate enough to be able to start playing the game four days before the official release date (December 20th). I created my account, downloaded, installed and launched the game. My immediate reaction to the opening cinematic was the same as my reaction when I first saw the teaser trailer EA and BioWare showed off at E3 last year:“Why the fuck weren’t the prequels like this?!” It’s sad to think that a five minute trailer could be more satisfying than three two hour long films. Anyway, I chose my server (a PvE server, I’ll try PvP later) and created my first character – a human female Smuggler. Smuggler’s are the Han Solo class and rely on blasters, stealth, explosives, wit and sexual charisma to survive. While Smuggler’s are aligned with the Republic, they tend to do whatever the fuck they want and are more than willing to bend the rules as long as it’s for the greater good and there’s a large paycheck involved.
The four classes of the Sith Empire
There are eight different classes to choose from in SWTOR (four Republic, four Empire), and each one has their own story that’s broken up into three acts and a prologue. The classes don’t start out in the same areas, either. The classes that have force abilities start out on different planets than the non-force using classes. For example, Republic Smuggler’s and Commando’s start on the planet Ord Mantell, which is currently in the midst of a civil war between the Republic and Republic separatists. Meanwhile, Jedi Knight’s and Consular’s start on the planet Tython, where they are currently rebuilding the Jedi Temple after the Empire’s sacking of Coruscant, which destroyed the original Jedi Temple.
The four classes of the Republic
The game’s narrative is told through cut-scene conversations complete with voice-acting and conversation trees that give the player a choice in how they respond to what NPCs are telling them, just like in Mass Effect and other BioWare titles. These choices not only have an effect on the outcome of certain missions, but they also effect the character’s Light Side and Dark Side levels. Throughout the course of the game, the character gains points in either Dark Side or Light Side depending on the player’s choices in how to complete some missions. These points translate into either Dark Side levels or Light Side levels, which in turn translate into access to better gear. It is not possible to gain levels in both alignments; one must chose one path or the other.
A typical mission conversation in Star Wars: The Old Republic
Leveling in SWTOR consists mainly of doing missions, exploration, crafting and killing enemies. PvP is also available, but since I’m on a PvE server I haven’t experienced the world PvP yet, and I’ve been too busy with all of the other treats SWTOR offers to try out the PvP battle arenas. The battle system is similar to WoW, and consists of different task bars that are used to access the character’s skills and can provide easy access to inventory items such as stims that provide large boosts to character attributes. SWTOR’s command keys are almost exactly like WoW’s (“c” opens the character menu, “tab” switches between targets, etc), and the user-interface is also similar. One major difference, however, is inventory expansions. In WoW, players have to buy new bags in order to increase the size of their inventory. This is not the case in SWTOR, as the player can just use their credits to expand their inventory right in the menu.
The galaxy map for Star Wars: The Old Republic
Every class in the game acquires a space ship around level 16, after they have finished their prologue story missions. The ship acts not only as a way to travel between planets and space stations, but it also provides extra storage (which can also be expanded), access to space battles (I’ll get to those shortly) and houses your character’s companions. Every class meets new people during their story campaign that become crew members for their ship and battle partners. Only one can be activated at time, but they all do something different that benefits your character in battle such as healing and tanking. Companions also get there own armor, weapons, have their own story missions and some of them can have a romantic relationship with your character. No BioWare game would be complete without alien sex.
Races of the Old Republic
The space battles in SWTOR are a nice break from the melee combat. The battles are on rails, but you can move your ship around to dodge other ships and asteroids. BioWare has taken a lot of heat for the space combat, but I rather enjoy it. There aren’t that many space missions available currently, and most of them involve doing the same thing. These missions do become more difficult, and require you to give your ship more upgrades, but they reward you with some excellent experience points and some nifty items.
A typical space combat mission featured in Star Wars: The Old Republic
I’ve only created three character’s thus far in my SWTOR career: My Smuggler Exendria and an Imperial Bounty Hunter named Loboh, both of whom are on a PvE server, and a Sith Warrior that I named Exender who is on a PvP server (only level 3). Exendria is level 28, and is currently kicking sand on the planet Tatooine. Loboh is just level 7, but so far I’m enjoying the Bounty Hunter’s story more than the Smuggler’s. Furthermore, I think I may actually prefer the Sith Empire over the Republic – the character’s seem to be more interesting and their stories more compelling. I haven’t decided on a main character as of yet (alt-syndrome strikes again), but I after get most of the classes to level 20 or so I’ll probably have a good idea as to which character’s ass I want to stare at the longest.
The combat is solid, but could use some tweaking.
So far, I’m loving what I’m seeing and I hope it keeps getting better. The game has great music, smooth graphics, great voice-acting (including Nolan North, for you Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted fans), interesting stories and spiffy battle mechanics (though they can get weird at times). If you’re an MMORPG fan, especially one that is bored with WoW, definitely give this game a shot.
Star Wars brings people together.
