Yes, I know this is a WoW blog, however I thought it appropriate to post here 🙂
SWTOR does not get released in Australia until March, and there is rumour (perhaps fact) that they are actually going to be providing Oceanic servers in our area. Which could be a slight winning factor. However there is a lot of hype about it being a WoW killer and how they have 1 million subscribers etc etc.
After playing it for most of yesterday and some in a BETA weekend, I don’t think it is all that it has cracked up to be. I can allow this game is awesome – it has a world that is pretty well known to a large portion of people already, and it has the sci-fi thing that a lot of people love, it has some fantastic game mechanics and is – on the surface – brilliant fun.
I am not level capped – or anywhere near it to be honest and I am certainly not even out of what is considered the starting areas…I am still working on getting my first ship…however I have already encountered a few things I am not liking and of course this might change once I have done a little more…
If you haven’t played yet, be prepared for a lot of talking…video talking the entire way through…perhaps it lessens after the first starting areas, I don’t know but the flash points (dungeons) have it every 2 seconds and questing it constant…You need to choose options, light/dark or neutral. This feature is cool the first time round, but it quickly a pain in the backside when you are doing a few toons at the same time. I have about 4 toons on the go, on different servers, factions and classes just to see which fits with me and what they are like.Yesterday was horrible with the constant interruption to my questing…I think the first time through it is awesome and there is a definite “wow factor”, but doing it a few times makes it highly annoying…at least in WoW I know I can just ignore the text but still be able to grab the quest.
My other major beef at the moment is there is only one class I really want to play that I enjoy the play style of, maybe 2. This is because my heart is still set on magic and sorcery and fantasy – the Sith Inquistor does that so well. I would prefer to play a ranged dps/healer class and really they only have the Inquisitor or the bounty hunter. The BH played with weapons and guns and missiles – I tried that but really just don’t get the play style, I should play it to level 10 where I can choose to heal and see if that is any better, but that is a work in progress. So basically I am going to stick with the Inquisitor. I do have a Jedi Consular as well, which is effectively the same class but I wanted to be on both factions to see the difference. In WoW I have so many choices for what I want to play, I like having those options available to me, they can surely add more classes to this game down the track.
I ran my first flashpoint yesterday, which is a dungeon – apparently they have heroic mode as well. However I will say the flashpoint was horrible. The idea is cool, however it was hard to keep up or understand what the hell was going on. I was in there for almost 50 minutes with a person who was leading us through – already has a level 50 toon and this was an alt, so they were zooming through and it took that long. Part of that was the whole video talking thing. We all had to make choices and waiting for 4 people to make choices and watch the video was painfully slow. Even I started skipping the crap about halfway through. For some reason as well, when doing the talking thing, there are numbers around the party frames which change depending on your choice, I have no idea what it is or how it works, there was no explanation for it, so I will be checking out the help function in game to see if it explains it better. I liked the actual running around, I just felt it was a little long – WoW also learnt from their long dungeons though. So perhaps these guys will. The instance I was in could be done with 2 people, we went in with 4 and it took us 50 minutes, I would hate to see it with less people. I will do a few more and see if my opinion changes.
The last thing that is starting to annoy me a little, is the lack of variety, at first it is awesome that quests and drops are catered to your actual class, however when you get a companion and are trying to get them some gear you can’t unless you buy it – as far as I can tell. All the gear I pick up is my armor class, but my companion wears a heavier class than me. He is currently not wearing any upgrades because I am not going to spend anything unless I have to, I do want to get my ship when I can. I think perhaps once you have a companion, the gear should be offered for them as well so you can upgrade them if I don’t need anything. It isn’t a major issue yet, but once I have other companions and they all need gear that is of a different armor class, it will start to get expensive….
They have LFG system either, so it is back to spamming the general areas for groups – which from experience sucks balls. the LFG tool, and now the LFR tool has made WoW so much easier to play, perhaps SWOR will implement something similar – I don’t know, but they may not have the same set up as WoW with groups of servers etc….So we shall see.
So onto the more positive things 🙂
The community seems ok, at the moment, a fair bit of stupid happening, but that can’t be helped. I have noticed a fair few people saying on the forums this is their first MMO so they don’t really know all the “rules” for behaviour etc. Which means the threat to WoW is possibly not as high as people think 🙂 However they could aid be bullshitting to avoid taking responsibility for their actions, who knows.
One of the built in options is fantastic – “loot all in area” option, so if you kill 5 mobs and 3 of them light up with loot, it picks up all the loot for you in one click….FAST! Would love that when running dungeons in WoW 😀
I do like the overall game play, it feels nice and they have some great effects, it is hard to pinpoint exactly what I like about it, perhaps the story has me hooked more than anything and I want to see more before I can say exactly why I do enjoy it. It is different – and I think that’s the excitement, I think after a few months of people being addicted to this they will start to have the same issues that they had with WoW or any other MMO, but some of the hardcore Star wars followers will be ok with that because they are living the dream 🙂
It is definitely not a WoW stealer for me, I am so much more in love with WoW because of the world and the high fantasy aspects of the game, ANY MMO you play is going to have repetitive parts and be constantly battling for change, but that is not going to change any time soon.