Star Wars: The Old Replublic

[Scott]

So this is sort of free now.

You know, free in that sort of way that only frustrates you.

I only started playing about a week ago. As a free account you can have a max of two characters, so I made a Jedi Knight and a Bounty Hunter. I think they are both right around level 12.

So far the game is a lot of fun. If you ever played Knights of the Old Republic 1 or 2 it feels a lot like those games felt. Each class has its own introduction story, and I think each class has its own story throughout the game, though certain quests overlap. The game feels really epic; you start off on a world, where you will spend your first ten levels learning about the game, advancing your characters level, and getting entrenched into the storyline. At a certain point, usually right around when you reach level ten or so, you will get a chance to leave the planet and go to a large fleetship in space. They don't
seem to specify where the fleet is located, but it serves as a large hub for people to meet, trade goods, upgrade equipment, ect.

All NPC's are voiced, or, if they aren't voiced, they simply do not speak. This is pretty cool when you are playing, especially since the voice actors are pretty decent.

I'd love to try out other classes, but it's okay. The other thing I like about the game is that it doesn't force you to team with anyone, but it encourages it. You get companions which can help offset your need to team, so if you want to solo the entire game you can. There are special missions though that require you have other people with you, and there are a lot of PVP options, which makes sense when people are playing Sith and Republic characters.

Anyone else tried it? The only thing I don't like is that a lot of the best stuff require you to be a subscriber. A lot of it is cosmetic; alternate appearances for your companions, stuff like that. Some of it isn't though; massive storage for your
extra goods that you don't want to trade or sell yet requires you to either pay a one-time fee for it or be a subscriber to have access to it. Also certain rewards at the end of quests are in lockboxes, which can only be opened by subscribers. A great marketing ploy though, because right around level eight I realized I really wanted to be a subscriber. I'm not in a position to do that right now, otherwise I probably would have.

[Zionite]

I bought the collector's edition and still play, so yes I've tried it. Good game.

[Sir Sapphire the 3rd]

The free to play version is shit. They limit you to a point where the gameplay style is different to a full version. I dont like how they went with it. This game plays more like it shouldnt even been a MMO. Good voices and interesting story but no true end game play.

[Scott]

I agree in part; I don't think the changes are so significant that the game itself feels different from a paying player; honestly a lot of the best differences are purely cosmetic, or, in the case of a few instances, utterly frustrating. I do agree that the game doesn't really feel like an MMO; it feels a lot more like KOTOR than, say, World of Warcraft or Guild Wars even. It definitely feels like it could have almost been a singleplayer game.

[Kaitscralt]

I had a pretty obsessive run of TOR last year with a few friends, but we stopped playing before the free version. I really enjoyed the game, shame to hear its taken a turn for the worst.

[Zionite]

It's pretty bad; it's not so much "free" as it is "trial". They gave up their best aspect, storyline, for free. You pay for all the grindy game stuff (pvp, flashpoints) and convenience (crew skills, quickbars (THE FUCKING QUICKBARS AREN'T FREE), speeders, quick traveling, etc.)

Not to mention whenever a game goes free, the playerbase turns into an utter cesspool, not that it was so great to start with but free makes it worse.

But good things are happening because of it. More players joining everyday, subscribing. Updates are coming and shit gets fixed, new content comes out (slowly). So it's definitely alive, just could use less EA.

[Scott]

The playerbase does leave a lot to be desired. I think the last time I was on a guy was running around saying "VAGINA" over and over in all caps.

I just turn chat off.

The other thing that is annoying for me is the 2... TWO hour wait time when you quick travel. I mentioned it to my wife, I'm still not sure I play enough to pay for the game, but I am considering becoming a subscriber. I really enjoy the game quite a bit, I just haven't decided if it is enough to pay for it or if I am still okay with being free and losing out on a ton of stuff.

[Zionite]

I'd say if you play it more than 10 hours a week, go ahead and subscribe. I use box office prices to gauge entertainment value: $8-16 for a 3 hour movie vs. $8-16 for a 10-40 hour game, sounds like a decent value.

I can quick travel every 30 minutes. It's talented down from actually playing the game; I didn't buy it with $.

What I do really like about SWTOR's F2P model is that everything you can unlock with cash, you can also unlock with credits. But the credit cap on free and preferred accounts totally works against this idea. You could get a buddy to do the transaction for you I'm sure, but you shouldn't have to. The credit cap pretty much prohibits you from unlocking everything just with in-game credits, and that can undermine an otherwise elegant design.

[Scott]

Yeah. When I first walked into the game I thought it was going to be like Guild Wars in a way; I've been playing the original since it came out (well, I don't play it anymore at all, but I had been.) Which reminds me, I should check my account and see what presents my characters have... But I digress... Everything extra could be purchased. The idea of being able to buy anything in-game is great, except like you said, there's a cap, and that kind of shoots that down.

[Kaitscralt]

Eh, we're just waiting for Elder Scrolls Online now.

[Zionite]

I can name so many reasons why I think ESO will fail, but it would require a new thread.

[Kaitscralt]

Seems a bit premature to predict failure anyways, doesn't it?

[Zionite]

Not really; beta is a good indicator of final product. This article is a near perfect representation of my feelings about the game.

And the simple truth is that the MMO lore is going to become canon, whether it's better/true or not. It's kind of like the "Han shot first" controversy; you can't just straight up change the story because it works for you. It's shitting all over the fans for personal reasons instead of doing the unselfish thing and serving those fans.

I'm also personally sick of the holy-trinity game-play which is not like Elder Scrolls at all.

[Scott]

I tend to try and give games the benefit of the doubt, but I have a feeling it is going to end up like DCU or even maybe like STWOR; it'll be explosively popular in the beginning, but taper off sometime later.

I'm not sure what the holy trinity of game-play is, but my brother, who is a huge Morrowind fan, has always pointed out the steady dumbing down of the Elder Scrolls games; Morrowind had more complex crafting systems and Oblivion was a step down from that. He said Skyrim was the worst of those three, in that they even simplified the class system. I've never been a huge Elder Scrolls fan, so I can't really speak from personal experience, though I have played Morrowind some, and I've played Skyrim a lot more. I didn't feel like it was dumbed down perse, but it was definitely streamlined or simplified. I haven't seen anything about the MMO yet, though.

[Zionite]

The holy trinity dictates that for grouping, you REQUIRE one tank, one healer, and 2-3 damage dealers. It's how WoW works and every MMO that seeks to be WoW works. SWTOR is a great example of this; it also relies on the trinity game play dynamic for flashpoints and operations to function.

My point is that games have copied this and failed because, while they may be tested, they are boring and restrictive. Players shouldn't have to turn down a group quest because no healers or tanks are on, and those classes are scarce because they suck for leveling. It's a mechanic that defeats itself, or encourages chameleon characters that fit the purpose they need for the situation, creating generic characters that fit the mould and no more.

[Scott]

Ahhh, yeah. SWTOR may need that for flashpoints, but I haven't felt like I need any support when it comes to the storyline missions and quests. Guild Wars 1 started off that way, but when they introduced heroes you felt a sudden shift away from it; suddenly people were soloing more than they were playing in groups. My own guild was made up of a tight knit group of people who were all friends outside of Guild Wars and we used to team and play together frequently; when heroes were introduced I saw a radical shift away from that. The hardest of the hard missions, hardmode, ect, we still teamed, but quests and standard missions? I never went anywhere without my companions.

I feel like that in SWTOR; I teamed up with a random group to kill a monster way outside of our league, and another time as I was running into a quest I teamed with some people, but I felt like they dragged me down and there was a bit of competing for
resources as the better drops didn't seem to automatically go to someone. I haven't grouped with anyone since, and while I'd like to do some of those flashpoint quests, I haven't simply because it requires teaming, and since i don't personally know anyone in the game I am reluctant to team with people who may turn into idiots or assholes.

I do like the idea of games that don't require you to fit into any sort of mold. My mercenary character is the way I want him to be, and I don't want to have to rely on other people to survive. Same with my Sentinel. In Elder Scrolls the beauty of it is that you are the hero, you don't need help, you find your way through your quests and missions based on your skills; magic, sneaking, straight melee, some sort of mix.

I also agree that it can be annoying; maybe your character is somewhere in the middle of those three. I don't feel like my Mercenary fits into a specific role, damage dealer I suppose, but even then I don't know if I have made him in a
competitive way or if I am optimized well enough to suite that role. If a group is looking for people and I don't fit what they want, I get excluded. Same as you said, if there are no healers around you can't do what you need. GW2 tried to break that mold by having no dedicated healers, but giving each class ways to heal themselves, which I like.

[Kaitscralt]

So a general dislike of the strategy of MMO's is why you think TESO will fail? Combined with that article, which I read and find laughable because if you're not a huge story/lore nerd then you don't care about almost any of those facts, I can't say you've dwindled my hopes whatsoever. The only point in the article to actually comment about the gameplay is that the game is too colorful. LOL!

[Kaitscralt]

MMO will fail because it's an MMO, got it

MMO will "probably" kill TESO games that haven't been created yet <-- you call this a reason why the game itself won't be good?

[Kaitscralt]

"OK, I'm going to get a lot of flak for this one, but it's true. Though I haven't specifically stated, it's probably been evident throughout this article that I'm not a fan of MMO games."

[Kaitscralt]

Nice article.

[Zionite]

He raises excellent points though. The game play is going to be a huge shift away from their tested formula to a tired and dated WoW formula. SWTOR is the perfect example of why that doesn't work, regardless of how good the writing is. SWTOR is commonly criticized as "WoW with lightsabers". On TESO's current course, it'll be "WoW with cat people".

[Scott]

Sometimes shifting to something new works for a game though. When Fallout 3 was being made I was one of those nomutantallowed raging fans that was dead set against a first person shooter setup for a Fallout game.

In the end I felt justified because Fallout 3, while somewhat fun, was still nothing like what I wanted from Fallout. New Vegas was only slightly better in my opinion. That said, you have the hardcore fanbase and then you have general fans, and the general fans always outnumber the hardcore fans. A small vocal minority that got heard by the Bethesda teams (our forums were even visited by Tim Cain or whatever his name is and a few others on the F3 team) but in the end we were the small vocal minority. They couldn't give us everything, or in some cases, anything, we wanted.

That said I have to wonder if doing things the same way they have always been done is the right way to do them. The games that end up being
wildly popular are the ones that break the mold, yet WoW is still incredibly popular itself, and I think companies are afraid to deviate too far from that lest they not get anyone to play it. Why is WoW so popular? Let's try and find out and mold our game after it.

[Kaitscralt]

I'm a hardcore fan of most of the series you're mentioning, I don't know why you attribute that to being hard to please. I love Fallout 1 and 2, and I love Fallout 3 and NV. I guess I just go with the flow.

[Scott]

There was a group called nomutantsallowed, I used to post there a long time ago, but haven't in a few years. It was before F3 came out. There was a lot of anger from that particular fanbase over the idea of the game shifting from isometric to first person. I guess my overall point was about the MMO shifting away from the standard style of Elder Scrolls. It may suck, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it will.

[Zionite]

I've played Fallout 1 and 2. They're full of great writing, but the interface and controls were daunting to learn and were never 'fun'. But if Fallout 3 happened to do something like what XCOM did (kept isometric, streamlined it), I probably wouldn't have played any fallout games. It was the Bethesda approach that pulled me in to the series as a whole and was a great storytelling vehicle.

I visited nomutantsallowed once but I forget what for...I think it was for modding. Maybe for paper crafts.

[Scott]

Right, and in your case you were coming at it from the opposite direction; I am gathering from what you wrote that you played the third game first, and then went back and played the first two. I played the first two first, then the other games that have since come out. To me a huge part of what made Fallout what it was, was the isometric perspective. Was I sad to see it go? I guess in the end not as much as I was at first. Isometric is dated, and it worked back then because graphically there were so many limitations. There are still isometric games coming out (a new Wasteland game is in the works for example), but they probably won't be breakaway hits like Fallout 3 was. They won't even be as popular as the original Fallout was because they missed that train by about 15 years.

As far as storytelling goes... To me that is where Bethesda fell short the most; Fallout 1 had such a great way of telling the story. Even nuanced
things like making your character incredibly intelligent or incredibly stupid completely changed how the game went (with the lowest intelligence score the game was not only hilarious, it was damn near impossible to play.) Bethesda really missed an opportunity; very little in the conversation tree was changed based on your intelligence, if anything at all. The combat and scenery were fine for me; a lot of people complained that for a world 250 some odd years after the apocalypse the buildings were holding up remarkably well, but I was fine with how everything looked, it wasn't worth getting too hung up on.

In the end it was a fine game, I was more just talking about how apprehensive you can feel about something you really liked being so different.

[Scott]

Dragging the conversation back to STWOR, I found out something interesting. You can actually become a preferred account (not exactly sure what all that entails, I know it is better than just being a standard free account) by buying cartell coins; you only have to do this once, and don't have to spend a ton of money, just five dollars. I am going to do that I think, and then use the coins to buy a storage locker and one extra character slot; I tried all of the classes, and thus far only three really interest me much (Jedi Knight, Bounty Hunter, and the Sith Inquisitor. I really like the Scoundrel but they are largely the same as the BH). There is a lot of overlap with character classes and how they play I've noticed.

Also, for part of one of my quests I had to go to a beginning planet where a lot of low level enemies are; mowing down guys with one blow is oddly satisfying when you do about ten or twelve in a row, lol.


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EDIT:
Went ahead and spent the five bucks on it; I don't play enough to justify becoming a subscriber, and I only have two characters, and will probably only be able to get one up to a high level (one is 16, the other is 12)

Only changes I have noticed;

Instantly get an 80 slot cargo hold on your ship for all of your characters. That's pretty sweet, it is annoying carrying around stuff I don't want to sell, but also don't need to use right off.
All characters get sprint at level 1. That's nice, I guess. My main guy already had it though (you get it at 15)
Ups how many characters you can have from 2 to 6. That's per server, which I didn't even realize you could have more characters if you switched servers. Despite knowing I won't have time to level all of them I went ahead and made the additional four characters, and then the final two on another servier. What the hell, why not.

Not sure what else changed, I haven't looked hard at it. Nice little changes though, I guess.