By Scott Jeffrey
This game has been on my radar for quite some time. I joined the mailing list upon its announcement. I even played through the Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) series right before its release as a refresher. As a longtime World of Warcraft (WoW) and Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) player, I was quite wary on another MMORPG that could steal my heart away from my level 85 paladin tank and existing guild. WoW held me back from starting up on Star Wars, but I finally worked up the nerve to cheat on the old girl.
I got a new PC recently and I was looking to play something new. A few people I knew were early adopters of Star Wars the Old Republic (SWTOR), and were singing its praises. So one morning I woke up, went to Future Shop and slammed down the money for a copy myself.
I hurried home excitedly expecting to have a long installation process, but was pleasantly surprised to have only 2-3 major updates when I got going. The process, I found was not in the installation, but in the signup.
The Old Republic requires a credit card and a ton of security information before you start up. Where most MMO’s will let you simply plug and play once you’ve given some basic login and address information, StarWars wants a minimum of 5 security questions, a ton of info about you and a credit card on file before you can even login and create a character to start your adventure. I mean this is good, your account is frightfully secure, but I was really just looking to play right out of the box, not have a ton of time doing the sign up stuff that could be accomplished after I decide if I even like the game.
Starting the game up I had to say it was quite impressive on a graphics scale at least for a game that is dumbed down to be played on most PC’s, which it’s not, but I will get into that later.
The character detail and world detail is really well done as is the story elements and voice acting when picking up and turning in quests. The conversation guide is very similar to a mass effect or KOTOR style.
The implication of the story driven MMORPG was a very tough task and it’s done fairly well. In order to keep all these stories and conversations straight however, there is a lot of phasing (Phasing is where the player is transported to a part of the game level only accessible by them). It’s in these parts where we can see most of the story driven content, but it also makes it feel more like a single player experience and less like a MMORPG.
The interface and game play feel very similar to a WoW experience, with the mini-map and quick slot bars almost the exact same. Even many of the commands remain the same as in WoW so the transition is fairly simple.
What this feels like, if I’m honest, is playing vanilla WoW again. There are no guides, a tiny bit more challenge and not a ton of endgame content as of right now, and because the content is all new and not stuff I have played through half a dozen times leveling alts, it is frighteningly addictive.
The new introduction of social points, light side and dark side points is the Star Wars answer to reputation. Its tough to get, but it encourages your choices in the conversations with NPC’s and to play with others while questing.
Some of the bad parts of this game as I mentioned before however, is the lack of endgame content, the person versus person (PVP) is sort of weak because it’s still fairly new there is a lot of class imbalance and only a few battlegrounds. There are daily flashpoints to keep you entertained and a few world bosses, but it still feels minimalist with the level cap at a skimpy 50. It takes roughly 40 hours of game time to get to level 25, so really this is no better than a single player game like Skyrim for hours of enjoyment and game play fun.
The companions, although helpful, make it very easy to treat the leveling process as a single player experience. As long as you’re not entering into heroic quests and flashpoints, you should be able to get through most of the quests with just a companion, greatly reducing the whole social aspect of an MMO world.
The space combat portion of the game was alright, it reminds me a lot of the old rogue squadron games on PC. Your ship is on a guided course (you essentially don’t control it much) and you just kind of move it around the screen to avoid the occasional object and use the mouse to shoot. I think they could have done a lot more with this or at least given a few more missions. It’s fun to play the first few times and to upgrade your ship but gets very repetitive quickly.
This brings me to one of my main complaints with the game, which is the engine. Now I have a new 8core processor in my gaming pc. So was expecting this game to run lightning fast. Well I was mistaken. Granted I can play the game on high, I was expecting however to play the game on high, far above 40fps. This is not the case.
The engine that was used to develop the old republic uses only one core of a processor. Now doing a bit of research on the forums, I can’t exactly tell why. Looking at the game specs released on the website, just about any current pc should be able to play SWTOR on low with absolutely no issues. The game engine uses only a single core to reduce the amount of system resources the game needs while it runs. Because of this, any older processors will have huge difficulties running the game even on low. You’re held back by your processor. Therefore even if you are far and above the minimum system requirements to play, you probably don’t have a hope in hell of being able to play the old republic at a frame rate where you can actually perform actions.
Overall I do enjoy the game, it’s a fair distraction from WoW, but I don’t think its quite at a stage yet to be called a WoW killer. There are many bugs (not to say WoW doesn’t have those too) and it does not feel like quite the same social experience. The conversational elements and ability to choose a character alignment with light or dark side is a very cool touch and something I wish was in WoW. The guild system really offers no benefits beyond a tag under your name, I wish there was rewards. They really need to step up some encouraging factors to get people to play together and not just blow their way through all of the content like a single player experience. Offering achievements and the new changes they have eluded to in the star wars legacy system may be part of getting on the right track.
Sound: 8/10
Graphics: 7/10
Game play: 7/10
Story/Writing: 9/10
Replay Value: 5/10
Overall: 36/50
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