Seems I spoke ill too soon about Star Wars: The Old Republic. While I didn’t have remotely as much time as I wanted to due to the Steam sale and a still unfinished Skyrim, I did put a good amount of hours into the latest World of Warcraft killer over the last few days, and I can report that I more and more like what I see.
The thing I was most skeptical about was the fully voiced quest texts – considering how often Blizzard had to rewrite quests because they just didn’t work or needed retconning, I thought this to be a rather bold, if not insane, idea. Also, why bother with voiceover when you just power through quests anyway, right? Well, wrong, because this is what makes SW: TOR so much different from Blizzard’s MMO behemoth: it has an actual, well crafted story, not just a ton of quests that have little relation to each other, so you probably don’t want to rush it anyway. How this story is delivered is identical to games like Mass Effect, which I absolutely loved despite not being a fan of Science Fiction at all, so even though full voiceovers and cinematics may not be the most practical in terms of game updates, it’s certainly more immersive than a window full of text. In short: questing in SW: TOR is much more enjoyable than in any other MMO I’ve seen so far, simply because even though certain mechanics are the same, the delivery is almost like in a single player game. And even when you are in a group, the mere fact that every player can chime in with their own line of dialogue is a clever enough mechanic to make group play worth it – way more than just adding an experience bonus.
In that regard, it doesn’t even matter that many systems in SW:TOR are pretty much identical to WoW – I mean, what else would you want them to be? It’s not like WoW invented stuff like global cooldowns and talent trees in the first place, but all of that works perfectly well, so it’s actually a good thing they didn’t try to reinvent the wheel like for example Age of Conan (which didn’t go so well, as you might remember). As long as the developers bring some truly unique ideas to the table, I have no objections against copying as many good features from the competition as possible.
You can make Lady Gaga envious with a hat like that!
Of course, you can’t really see these new ideas in the first few levels, that’s why I said I spoke too soon. I’m now playing a level 17 Bounty Hunter who has just boarded her (stolen) ship, and I doubt I’ve seen all the new ideas Bioware has in store, but what I’ve seen so far convinces me: a clever way to implement crafting without having to grind all the time, equippable companions that function much like the party members in Mass Effect, don’t totally suck in combat and are actually integral to the story, player-owned starships that can be equipped and flown into battle, fun abilities like Death From Above that might just work like your standard WoW skills, but look much cooler … yep, there’s clearly nothing that makes SW:TOR stand out from the crowd or copycats, nothing to see here, move along.
But there’s some shadow among the light as well, like the insane amount of running you have to do before getting a mount. Seriously, the cities are huge – why put the auction house in the very last corner? Or that your companions might want to talk to you in private – I don’t mind that at all, but does it really have to be in a Catina that’s only reachable by a foot march that can take several minutes? Most of the city is empty anyway, why not just talk about it on the street when nobody’s around? It sure helps to make that mount look much more desirable. Also, despite all the carefully crafted voice acting, there are some occasions when the actor’s tone completely changes between sentences, making the impression that nobody bothered to listen to the recordings in sequence before putting them into the game. Of course, that’s all rather minor stuff – the excessive running becomes tedious after a while, but that was exactly the same with vanilla WoW. It’s room for improvement, but not the end of the world.
In the end, it’ll all depend on how fast Bioware can add additional content to the game and if that content is any good, but at least the rate of bug fixing patches is rather high, which is more than one can expect from MMO developers in this day and age. In any case, I’ve got a feeling that Star Wars: The Old Republic is a game everyone who has the slightest interest in MMORPGs should at least give a try, and that’s really something you couldn’t say about many recent MMO games.
NB: In my video I said that there’s no way to skip quest text. This was incorrect, as you can skip through dialogue by pressing the space bar. I apologize for the error.
