Where to begin? History, yes, that’s good. My career in MMOs started with World of Warcraft, if that gives you any indication of when I first got involved with the genre. I started playing shortly after release, right around patch 1.3.0 (Dire Maul). I took a few breaks between then and now, but have effectively been playing and keeping up with the game since that time (which was 2005 by the way). I also took a crack at Rift during one of my WoW breaks, but was only able to stay with it for a few months before defecting back.
Over the past year and a half or so, I started to hear rumblings of the upcoming Bioware MMO based in the Star Wars universe. Bioware has a pretty good record of making some killer games so I was hopeful that an MMO would continue this trend. I created an account for The Old Republic in September of last year, hoping that I’d be chosen for a beta spot. I wasn’t picked until last weekend’s stress test beta, but I am glad I was. MMOs require a different type of commitment than most single player games. The world is always changing, people are always leveling, new content is constantly being added and there are achievements and exploration to do as well as crafting and gathering. All of this requires an inordinate amount of time. That being said, I’m not quite sure if I’m going to be playing at release, but not because of the game itself, but because of lack of time.
I decided I’m going to break my thoughts down into categories instead of a long winded prose.
***SPOILER ALERT*** The following contains many specific aspects of the game, if you don’t want the story or features ruined, stop reading.
Character Creation:
The first thing you have to think about in an MMO is your character. TOR currently has two factions, the Galactic Republic or the Sith Empire. You get a great cinematic about your side, then you head to class selection (there are 4 but are named differently depending on which faction you choose). You can choose male or female, 5 different races, and pretty decent customization. It’s a good balance to start out and gives a lot of room to expand as the game matures.
Starting Area:
You get another cool cinematic with a class-based trademark Star Wars crawl. The game does a great job of getting you immersed via the cinematics, they are impressive and have good voice acting. Your first quest instantly shows off one of the coolest mechanics I’ve seen, the “story area”. If you are familiar with MMOs, you probably know about dungeons or instances, but SW:TOR has managed to integrate instances into the environment, they call them “phases”. Some phases allow only one class type; some allow groups of any composition. It’s a seamless transition from the world into the standalone story area away from all other folks. I imagine this causes a great server load, but if you’ve ever tried to complete quests that EVERYONE has to do in order to advance their class, this is such a smart move for the user experience. Your standard pop-up tutorials continue as you progress through the quest objectives.
Quests:
Bioware has a very distinct way of giving out quests (see Mass Effect). It involves an NPC with a little marker over their head saying “Hey I have a quest, talk to me”, and then an actual cut-scene conversation occurs with your character and the NPC, allowing you to make dialogue choices to advance the story. The same type of quest distribution is present in SW:TOR, and it’s epic. For most MMOs, you click on an NPC and get a wall of text you are expected to read in order to learn about the quest and objective. Because the cut-scene method is meant to be an immersion, you actually get a debuff called “In Conversation” which prevents you from entering combat or being attacked. You can disengage from the quest conversation at your will if you choose, or move it forward using the space bar. I found myself more willing to quest because you actually get back story and interaction, not just a new quest in the log. The majority of the quests are your standard MMO fare, kill X amount of Y, disable Z water reservoirs, but the class quests in particular are story rich. There are typically bonus objectives that appear as you kill a certain type of mob in each area. These bonus objectives offer an XP boost and are a good incentive to do all the side quests.
Companions:
As I was leveling up, I started to notice people near my level have a companion following them. Turns out, all classes as part of their class line will get a companion, and add more as they level. At first I didn’t like the idea of having a companion as I don’t like to control multiple units, but the AI is pretty good and they do have an action bar where you can toggle and choose actions. What I didn’t know was that companions play a major part in the trade skills portion of the game. You can choose up to 3 trade skills (there are various crafting and gathering, but you are limited to only 1 crafting choice), but the companion owns the crafting! Gathering is based on missions where you send away your companion for a certain amount of time and cash and they “accomplish the goal” and return to you with the rewards. There are also ways to gather in the world like normal (bio-analyzing beasts, gathering crystals), but the majority seems to be done via the companion. You can also send away your companion to sell all the grey (useless) items to a vendor, which is great if you are completing a lot of quests in an area without a vendor nearby. All in all, Bioware has done a great job in making your companion more than just something that does extra DPS.
Grouping:
Groups are capped at 4 members, raids appear to be max of 16. Also while in a full group everyone’s companions are dismissed. There doesn’t appear to be a looking for group tool implemented yet as most of the grouping was being done through chat channels. There are social rolls during the dialogue cut-scenes (yes, they happen in instances too), and whoever’s character rolls the highest gets to give the answer they chose. There is also a feature called social points, which allow you to get titles and makes you eligible for items (cosmetic I believe). It’s an interesting way to promote grouping. I went through one of the instances (they call them Flashpoints in-game) and it had rather dynamic bosses, limited trash mobs, and good experience throughout. It told a story, it wasn’t just a bunch of packs of mobs.
UI, Maps, and Graphics:
I’m lumping all of these features into a single category, there’s not much to it. The UI is clean and mainly un-customizable (though I’m sure this will change over time). You can add bars and alter nameplates but that’s about it. Add-ons are currently not supported. The maps however are very useful and can be greatly customized. Quest objectives are clear, vendors can be filtered based on what you are looking for, and the map will even fade while moving so you can keep it up. The graphics in the game are advanced and similar to the quality found in recent Bioware games like Mass Effect 2. My PC is about 3 years old but running an Athlon 64 X2 5400+, 4GB RAM, and a Radeon HD 5670 I really never got lower than about 15 FPS, I mostly remained in the 25-40 range using the default chosen settings.
Final Thoughts:
There were very few times while playing over beta weekend where I felt as if I were actually playing an MMO. It feels like one big RPG that happens to have other people in it. I’d be interested to see how the end game content fares as well as how quickly Bioware will be able to push out new content of the same caliber. I didn’t get a good chance to see how expansive the game world is, but the two major areas I experienced were rather large and detailed. There are definitely a lot of good things they have brought from their RPGs to this MMO. It’s got a lot of potential, a lot of key things that make other MMOs good, and a lot of features that allow people to play how they want (everyone can resurrect other players, just on a long timer, talent trees are diverse, etc.). I don’t know how close to the release version this beta was, but they certainly are well enough along to have a successful launch. Most importantly, the game was fun. I’m sure on your 5th character trying to level up it won’t be as fun, but it’s the most unique first impression I’ve had from an MMO.
Game: Star Wars : The Old Republic
Developer: Bioware
Price: $59.99 (standard edition) + $14.99/mth (1 mth subscription)
Release: December 20th, 2011
http://www.swtor.com