....It's not a WoW Copy at all. The UI is similar.. in that your abilities are lined up on the bottom.

That's the ONLY real similarity.

-Facepalm-

People who make this argument make me want to scoop out their eyeballs, so I can point them at the differences.


WoW doesn't have Quest-Conversations.

WoW has Auto-Attacks. SWTOR Does not, making the combat feel more involved.

WoW doesn't have the companion system. SWTOR Does, and let me tell you, that's a big one, right there.

Don't even get me started in the differences between the crafting systems.

WoW has Flying Mounts. SWTOR does not, which makes the world feel much more encompassing and large.

WoW has no real story. SWTOR is laden with story. Quest NPCs have personalities, they're interesting. They feel like people instead of just objectives.

-Eyeroll- Need I go on?

Are there some similarities? Yes. But that's because WoW did some things right, despite as in-vogue as it is to hate on World of Warcraft, it IS, or at least was, an excellent game that dominated the MMO market for years, for a reason.

Nothing wrong with taking something that works and putting your own spin on it, so long as it's also supplemented with a healthy dose of originality and your own creativity.

If you'd look for how they're different, as opposed to how they're the same, you'd see a wealth of details.

/Stuck fixed that for me.

I find that that the JK, Trooper, SW, etc etc.. they all have very visceral stories full of action and combat and tension.

But the SI, the JC, and the IA seem to have much more cerebral stories. Which I appreciate.

 

I'm having a blast playing my darkside missile lobbing bounty hunter, although considering I have maybe 12-14 pure damaging skills at lvl 14 has me a bit wary of too much choice at higher levels.

The companions are fairly usefull, got my mako set to autocast heal only, but she's usually out doing companion missions for crafting anyway which is another really nice feature. My only real gripe is that there's no UI scaling.

 

I started JC. What are my quests? Free 6 prisoners from murlocs cages. Kill 15 of those creatures. Kill some kind of mammoths and get 3 piece of mammoth meat to feed a baby creature. Going back to the Jedi Temple, I take the hypogriff taxi. Later, there is a different quest where two Padawans are in love and I have to solve that. What are my options? Not tell the masters, or tell the masters about it. Wow, I really feel like a bad ass negociating Jedi Consular.

A few hours into the game, and I really feel like playing World of Wacraft over again with shallow quests, similar environment. Same shit, different and more elaborate wrapping.

Sure, graphics are better. Nice cinematics. Lovely soundtrack. But quests conversations don't make boring quests not boring.

I don't know, perhaps I just had enough of MMO's but so far SWTOR has just been a time sink where I didn't get any enjoyment out of it. Or Jedi Consulars just suck.

 

@Link. You're posts make me wary. I haven't tried the beta(will wait for the main game to release) but I am loathe to try a WoW clone. Though balanced by others there might be enough difference between the two.

The one question I have for you, is how is the story-telling? That was the one thing lauded by Bioware that has me even interesting in the first place. WoW was just quests with vague links to some over-arching story and lore. Bioware claimed this would be a far more personal story. Does their stance hold water?

 

I'm really enjoying it so far, a LOT more than I thought I would. I really am actually tempted to buy the game now, I can afford the subscription easily, but I haven't made my mind up fully. Yeah there are similarities to WoW, and some bad scripting and animations, but overall so far I've had a lot of a fun. I've only played the BH so far, what are the other classes stories like?

 

Second day of testing and every server is full.

My main question for today is this: How is pvp?

I just quit Rift for all intents and purposes because their pvp was awful. I've looked at the pvp vendors in OR now and am glad to see they haven't stuffed in a pvp damage mitigation stat. That's the first good news.

So what do you guys think? Is pvp something that you see yourselves entertained with at level 50 on a daily basis? I consider myself pretty hardcore when it comes to these games, so when I'm not raiding I'm usually trying to occupy my time with something like pvp.

Let's post some feedback, please.

 

There are only so many options when it comes to quests, you can pretty it up in as many ways as you want, but eventually it will come down to 'interact with/find this item (then maybe use it to do B, C, D etc etc)' or 'kill/save/find this person/these people' or 'Stop this from happening by killing these people and finding this item, blah blah.'

That's just MMOs for you. World of Warcraft didn't invent it, they didn't do anything really revolutionary with it. It's just the name of the game. If you can't learn to accept it, you're going to find every MMO to be frustrating and repetitive.

I wasn't too terribly impressed with the Consular starting area quests myself, either. But I'm enjoying the hell out of the Sith Inquisitor. And the JK was pretty fun.

Trooper is different, as well.

At least in my opinion, the storytelling is fantastic. You may not enjoy the story being told, but the way it's presented is very well done indeed. The voice acting is simply incredible, it makes me connect with the NPCs and my character on a much deeper level.

My character has a real personality, when I choose options, I choose them not because 'hey that sounds cool' or 'hahaha', but because I gain enjoyment from hearing my snarky, mostly ruthless Sith Assassin backtalk and annoy everyone from lowly indentured servants to Sith Lords to a couple nasty, scary Darth so-and-so's.

I want to see more of his story, and it's really becoming very immersion, they've just introduced a couple elements that changed my mind about whether to switch to and experience another class for now.

tl;dr: Storytelling is very, very good. Can't promise you'll enjoy the actual story that's being told.

 

So, uh, yeah, what the fuck did you expect? You just described questing in its most basic aspect. Every fucking game ever will be similar to that, and if you want something different, play a different genre.



The thing you seem to be missing is how incredibly immersive the game is. If you're feeling so disconnected from your class, you're probably skipping through all the dialogue in a rush to get to the action. Not only that, but the JC class questline on Tython IS one of the most boring in the game. But even then, everything you end up doing is for a reason, and you are never given a quest to go 'kill 15 murlocs' by a questgiver. You are only ever told to perform an action, go gather something, or go kill a specific person, and the 'kill 15 whatevers' is a bonus quest that you can fulfill easily as you do the other aspects of your storyline.

 

About interacting with your companions? Do they each have their personalities? Do they add or subtract from the stories told? Are there several you can choose from, or are the ones you can get limited? And finally, are they actually well characterized?

 

As far as I've understood it, they'll be more like the companions in DAO than Skyrim. Havn't got that far yet though, got Khem Val just an hour ago.

They have personalities though that much is obvious from earlier leaked info, havn't really kept track since NDA was lifted.


As for the Consular dissapointment, I am sad to hear it. I was planning either Consular or Inquisitor based on how story unfolded and companions. Since I saw the Companion Video SWTOR made I've been leaning towards Consular based on non SGRA's. Now, since I am enjoying the crap out of inquisitor so far I may have to accept I'll play my main non romance. I want to play my female Inquisitor

 

Apparently you'll end up with anywhere from Five to Eight, not sure what the number is. And yes, they each have distinct personalities, that add to the story and the ambiance.

I'm not sure whether Khem Val, for instance, wants to crush my enemies, or eat me, starting with the neck first. And that subtle tension, the lack of surety is always there, whenever he says something, does something.

I wonder 'Does he still want to eat me, or is he finally starting to respect me?'

 

Downloading the beta now, looking forward to testing out the Trooper. I watched a few trailers and it looks pretty good.

 

The Trooper is real fun, at least in the beginning you are for all intents and purposes a rolling bastion of explosive, electrocuting, unstoppable (so long as you don't get a god complex and try to take on three or four packs of mobs at once at level four or something else equally stupid) death.

But, game-play and ability wise I'm more enamored with his Empire-Sided counterpart, the Bounty Hunter. Even though I hate the starting world and I'm not terribly impressed by either the voice acting, or the story so far.

 

The companions are heavily interactive with the STORY, but less so with actual gameplay. They just sorta do their thing while you fight, but the companions ARE involved with class story lines and talk and shit.

As for consular disappointment, its more that Trooper, Smuggler, and to a lesser extend JK were THAT good rather then Consular being bad. Trooper in particular was my favorite so far in terms of storyline, and the Smuggler that I played through to Taris was epic, too.

 

I'm surprised by how enjoyable that overarching storyline actually is. It's really significantly more immersive than I remember questing in WoW to be.
Unfortunately the actual gameplay isn't that fun. It's pretty much the same system as any other MMO (and you can't change the formula that much obviously) but I always felt that I'd rather be using the WoW system (skills+combat).
I mean: "Great! You've thrown out auto-attacks! Now wait a second, I just have to click on my auto-attack every single time? How is that an improvement?"

If you're sick of running instances and killing scripted bosses and then doing arenas in between, you won't like SW:TOR either.

It's not different enough to convince players who didn't like previous MMOs.
But if you were just waiting for one with better storytelling and enjoy Star Wars, then it's great.

 

Finally got the game to work now, and I have to say that it reminds me very much of the early days of WoW. Server down

 

Yes, the questing is immensely more satisfying than any other mmo I've played so far. And I've tried alot before Vanilla and since Burning Crusade.

On the auto attack 'Issue' I can't say I really mind. As I've understood it it's basically just a filler ability at lower levels something to press when your other abilities are on cooldown. The only difference here seems to be that you use it to regenerate with certain classes, Jedi Knight for example. Imo, taking out 'white damage' and focusing on animations for abilities isn't bad.

Indeed, in the larger sense this does resemble WoW, naturally since it's an MMORPG. Frankly I do think it's different enough to attract new people to the MMO arena, it will be able to snag RPG'ers with the story. Inquisitor, Jedi Knight and Trooper Stories so far are completely awesome. And of course, Star Wars fans might give it a try. If they pick the right class I believe they could get hooked aswell.

Should give everyone a warning that Consular Story sucks, I managed to level four before I gave up. I know, not long at all, but by level four I was literally a giggling moron in my dark room whilst playing the Inquisitor.

 

Half of the time there will be an insane lag in PVP(like 1 second and upwards), which they lie about.

I got rid of my Consular Shadow and switched to an Imperial Agent and the Agent is just awesome. I'm really impressed with the story. It's no longer just

Every player I have quested with so far has listened to all dialogue and not skipped. I think that a round robin system for choosing who gets to speak would have been better, but the rolling works. It seems that if you fair a few rolls in a row you get a 'boost' to your next roll.

Beta ends in 28 hours for those interested. I'm playing on The Queen of Rannoron.

 

So played a few hours as a Sith Inquisitor... and I must that I really like it.. the story is interesting and even the normal quest have a nice dialog. The graphic is ok and as I have never played WoW i can´t say how big the difference is.. but for me this my long awaited KotoR 3 and it is just nearly everything I hoped I would be.