Customer Reviews

Star Wars: The Old Republic

5 star:		(256)
4 star:		(87)
3 star:		(58)
2 star:		(56)
1 star:		(122)

 

 

Many people playing this game are either (a) new to massively multiplayer online gaming (MMO) or (b) come from either World of Warcraft or Star Wars Galaxies. Thus, there is a lot of room for expectations to become let downs. I'd like to take a moment and explain exactly what SWTOR is, at this point in its evolution.

MMO titles go through many iterations. The most difficult time for an MMO is almost always at launch. When Warcraft launched, it included 60 levels and two raids (MC + Onyxia had been created for launch but not enabled, wowiki more or less agrees). The equipment didn't look exciting and the world was quite small compared with its size today. Before purchasing SWTOR, it is important to realize that the title is at this point in its evolution.

These games go through many iterations. Part of the reason we pay a monthly subscription fee is because the game never stops being developed. Our monthly dues ensure that many of the features that didn't make it into the launch are developed later. Bioware has focused exclusively on core game play features, steadfastly refusing to be distracted that the fluff that will allow for a lush universe a couple of years from now. As a result, the game can tend to feel stripped down to its most basic elements if you are used to a seven year old game like WoW. If the bare-bones feeling of a new virtual world is a deal breaker for you, then seriously consider waiting until December 2012 before purchasing this game.

Many impressions around the internet include flaws from beta. These should be taken with a grain of salt. There were several different beta groups and all were testing different versions of the game's features in order to determine what would work best at launch. The danger of a large scale beta is that many players will nit pick at it as though they are seeing a final product after nine months of post-launch support. SWTOR has often been judged in this harsh light.

When you enter the game world for the first time, you will find out whether or not your computer needs an upgrade. The lowest system spec I have comfortably played this game on is an E6750 (Core 2 Duo 2.66) with a modern video card (nVidia 550TI). Anything beneath this line is going to feel jerky. Please be aware of this before purchasing the game as it will severely impact your experience if the camera movements are not smooth.

One of the most questioned features of SWTOR is also one of the favorites at launch. Between the musical score and the voice acting, this game captures a level of emotion that has not been accomplished in past online worlds. The first time I played through the Sith Inquisitor class during beta, I tried make dark side decisions for their own sake, knowing that some gear required greater devotion to the dark path. On the third planet, this caused me to have to kill an arrogant young Sith apprentice, whose father I was working for, and all I got in return was a common (green item type) lightsaber. The man was furious in his pain, his voice acting was beautifully done. By that decision, my dark alignment moved to 2 and the Sith corruption on my character's face turned his sunken eyes a deep bruised purplish black. Surprisingly, I had a strong emotional reaction to this. I began to make light side choices when the most horrible dark side choices were presented and as a result started to play a far more rational Sith force user. It was as though I had actually hit a turning point in my character's development where he moved from being a bitter former slave towards being a future leader.

On the flip side, the Jedi experience is cannon to a point of feeling like a Norman Rockwell painting. Without making an occasional dark decision, the player is faced with a character who does the right thing no matter the cost and no matter who is hurt. The Jedi are blind religious justice when played as lightside for lightside. These nuances were not something I expected to find and to be honest, they were not something I particularly recognized until I had played through several of the character classes. As an aside, playing the Imperial Agent as lightside is very much a James Bond experience.

Your first or second time through, it will be easy to criticize what you think is a plot on rails. Keep going and you'll find there are subtle gradations that really change the feel of the game depending on how you play and you may regret that some decisions cannot be taken back without starting over again. This is a good thing.

From a pure mechanics standpoint, the game is similar to Warcraft. Blizzard really wrote the book on how a game should operate. Many players have been upset that they were able to sit down and feel immediately at home in SWTOR. To them, I would point out that on the rare occasion in my life when I have driven a Ferrari or a Lamborghini I have not been disappointed that the car still had a steering wheel and a gas pedal. The point of building a supercar is not to create an alien experience but, rather, to heighten all that makes the driving experience so exhilarating. SWTOR has taken the best of Warcraft's mechanics and super-powered them. There are subtle differences, especially in the crafting and companion systems, but the game is truly a collection of seven years worth of homage to Blizzard. It doesn't significantly diverge until around level 30. If you feel that this is a bad thing then perhaps this is not the game for you.

Many people have worried that boss mechanics would be ho-hum and as a result the game would plateau after level 50, losing subscribers back to Warcraft, as has happened to a great many titles. Were we talking about boss mechanics four months ago, I would have been inclined to agree. My guildmates from Warcraft are very accomplished raiders though and even they had to own up to the fact the last boss on the second major Flashpoint (Bringing Down the Hammer) was a surprisingly tough fight. They declined to repeat the Flashpoint in hard mode, instead electing to move on with the game content, because they realized they were not yet ready to take the content up a notch based on their gear to level ratio. If the boss design can sustain that level of increasing complexity up through endgame operations then this title will have a truly special raiding component.

Yes, there are bugs. Some of the bugs during early access have been frustrating because we squashed them two months ago in beta but they have returned (un-clickable mining nodes come to mind). Others are based on newer systems that were refined just in time for launch. Sometimes, at the right camera angle, all of the walls disappear leaving only the background image for the planet. Is it frustrating? If you are used to XBox type launches, yeah. Is it game breaking? No, not for an MMO. This is all par for the course.

All in all, Bioware has created a worthy heir to the throne of World of Warcraft. The game is young and it lacks the complexity of a mature title but it has lots of positive momentum in the right direction. If you love the Star Wars universe and enjoy MMO gaming then there is absolutely no reason not to pick up this title right now. If, however, you are someone who needs a bug free, mature, later stage title to be fulfilled then you should wait a while before buying Star Wars: The Old Republic.

[12/21 Update: 12/20 brought severe sever queues with new players exercising their first month free. This is a situation that will stabilize by 2/1 but it *will* degrade your retail experience. Bioware seems to have increased realm caps to deal with the situation, however, it will likely repeat itself with holiday accounts signing in for the first time four days from now]

[12/24 Update: Sever queues have been well under control, however, the 25th is coming. More on that in a bit. I wanted to add the following to my review:

Space is really a mini game and as such it falls outside of the MMO experience. Most recently, Star Trek tried to fully develop a space + ground MMO. The dev teams were clearly split and neither one created a particularly good experience. Like Star Wars Galaxies before it, I suspect Bioware will focus on space in a couple of years when the ground game is fully developed.

Until then, think of Space as a mini-game that is good for picking up XP and credits between planets. You'll enjoy it more that way. If you try to think of space as a part of the MMO experience, you will be sorely disappointed.

Finally, if you have not played past level 30, do not assume you are fit to judge the game. The first 10 levels are spent learning the interface. The next 20 are spent learning your advanced class. 30-40 is spent learning the advanced stats and 40-50 is spent honing your rotation.

First off, I would say a 3.5/5 is more accurate, or a 7/10.

I will try to be as subjectively objective as I can. This is no Asheron's Call, Ultima Online, or Shadowbane. It is as much a theme park game as every other "AAA" MMO to come out in recent years. It looms as a shadow over other titles, such as Age of Conan or Star Trek Online. It is supremely better than anything modern except for the one dated title that everyone likes to compare it to... I won't even bother saying it because we all know which one. Does it share elements to this grossly successful "other" title? Of course it does. Just like "it" did, The Old Republic has copied elements from what worked in other, successful MMO titles. Is it a clone or a copy? I would have to say maybe, but it is something new and refreshing in many other ways. It is a theme park MMO... and that type of MMO hasn't changed much since Everquest (except to remove that pesky sandbox, which many of us still lament). Is it the be-all, end-all MMO... of course not. It has many flaws to rival it's merits.

Here's my quick breakdown:

The Good:
1. Voice Acting is Sufficient. You won't hear anything as well-done as the Mass Effect series, but it is adequate... and in places, pretty good. It does have some good people, and that's where it shines. Nolan North is in it quite a bit, which alone means there's some good voice acting. The diversity and acting quality of a lot of the rest, however, is merely "adequate".
2. Stories are Adequate. The story lines in this game won't compete with a half-decent novel, but they are as entertaining as your run-of-the-mill prime time show.
3. Group Questing is Actually Entertaining. I have always hated being in a group for questing in any other MMO. It's a penalty, curbing reward possibilities and just making everything take longer. The conversation and dialogue with NPC's makes grouping with a friend much more enjoyable.
4. Instancing is at least Well-Done. I hate instancing... with a passion. Something ought to be said, though, about the way it was done to be less immersion breaking here. Walking through a glimmering force field into a private instance with NO load screen is a step forward, to be sure. Note: this only refers to private/group instancing WITHIN a zone. See #3 below for more elaboration.
5. Art Quality is Good. Sure, the graphics aren't top-notch (see "The Bad"), but the environments are often beautiful nonetheless. You don't need Arkham City graphics to be pretty (Arkham City was beautifully ugly), and ToR shines here. Worlds like Taris and Nar Shadda offer stark changes in artwork that is easy to appreciate.

The Bad:
1. Character Creation is Severely Lacking for a Modern MMO. In the days of character models such as those in any Cryptic game, Aion, or even EvE's new generator, the customization in SW: ToR's character creation system is pretty much a joke. The mesh/textures on character models are also very "flat".
2. Engine is Poorly Optimized. There are many posts on the forums about bad FPS. Personally, I run an AMD x4 Phenom II Quad-Core 3.2ghz, 6gb Corsair RAM, and a GTX 580 (GTS250 for Physx, which doesn't apply here)... and I'm lucky to average 30fps on max settings (ironically the same average as people with far lesser systems). Considering the lack of technically advanced graphics, something is amiss here.
3. The first several worlds are very "corridor-ish". The worlds don't seem very big, there is little exploration at the onset of the game. You are funneled from point A to point B to completed objective H. They claimed an epic and huge feel to the game, but I'm afraid to say that I'm just not feeling it... at least not yet. Instancing might be well done WITHIN a zone, but the rest of the time I am still reminded that I'm going from one arena to the next. The fact that each zone exists as instanced copies also limits the big MMO feel. Many people act as apologists for developers, stating that they don't like waiting for mobs to spawn because people are camping. My opinion is this: the devs ought to create more than one or two mobs to avoid this, not 20 instanced copies of the entire map. MMO's used to be gigantic because they had to be, now they are tiny and save development money by just putting people in separate copies of the same zone. Some people might love small over-instanced maps, and more power to them. I don't.
4. It doesn't feel "alive" the way an MMO should. The only critters in the world are occasional HUGE monsters that are too busy grazing to attack. This seems like laziness, to me. NPC's and Enemy Mobs are always standing in one spot, doing the same thing over and over. The rare exception is a world boss that walks in a small circle. Everything just seems so... static.
5. Sometimes combat does seem clunky, sometime it doesn't. Most of the time I have fun with it, and I suspect a lot of people's issues stem from timing issues with abilities that can be corrected at some point. Still, fluid and responsive combat is a must in any modern MMO... and it's enough of a problem that I think it merits stating.

These are just my highlights. There are other issues I have, such as it not being sandbox (they always said it wouldn't be, so this was expected), and lack of immersion things like being able to sit in chairs or sit on the ground without looking constipated. I also found that the advertised flashpoint (Black Talon/Esseles) seems to be the only one that is as interactive and conversational, but I've only done the first four. Hammer Station and Athiss, the next two, are just your run-of-the-mill dungeon crawls. I found this rather disappointing as BT/Esseles are the most fun I've had in a "dungeon" in a very, very long time. Space combat is also underwhelming, and they have said they plan on doing something big with it later on... which is fine. None of the issues in this section are really enough to affect my rating for the game at launch, however I still thought I would add them for sake of full disclosure if you're on the fence about purchasing.

Despite the flaws, there are many good qualities here... so don't let the zero's, one's, and two's on metacritic dissuade you from trying the game. At the end of the day, I have fun when I log on... for now. I'm quite certain, having been in the beta since early on, that I will get my money's worth before I stop having fun. Give it a try. At the very least, it is a good base from which Bioware will, hopefully, build a worthy and successful MMO title that will last years.

Update 1/24/12: The patch that went live last night seems to have alleviated a good deal of my negative issue #5. That is, combat clunkiness. The issues were apparently something to do with input lag or ability timing. From what I garner from the official forums, which are tentative at best, this isn't a universal solution... but for most customers it seems to be much better (myself included).

Issue #2 regarding engine optimization also seems to have been alleviated somewhat for me. I did some NVidia tweaking and got much better results. However, with the belated inclusion of AA... many users are experiencing stark FPS drops (even with AA turned off). Shadows remain a tenuous affair, at best... and don't look very good to boot. Either way, I'm now averaging around 50-55fps with VSync on, with obviously higher results with VSync off. It is quite playable/enjoyable for me.

Final Update 3/22/12: After hitting max level and getting all the PvP gear I could want, and poking around with some of the PvE content and alt leveling, I lost my drive to log in. I just didn't look forward to it anymore... most of the negative things I've commented on here have taken their toll, and the positives are just not enough to keep me here. The game feels too narrow, too empty, too lifeless, and too simplistic. As a result, I have cancelled my subscription as of this date. Best of luck to those of you sticking around for longer. I am aware of the big upcoming patch, but even if it delivers on its promises... it still doesn't change the fundamental design issues that I do not enjoy. I might come back eventually, but I have no further plans to update this review if I do. I hope it stays something enjoyable for the rest of you for a long time to come!

Should you get the game? Let me ask you a series of questions:

- Are you a big Star Wars fan? If yes, go ahead and get it. It's a good Star Wars game.
- Are you new to the MMORPG genre? If yes, go ahead and get it. It's a good MMORPG.
- Did you play some other MMORPG, enjoyed it, and mostly just thought, "I wish this game could be exactly like it is now, except with more wookies"? If yes, go ahead and get it. It's got wookies.
- Did you quit your last MMORPG because you got tired of the gameplay? If yes, then you might give this game a pass, because it's really just more of the same, recast as Star Wars.

This is a good game. If you answered "yes" to any of my first three questions, don't even read the rest of this review. Just put it in your cart and click on to the ordering screen because I think you'll be pleased with it. If you answered "yes" to my final question, then read on and I'll explain why you might give this game a pass.

It's hard for me to not be a bit bitter about it because it's the same game I have been playing for roughly 10 years, with a few minor tweaks. (Where are the innovations?) That is, if you've played Warhammer, Rift, World of Warcraft, Everquest, etc, then you are already very familiar with what SWTOR is going to be like. There is very little truly new to the genre here. A bit more story based? Sure. A couple neat things with crafting and the "companion" system? Yeah. But basically you are playing the same game as that last MMORPG you played, whatever it was, except this time it's got more lightsabers in it. MMORPGs have been stuck in this rut for a long time. If you're new to the genre, hey, jump right in! It's a good rut, really. If you've been in it for 10 years like me, then don't expect SWTOR to jump the rut in any way. There are no big innovations here:

You know how it goes. See dude. Talk to dude. Get quest. Go kill everything. Go talk to the dude again. Get reward. Go talk to next dude. The world is linear. The world is not dynamic. You cannot impact the world (at least not for more than about 60 seconds). The decisions you make are very fleeting and don't really matter in any sort of big scheme. It's set in a time of conflict but there's no real "war" to fight in, per se, because, as is always the case in MMORPGs, we enter the game when the war has just been called off (WOW, Rift) or just before it has gotten started (LOTRO, SWTOR). So yes, there's some fighting, but you're not going to have to fight for or against the Empire as they try to take over a planet in real-time because this is not a wargame -- it's a standard, linear, computer RPG.

So it's good, really, it's just same-old-same-old. They did some neat things with crafting -- you won't find yourself slaving over a hot forge all day making hammers. The "companion" system basically gives everyone their own NPC "pet" that follows them around and adds to the conversations as well as providing some tactical interest. The quests are good. Everything is a voice-over and done pretty well. You get to chat it up with some options that have some immediate impact and you can pick "light side" or "dark side". So yeah, there are some neat things in this game.

But it's still fundamentally the same as the last MMORPG you played, whatever that was. If you liked that, you'll like this. If you were sick of that, then you're just getting more of the same here.

If you liked Knights of the Old Republic - just stop reading these reviews and order this game. Even if you were never all that into MMOs, this game will at the very least give you at least 400 hours of play time as you play through the story lines for every character type and do nothing else.

Questing - Every MMO since the day of UO has struggled with how to make the player feel important and have an impact on the world with thousands of players sharing that same world. SWTOR pulls it off by having instanced parts of the world that only you and your companion are able to enter, these instances may be a whole dungeon or just a room, but the events there are specific to your storyline which does have branches. Your decisions have lasting impacts, you will get mail from NPCs with credits or just follow ups on the fallout from your actions. The final outcome of your particular story line will also depend on the decisions you have made - and no, it's not a simple light side vs dark side ending based on alignment. Speaking of alignment, it's not all black and white and in many ways playing a "light side" empire character makes sense. (SPOILERS: The Dark Side choices when playing the empire in general have you serving the Sith or just being unnecessarily cruel, while the light side may have you serve the actual "Empire" and it's people. There is distinction between what is good for the Sith and what is good for the Empire. In the Republic, the politicians are horribly corrupt and self serving, you can either embrace that or try to fight it. There are a lot more gray areas in the Republic choices overall - end justifies the means sort of stuff.)

Grouping - Admittedly, your personal unique quest will only take up about 20% of your game time. Most of your quests will be shared by other classes as well - this is actually a good thing. For example, you start on Hutta as an Imperial Agent and your friend starts as a Bounty Hunter - you will have radically different personal quests - but they will steer you towards the same area just with different purposes. So you will be able to group together for 80% of the quests and go to the same areas, just not be able to enter each others personal quest areas. The attention to detail for the common quests is as high as for your personal ones. The voice acting is fantastic, the quests are grouped appropriately and even in the rush of the head start there is little difficulty in getting to your objectives. Finally, if you are playing as a light side character in a group of dark side characters, the decisions you make have no impact on your own alignment. For example, if given the option to save or kill someone, all group members pick a response and do a dice roll, who ever wins gets to speak and execute the action, but the choice you made is what impacts your alignment even if the other option won out.

PvP - I will admit that PvP in this game is clearly not the main focus at this time. It's there, but it's not perfect yet. There is also some imbalance between the empire/republic therms of population count right now - at least that's what appears to be happening as I've been doing the mixed faction HuttBall pvp instances more than empire vs republic instances. This will probably balance out by release and doesn't matter much anyway as HuttBall is pretty good times. PvP in terms of class balance is decent but most tanking classes start out very weak early on. Finally, there is nearly no distinction between a PVP and PVE server - open world pvp doesn't exist till very much near the end game and the planets are fairly segregated.

Crafting - Crafting has been relegated from being a time and money sink to just being a money sink. You do not personally craft the item. Your companions do. In addition they will use crafting components from your inventory as well as your ship bank. This means that you can be crafting while questing, pvping etc. Once you get two companions, there is no reason to not have one of them crafting at all times. The system is well designed but the long term financial viability of some skills is still debatable as the economy at retail will be very different from beta.

Itemization - You are able to modify certain items to change their stats in entirely. IE on a gun all the damage is determined by the barrel which you can swap out - the barrel itself has a level requirement and that is passed on to the item. Thus you can stick to the same items for the rest of the game. Oddly it is often more expensive to buy upgrades for an existing modifiable item than it is to buy a whole new unmodifiable one. This will probably change once the economy stabilizes, but right now modifying your gear is wasteful. Quests will often reward you with a choice of an item or tokens which then can be used at a vendor to purchase higher quality gear, as such you don't usually get stuck with quest rewards that you end up selling right away.

I can't think of much else to say - the game is running fine on my QX6600 with 2 GTX8800 in SLI(this is an OLD PC) as well as on a 2 year old Asus G51-A1. I have not had a single crash in the last beta build or in the release client. It's still not happy about alt tabbing (slow to tab back), but that's the only issue I have with the release client. Lag is minimal and I'm on a "heavy" load server.

I honestly had no intention of buying this game at first. I merely wanted to play the beta to see if it kept my interest long enough to make a decision. However amazon decided to ship early so those plans fell through. I will preface by saying I am not an MMO fan, I absolutely hated WOW, honestly tried to get into it but couldn't. Graphics don't really matter to me but i will address them.

Graphics:
Not the greatest out there. They don't really bother me but if you are expecting to run into beautiful worlds you will not. For the most part areas are pretty bland. I have also had the issues of random terrain growing (watching the grass pop-up as i'm walking to it). The game looks like it was made for low end computers so hard core PC gamers will probably not like it.

Story:
I have not finished a full playthrough so I cannot comment on how good the story gets. The beginning for each class is interesting enough to make me want to play through each one. Voice overs for all the quests are a welcome addition and for the most part are very well done.

Overall Experience:
I haven't experienced significant lag in this game. Only during the first month of launch were the servers ever so full that you had to queu to enter. Parties are really small maxing out at 4, I'm not sure why this decision was made this way. Flashpoints beyond the first one are a little disappointing. For those that don't know these are special group areas with unique stories. The first one has a lot of interactions and dialogue between party members and NPC's giving you a feeling that you are actively participating in the story. The others I have participated in are not this deep. They will basically be kill this, get that, keep going, kill boss, end. I feel slightly cheated by the subsequent flashpoints. The community is generally nice and willing to help though every now and then you'll run into a jerk. PvP is pretty awful, I have only participated in three different scenarios with only one actually being fun. Whoever thought Hutball would be fun should be fired.

This MMO I believe was mostly designed for non-hardcore gamers. It lacks the complexity most hardcore audiences would like and newbies will appreciate. I have had fun playing the game and questing with a few friends. Take the game with a grain of salt the voice overs really help pushing the quests along and for the lazy gamer cuts back on the reading. It's easy to get into if you have never played an MMO before. For the hardcore audience there may not be enough meat on the bones of this game to get you to love it.

Update: The developers have launched the legacy system this month which i forgot to comment on. Basically the legacy system will allow the player to make a sort of family tree if he/she plays multiple characters. I'm currently unsure if the characters have to be in the same server to form part of the same legacy. This translates into giving certain character classes abilities from other classes that they "inherit" from your other characters. For example a bounty hunter who can use force choke. The characters will also earn legacy levels which will unlock more abilities and can earn legacy equipment. The difference with the legacy equipment is that you can freely exchange the equipment with anyone of your playable characters making subsequent playthroughs easier. Another addition is the "race unlock." This extra feature activates when you max out your character at level 50 and therefore unlocks the race to the other faction and classes. For example you can be a sith pureblood who is a jedi and follow the jedi storyline as opposed to just being a "light aligned" sith.

This addition should add some replay value to those who like to play multiple characters.

I'm going to start off by saying I have a great deal of experience with MMOs, stretching back over 10 years now. All the way back from the heyday of DAoC to all the expansions of WoW, with stops along the way at various others which held my interest for shorter periods of time. When TOR came out, it was a no-brainer to purchase. I'd played and loved both KOTOR games, and BioWare is one of the two best RPG makers currently on the market, the other being Blizzard.

As a RPG, this game is solid. The sheer volume of voice acting is mind boggling, and the stories, while not spectacular, do hold together well. It takes a satisfying amount of time to complete. I played through a solo character to 50, and another character to 50 with my brother, doing all of the Heroics/Flashpoints along the way. I had a good time with both, and don't regret the time I put in for one second. I would absolutely buy this game again without a second thought.

That being said, the MMO part of this game has some issues. When I started my character with my brother, we chose a low-pop server to avoid the queues that were prevalent at the time. Let me tell you, we didn't know how low pop it was going to be. The server was pretty darn close to deserted the entire time we leveled, rarely did we see more than two or three other players on the same planet as us. Our server was literally the most deserted server I've ever played on in any MMO. BioWare didn't allow for character transfers either, which didn't help; and they kept saying server merges "may" one day be an option. If I log on Friday night and the total players on the Republic side of my server is stuck in the double digits, that's just terrible and I shouldn't have to wait for BioWare to figure out how the heck to fix it. Yes, of course, I can start other characters on other servers- losing all my legacy points. Plus, leveling is not nearly as fun the third or fourth time through. The voice acting which was amazing the first or second time through is just repetitive on the third go-round.

Overall, it's a good RPG. As for the MMO part, well, that remains to be seen. I've cancelled my subscription for now, and Diablo is calling my name. After that addiction runs its course I may come back to TOR depending on what BioWare has done with it.

Alright, I'm likely to upset some folks by saying this game isn't as great as the hype has made it out to be. Some will say this is because the game is so new and others may say my expectations of it were flawed. Either way I feel like I should mention all of the items which I personally found fundamentally flawed in the games design such that others who look to determine if this game is the right fit for them will be able to make a well informed decision.

I'll probably add more to this list as I recall specific things that really stood out to me.

To begin, I was one of the folks that got early access via the preorder promotion and also had some time off for the holiday break which I used to play the game. Through this time I was able to get to level 50 about two weeks ago and had some experience with raiding on the normal level with my guild.

The following areas will be discussed:
PVP: warzones, world pvp, instanced worlds, separate world levels
Classes: crowd control, skill trees
Level: speed of leveling, possible locations for leveling
Zones/Planets: instancing, planet feel, one path through worlds, likelihood of return to planet after visiting, spaceport, need of mounts, token system
Quests: questing types, questing reward ui, speaking
Companions: reliance on,
Crafting: importance of trade network for crafting, purpose, items required for crafting availability, self reliance, paid collection
Fun/Additional: human gathering location, mounts, death penalties, inflated economy
Guild: guild specific items
Space information
Raid information
Modification system
Armor differentiation / uniqueness of pieces
End Game

PVP - Warzones (GOOD):
Right now there are three warzones that exist. A capture and hold warzone, a basketball / rugby style warzone, and a capture or defend alternating push to last objective warzone. All three are fun and pvp in general feels a lot more exciting than a lot of games I've previously played it in. On top of that there are stat scaling buffs given to players to somewhat even the playing field so level 10s can play with level 40s and not entirely be destroyed. Level 40s still would have an upper hand, however, as they have more skills but it's not impossible to defend against. This system is superior to the bracketing systems most games use because it allows smaller queue times as a result. There is currently an issue where well geared level 50s are near impossible to defeat but the 1.1 patch should address this by giving them their own bracket.

PVP - World PVP (BAD):
World PVP is somewhat of a joke because of certain design decisions made by the developers which fundamentally would be difficult to change. Firstly, the lowbie planets and capital city planets are inaccessible to the opposite faction. While this could prove to just be a minor annoyance on top of that (as I'll mention in a few paragraphs) many of the other worlds are entirely on different maps for opposing factions. So while you are on the same planet there is no way you will ever bump into an opposite faction user. In my leveling I saw two imperials total and the republic (my faction) is the outnumbered faction.

PVP - Instanced Worlds (BAD):
As a result of the instancing it further makes it unlikely that you will bump into a member of the opposite faction. It also means that the person who you were fighting can just change instances to get rid of you. It just makes pvping a lot harder because you're dealing with pvpers who can escape to different versions of an already sparse populated world.

PVP - Separate World Levels (BAD):
A lot of the leveling up worlds have completely separate world maps which look almost identical to the opposite faction but contain completely different npcs, quests, and human players. In these worlds there is no way to interact with the opposite faction. So while both factions may share the planet they can never see each other.

Classes - Crowd Control / Class Purpose (ANNOYING):
Oddly enough bioware decided that the best option for giving skill abilities to classes was to give everyone very similar abilities. This is fine for PVP where it's nice to have a ton of stuns (and trust me you'll be stunned a lot if you play in warzones) but for pve it removes the real purpose for having so many alternating classes for questing. No longer do people really need to ask for a CC class as they have plenty (everyone is one). Now people just ask for DPS, tank, or healer -- which while fine it removes a lot of the niche purposes of having such a varied player base.

Classes - Skill Trees (DECENT):
SWTOR appears to not really make any big changes to the skill tree style leveling we've seen in other games. You pop in more skills until you have five at a level and then put points into higher trees or dual spec. There are some interesting combinations you can make but it's nothing ground breaking.

Level - Speed of Leveling (BAD):
While some uber casual players may rejoice there are a few benefits slower (but not grind focused) leveling can have. First, it limits the number of players reaching end game for a bit allowing developers to enhance some content there prior to them reaching it. Secondly, it makes the accomplishment of actually reaching the highest level more worthwhile. The game leveled me so quickly turning in a quest reward could potentially out level me for other quests I was turning in. I could have skipped planets but I wanted to experience the story. PVP also levels at an extreme rate giving enough experience to potentially level just in that by attending 10 or so warzones. Ever match (even ones I entered right at the end of the game) gave a sizable sum of experience.

Level - Possible locations for leveling (BAD):
There really only is one path to level 50. While you can skip levels there is no choice in terms of whether you go to planet A or planet B when you're level X. There is a set planet for each range of levels up to 50. On top of that if you do your class quests (which you need to for companions) you will have to at least visit each planet and be forced to visit many of the zones inside of them so you'll need to walk the distance of the planet regardless. I remember fondly the feeling I was getting bored with one zone in WoW so I'd get up and go to another zone to quest and find I liked the beasts I was fighting there more. With SWTOR I'm stuck having to deal with the same beasts over and over again with no option for anything else until I'm done with the level.

Zones/Planets - Instancing (BAD):
I mentioned this in the PVP instancing note but wanted to make sure I mentioned it here as well. You really never see other people even in busy worlds. They seem to limit the instances to around 50 people and while this may sound like a lot it really isn't because those 50 people are spread across every single zone in the world you're on. It's nice when you have to do a grind quest (which many of the quests in SWTOR are) but it's not nice when you want to feel like you're playing a MMORPG.

Zones/Planets - Planet Feel (BAD):
Planets feel empty. Not just because of people but because of the way they were designed. There are no animals just grazing really and almost all npcs just sit in their camps waiting for you to attack. NPC characters in town repeat their same animation or just are randomly standing as well as if the whole world aside from your character froze in time. On top of that there are no weather patterns or a day/night cycle and the planet just feels like something is missing.

Zones/Planets - One Path Through Worlds (BAD):
While some of the later planets don't have this problem (and some like the jail planet do) often you'll find some of the planets have only one path through them. This means that you are being hand held from point a to point b and stopping for quests along the path. This is fine but it removes the immersion you feel in some MMORPGs which allow you to make the mistake of going the wrong way. There were zones in WoW for example which could easily put you against a creature of much higher strength at a low level. Here you'll always be where they want you to be (or on the rails as they say of the themepark).

Zones/Planets - Likelihood of Return to Planet After Visiting (BAD):
Almost zero. The reason I say almost is because: 1) many class quests force you to travel deep in the planet for a one minute discussion before they send you off (annoying), and 2) you'll likely come back at 50 to hunt hard to reach stat bonuses you missed while leveling.

Zones/Planets - Spaceport (ANNOYING):
One thing you'll find that will likely annoy you is the spaceport system for landing on planets. Every planet uses a copied spaceport (sometimes in space you need a shuttle to get down and sometimes on the planet) which forces you to run without your mount all the way into the planet. It's just an annoying time sink because there usually is really nothing to see on your way.

Zones/Planets - Need of Mounts (ANNOYING):
Some people tend to be bad at saving up money... while this game does seem to have a broken economy (inflation is a huge problem) it is annoying to be forced to have a mount to really keep playing. The game effectively does this when you reach Tatooine. Previously a mount is a nice to have feature but many of the planets like Tatooine and Hoth are big empty planets which you'll spend 95% of your time on just traveling. While I like the feeling that the world is huge it just makes it a pain to go anywhere on the planet since you know until you find a binding point / fast travel you won't want to leave even for a flashpoint (dungeon).

Zones/Planets - Token System (INTERESTING):
I find the token system to be an interesting idea. Basically each planet has its own token type which you can redeem for rewards if you collect enough. This could be an armor piece, a weapon, or a mod (more on mods later). When you complete some quests you have the option of taking a token instead of a reward and sometimes they drop of monsters you kill in the zone or off bosses in flashpoints (dungeons). The nice aspect of these is that you can quickly get good gear if you haven't had luck with any drops or haven't found the piece you need. The bad part is it trivializes the loot drop system by allowing you to select exactly the missing you piece you need. So instead of going on the auction house and purchasing the lightsaber I need to upgrade I'll just collect some tokens from Esseles (the first flashpoint) to get modifications for it. It's not bad but it removes the need for such an auction system since it makes quality gear accessible without the need for other players (since the tokens from from easy daily quests along with regular monsters and normal quests).

Quests - Questing Types (BAD):
Aside from a very select few quests the majority of quests are either kill or fetch quests. The selection was pretty disappointing as they ignored some of the more fun types of quests I've experienced in other MMORPGs like defend person quests, etc. On top of that while occasionally you will get a quest item to use (scan these droids, etc -- although the only time I remember seeing this was the starter world) these are in their own inventory. Some may like the fact it doesn't interfere with your inventory but there is something to be said about actually holding the item versus just throwing it into a grabbag quest inventory you can ignore.

Quests - Questing Reward UI (BAD):
You don't know what sort of reward you'll receive until the quest has been handed in. This may be realistic if you're doing chores for grandma but it's nice to know if you can skip a quest when you're outleveling a zone because they made leveling too quick.

Quests - Speaking (INTERESTING):
I found the speaking in quests to be interesting... until I learned I could skip it with spacebar. In general a lot of the quests reuse the same text (beast races like wookies will say the same sounds a lot and your character has canned replies he reuses) and often it's not really even that interesting. Class quests are interesting and I never skipped them, however.

Companions - Reliance On (INTERESTING):
It's interesting how much reliance is put on companions for questing. Jedi Knights at this point in time almost exclusively have to use their healer companion past a certain level (according to most I've heard from) up until level 50. It's a nice idea to have companions but it effectively just turns every class into a PVE pet spec where in order to do most content it's smart to keep it out. You don't always need it but many times you'll find some content is impossible without it. Unfortunately this also leads to people rolling need on gear for their companions (who may be a different armor class than them). When I did play tank for a bit with heavy armor a cloth user ended up with the heavy tank pants I needed so he could use them for his companion... just additional pain since some folks don't see this as ninjaing loot.

Crafting - Importance of Trade Network (BAD):
None. Any items you need for crafting you can send your companions on a mission to get. You can be completely self reliant and there are very few (save for the highest level crafting items) that you need any item outside of those missions to get (it drops from raid bosses and everyone needs one so it's not like it's a random item). This kind of takes away one of the elements of crafting which really makes WoW stand out; the coolness of having something others may not own. I recall the pain of having to find some obscure item from some elementals I needed to build an item I could craft and how I could spend x amount on the auction house to get it right away or spend some time trying to get it to drop. I also recall how happy I was to finally be able to craft the said item. This is gone with SWTOR as you can just craft whatever you want with little work involved.

Crafting - Purpose (BAD):
There is little purpose to crafting aside from biochem (for reusable stims, addrenals, and medpacks). While you can make mods for armor and weapons, armor, and weapons they are unlikely worth the time involved as you can easily get an item from tokens or by questing in a shorter period of time. Often merchants on planets will sell blue level items as well for a small amount so you can just buy those there. In general crafting is a waste as even when you hit 50 you'll likely out level the highest level crafting items (besides biochem) with the gear you can quickly assemble. I did a few PVP easy win a few warzone quests and I had T1 armor almost instantly. That's better than the armor that drops from the instances at 50.

Crafting - Items Required for Crafting Availability (BAD):
Like I mentioned above you can get the items almost instantly even for the purple recipes. It's not hard.

Crafting - Self Reliance (BAD):
No crafting skill requires any other crafting skill. So unlike some engineering recipes in WoW which could require a dye made by a chemist (forget the name of that skill) you can completely do your craft without other players. It removes the need for trading crafted middleware-esc items from the auction house and really makes the game more like a single player game.

Crafting - Paid Collection (BAD):
You don't actually ever need to leave the Republic/Imperial Fleet station to become a master in your craft. If you have the money you can just send your companion(s) out and run missions for you to quickly rise in level. There is no level cap with skills as well (although produced items have them) so you could level up a level 50, get tons of cash (which isn't hard with how inflated the economy is) and then build a few level 10 alts who craft out every skill to 400. It just removes the exploration aspect of crafting which gives crafting a uniqueness. There is something to be said about having 400 skill scavenging skill when it required you to have to gather from all sort of nodes than it is to just have your minions gather. The nice thing about it though is that they made the planets so boring to go back to so you can just avoid them altogether if you change crafts.

Fun/Additional - Human Gathering Location (BAD):
There really isn't a human gathering location right now. I suppose you could say the fleet is one but aside from groups around the PVP quest vendor and flashpoints there really isn't a place where lowbies and high levels go to all just hang out between questing. In WoW you had the banks/gates of Stormwind and Ironforge but in SWTOR there really is no common place. This could also be because of the nature of the game, however, where most people never really return to the fleet all that often unless they are done with a particular planet.

Fun/Additional - Mounts (BAD):
There is no real purpose for mounts aside from the annoyingly large planets. While some people show their mounts off in the station once you hit 50 you are unlikely to really use it much except to go around the station from end to end or datacron hunting. Mounts usually are a thing people are willing to spend a lot of in game cash to really get a nice one for and there is no real point here. On top of that the higher level mounts (rank 2 and 3) are barely an improvement on the original. So there is no real point to upgrade aside from how inflated the economy is so you'll always have cash.

Fun/Additional - Death Penalty (BAD):
Everyone can rez other people and themselves at the exact location they died. On top of that you lose some durability but nothing else. At least with WoW you had to run back to your corpse. It's not uncommon to see people in SWTOR CC (which everyone gets) a tough enemy, kill the adds, die from the tough enemy, respawn 10 seconds later, and kill the tough enemy alone. It's just kind of silly.

Fun/Additional - Inflated Economy (BAD):
Inflation is out of control in the game. First, there are too many easy ways to get money. Second, there isn't enough to really spend money on. The issues from crafting I mentioned before really give nothing for people to spend additional cash on and aside from inventory space purchases you won't be buying much. I don't think there was a single point in the game I went bankrupt and toward the end of it I stopped caring about even thinking of selling items (I'd just stop picking them up because it wasn't worth the hassle of managing my inventory for items I'd only sell for cash I didn't need).

Guild - Guild Specific Items (BAD):
This can be fixed in patches luckily but they currently don't offer much for guilds. No perks (which is fine) and no bank. Guild banks are pretty common these days so not sure why they didn't have one at launch.

Space Information (BAD):
Space is a single player mission based system. All of the levels are copies of each other after the initial few unique ones just made slightly harder (enemies take more damage forcing you to upgrade). Once you upgrade your ship there is no real difficulty and given how it controls your ship for you (you can only move directionally to avoid thing) it gets pretty repetitive quick. It's a single player mini game. It also gives a lot of cash and experience so I'd avoid if you don't want to level too quickly.

Raid Information (BAD):
Raids so far are kind of a joke (they can fix this later though luckily). The enemies are either way too easy or are bugged to the point of impossible. In the Eternity Vault we had the second boss bug out not allowing anyone back into the zone after we wiped on our first try so we had to wait until it reset to try again (since resetting it wouldn't work). On top of that it somehow killed us outside of the zone. The final boss also bugged out after he died with half of our group still in the trapped state forcing them to suicide and rezed to get loot. I did like, however, how each person in your raid has a chance to get an armor token to trade in for armor. It's nice because it opens the door to allow a random aspect to retrieving loot more than one person could use. I always hated losing each roll to get a piece of armor while this somewhat removes that need.

Modification System (BAD / GOOD):
One neat (and bad from an auction house point of view) is the modification system. Until end game (which had mods you can't take out with set bonuses and high level armor / weapon damage) you can use the same modded pieces from when you receive them to the end of the game. This means that you can just keep getting new mods and upgrading as opposed to buying a new item. This is great if you like the look of a piece of armor but really bad from the point of view of a crafter. Since people can easily get mods from tokens (although some may buy mods from mod crafters) there is no point for people to buy blue items really any more that drop. It's too expensive to buy a rare or semi-rare item when you can easily get an item up to that level with a few simple purchases. It really helps ruin the economy and having a clothing system like rift would have allowed people the look they wanted without this breaking of the economy. It's another fundamental system which many (including myself like) but it does have an effect on the economy as a whole as a result it seems bioware did not plan for.

Armor differentiation (BAD):
Another annoying aspect of the game is the lack of surprise from killing bosses in flashpoints (dungeons) and raids. There is something romantic about receiving a certain end game item and having stats you didn't know about that are great for your character. Because bosses drop specific tokens to get specific end game gear everyone in your class will be wearing it removes that aspect most MMORPGs embrace. It's nice to have the cool shiney thing everyone wants and having the same exact gear just really is disappointing. It also removes the need to really visit a ton of flashpoints (dungeons) since you can just farm your equipment. On top of that most people will have T2 PVP armor because it's so easy to get it. You don't need a specific rank to get PVP armor just need to do the daily which gives you a grab bag to get T2 armor (or the easy weekly for 3 grab bags). If you're lucky (like some people have been) you can end up with four pieces + in the first week just doing daily quests. It's pretty crazy.

End Game (BAD):
End game right now is fairly bad. This can change but aside from the buggy raids there isn't all that much to do. You'll find the flashpoints (dungeons) to be kind of worthless quickly since it's so easy to get good gear without doing a bunch of them. On top of that without really any crafting goals (in WoW I spent a lot of time really building out my high level engineering items) there is nothing to do aside from PVP and do daily quests for commendations (tokens) you can buy mods with or other items. It really is pretty boring once you reach it. I'm sure they'll add more content but many people who hit 50 have already begun to check out of the system or roll an alt (which is boring since you'll hit all the same zones you just went through because of the lack of quest differentiation).

Well, anyhow, I want to give my review of the areas of the game I thought were a little disappointing. Relative to a lot of games they did a really good job with SWTOR. If anything I'd say their biggest issue was that, in a lot of situations, they designed the game from the perspective of a single player. On top of that their ignorance of the MMORPG market led them to make a lot of really foolish mistakes ruining their economy fundamentally (which drives a lot of consumer behavior); in a lot of cases they seem to have favored cool design decisions (let's make moddable armor) over their effects on the game world. This is further exacerbated by the commendation system which, while it rewards players for grinding, removes the need for players to get armor upgrades from other players.

Anyhow, I hope my review will help others come to a conclusion if this game is the right fit for them or not. I liked it for the first 1-50 and got bored / fed up with some of the issues I mentioned. At the very least I suggest you buy the game for those first 50 levels as they are fun.

It's probably not possible to write a legit review of an MMO without sampling all that it has to offer beforehand but I'm gonna treat this more like a first impression than a review. I'm also not going to write about voiceovered dialogue or class-specific storylines because other reviewers covered those aspects in sufficient detail, imo.

So far I made one character, a Trooper on the Republic side, and got him to lvl 26. I'm currently wrapping up questing on my 4th planet/moon, Nar Shaddaa. I'm mainly a PvE-inclined player with very little PvP on the side.

I'm gonna start off with a drawback...
The game world(s) so far has a problem in that certain planets feel like they are instanced. Urban environments in particular have this problem. A playable area on a city-planet is divided into several districts and you can take a flying taxi to transport yourself between them but you can't get there on foot or on your vehicle (scooter, etc.) so they really are like islands in a sea of graphically inferior cityscape. There is a physical game space between them that you can look at while flying in a taxi but it isn't accessible. Additionally, certain parts of playable zones feel empty. Not only you don't see anything attackable, for what sometimes feels like miles and miles but there are very few NPCs around that you can interact within those areas, as well.
So far only my starting planet was fully free-roam without any barriers.
Zones are also too restrictive (imo) with where you can ride your scooters/bikes (starting from lvl25) and where you can't.

There is an obligatory quick transport feature. You can transport yourself (basically teleport) to any bind-point that you previously unlocked but only within the planet that you are currently on; it has a 30-min cooldown.
There is no open space travel in TOR. For transport between planets a player has their personal ship, which is obtained at some point in each class' storyline and a galaxy map on the bridge similar to that in Mass Effect. There might also be a system of shuttles (not sure about it) but your personal ship is the most convenient... not to mention you can talk to your companions while on the ship (cantinas are the only other places you can do that) and space combat missions/quests can only be initiated from your ship's bridge.

Your ship doesn't serve well as living quarters (or a home) mainly because its interior can't be customized and its interactivity is limited to companion conversations, transport, and some quest-related stuff... well ok, you can sit in some of the chairs but it only gives you a basic visual effect of (not surprisingly) being sitted in a chair.

Space combat and its reward system right now is also nothing to write home about (main problem being that the space combat itself is on rails). The best part of it is probably upgrading your ship with ship-specific equipment, which can also be crafted by some professions. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to change your ship's external appearance at all...
Bioware stated that this is their main focus right now and from what they said it sounds like they're working on a major overhaul of space combat.

I like crew skills (crafting) in TOR, so far.
Technically, crafting is performed by your companions however you don't see them doing it unless you're on your ship near the workbench. Gathering is also done by your companions although you can perform gathering by yourself if it involves harvesting a node that you found in the world. Nevertheless, some gathering professions don't have nodes and can only be performed by companions. Of course it is you, the master and sometimes an unwilling (or willing, in case you're going dark side) slave driver who chooses which specific items to craft or gather.

There are also a couple things that need to be mentioned here. When you send your companion to do crafting or gathering it takes a minimum of ~1 min for them to finish it (crafting is shorter while gathering takes longer unless, again, it is from a node nearby). Secondly, you have to spend credits for your companion to do gathering (at the level I have it right now it can mean even >500 credits per 1 gathering trip) and again gathering from nodes is an exception in that it's free of charge lol.
Some professions level much slower than others, for instance I have cybertech, scavenging, and underworld trading and for me U.T. levels up several times slower than the others. Finally, I wish the workbenches were more than just a decoration on a ship that you can't even interact with or a mention in the text when you open your crafting window...

Itemization is very similar to WoW... if not actually better.
Gear has primary and secondary stats, gear progression so far is smooth and interesting and feels like upgrades make a difference in combat; variety is also very good. There is cosmetic gear for people who want to RP or play with it. Cosmetic gear and social items have restrictions and can only be bought if your character has a certain social level. Social points are earned while grouping and questing with other players.
A very nice feature are planet-specific commendation badges that can be exchanged for gear or equipment suited for a specific level range of the planet. This system is of course on top of the usual quest rewards, crafted gear, loot, etc.
Gear has modification slots from the very beginning, at first it's just for your weapon(s) but soon (~lvl15) other gear types start having them, too.

Besides social scale your character can progress on the light/dark-side scale, PvP (valor pts), and on the affection scale with specific companions. Unfortunately it's not possible to make your companions so pissed that they stop obeying your orders, temporarily walk away, attack you, or run away for good. It would be great if that was possible, imo.
I'm not 100% positive whether or not there is a space combat-related reputation. I haven't encountered any NPC factions for which you can earn reputation, either.

There is a feature that combines lore info with an achievement system and it's called Codex. Right now it's more of a lore encyclopedia with some tutorial-like entries here and there. Nevertheless, there are achievement categories with counters showing how many and which entries from a specific category you got so far. So, it's not perfect but it shows potential.

Combat is very good; flashy, kinetic, animations are very good, upgrading your gear feels like it makes a difference, and putting points in talents (advanced class stuff) feels like it makes a difference, as well. Stuff that is supposed to be easy is easy and stuff that is supposed to be hard (heroic quests, instances, PvP, etc.)... feels hard.
Boss encounters have extra combat mechanics, etc. It's worth mentioning that most trash mobs and enemies in the world are ranged (on average probably ~80% are ranged)... On more than one occasion groups that I ran with had to use CC to manage fights, even at low levels.
So far I've healed with my Trooper and I have to say healing was quite fun. In fact, all combat mechanics is surprisingly much more fluid than I'd have expected from a newly released MMO (it is basically of the same quality as in WoW).

Probably the biggest issue besides the above mentioned problem with certain planets feeling instanced is (imo) lack of accessible combat log. Floating combat text is in the game so it's not clear why there is no combat log implemented yet although after a PvP match there is a rough combat statistics displayed in a window where you can see how different players performed within different categories (dps, kills, deaths, healing, etc.).

As of now there is no modding support. It isn't a big problem for me at this point in the game but I can understand that it might be an issue for others. The UI, while not very customizable, is well designed and has a nice Starwarsy feel. There are minimized and movable group/raid frames available. They have some degree of customization and look good and so far fulfill their role nicely.

There are other minor issues like for instance the galaxy map and the `landing on a planet' cutscenes might use some graphical improvement. At the end, I give this game a strong 4/5 with a disclaimer that there is easily a potential here for 5 stars (and I don't give 5 stars easily).

edit: the fun factor is supposed to be at 5 stars but it doesn't let me edit that part lol

This game has all the marks of one developed by a team who spent too many years spending someone else's money and then had to rush to get it done when the people (EA) holding the purse strings said "That's it, no more extensions of the deadline, you ship it by the end of the year so we can book the revenue in fiscal 2011 or all your management is fired."

At first glance, SWTOR seems to have everything necessary for a successful WoW-style MMOG. The story and voice acting is good, there's PvP, raiding, etc., etc.

And you get to be a Jedi Knight and wield a Lightsaber for gosh's sake! How can you go wrong?

Indeed the game is very fun for the first 10-30 levels or so, at which point you can level alts to level 10 to try out the other classes and faction story (and do PvP battleground-style matches if you like that). Even the space combat is a very nice break from the usual level grind tedium, even if it is simplistic "arcade" style.

But there are deep issues with the game, both in the short term and the long term that made me decide not to renew after playing for the first month. I'm happy to support the developers by buying their game and giving it a try, but if it doesn't look like it's going to provide ongoing *fun* then I'm not going to pay a subscription fee.

If you are a very slow leveling casual player and a Star Wars fan, you might easily get a few months of fun out of this though.

So what are the issues? There are three categories of problems:

1) Bugs.

People go on about the game having bugs but honestly I never had much problem. Also bugs are generally easy to fix and you can be pretty much certain that they WILL get fixed.

So I do not fault the game at all at this point for whatever bugs it has, and I don't feel like they were a major cause of my not enjoying the game.

2) Stuff missing at launch.

You can try to make the "Well, it's new so you can't expect it to compete with a game that's been out for seven years" argument, but I don't think it holds water for two reasons: first, they've had about five years of working on this thing and even through some of the missing game systems did not exist in any game when they started out, all of them should have been obviously required for the last couple years. If you want to produce a big MMOG at this point, you have to be prepared to ship it as good as your competition and BETTER in at least some ways, because your customers aren't going to put up or care about your issues. Yes, this is REALLY HARD for a developer to do, but nobody said it would be easy.

Second, some of these omissions and half-implemented features are shockingly embarrassing. I'll give two examples: The Auction House (GTN) user interface is so bad (from a UI design and implementation point of view) that it's incomprehensible to me. How did you not mock-up something twice as good as WoW in the first week of development five years ago and then find time to implement it somewhere along the line?

The other massive failure is the lack of any support at all for social gaming such as a "dungeon finder" or even a simple global "Looking For Group" channel. It's a MAJOR source of dissatisfaction among players that it can take hours to put a group together to run a dungeon (apart from the first level 10 flashpoint that everyone gets pushed towards). The developers respond with "Oh, we think it's good for the players to have to interact with each other and form groups."

Another big factor in MMOGs traditionally is that there be cool loot to work for. In SWTOR, I personally found all the gear bland and uninteresting. There was rarely a reason to do one bit of content over another just because you wanted an item that was only dropped by a particular boss. Very little variety in character looks, and your armor type pretty much determines what your character is going to look like.

This category of issues are all at least theoretically solvable over the coming months, but the simple fact that they existed at launch says volumes about the development process the game went through, and it does not give one cause for optimism that they will manage to improve things in a timely manner.

3) Fundamental Design Issues

These are the worst problems because I don't see how you can fix them short of spending another couple years redoing stuff from scratch in a different way.

Here are a few examples:

Planets are just "levels". It's an important attribute of any successful MMOG that the worlds they create have to feel good to the players. They have to want to "live" there in a virtual sense in order to keep paying a monthly subscription for years. SWTOR fails in this respect. Planets do not feel like places or even "zones", but more like level maps in a single player game. They are full of walls that enfoce a maze-like linear progression in many cases in order to make it take longer to move through their relatively small areas. Generally all corners of each map (planet) are packed up to the edge with mob spawns in the same styles (groups of four weak enemies or three normal, two strong, one elite+ etc.) and there is just no room for exploration as a component of game play. There are few if any little nooky places in the world to discover as an explorer.

Planets have no day/night cycle. This is really a big one as it means there's no sense of time at all. On Tatooine it's always just an hour before sunset (or after sunrise, who can tell?)

Questing starts out fun but quickly settles into the standard MMOG grind. The fully-voiced storylines and quest dialogs are good, but it generally boils down to kill N bad guys, find and click N blinky things, or fight your way through some base, killing all the trash to find the mini-boss at the end (who always monologues about how you killed his predecessor but the same thing isn't going to happen to him, just before it happens to him).

There are gigabytes of voice acting in the game, but (not surprisingly) only one option for each class/gender combination (race makes no difference in voice). Thus if you don't like a particular voice, or the way the actor played it, then you may find yourself less happy with a particular class, or you may have trouble feeling like the character in the game represents "you". This makes the game feel much more like a typical single-player gaming experience, and less like a "world you want to live in".

SWTOR is a WoW copy in the same way that Rift was, i.e. if the developers did not have their own idea of how something should work, the process was clearly "go see what WoW does, reverse engineer it, and give it a new name but have it work exactly the same". This is not a bad thing in terms of providing systems that some people will be familiar with, and many of these systems have become the standard way of doing things in MMOGs (because everyone did the same thing). But sometimes it gets pretty annoying.

Little detailed thought seems to have gone into the economy of the game world.

Anyhow, I'll stop rambling there. I wanted to like SWTOR a lot, though I never had the sort of expectations that a lot of the fans seem to have had. But it failed to provide an experience compelling enough to make me want to pay a monthly subscription and "play" for any extended period of time.

If you want an up to date replacement for KOTOR, a reasonably enjoyable single-player style experience, and, as noted above, if you're someone who likes to take their time and is very motivated by story, then you might well get your money's worth out of SWTOR. I however do not feel like I did, and I could not find any reason to hang around in the hope that things magically got better.

G.

First I actually played the game for a substantial length of time unlike many of the other reviewers here. I know hundreds of reviewers here though probably have played much more than I have, I'd consider myself probably a little more hardcore than average but not by any means the most hardcore player out there. I managed to reach the starting cap with a few characters. One dark side one light side. The game delivers standard formula MMO style game play with all of the same features you find in WoW, etc. etc. It has some nice twists of its own. However it is not the next generation of MMOs as promised during the hype to launch. This is largely just another licensed Star Wars universe title. I like Bioware, I used to like Star Wars (in the pre-episode 1-3 days) and I used to enjoy MMOs. For me the issues I have with the game are as much an issue with the old MMO grind, waste a huge hunk of your life sitting in front of a screen grinding, same ole same ole, different genre, slightly improved graphics, WoW 2.0. So I played, it was mildly amusing for awhile, I have uninstalled. I won't be back no matter what they do to the game.

Biggest actual critique of the game itself IMO the story is all a weak illusion. You have only two real choices which in most cases make only superficial differences in the game. The end game rewards for going light or dark are rather meaningless. Yes there is voice acting galore, but the zones are pretty homogeneous, they are also mostly pretty small. The diversity in races, etc. is not as good as it could have been and the difference in races in terms of game play is non-existent. Classes and crafting are well done as are the companions which I think is probably the biggest addition to the MMO format that this game has given. PVP was alright but nothing amazing. The flier on rails mini game that space combat provides is decent, I'm sure eventually they'll offer more in space. The launch wasn't horrible given the number of players, etc. etc. it could have been a little better but honestly I don't fault Bioware or EA for their efforts their they seemed to be really keeping an eye on things, etc. Customer service was horrible over the course of the time I played the game I had to open perhaps a few dozen tickets and never had a single live response (I don't expect an instant real time response, but in WoW for example anywhere from 4 hours to 2 days after a person opens a ticket you usually eventually get an actual GM). Hopefully that improves with time.

All in all if your looking for a grindy, licensed Star Wars MMO, this game delivers. If you want innovation, the next generation of MMOs or some real interesting new story lines in the Star Wars universe ... you might be a little disappointed. The stories in the game feel like cliche rip offs of the new hope era Star Wars story lines, Bioware took little risk and really didn't do anything new. Even as a fan of KoToR I was disappointed this game really fell flat on the story in my opinion.