BioWare+Mythic: A SWTOR review

When I signed up for SWTOR, my expectations were fairly specific. I expected to find a BioWare-quality single player leveling experience grafted onto a Mythic-quality MMO. At this time, I am both happy and extremely disappointed to say that this prediction seems to have been exactly correct.

Leveling experience, art, character, story, narrative: Solid A
SWTOR claimed that its use of story and high-tech character animation would revolutionize the experience and bring storytelling to the stagnant MMO genre in fabulous and unexpected ways. In general, I believe BioWare succeeded at this, and in fact even managed to exceed my expectations by integrating storytelling strands into repeatable content. The use of their trademark companion character loyalty mechanic as a form of alternate advancement was particularly clever and well-conceived.

Interface and Quality of Life: C-
SWTOR is a bizarre beast when it comes to the UI and quality of life issues. It had terrible control lag issues at launch, but those have since been incrementally addressed. The UI is mostly MMO standard, though it conspicuously lacks any form of combat log. This, I can only imagine, stems from a desire to take a hardline stance on the controversial issue of DamageMeters and other quantitative-reductionist phenomena that are a mainstay of the WoW community to this day. Given BioWare’s stated goal of maximizing the immersive feel of its world, I can see this as a consistent position to take.

They have not, however, taken any steps to mitigate the negative side effects of this decision. The inability to answer the simple question, “What killed me?” is unique to SWTOR – even the single-celled text-based progenitors of the genre didn’t have that problem. Similarly, the lack of a reconfigurable interface (hope you like sidebars) is a throwback to the days before even Mythic Entertainment’s own Dark Age of Camelot.

There are a potpourri of other quality of life issues as well. Players are forced to run through multiple pointless docking bays and loading screens several times between any two destinations. Tab-targeting is clumsy and seems to have an extremely long reset time. You can’t keep the camera from turning back in the direction your character is running. The Galactic Trade Network (AH) interface is nigh unusable. These issues are minor, but their annoyance adds up.

Finally, I’ll throw into this category the lack of compensation for server downtime. There’s an expectation that if you are incapable, for technical reasons, of providing a service for a significant chunk of primetime on a given day, that you compensate your subscribers accordingly. I’ve seen no mention or motion toward this by BioWare, and it weighs against them in my estimation.

Renewable content, tradeskills and economy: C
Tradeskills are very well-integrated into the leveling experience in TOR, being intertwined with the companion/crew system in ways that allow players to participate with a minimum of disruption to the crafted narrative experience. Kudos to BioWare on that.

Unfortunately, tradeskills are effectively AWOL at 50, with one huge, huge outlier (BioChem) and one minor blip (Cybertech). Endgame recipes seem not to exist beyond flashpoint hard mode, and no profession has craftable items of significant value to a player who has already gotten Columi drops… except BioChem, which for some inexplicable reason gets huge performance-boosting buff items and giant medpacks that aren’t consumed on use.

This is supposedly changing in 1.1.2, but the proposed solution will still leave BioChem as the only producer of consumables and hence the only profession in the game with ongoing revenue. Hardly the foundation of a broad-based economy capable of supporting active crafting and trade.

Money… well, there’s not much to be said for money in SWTOR. Between deluges of cash falling from the sky via dailies and PvP, and a nonexistent player economy at 50, it makes me wonder just why my smuggler was so keen on making sure he reminded people about his “fee” at the end of every conversation.

Renewable content, PvE: C
Endgame content is where the rubber meets the road for MMOs with short leveling curves like TOR. An unapologetic rip-off of WoW’s model, with the occasional cutscene thrown in to keep things cinematic. Everything else from character mechanics and skills to encounter design to loot methods are completely off-the-shelf.

Operations, from what I have experienced, are also carbon copies of WoW raids, with a couple puzzle bosses thrown in. Since this space is already well-mapped, the only thing to point out is that the encounters themselves are still very buggy. Soa, the end boss of Eternity Vault, is notoriously so. On many occasions, platforms have simply failed to spawn in the right places, rendering the fight completely unwinnable. On another occasion, he grabbed one of our ops members and threw him around the room right at a phase transition, depositing him back on a nonexistent floor afterwards, where he fell to his unrezzable doom. Up until the last patch, the quest for defeating Soa was also failing to grant credit.

BioWare does get minor points for the destined loot system, which automates the process of assigning loot for Normal mode (read: PUG-friendly level) raids. However, those points are heavily outweighed by a LFG system straight out of 2002 and a lack of cross-server interaction of any sort, rendering the pool of groupable players unworkably small.

Renewable content, PvP: F-
It’s not so much that the PvP in this game is bad. It’s honestly not, and in fact the damage and control models are actually much more action-oriented than many of TOR’s contemporaries, which instead favor rage-inducing coordinated CC chains as their primary player skill differentiator.

It’s not even Ilum, at least not the debacle that is Ilum itself. It’s what Ilum represents – a complete lack of understanding of the desires, priorities, and expectations of PvP-oriented players. Rather than recount the many failings of Ilum, I’ll point out the major reasons why this whole fiasco and its handling by BioWare have left them looking like three things that PvP players absolutely hate: clueless, slow, and disinterested.

Clueless:
Ilum 1.0 was completely backward. Rather than reward players for fighting each other, it rewarded them for cooperating in the same way that a Portal 2 level might: you press this button, I press that one, we both profit. Ilum 1.1 was the laughing stock of the MMO world when it came out, and for good reason. Replacing click-walker-for loot with zerg-players-for-loot, it not only made everyone hate it (even the free lewt doodz who liked the original version), but it DIDN’T GET RID OF THE ORIGINAL PROBLEM. Justifying their actions by arguing that the zone is painful and stupid, organized kill trading has replaced organized point trading. And you know what? Most people agree. Even players who would normally be repulsed by the very idea of unsportsmanlike conduct close their eyes, stand in a big clump, and farm 30 kills a day.

Slow:
There has followed a complete lack of a transparent, open response to give even the impression of a competent hand at the wheel or a plan on the horizon. Nobody likes Ilum. NOBODY. And yet, a month and a half after launch, more than a week after the spectacular failure of the 1.1 Ilum update, the patch notes freshly moved onto the PTR contain a whopping two changes to Ilum: the turrets outside the bases should work now, and players will now get a message when killing somebody who’s not worth a reward. If ever there was an opportunity to make it look as if one has no clue and no plan, this is it, and BioWare has jumped all over it.

Disinterested:
Worse, people who took (and continue to take) advantage of the situation to propel themselves to a big gear advantage over other players in PvP are being allowed to do exactly that. Players who traded clicks in the original Ilum violated the spirit of the game but kept their rewards. Players who trade kills in Ilum today keep their valor points and access to Battlemaster gear, giving them a very substantial edge over their honest competitors.

Nevertheless, despite a series of high-profile incidents that provided the perfect opportunity for a strong, proactive response on the part of the developers, all they gave were vague promises that the worst of the offenders would be punished. There has been no public response whatsoever to the claims of kill trading continuing to this day.

SWTOR is not alone in having sought to create PvP ecosystems it could not support. Many games have done so, and crashed and burned in the following months as a consequence. One such AAA MMO comes to mind both for the magnitude of its fall (1.2m boxes sold, 800k subs at its launch in late 2008, now down to a single US server) and for its direct lineage to TOR: Warhammer Online, produced by EA Mythic, now a division of BioWare Mythic.

Conclusion:
Charitably, one could say that BioWare Mythic is taking a very long-game approach to things. Play your hand close to your chest, let good things happen, and let people notice them as they do. Maybe they don't care about Valor ranks because they have a different system in mind for "real" competitive PvP. More power to them if they can make it work, but actions speak louder than words, and at this point, their actions are speaking volumes of nothing about a viable endgame. That’s tough to take solace in, for a subscription-based game in a world where a new hotness comes along every 2 months.

TOR has had its $75 from me: $60 for the BioWare story and $15 for the Mythic MMO. If its developers remain on their current path of talking up a March patch while posting PTR notes that look like emaciated collections of hotfixes, I'm afraid SWTOR will be destined to live alongside Episode Two in the annals of the could-have-beens in the Star Wars franchise.

Update: A screenshot of a GM/CSR endorsing kill trading has begun circulating within the community. While the authenticity of the screenshot can, of course, be called into question, and there is the possibility of this simply being a "rogue" or uninformed GM, the lack of action or even a PR response to a PR problem by BioWare continues to reinforce the impression that they are "clueless", "slow", and "disinterested" in the PvP department.

Update 2 (1.1.2): Moved to http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2659489

I wanted to post something, but can't come up with anything respectful to say. I'm disappointed in SWTOR though.

Well...good thing this isnt a pvp game...

Strongly agree that the AH interface is a disaster and that the LFG system is blarharhalghlgele.

It's not clear to me why I have to use five drop down menus before I can search for the item I want by name.

I think this game shows a lot of promise though. If they can satisfactorily address the things you mentioned (it's a pretty complete list by the way!), I will be satisfied. Otherwise I will probably renew for next month, hit 50, and declare it an enjoyable single player experience with weird meta-multiplayer elements a la Dark Souls.

excellent review

This !

Then what sort of game is it, it was advertised as utilising features of PvP. Dont have it in the game then, see how many people stay around just to pve.

I thought he was being sarcastic, but to settle the question of whether BioWare believes SWTOR should be a PvP game, you need only look back to the most recent "Coming Up in Star Wars: The Old Republic" video that they posted on the 17th.

http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/...s-old-republic

At :45, Game Director James Ohlen says literally, "PvP is going to be a big focus for us".

That said, PvE is hardly spotless either, as I've had tons of encounters behave in unintended ways.

Ok lets get something clear first cause i see lot of kids don't understand it properly!

SWToR IS story-driven PVE oriented game with focus on end game PVE content, which BW said in almost every dev trailer prior to the game launch. (see the trailer link at main SWToR site).

James Ohlen said in one interview they will focus on PVP merely for the reason because PVE was main focus so far and pvp , as it is now is bad, so they wish to cater both player base, pve and pvp.

There are MMOs out there with the focus on PVP like DAOC or WAR, and there are those who are focused on PVE like Rift, Swtor etc...

What i dont understand is why people whine about something thats not games main focus ,so if you want pvp endgame this is hardly game for you.
I would suggest WAR, or maybe even e-sport pvp like WoWs arena, DAOC but definately not SWToR.

In case you want to pvp in SWTOR,be my guest ,but don't fricking whine here on forums about it telling the game sucks because it didnt bring your concept of mmo!

I totally support you. I see alot of people whining about this and that.
I have a level 33 Republic and a level 42 Empire character, I don't really have something to complain about..

Its a new MMO, give those Devs some time.... I dont want ur negative review ruin the game.