So Tired Of Pretending...

This game killed WoW for me when it was announced. I canceled my WoW sub when I watched the "deceived" trailer. I should have bought the damn collector's edition *** was I thinking...

I'm 21 days into a 60 day game card. My problem is two-fold.

First, the game play is soooo repetitive. Go here, kill these, figure out the best use of your abilities and them spam them in the same order. While a few of the stories are interesting and have held my interest (I'm really enjoying the story for my Sith Sorcerer), it doesn't cover up the ungodly boredom I feel. I want to get to 50 to finish the stories, but the thought of logging in is getting more and more distasteful. For a game that so many are touting as a possible WoW killer, it seems an awful lot like a WoW clone - WoW with a Star Wars skin. 100% voice acting doesn't make up for that. Soooooo bored!

Second, how twisted a view of the military to the developers have that on the light side, it seems like 2/3 of the missions involve catching the military doing bad things? Or helping whining refugees. Or (and this one really, really pisses me off) finding supplies that were stolen from the military and getting dark side points for returning them to the military rather than turning them over to civilians who "need them more". It seems like most of the light side's side missions either make you suck up to a lot of whining people sitting on their butts waiting for someone else to help them or you're rooting out corruption in the good guy's army. Both are equally noble in small doses. When that's all you're doing, over and over and over again, it's just too much.

Maybe I'm looking for more - maybe I'm just getting older. Either way, I paid for a 60 day game card to test it out. I've been eagerly awaiting this one since it was announced. I strongly doubt that I'll renew.

As a proud owner of a new PC I bought SWTOR as it was the game i was looking for. I discovered there was other I wanted to try so I downloaded RIFT.

After a few hours install the game lasted 30mins and I deleted it. It was not the play style i enjoy. Although I hate Coruscant with a passion and its grind of missions. I do prefer SWTOR over every other MMo ive tried (Apart from GW).

So maybe I'll be playing this with my sub for longer until i try TERA in May.

The sad and simple truth is...the vast majority of people disagree with you. Good luck in WoW.

the big thing for me was i had to be persuaded to come from wow to sw. didnt take much persuasion because wow had gone too far to appease the idiots and bots/hackers so i said id give sw a try.
very happy i did, the community isnt as douchey as wow and because there isnt addons here (hopefully never will be) and hackers seem to be actually deleted rather than encouraged like there were in wow), the game is immensely enjoyable.
really like the pvp model where you kill a level 50 when youre a level 10 because of the qualisation thingie .. thats fun.
id love to see gear balancing done, pvp-geared people versus equivalent pvp-geared people, but i wont hold me breath.

all in all, once SW keeps not allowing addons, plans to release lots of new planets and races, end-game content (that isnt just "kill the mad robot" btw), fixes the damn GTN setup (oh gods, it drives me insane) and keeps tracking and deleting hackers/abusers then im as happy as a camper and they can continue to siphon my moneys.

i'll keep renewing as long as the game keeps me interested.
by the way, class quests could do with a bit more camp humour .. a la the original films .. some more tongue-in-cheek humour would be great.

"jaysus, that hutt looks like it fell out of the jolly green giants nose"
"that little furry thing looks like a wookie-poop"

etc

Agreed with above on keep playing as long as it keeps interest. Ive actually stopped rolling out new characters now as Im waiting for the legacy options, rummours of possible skills being passed down the tree to new characters using legacy options. I WILL LOVE THAT.

I had a similar experience, only in beta in 2010. I wasn't terribly impressed with the screenshots and vids, didn't like the look of it much, and thought "VO in an MMO? Pah, what a waste of money". But then I got the invite and thought why the hell not, give it a try, at least I can brag

From the first moment I played it I was pleasantly surprised. "KOTOR with mates", I thought, yeah this will probably work.

I think for people who particularly love immersion, but who aren't hung up on "it has to be a single seamless world with lots of exploration otherwise I refuse to be immersed" (hey I love Vanguard too, so I know that feeling), who can get their immersion from story and "being" a character, SWTOR scratches a spot you had forgotten was itching.

In fact, the most interesting suprise for me is the multiplayer aspect of VO-d storyline/dialogue - i.e. grouped dialogues. TBQH, this is almost my favourite bit of the game. When I see that "Join Conversation", I get a buzz each time now. It's so cool to see how others look close up, to hear them talking, to wait in anticipation for the roll of the dice to see whether one's character will be the one to speak, to chat away with the party simultaneously while the dialogue's going, commenting on aspects of the story with each other, lol-ing at peculiarities of each others' outfits, or of NPCs, etc. This is truly a multiplayer experience, and truly innovative. I think people have vastly underestimated it.

Having said that, of course, the game needs tons more endgame content, bug fixing, QOL and even a bit more polishing before it will reach its full potential.

And one might wish that BW had been as innovative in a few other aspects of the game as they have been with the story/dialogue. (My main gripe: not enough use of "phasing", so that the world changes around you as you move through the story - e.g. 2 phases of a planet, before and after you "save" it by doing all your good work, would be very powerful).

Some of the "standard MMO" stuff is indeed a bit too "by the numbers".

But, in perspective, it's really one of the best launches to any MMO I've ever experienced, perhaps the best.

Every single one of the big MMOs of recent years has suffered from the same fate.
The only difference is that SWTOR refuses to oblige and die.

I hereby predict that Tera, TSW and GW2 will suffer the same fate. The hate will build pretty quickly after launch.

This is because the "MMO community" is bulked up with two types of players:

1) people whose first MMO was WoW, and

2) people who started MMOs back with UO, EQ, etc.

The first lot are never, ever going to be happy with any new MMO because they don't understand that a new MMO can never have the same amount of content and finish as one that's been out for 7 years. Plus also, they don't realise that their desires are schizophrenic - they want their new MMO to be like WoW (because it's familiar and comforting) and they also don't want it to be like WoW (because WoW is what they're getting bored of).

The second lot will never, ever be happy with any new MMO because no actually existing game could ever possibly match up to their hazy nostalgic memory of those first few "magical" months and years in their first MMO.

I'm afraid hate is going to be the lot of every new MMO that ever comes out from now on. What's actually going to happen is that you get a wave of hopeful players and then a blast of pure hatred, and then the Tsunami will roll on to the next game, leaving in its wake a certain proportion of players enjoying each game in turn.

So far the proportion staying for SWTOR is bigger than any of the so-called "fails" before. But every MMO will experience a similar phenomenon.

Another point of personal preference. I absolutely HATE phasing. Friends (RL & IG) sometimes play at different times and when you do get a chance to team up you're out of phase. UGH! That's just how I feel about it.

This is actually not only with MMO's but with nearly every entertainment product. I have experienced it with other games from shooters to single player RPGs and strategy games. And also with movies, books and TV series.

People want new things, but when something truly new happens they often don't recognize it and let it slide. So entertainment industries have to put big names on top to sell their product. Be it by adding big name actors, or by virtue of the good name of their production studio, or by virtue of the IP that is backing them.

Studios are forced to offer things you know, because otherwise you will not hear about them. And when something you know is part of a product or service you buy than you have expectations. You remember fondly the thing in the past you experienced that was similar in that aspect.

...

And then you see the new thing.. and it is new, and different and intimidating.. But then you also see the recognizeable things from what you saw before! So you cling to what you recognize and then realize: "But wait, this recognizeable thing doesn't seem as good as it was in what I fondly remember." So your mind then makes the leap and says that this is worse than what you already experienced.

This is simply nostalgia. The past was always better. The past also had this aspect of this new product, so the past product is better. You forget the new things that scare and intimidate you and make you come out of your comfort zone, and focus on what the past thing did better.

The same thing happened with the new trilogy. People new to Star Wars loved the movies, despite it's flaws. People that have known Star Wars for ages disliked it because of it's flaws.

And the same happens with games, all of them. People with experience in the franchise/genre will always hate the newer one because it is different, and look back fondly to the older one despite the flaws it had.

And once you realise your brain works that way, you can create some distance between what you feel about something and how it really is. You can take things for what they are, and not for what their forebears were.

People that step into a game with an open mind and no expectations will always enjoy more aspects of it than those that step into it with high expectations and previous experience. And that, my friends, is a fact.