WOW really made me appreciate SWTOR

Your point doesn't stand at all. The achievements tab in WoW operates as a list of suggestions of things to do at max level.

Want crazy grinds? There's The Insane. PvP? Battlemaster. Crafting? Chef and Salty. Want to explore every single inch of the world map? The Explorer. There's even achievements for collecting recipes and non-combat pets.

Already ran every heroic and raid until you're blue in the face? Go for the Hero and Glory achievements with your group, which require very specific changes to play style during boss fights to make them more difficult.

All of these come with specific perks, from titles to mounts, tabards and exclusive in game items.

None of them are easy to get, because they require serious time commitments from the player, the full participation of a group, or both.

The point is, Blizzard's system adds incentives to doing things in game you've already done, adds new wrinkles and complexity to old content, and encourages you to do things you might not have done on your own.

So aside from being an in game guide at max level, the achievement system adds an enormous amount of replay value during endgame.

There is nothing at all similar in SWTOR. For reasons that should be absurdly obvious, Codex entries and Datacrons don't even come close.

Actually some ppl is playin just to accumulate achievement. You can call'em dumb or silly but in some cases is really funny tryin to get somethin.
Sometimes achievements are more fun than guesting: f.e. the turkey achievement or School of hard knocks or others.
Actually i unsub Wow cuz im bored of it, and im continuin to play TOR instead, but for me is fun cuz is a new game SW branded... But isnt innovative at all... using mortar and granade with groups and blast against silver enemies 1000 times is a little repetetive...
Just a last note: there's no ironic content in this game (i think for precise statement of the SW brand).. But hell! Is a game... i love makin a smile or a laugh sometimes.. While was performin the singing flowers quest in Wow or when was dress'd with a murloc costume i had a good laugh.

Several years ago, I got a test account for WoW. And I had a very similar experience to the OP. The first quests had no real story and I missed any voice overs.
It turned me off and I decided to not bother anymore.
I've heard that the latest addons revamped the starting regions, but apparantly not fundamentally so, as the OP seems to describe what I saw then.

Endgame is nice and all, but if you don't even subscribe long enough to get there, it's useless and irrelevant.

I believe other MMO developers agree with this view - that's why most new MMOs lack in endgame. People first have to be convinced to get to the endgame. If you can't manage that, you can have the best endgame ever developed in MMO gaming, your customers won't see it, as they jump off before the get there.

Obviously, what turns you off from a game before endgame can differ a lot between players. WoW obviously works for a lot of people, but that to me suggests not just that the endgame is great, but also that these people enjoy the levelling experience. Whatever they did right, it didn't work for me.

Your choices result in slightly different dialogue responses from the NPCs, and some quests will have different conclusions, but these differences are extremely minor.

This is similar to the DA:O model, which also gave you the illusion of choice: No matter what you do, you still end up fighting a gigantic dragon at the end.

In SWTOR, choices don't have any real impact beyond the next 5 minutes. The actions you take on Corcuscant, for example, have zero bearing as to what happens on Tatooine.

That's very true, though it's still more of a difference than you get in other MMOs, where your character's personal development (from an RP/personality standpoint) is entirely imagined, whereas you can actually somewhat act upon it in-game in SWTOR, even though it doesn't cause any groundbreaking changes. It would be exceptional if it did, but it's just not within reason from a game development standpoint.

The changes are all very minor, but I appreciate that they exist, and they make the world feel ever so slightly more "real." It's certainly small, but I do enjoy how NPCs respond to me differently based upon race or sex. For example, my Sith pureblood is generally respected by any Imperial NPC I speak to, but a number of them will refer to my Chiss as a "filthy alien" or something of the sort. Or a situation where an NPC told my character "You're everything a woman should be. I wish I'd met you when I was still a man." (Sounds really strange out of context, I know, but he was referring to his dignity, not his actual physical gender.) That's something that clearly wouldn't have been said if I were playing a male character. It is a very minor and inconsequential detail, but it does help me feel more immersed in the world via my character.

I like that I'm supposedly an important individual in a sense of the SWTOR story. The plot covers the "important" half of that and those minor changes in dialogue based on class/sex/race really go a long way to cover the "individual" part of it. In some other MMOs that I've played, it seems like the storyline is more akin to: "Amazing event occurred. Oh yeah, and Character was there too. (S)he's important, by the way." The SWTOR storylines actually make you feel like a central player, and less of a generic stand-in. Ultimately you're a stand-in either way, because there are hundreds of other Jedi Knights/Sith Warriors/whatever who went through the same exact thing, but perception is a powerful thing. The storyline at least gives you reason enough to perceive your character as truly being "the main character."


Equally fair. I can see where you're coming from. That's how I've played every other MMO I've ever gotten into. And in WoW, at least there were one or two leveling area alternatives for a particular range (or PVP/dungeons if that's what you preferred). I wish there were an easy way to do that in SWTOR and still maintain the same cohesive storyline, because it does end up being incredibly linear as it stands. The idea of character progression (in terms of gear/"raiding" content) is part of what makes an MMO addictive, and I can see why you'd find SWTOR lacking in that department compared to other alternatives.

That's very true, though it's still more of a difference than you get in other MMOs, where your character's personal development (from an RP/personality standpoint) is entirely imagined, whereas you can actually somewhat act upon it in-game in SWTOR, even though it doesn't cause any groundbreaking changes. It would be exceptional if it did, but it's just not within reason from a game development standpoint.

The changes are all very minor, but I appreciate that they exist, and they make the world feel ever so slightly more "real." It's certainly small, but I do enjoy how NPCs respond to me differently based upon race or sex. For example, my Sith pureblood is generally respected by any Imperial NPC I speak to, but a number of them will refer to my Chiss as a "filthy alien" or something of the sort. Or a situation where an NPC told my character "You're everything a woman should be. I wish I'd met you when I was still a man." (Sounds really strange out of context, I know, but he was referring to his dignity, not his actual physical gender.) That's something that clearly wouldn't have been said if I were playing a male character. It is a very minor and inconsequential detail, but it does help me feel more immersed in the world via my character.

I played an agent and persons who I crossed but didn't kill (had the option to) found me 20 levels later and tried to kill me. I'd call that "real impact".

You sir, are extremely incorrect. < 2% of the population has gotten the best gear in WoW because of hard-core guilds that only recruit people that live and breathe WoW and devote 3+ nights per week spending 4+ hours every night in attempt after attempt on one single boss. Mind-numbing and frustrating is not what I call a great game, dude. Take your hard-core makes right attitude back to WoW, since it is SOOOOOO great for you and your lifestyle.

No, Wow is not more than an investment of time. It's not a measure of personal skill at all; it is a measure of hardcore persistence and nothing more. Sure, you make 800 attempts on one boss hoping each time that some newb doesn't screw it up until your eyes bleed - yeah you are going to down it eventually.

I have been playing WoW since it was a newborn baby and I will tell you that WoW has very little on SWTOR. Spending 7 years building a game and sure it will be more polished. WoW raiding totally sucks and and is NOT a selling point for a large portion of the WoW population. It is a selling point for YOU, sure. Then, go enjoy it and quit trying to convince everyone that WoW raiding is some perfectly created MMO dream come true.