Let me start by sharing a few things. I used to be a World of Warcraft hater! Every time I just heard about it, I always shared my VERY negative opinion towards it. However, when a friend gave me a WoW Timecard and a free copy of the game (it was a birthday gift) I decided to try it out. I realized that, I do like it now! Before when I had played woW, I had a very small knowledge of MMOs and gearing. Now, however, I was able to play quite effectively. The stories and RP elements in it were great. So, here, I figured I'd list what's good in WoW, what's good in SWTOR, and what WoW uses that could possibly make SWTOR better.

SWTOR:

Star Wars the Old Republic has many great things, such as:

• A full story, with character impact. (Or the feeling of)
  
• Multiple class archetypes featuring unique playstyle for each class.
  
• Very effective customization, with many options.
  
• A free-to-play model which allows players to experience the game.
  
• PvP that is enthralling, where each Warzone has a story and they give a feeling of importance over fighting for that Warzone.
  
• Multiple planets, each with multiple storylines and tons of places to explore.
  
• Multiple unique races.
  
• Combat that flows quite well.
  

WoW:

World of Warcraft is a fun game, but is a bit different from SWTOR.

• Unique starting areas for races.
  
• Unique racial buffs
  
• RP Support, including usable chairs (Which SWTOR lacks), chat bubbles, and more.
  
• Speccing plays an important role.
  
• Ability to duel-spec.
  
• Many end-game options.
  
• Multiple types of PvP, multiple Battlefields.
  
• The choice to go where you like, with multiple areas for each level set. For example, 45-50 has three possible questing sites.
  
• Multiple weapons and abilities that are usable across classes.
  

Alright, now for the bad:

SWTOR

• Unbalanced PvP
  
• Exploitable PvP
  
• Player impact is minimal.
  
• Lack of RP support
  
• Not a large amount of in-game things.
  
• Lack of ability to duel spec.
  
• Only one questing zone for each level set, meaning lack of replayability, unlike WoW.
  
• The constant "easter-egg hunt" for Codex Entries. (Not everyone finds this bad, but I do.)
  
• Minimal exploration EXP, not rewarding enough to explore.
  
• Inability to make big city-planets seem big.
  

WoW:

• Combat doesn't exactly "flow"
  
• Lack of tutorials
  
• Unbalanced PvP
  
• Repetitive landscapes
  
• Constant backtracking
  
• Quest reward options which can be misleading, or not useful.
  
• Many quests in later levels give less and less gear.
  
• Story with very little player impact.
  
• Dungeons with no background story, and very high difficulty. (Some of them)
  

Now, as for what WoW has which SWTOR could use:

• RP support.
  
• Increase in end-game options.
  
• Multiple questing areas for each set of levels.
  
• And possibly more. If you think of any, please reply down below!
  

after you have played all the races and classes in wow it is just like any other mmo boredom sets in, i also played wow and recently quit again to come back to swtor i also quit this game and returned many times and i will do it again.

people are going to hate and want to say one game is better or worse.

Play the game you enjoy the most then when boredom sets in find another one and try it you always have the option to return or go f2p on swtor wow on the other hand did f2p right and thats the model this game should have followed.

my god people on this forum need a job / life / girlfriend

the time people waste on pointless crap like this and all the random hater complaining is amazing

If you think of any, please reply down below!

Two comments:

1) your views, and the details contained within them are your opinion. You are entitled to them, as opinions. People will disagree... because they have different opinions. So the topic is circular by definition.

2) I don't give a rats blow hole what anyones comparison between WoW and SWTOR is. I no longer play WoW and never will again. Besides, it's pointless to compare MMOs except as a platform to complain about the game whose forum you are posting in.

This of course, is just my opinion.

I just want 1 thing from WoW to SWTOR... GCD.

Yes, Global Cooldown and activation ability time.

Well, I would say a few, naturally they are speculative and arguable.

WoW, in my view, has smoother overall combat. The animations play out smoothly, specials fire when you hit them, everything just runs like butter.

TOR on the other hand has much better animations, especially with mob death. Blocking and attacking animations are top notch. TOR also has superior sound connected to abilities.

Finally, TOR has more potential for future features that WoW will likely not have any time in the near future, like some kind of PVP 3d airborne combat (in TORs case it would be space naturally) and a decoratable housing system (likely our starship)

umm... TOR has a version of dual spec. it has a better option in some ways, because you are not locked into just 2 presets and as a subscriber can respec whenever, wherever you wish into whatever you wish - for free.

its called field respecialization.

what TOR is lacking is ability to save your spec/bar/gear presets. that should come in time. in a mean time - there IS a good alternative.

also replayability of WoW vs TOR is actually YMMV. sure you have couple of extra starting zones, however - the story is ALWAYS the same. no matter what you do, which character you play it doesn't change at all. IMO, TOR has more leveling replayability despite having a pretty set planetary track (and btw, WoW quest chains are extremely linear in content given since Cataclysm - more so than TOR from personal experience), because in TOR - character story is different, and even majority of side quests, including planetary story - can be completed in a variety of ways. one of my favorite things is that there are quests that literally take you in different directions doing different things depending on which option you chose.

however. you weren't paying attention if you are saying that WoW dungeons have no background story. they very much do. the main problem is - you used to be able to only get quests for dungeons if you completed stories outside of them, so it was a sort of smoother lead in. now you just have quest givers sitting at the entrance (something that was added because of group finder). but the story still exists.

Not really sure why I'm responding to this, I guess I'm bored. I play both games, they aren't the only MMOs out there and neither of them have all the answers.

Couple of comments:

Having multiple zones per level in WoW does not add replay-ability. Nobody does anything but go from point a to point b, and most people tend to just pick the zones they like and stick with it. Also leveling is so fast for lower levels that most people do a flashpoint and find themselves too high for the zone they entered before the flashpoint. Basically, nobody wants to spend time leveling anymore, Blizzard knows it, and that's why they allow people to blaze through it.

Racial buffs - they used to be significant, but they've been slowly cutting them down to be insignificant, stating they regret making them in the first place. The racial buffs were problematic because something that should have been a cosmetic choice became mandatory if you didn't want to be scorned.

WoW has exploits in PVP too.

The only form of cross-faction communication available is with pre-set emotes. You can't even use /say or /me. So that limits RP support a lot.

Speccing plays an important role? Not sure what that means. You really don't even have much of a talent tree anymore. The tank, heal, dps roles are equally important in both games.

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Combat doesn't flow, really? How so? I think combat actually flows pretty well in WoW, better than in SWTOR. The animation for the oldest models in wow looks so bad, though.

Not sure what you mean about quest rewards being misleading - they even show you what your quest reward is before you accept your quest, unlike swtor. You can hover over it and see exactly what you're getting.

The dungeons in WoW actually do have a background story, you just have to pay more attention to the quests leading up to them.

A lot of the things like dual spec, more weapon choices per class, lots of PVP options, all came over being around for 8 years.

Of course, for better or for worse, WoW allows addons.

Not sure what you mean about quest rewards being misleading - they even show you what your quest reward is before you accept your quest, unlike swtor. You can hover over it and see exactly what you're getting.

I think what OP means is that unlike TOR that gives you only items that have proper stats and armor type for your character (or for your companions) making it easy to figure out which stats you should be looking for - WoW has set rewards for quests that don't necessarily cover all the classes and can be extremely useless.

case in point - I was leveling a monk as a healer and I was stuck wearing cloth a lot of time, because most leather quest rewards were agility, not intellect. at least i've been playing that game long enough to know where to go for questions and the like. WoW is terrible at telling you what stats you need through in game means. they pretty much assume that you'd be going for guides outside of the game and even tell you that much on a loading screen.

in TOR at least, I know that every quest reward is geared for my specific class.

We should compare apples and oranges too!

Or bananas and kumquats!

I think what OP means is that unlike TOR that gives you only items that have proper stats and armor type for your character (or for your companions) making it easy to figure out which stats you should be looking for - WoW has set rewards for quests that don't necessarily cover all the classes and can be extremely useless.

That's changed somewhat, actually, for the newer content. They used to offer multiple choices for classes for everything, but now it's more like swtor where you get only choices your class can use. But there's still older quests that haven't been revamped in that way.

case in point - I was leveling a monk as a healer and I was stuck wearing cloth a lot of time, because most leather quest rewards were agility, not intellect. at least i've been playing that game long enough to know where to go for questions and the like. WoW is terrible at telling you what stats you need through in game means. they pretty much assume that you'd be going for guides outside of the game and even tell you that much on a loading screen.

Up through level 50, you can use a lighter armor class without any noticeable penalty. After that your stats become gimped if you don't use your proper gear specialization. Back before they implemented that function, you'd see paladin healers decked out in cloth. Those were funny times.

Though I agree that SWTOR's gear system is better overall. The mod system, the adaptable gear, the fact that all specs within a major class use the same base stats and resource is a big improvement.

[*]Lack of ability to duel spec.

People STILL complain about this? Just subscribe and get field re-spec and you have something that's a billion times better than dual-spec. it's n-spec. With dual spec you are stuck with only 2 roles (which was very annoying in wow, especially when playing a Paladin or Druid), but here you can have as many specs as you like. PVP dps, PVE dps, PVE tank, pvp tank, pvp heal, pve heal, etc.

I'd take my free field re-spec over very limited wow's dual-spec any day.

That's changed somewhat, actually, for the newer content. They used to offer multiple choices for classes for everything, but now it's more like swtor where you get only choices your class can use. But there's still older quests that haven't been revamped in that way.

 

 

 

Up through level 50, you can use a lighter armor class without any noticeable penalty. After that your stats become gimped if you don't use your proper gear specialization. Back before they implemented that function, you'd see paladin healers decked out in cloth. Those were funny times.

Though I agree that SWTOR's gear system is better overall. The mod system, the adaptable gear, the fact that all specs within a major class use the same base stats and resource is a big improvement.

oh I know... its just that my monk had to wear cloth all the way to pandaria which is where it first starts changing to class specific rewards (and coincidentally, where they added vendors that sell full set of affordable, properly stated armor) early on though, where you are still learning how you class works? its pretty blah. (and yes my pally used to wear cloth I mean, the whole leroy jenkins vid starts with a premise of them deciding if they want to kill that boss to get devout shoulders for leroy - cloth shoulders) and it doesn't help that dungeons have gearscore requirement to queue for them, which means she had to slog through a lot of quests that had no good rewards for her first, before being eligible to queue, even with scaling BoA gear.

aaanyways

I also prefer TOR gear system by a large margin

that said, the comment about comparing apples and oranges has a lot of merit. I mean there are similarities to both games, just like apple and orange are both fruits that grow on trees and can even be the same color, but they ARE different games nonetheless.

People STILL complain about this? Just subscribe and get field re-spec and you have something that's a billion times better than dual-spec. it's n-spec. With dual spec you are stuck with only 2 roles (which was very annoying in wow, especially when playing a Paladin or Druid), but here you can have as many specs as you like. PVP dps, PVE dps, PVE tank, pvp tank, pvp heal, pve heal, etc.

 

I'd take my free field re-spec over very limited wow's dual-spec any day.

Does this "field re-spec" save gear sets and talent choices so you can switch between specs with a single click? I don't think so. How is it a billion times better then?

Does this "field re-spec" save gear sets and talent choices so you can switch between specs with a single click? I don't think so. How is it a billion times better then?

Changing gear is not part of "dual spec", what you're asking for is an auto-wardrobe feature, not duel spec.. Duel spec is about saving money when changing your role. And you mean changing gear is so difficult for you that you'd rather limit yourself to only 2 specs, instead of having infinite number of specs and changing your gear yourself? You people are beyond lazy.

Sigh seems future really is going to be exactly like

Does this "field re-spec" save gear sets and talent choices so you can switch between specs with a single click? I don't think so. How is it a billion times better then?

Wow doesn't save gear sets with dual-spec, that's a different feature that does that.

Honestly, it is a little bit better to be able to switch to any spec, even the tiniest little re-adjustments, anywhere, anytime, anyplace. Yes, in WoW you can have two pre-selected specs that you can switch back and forth from at any point. But if you want to change your second spec from a tank spec into a heal spec, then you have to go back to the trainer to unlearn that specialization. As someone that needed to change between three specs in one week, (pve dps, pve heals, pvp heals), I would have traded for SWTOR's system. I ended spending a lot of money dong that, and also having to change glyphs.

All SWTOR really needs is an option in the UI to save your action bar buttons and a gear set saving button. I don't mind replugging in talents, that takes all of 10 seconds.

Both games have unbalanced pvp because they are MMOs. Can anyone name an MMO that has balanced pvp?

"

I see people still do not understand that SWTOR is 1.5 years old and WoW is 8.5 years old. It took three years before WoW got its first expansion. It took WoW 6 years to get character customization. There are tons more examples aswell.

SWTOR has done things in lightspeed compared WoW. The game is still young, it has loads of potential and is still going strong.

And as usual in this kind of thread, I post only the following:

My personal view of SWTOR vs WoW:

- WoW: boring

- SWTOR: entertaining

Everything else is just dust and shadows.

This topic is comparing a dying game to a game that seems to be establishing itself more and more.

You'll hardly find people leveling a very first toon in WoW. The player base has been the same for ages and "new" players are not really new, but rather returning ones. This does not compensate for the number of players who leave for good and that's why WoW is slowly dying.

SWTOR on the other hand is growing and you see loads of new players starting their very first toon. The game recovered with F2P and has a growing player base. Latest figures were > 2,5 million, as far as I remember.

Why would one want to compare these two games in terms of little WoW featurettes that SWTOR keeps implementing according to taste anyway?

This topic is comparing a dying game to a game that seems to be establishing itself more and more.

 

You'll hardly find people leveling a very first toon in WoW. The player base has been the same for ages and "new" players are not really new, but rather returning ones. This does not compensate for the number of players who leave for good and that's why WoW is slowly dying.

 

SWTOR on the other hand is growing and you see loads of new players starting their very first toon. The game recovered with F2P and has a growing player base. Latest figures were > 2,5 million, as far as I remember.

 

Why would one want to compare these two games in terms of little WoW featurettes that SWTOR keeps implementing according to taste anyway?

Actually, there is a lot in your post that is not true. A few weeks back, I resubbed to WOW after a long long absence. Everything had changed so much, that I rolled a new character on a server designated "new players". The server is very alive with a ton of people running around. When I log on to my old 85s on a medium server there is a ton of people all over the place. WOW has dropped to 8.5 million players, but I have not (on three different servers] experienced the empty world feeling one gets after the first few planets while leveling in swtor. I am sure that is subjective, but tI think that your statement is false.

To me, the reasons that I left WOW still exist but I am finding it well worth a few play throughs. To me, the solution to WOWs problems is simple. Get rid of GC and take a hard look at Wrath (12.5 million players) in the context of Cata (first big drop) and Panda express (second big drop).