Edit to provide a VERY short version of this:
Story is kinda interesting, but also has problems due to technical limitations
Focus on being The One is just wrong for an MMO
PVP is terrible - combat mechanics require massive improvements and the engine needs heavy optimization
Space Combat PVP is not good - controls feel awkward
Flashpoints and Dungeons are no fun with group finder if you even find a group at all
F2P restrictions suck compared to other games - don't lock basic features behind a pay wall
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Greetings,
I have to warn you. This might be a bit longer as i want to describe my experience of the game after so much time. So don't let the wall of text crit you...
And if you want to skip most of it, feel free to go to the last chapter.
Introduction - A long time ago in a galaxy far far away
I originally bought the Star Wars The Old Republic at release but cancelled my sub after about 5 or 6 months because I got extremely bored with the game. It had huge issues on a technical as well as the MMO level. The stories were fine, but after I was done with them I felt like TOR had little to offer. The PVP felt terrible. Hunting for equip in the Ops didn't feel very rewarding and the crafting wasn't that great to begin with.
So after 3 1/2 years partially because of Star Wars Episode 7 I thought "Hey let's give it another go and see what changed". This decision was made easier because it's F2P now...sort of...
Episode 1: The Phantom Agent
So yeah, I started a new character on on one of the decently populated servers and picked something i didn't play before story wise (Imperial Agent). OK, so I started the game and I got the first level up before even taking on the first mission.....wait what? Yeah i went to my message box and had various messages in there related to Special Edition and other things with some items and titles inside. Apparently the titles gave me enough XP to get to level 2. That seemed a bit odd, but okay. The odd feeling was then replaced by anger because the titles I get i can't display as a non sub. Why get something i can't use? So this is first feature locked behind the sub wall. It's not to bad i thought because it's just a title and at least it doesn't affect the gameplay....(some of you might laugh at this point).
So after doing some missions i was surprised how quickly I got XP. I was level 8 before even leaving the main settlement as a F2P which made me scratch my head. Why do I get so much XP? I know that there was a Christmas boost, but still this is excessive. I always thought the level process was fine with the original game because it had you experience planetary story missions, class story missions and some side missions for money and item rewards. Now it feels like "here, take your XP and go to the next planet. You don't need all the items". Doesn't feel right to me. At that point i decided to leave the side missions alone and focus only on the main story.
After a few more levels I got more and more spells and they didn't fit on my quick bar anymore. So i wanted to activate more quick access bars through the interface settings.......WHERE ARE THE QUICK ACCESS BARS? I couldn't find the damn activation settings for the quick access bars. After literally checking every possible setting I finally found them and get angry again. You have to pay for more quick access bars? SERIOUSLY? It is a basic interface element and has to be available to every player. This is typical EA bull****. It's not like you provide something nice for subscribers. No, you're making it a pain to play for non subs....
Well i paid the cartel coins (I had 4000 at the beginning) to get additional bars and so I could keep playing normally. By now I was level 15 and after doing the first flashpoint solo I thought "Hey let's try a group flash point" (or tactical as they're called now). Went through the FP pretty well and got a purple item at the end....WHICH I CAN'T USE AS F2P.......REALLY? There is a limitation what equipment I can use? Man, this deal is getting worse all the time...
At this point I've had it and finally subbed for 1 month so I could fully use the features of the game which apparently also includes all expansion packs. i wanted to see what else the game had to offer and paid at least for that 1 month.
Episode 2: After the Sub
The leveling now continued at an even faster pace. And I was quickly over level 30, 40 and 50. Leveling the crafting at that point was also pretty terrible, even with the obviously increased XP you get there as well. I still like the class main story line and of course do it properly, but due to the XP I'm also ignoring the planet story quests.
I have given the standard PVP as well as the new air combat PVP a try. The battleground PVP is just as terrible as it was at the release of the game. The combat feels weird and unresponsive. The game still has huge problems on a technical level. Why wasn't this optimized over last 3 1/2 years? Is the engine really that broken that it is impossible to fix? The air combat as well doesn't feel that great. The controls are clunky and the movement feels weird and not what I would expect. In short I don't like it even though I love SciFi flight simulation action games like Freelancer and Freespace. And yeah i know about Star Citizen and also played around with the Alfa/Beta a bit. In any way the system in TOR could be much better.
I also tried the old rail shooter elements and plays just like it did at release - in short - not very exciting.
So after that excursion I continued through the class story missions, leveled the crafting and reached Level 65 long before even touching any new planets. I saw the level restrictions that were put in place on the various planets. Some might like that, personally I didn't. even with the lower level the enemies are no challenge at and the only thing it causes is that i occasionally get dismounted and have to fight some stuff which is annoying.
Oh yeah btw. I think the difficulty of the game has become ridiculously low. Taking away the challenge also takes away the fun. There is no balance in the force.
Episode 3: Rise of the Hutts
I completed the main class story and then checked the various new missions that popped up in my ship. I wanted to do it in a proper order to see the story in the right way without spoiling parts of it. So of course I started with Rise of the Hutts. So it was pretty much one planet with a number of missions that were okay in my opinion. I enjoyed them but it was also rather short. After a few hours I was done with everything on that planet (can't remember the name right now). I completed the dailies there once and decided it wasn't interesting enough to get back.
There was some additional missions that popped up about scanning and finding sources of evil, but to be honest I didn't like those. So I didn't even bother to complete them. It felt a little bit like Archeology in WoW, but I didn't like that profession in WoW neither and I don't remember anyone really praising that feature.
Episode 4: Revan
The rise of the hutts had been stopped but Revan was out there trying to raise the Emperor. Alrighty then, let's go and hunt Revan. There was quite a few Flashpoints related to this story line and I did all of them solo. Wasn't this supposed to be an MMO? So far I barely had any contact with other players. From time to time a saw a few of them, but It doesn't really feel like I am part of a community, more like playing a Solo RPG. That problem existed with older content as well, but wasn't as abvious there. There were group quests and you actually had to find 2-3 other players to do the 4+ heroic missions. From what I've seen all heroics have pretty much been reduced to 2+ heroics and every mission I attempted solo so far was no problem. So why should I work together with others?
During the Revan story missions i also noticed a trend towards me as a player being the one and only who can stop the crisis. Even though it was a trend here, there was still some things that referred to group content (storming the temple with group - Operation). Nonetheless I picked the solo route. The reason for this is that I wanted to finish the story line and I had some bad experiences with groups up to this point.
After turning 65 and getting myself some 208 ilvl gear from a vendor by using data crystals i saved up to now, I also wanted to see how Ops would turn out. And oh my god, was this horrible. First of all it's pretty much impossible to find groups through the group finder tool. I managed to find groups for three ops and all of them turned out horrible. It pretty much always ended after the first Boss was down and there was one wipe at the second boss. The funny thing is, that apparently no one knows tactics neither. So everybody apparently expects to easily run through the story modes like you would in LFR difficulty of WoW and people leave immediately after 1 or 2 wipes. Don't even get me started on people pulling without the group being together. The long waiting time and the terrible experiences i had pretty much pushed me away from the ops altogether.
So i returned to missions on Rishi and the other planet (Yavin-4?). I completed the flashpoints and story solo and it was pretty good overall except for the primary focus on my character rather than the world in general. But they won't continue this road, won't they?
episode 5: Rise of The One
So now it's time for the latest entry which is Rise of the Fallen Empire. The opening sequence looked promising at first. We got a huge war going on. Twins fighting for the leader of this new empire laying down the spoils of war and then one of them attacking the old guy and as a follow up killing his brother. Why kill of one potential bad guy right away? Makes no sense to me and doesn't touch me emotionally because I don't know anything about him.
Afterwards we're thrown into more video sequences and small fights. And one thing that feels odd to me right away is that the dialogue sequences are much longer. It feels more like a movie with minimal input from me than a fully fledged game. If I want to see something like that I usually play Telltale games. I expect other things from an MMO.
So now we see more things happen and the next potential boss simply being killed off during a video sequence (or is he?). We're now down to one big bad guy.....and apparently a bad girl that wasn't shown before. Who is she? TOR throws lots of visuals into my face but without much explanation. The introduction to this new storyline was not handled well in my opinion.
Anyway more stuff happens, there visions and my character is apparently slowly dying in carbon freeze because someone pushed the wrong buttons.....noobs....
The old guy is apparently the emperor and now lives inside my characters and gives me more power....ohhh really? I'm turning into Neo now? So apparently we now have thousands of players running around in the world carrying the spirit of the sith emperor inside them.....what a great idea...whooopdidoo
I get a big ship, gather more allies (man I love Lana Beniko as a character) and turn more and more into Jesus or Space Hitler. Several hours in I get to fight the new Emperor and it just feels disappointing due to the low difficulty. Even the Revan fight was more interesting, because he at least was a champion and had some interesting abilities. This new dude is just boring.
Well after the letdown final fight of the current story line I'm still missing my best leveled companion (which apparently returns in the next chapter based on the picture I saw) and I'm supposed to gather resources and allies because I'm the only hope the galaxy has.....except maybe the other thousand Space Jesus/Hitlers running around.
Episode 6: Return of the Dailies
So the story is finished and I'm supposed to do dailies now. Do I need other players? Doesn't feel like a I do. I mean, I'm supposed to be the one. I don't want to share the spotlight
I could go doing star fortress missions or gather more companions, but I've taken a look at those and I'm not really feeling very motivated. Some of the missions I've seen are also terribly designed and lack options on how to complete them.
That companion mission on Ilum for example was absolutely terrible. Going three times from corner to corner on the Map is not my idea of having a good time. The same goes for "participating" in up to 20 PVP non ranked matches. There's probably more related to flight PVE and PVP, but you've seen my thoughts on this already.
Everything feels like meaningless filler right now and pretty much is done solo. Feels a bit like in the Batman Arkham games in which I finished the main campaign and could do the side missions now. I might do it at some point, but probably wont.
Episode 7: The Final Thoughts Awaken
So here we are, I've played through most of the content that has been implemented over the last 3 1/2 years and I'm honestly disappointed and confused. Why turn TOR into more of a single player Action-RPG or rather interactive movie with RPG elements? Why not focus the available resources on improving the game on a technical level and really going for more Multiplayer elements? Why not improving the combat to make it feel better and more responsive?
Why am I supposed to be The One in an MMO? This was a terrible idea in Age of Conan and it is a terrible idea here. If you don't know hat I'm talking about watch this review (at about 2:30 the important part is metioned):
MMOs can be story driven and the old class story lines felt ok. I always felt there were other smugglers or other sith probably doing other things. Now it feels like without me nothing can be done in the universe. This can be good in SP games (you are the hero), but in MMOs it completely destroys the immersion.
In addition the heavy focus on story is also misplaced in this game as there are to many technical restrictions. You can't go all out in storytelling. There are lots of visual restrictions. Stories like Knights of the Fallen Empire I would've love to see as a fully fledged separate game with a better engine. Imagine the Battlefront visuals with a great immersive story.
The F2P restrictions are terrible and are just there to pretty much force you into subscribing. The Cartel Coin system only seems to be there to get even more money from the players. Oh and the shop interface itself is also terrible.
So my final thoughts - the game had potential at release but the devs focused on the wrong things in my opinion. From what I've seen and heard the game is heavily bleeding subs and I'm not even sure if you'll see the end of the Knights of the Fallen Empire storyline. If it will be finished it'll probably be cut short anyway.
To bad...