Star Wars: The Old Republic (TOR), a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game by Bioware, is scheduled to be released soon. The official date is December 20, 2011, but you can preorder now and get early game access! The collector’s editions are all sold out, but you still might be able to get the Deluxe Digital Download version that has a few other in-game perks. Treat yourself to an early present!
With the Deluxe Digital Download version of TOR, you get a flare gun, training droid, Holodancer, HoloCam, and best of all, the STAP (Single Trooper Aerial Platform). The STAP is basically like a mount or a personal vehicle in other MMO’s.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can see the pre order game deals here: http://buy.swtor.com/us/
Star Wars: The Old Republic Overview
The Game
TOR is priced at $60 and up depending on which version you buy. They all come with the same core game, but you’ll get some in-game and out-of-game perks depending on which box or download you purchase. After you’ve made your purchase, go to their website and enter your game code into your account for your early game access.
You will receive a 30-day free pass to play the game and try it out. After that, you will have to subscribe to one of several subscription options, similar to those in most traditional MMO’s. A one month subscription will cost $14.99, with three-month ($42) and six-month ($78) subscriptions offering slight discounts.
The Graphics
TOR has a great look and is a great playing experience. It is quasi-realistic with a bit of a cartoonish feel. This game doesn’t look or play like World of Warcraft and you really don’t feel like you are playing a cartoon. The art style seems more similar to a graphic novel type animation. Because it isn’t trying to be totally realistic, small imperfections or other strange graphic issues are somewhat hidden. Issues like this are more obvious in games that try to be photo realistic.
The animations are smooth, and combat is exciting. Even though the combat in Star Wars: The Old Republic is a little too basic for my taste, it is very exciting to watch. The particle effects, explosions, blaster shots, and force lightning all look great, and add to the character and story.
Game Play
Overall the game play is quite easy and draws you in from the moment you enter the game. TOR feels more like a single player game than an MMO at first. You are thrust right into your own story in well done cut scenes with great voice acting. You will have little interest for anything other than your main class storyline, at least for a while.
Even the side quests in TOR are all voice acted and presented as cut scenes instead of the normal dialog box. This is great the first, second and even the third time through, as you may experiment with different dialog paths or play these through on both the light side and dark side choices. Ultimately though, it can be a bit tiresome to have to sit through the same quest dialog you have heard half a dozen times.
TOR does have space combat, though it is very limited. The space combat feels like a mini game.
Once you get your ship, you have the ability to run space missions, but they are linear, very specific missions. It is a nice distraction, if you need a break. It felt somehow detached from the main game. I felt like I was wasting my time on the mini-game, when I could be enjoying the “real game”.
Characters
Your characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic are very easy to create. Races and sex have no influence on your class so just pick something that interests you.
There are only four basic classes per faction, which is a bit of a generic start. You have no control of the minute details of your character until later. This makes for a very simple and easy character creation process but also does nothing but turn out a giant mass of cloned characters. They may look different, but they are the same at their core. Many MMO players will be turned off by this. It is a stark contrast to the vast diversity you can build in Dungeons and Dragons Online.
At level 10, each class will be able to branch off into a more specialized role. The roles follow the character’s original intent closely, but will lean more heavily on one of its two main traits. If your character leans more toward offense, defense, damage, healing, or buffing, the character will begin to reflect it.
As you move up in your specialized role, you will also gain skill trees to assign points as you level. In this way, you have the ability to micromanage specific traits of your character. These are nice, and help to allow characters to specialize or focus on certain things. However, most main classes still seem to be very similar.
If you are looking for character mechanics and customization, you will find Star Wars: The Old Republic lacking. However, the character immersion and richness of the world help to make up for the lack of character uniqueness.
I just finished the beta stress test for 11/26-11/28. First of all I played WoW for 7 years so I have a good feel for these types of games. Your article is right on the mark; however your being a little harsh on the game as it stands right now. With WoW it was fun the first or second time to level up a new character, but it got real old, real fast when I started leveling a third toon. For us seasoned players it was a race in order to do end game content, and once there most of us realized the pain in not getting the gear we needed or worse yet not being able to get to finish those instances we needed to finish when Blizzard made us overlook instances in order to do the latest and greatest. With SWTOR I hope we all get to enjoy completing whatever they have to offer and they don’t do a Blizzard, coming out with new instances every 2 months, or it seems so. The 2+ Heroics in SWTOR are a lot of fun, plus you can run them again the next day for different loot. As for the cut scenes during quests I could see being able to hit the spacebar as long as you don’t need to chose what you have to say, but if you do then they can’t allow you to avoid the cut scenes. Bottom line is the game is set several thousand years BEFORE the Star War movies, so the developers have a lot to work with in terms of the star wars universe. Remember, what you and I played is Beta and companies like Blizzard have introduced lots of patches over the years. SWTOR will be no different. Besides if there is a issue, let them know in their forums.
Thanks for your thoughts on TOR. I am pretty familiar with MMO’s as well and I am glad you liked the review. I do want to say though that this was the Preview Review. :) I have played quite a bit of the game over the last few months and it definitely is a lot of fun. There are areas it shines, the quest stories and class series, and other areas it doesn’t. I know Blizzard puts out a great game, they have one now in TOR. The space bar is a great tool to skip by scenes you know and you can hit ESC if you need to back out of the scene. Both I find to be very useful. Especially when someone decides to blast mobs on the NPC I am talking to. Hit esc, and wait to start again so I can hear.
Overall it is a great game. I can tell you from experience that replaying the newbi areas gets old, even with skipping. But I am hopeful that they will release more content to bust up the grind. It seems to become the standard to “bust out the grind” in MMO’s through the first 80%+ of the game once you have capped someone. However, that doesn’t make it right. :)