Today I will become a paying Swtor customer. My free month is over and now comes the time where I have to put my money down on the table. To be perfectly honest it wasn’t really a hard decision and I can see myself staying subscribed for a long time. That said, I’m not everyone else and I know some people will ask themselves if Swtor is really worth paying for. So in the spirit of things I did a quick list of the pros and cons after a first month.
The pros
- Greatest mmo storylines ever! : Seriously, Swtor blows out of the water anything I’ve ever come across in a mmo by a long shot. There’s at bare minimum 8 interesting class storylines to go through and you could even redo them all at least once just to see how they play from both light side and dark side perspective.
- Great replay value: Tying into the above, doing those 16 playthroughs at about 5 days playtime each (average for players so far) totals up to 80 days of playtime. That is crazy good value and we’re only talking about the storylines. Then add in all the various classic mmo features like instances, raids, pvp, etc… and you get a lot of content to go through.
- Good immersion: The game makes you feel like you’re really part of the universe like few other games does. The only one I can compare it to would be Lotro.
- Bioware is working hard on the game: The results may not perfect, but at least they’re working on their game. I’ve seen more fixes and new content in a month than I’ve seen in a year from other MMOs.
The cons
- Lots of small bugs: Okay, there’s nothing game breaking but the amount of small bugs is truly impressive. The last patch (1.1) did fix a lot of small stuff but a lot more remains. They’ll need to keep working hard on this game to remove all the small annoyances.
- The Ilum disaster: Yes it only lasted a day but Bioware broke their endgame open world pvp zone in a truly impressive manner before doing an emergency patch. The community was pissed that Bioware not only realeased buggy content but did so without seemingly taking into account what was being said on the test realm forums which had identified the issues.
- Pvp issues: Ilum was a shinning example of the mess that swtor pvp is right now. There’s ton of huge balance issues that can be game breaking for all those loving pvp. If I was a player mainly interested in Pvp, I’d be real worried about Swtor direction and would probably consider not subscribing.
- Messy customer relations: Right now Bioware relation with its customers is a mess. They hold out on some information for mysterious reasons, they seem to ignore a lot of what their customers are saying (on purpose or not) and there’s a lot of reports of awful GMs on the servers. Some Bioware employees have recently started to apologize for the troubles and have promised faulty people have been replaced so there might be hope but right now… not impressed.
So right now, I think Bioware has one solid foundation with Swtor and the potential for one of the greatest mmos ever if not the greatest. However, it’s obvious a lot of the day-to-day running of a mmo is new to them and they’re struggling to keep up with everything going on. It’s to be expected and I remember WoW having some of the same issues at launch.
Right now I’m more than willing to give time to Bioware and be patient with them, they’ve only shown good effort so far. I just hope for them and myself they can get a handle on things fast enough.
Sounds like a good summary to me.
I didn’t realize the pvp scene was quite that bad. I heard about Ilum, but I’m not a pvper, and I’m also not 50.
I would also add to your con list that the crew skills could use some serious improvement. I know they nerfed the cyber and bio skills, but what they really need to do is buff up the other crafting skills with new recipes.
Also… there are a lot of little features that are missing that are very annoying to an RPer. Too Many Annas made a great little post (http://toomanyannas.com/roleplay/rp-annoyances-in-swtor/) about what she would love to see fixed, and I am 100% behind her on this. Unfortunately, I fear these features will be a long time coming in favor of other game fixes.
Just as you said, the immersion aspect is great. One issue I’m finding is that there is really only one questing path for each faction. Unlike WoW where you could usually quest in a variety of zones for your given level. It has made it less enticing to level alts, though I still do.
Another thing that bugs me include the lack of pants options for Consulars. In fact, I’m finding that gear variety in general is… limited. And as a synthweaver, it’s very annoying when half of the schematics that I pick up can’t be used by anyone in my faction. If you are going to give us limited fashion options, at least let us use all the ones you give us!
To be fair, there are a lot of other features that are the most awesome and creative features in the history of awesome features, including: area looting; crafting straight from the materials in your bank; being able to visit your friends’ ships; the ease/benefits of social leveling (seriously – who would have thought to increase mob difficulty and loot frequency for a group rather than just lowering XP gained?!).
In general, my opinion is that there is a large area for improvement, but the foundation has been laid and it is a very sturdy foundation. Part of my problem with RIFT was, I think, that when we got to 50, there was nothing left. It was a great game, but there was no room for it to grow to keep it interesting. TOR isn’t perfect but in a way that’s a relief. If it felt complete, then there would be no space to expand, both in the sense of new content/features and in polishing the old.
So, yeah, I’ll stick around for a while. See where this ship is headed.
You nailed both lists. What people need to keep in mind is that all of the cons you listed above can be fixed with some patches and customer support training. If the story and re-playability, etc were actually cons instead of pros, we’d be in trouble because those would be harder to fix. So it’s easy to see everything is headed the right direction.
And yes, the story and the immersion are incredible.
The most disappointing part is that many of the quest bugs were reported. I s’pose we should have expected a few bugs to get out (and I wouldn’t have blamed Bioware for them) but the amount of stuff in the game is kind of amazing. Issues that we, as beta testers, reported on months ago are still there. A little disheartening. I don’t blame them for the Ilum pvp patch … that was completely unexpected and one of those ‘holy guacamole!’ moments. Those happen from time to time!
But, other than the bugs,seriously this game is great. I’ve never been pulled in so completely by an MMO. Not a flawless game, but to me the best MMO ever released, bar none.
Agreed. Many of these bugs were reported by beta testers well before the game was released. I love the game but I fear the bulk of paying customers (ie. casual players) will run out of things to do at end game.
What I want to see added is more sandbox options and less themepark gameplay. Imagine if SWTOR had a space mode like that in Eve Online where you can full explore the universe and are free to travel anywhere. Dynamic generated space missions and remove the rail shooter space missions the game currently has.
That is what will keep customers long term. I fear they have copied a bit too much of the WoW model and speaking for myself I am very burnt out on the WoW-style of gameplay.
This article is a but worrying:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ea-falls-on-broker-concerns-about-star-wars-2012-01-19?siteid=yhoof2
I had a satisfying interaction with customer support yesterday, and it’s boosted my confidence in them to get it right by a little bit. I had reported an (extremely) offensive (pedophile) name and the rep contacted me by chat, clarified why it was offensive (he wasn’t local) and flagged the account to be checked for other offensive names (the legacy name was part of the problem, and could easily have been paired with other first names for equally disgusting combinations), and did it all while I was there chatting with him. I was a lot more confident that they’re invested in the state of the community and just getting acclimated to the MMO service business.
I think maybe there’s a degree of “oh hell, what just happened?” to the giant flood of tickets that I’m sure went in over the first few weeks after launch. It’s what they do now that the inundation is calming down that will make or break, I think.
When I see people complaining that SWTOR is “a space WoW clone” I truly wonder what on earth they have been playing. Because like you, I’ve found the way the story plays out through all of your evels, with your character squarely at the center of it, is quite different in fact, from my 6-years of playing WoW experience. Yes, they are both MMORPGs, but this one has a distinct freshness/difference.