Star Wars: The Old Republic

  This weekend, I had the opportunity to take part in a beta test for BioWare's upcoming MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR). This was a stress-test for them, seeing if their servers could handle the capacity.

I've never taken part in an MMORPG. I avoided the genre entirely, never playing Everquest, World of Warcraft, or any of the other RPGs out there. I briefly sampled D&D Online (DDO), a mostly free MMORPG. And hated it.

So I went into SWTOR expecting to hate it, as well. I expected to feel like it was a waste of time - lacking in plot and too combat focused to be worth playing. I was wrong.

First, the writing and voice-acting is excellent. I played a Jedi Consulor, and very early on started facing decision points where I had to choose between easy and hard paths; light and dark. Those choices effect the story lines and aren't always clear choices to make. The characters really do an excellent job here. Far better than the scripting in DDO. While it's not as immersive a story as a good paper RPG, it's far better than most online computer games I've played. Heck, I thought the story line was actually better executed than the SW I - III films. The story arc I was following was piecing together how the Jedi Council began and how the first Sith splintered off from that council. The SW fan in me was really enjoying peeling back the layers behind that backstory. The game is set during the Old republic, 1000s of years before the films, with the Jedi banished from the republic to the world on which they formed, Tython. I was there, exploring the Council's archaelogical sites. I give it a five out of five here.

Second, the playability. First, I'm a newbie at MMO gaming. So I wasted a lot of effort because I'm not good at keyboard movement. DDO was slightly better, in that it let you click a spot on the screen and your character would walk to that spot. SWTOR is all keyboard, and I suck at that. Too often, I found myself turning too far or not far enough and not going where I wanted. That is slightly annoying when travelling. It's insanely annoying -- even deadly -- during combat to suddenly face the wrong way. Traveling around the map isn't too bad. Once you "find" a new area, there are usually speeders available to carry you to other speeder terminals. Quick Travel lets you go to other zones without having to use speeders, but the game wasn't unlocking these for me (a bug I reported) as I found them. Stats are very basic: weapons and armor are the only things that change, there are no Strength, Agility, etc. to manage. Training is required to learn or improve skills. This means finding (and paying) a trainer. Several locations offer upgrades to equipment, at various price points. An improvement over DDO and similar games, I didn't spend my time wandering around clicking every damn thing in the game, just in case it was a container for something valuable. DDO had lots of that: break the crate, get the goods (so what if you're a LG paladin!). I hate that, it's boring and annoying to waste time kicking every box you see. I was glad this game didn't waste time on it. You do have to loot bodies, but that's okay, I guess. Combat was fun, as long as I was facing the right direction. I give it a three out of five here (and probably would give it four if I was an experienced MMO-player).

Third, the graphics. I don't have a high-end graphics card, so I didn't get to see it at it's best/highest levels. The art was great, though, despite the limits of my system. The sabers, when powered up, looked correct. The costumes and set pieces looked good. The terrain wasn't perfect, and terrain was immune to characters -- no shooting down trees or blowing up rocks, no slicing doors with light sabers, etc. I've seen better game graphics, but I enjoyed the art. The buildings were interesting, the ruins looked enough like real ruins to feel "right." The terrain is mountainous, which provides logical boundaries to keep you from wandering off the "set." Like all MMOs that I've seen, problems exist: characters could walk through each other, sometimes the camera would end up in a weird angle where you couldn't see what was happening. If you get in a corner, sometimes you'll see the camera stuck inside your own head: I saw the inside of my eyes, lips and nose, once or twice. Also, during conversations, the characters are drawn, then details are drawn in, so my Master would suddenly go from looking 30-ish to looking 50-ish as the wrinkles were drawn in after the main character. I can't say if these limitations are mostly my hardware, server lag, or the game. I give it a three out of five, based on what I saw.

Overall, I loved it. This game is now on my Christmas list. This is the first MMO that I've seriously wanted to play.