Being a life long Star Wars fan, I have a soft place in my heart for any Star Wars game. Even one as poorly structured as Star Wars the old Republic.
Let's start with the good.
Voice conversation story lines. Like most other MMOs the mission system in SWtoR is vendor based, but unlike most others, you actually hear the voice of the NPC vendor and your character during conversations in addition to the text lines. This is a refreshing feature that departs from most other games in a thrilling fashion. The only drawback is that in the Star Wars universe, most aliens speak their own language and so you still end up reading a large portion of the time. If they were to add a translator droid option to make every conversation in English then we would have a fantastic feature bar none.
Companions. Throughout the game your character continues a class storyline that introduces them to five companions that join your character in their journey and you can keep 1 of these companions with you at all times. As you advance in level so do all your companions so they are always your level even if you favor 1 over all the others in your adventuring. The mix of companions is also usually pretty diverse allowing you to pick the right companion for the job at hand, even swapping them out mid mission so long as you are not in active combat. The biggest drawback to the companion system is the level based advancement system. It basically meanns you are upgrading at least two sets of gear instead of one and in the case of companion compliments that do not share equipment types, you could be upgrading 6 sets of gear every few levels which is insanely expensive making it nearly impossible to stay at your best with even one companion and not at all possible for all 5 companions unless you spend real money to buy items from the games cartel market to fund your gear advancement. Plus each companion has their own little story that you get in periodical conversations as your affection with a companion increases.
The cartel market. SWtoR is free to play. This means that you can play the game up to level 50 out of 55 levels at no cost to you. You do not have as many advantages as subscribed players, but the game is playable and enjoyable with no money down. And if you don't want to subscribe, but are willing to pay a little money here or there, you can buy items in the cartel market with coins you purchase for real world money. For players with lots of real world money, but having a hard time gaining credits in game, they can purchase cartel market items and upgrades and sell them for in game credits on the galactic exchange. This means that free to play players that do well in game can buy items with in game credits that can usually only be purchased on the cartel market.
The bad....
Classes are really all just combat roles. My biggest beef is the Smuggler. I started playing the smuggler because, hey! I wanted to sneak things through customs and meet people for back alley deals or blast my way through an imperial blockade....but, you don't actually do any smuggling with the smuggler. It's just a combat role that mirrors the abilities of the imperial agent. It's sad on so many levels that I wanted to cry. The smuggler storyline starts off great. You don't do any smuggling, but that's because some wank stole your ship and you spend the first 15 or so levels just getting it back. But then you spend the next 15 levels hunting down the poser that stole your ship in the first place. Now 3/5ths the way through the smuggler story, you haven't done any smuggling...and you won't. There are no smuggling missions for the smuggler. Just combat missions like every other class.
The other classes have storylines that are more inline with their combat roles. Troopers are soldiers, so they fight. The two Jedi and two sith classes are melee/mage roles appropriately. The imperial agent actually has a great storyline focused around things imperial agents would do. Espianage, sabotage, spying and the like. And of course the bounty hunter is all about hunting people down for money and has a pretty fun, if not tragic, story. there is even a monthly week long event where every class can go on hunts for profit. Only the smuggler was shown no love. Yep, I still want to cry.
Small, closed off world maps that force you to follow preplanned paths on ground covered by thick spawns. It does not feel like you are on a planet most of the time. It feels like you are playing a Star Wars version of Diablo 3. Fight fight fight to get to this destination then fight fight fight to get out. Then fight fight fight to get to the next fight and so on. Here's a clue, Bioware, cut the numbers of fights by about 95% and increase the fun of each fight. make enemies more intelligent, more exciting and have the fights spread out a LOT more. If I get on to play for an hour, I don't want to spend 45 minutes of that getting to one objective just to further my storyline. I want to be in the story the whole time. Also huge open worlds like in the first Star Wars MMO, Star Wars Galaxies, makes you fell like you are in the Star Wars universe and not just a WoW clone in Star Wars clothing. I never had any problem finding mission objectives in SWG and I was able to chose my own path to the objective. That's an MMO.
Levels. I can not stress enough the problems with level based advancement. First, you can't play with a lot of your friends. Even if you start off together, people play for different amounts of time and before long you are too far apart in levels to adventure together. And you are always restricted to content around your level. A group of level 50's go off on a raid and your level 35 can't join them. And getting from level 35 to 50 might take a couple hundred hours of play. Then there is the problem of level based gear. You are constantly swapping out gear or components to keep your capabilities up to par with your current level. This is taxing and a massive waste of time and not in the least bit fun. You may have an outfit you like, but have to surrender it in just a couple levels because it no longer is viable or upgradable andthis forces you to take the outfit that has the stats you need rather than the look and feel you want for your character. Unacceptable.
PvP. The player vs player aspect of SWtoR is abominable. The vast majority of it is arena based. The two factions are kept separated on planets 9 times out of 10 and even if you que up for PvP, there are multiple arena types and you get picked at random. So if you wanted to play huttball, you might have to play 20 PvP matches before getting selected for a huttball match. And, as with many other broken MMO's, The PvP equipment is the best equipment you can get. So for people who don't like PvP, they are left in the cold unless they play PvP matches.
All in all if SWtoR was not a star wars game, I'd give it 1 star out of 5. It has a few features I like, but still does not hold a candle to the best MMO of all time. Star Wars Galaxies.
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