Star Wars: The Old Republic (Final Thoughts)

Star Wars: The Old Republic was the game I knew for a while was going to be the game I quit World of Warcraft over. Several of my WOW friends were invested in the game, and so burned out on WOW that there was no way they were going to stick around after TOR came out. Even I quit WOW before The Old Republic shipped—there was no point in playing any more when everyone I knew was pretty much gone and raiding in Cataclysm had become too much of a social drain.

I had high hopes for the Old Republic, and at first the game made a very good first impression. The idea of a story based MMO was very cool to me, and the presentation of the game was worlds above that of any other MMO I’d played. I had various fantasies about my days with FFXI, which had some very interesting stories wrapped around a completely unforgiving social system that left people spending more of their time waiting to get into a party than actually in a party. And I had a core group of friends that I had to experience the whole game with.

And now, some 6 months later, I see SW:TOR as something of a failed experiment for Bioware and EA. Yet, I also think the game shows a blue-print for how other companies might very well be able to succeed moving forward.

Yet I did call TOR a failed experiment. And I truly believe that. The problem is that TOR tried to take a traditional single-player WOW experience and wrap its quests around a central narrative. This, I think is actually a very good idea as it turns what is in every other MMO the least interesting part of the game into its central feature. But, in reality Bioware completely failed in the execution of this concept.

TOR may have had 8 separate storylines, and two completely different experiences, but simply put it ALL sucked. In fact it sucked hard. At first I really tried to get into it—but very quickly the reality of it set in and it was apparent that TOR’s storylines were bland, disinteresting, and in many ways completely infuriating. It took something that should have been truly grand and epic, and made it very much like watching C-SPAN.

TOR’s story presentation was about as bland as you can get. Almost every cut-scene was simply about people talking. Actual action was rare, and poorly presented. I mean when the War starts—the one hinted at for 40 levels, you don’t even get to see a newscast or a single ship. Instead someone just says, ‘The War Started. We’re already almost defeated and about to lose the war. Here have a quest that has nothing to do with that.’

It doesn’t help that the Republic storylines were horrible. And as a Republic player who hit 50 with 2 characters I can say with certainty that the Republic should fall. And just about every senator and military official should be shot as a traitor, or shot for complete incompetence. J

To put it in better terms, a Star Wars story should be epic. It should be epic-feeling. It should have serious consequences. It should be about the battle between good and evil, and the shades of grey in between. Yet, SWTOR’s story never at any point showed any evidence of being epic. Mostly the storyline was presented in the most boring and generic manner possible. You go up to a quest giver, you watch him spout off whatever BS he has to say, spout a few agreements/insults in return…knowing that none of it had any real consequence at all. Because consequences would screw up the quest line for the zone you were in, and the game couldn’t compensate for that.

Just how many times can you directly disobey General Garza, only for her to bitch you out one second, only to give you praise and a new mission in the same conversation before you realize that none of it matters? How many sith agents can you uncover before you realize that if the Republic was that heavily infiltrated that you might as well hand them the keys to the Kingdom (and of course, in some cases, like on Corellia, that’s exactly what happens).

Let’s face it. TOR’s leveling game was short—yet STILL extremely boring and unfulfilling.

There are other areas where the game failed. Its combat system wasn’t tight enough, for example, especially in instances or PVP where it really mattered. The game engine just couldn’t handle it without lag. Its end game (at least non-raiding end game) was a snooze-fest of dialing and instance grinding that got old fast. Its PVP was at best annoying (and I’m beginning to realize that faction-based PVP, especially 2 faction based PVP is a very bad thing), and each class just had too many abilities to feel comfortable at high levels.

It wasn’t all bad. The companion system was cool (and really helped keep solo combat interesting). Its legacy system was good. Its starter 2-man dungeons were kinda nice—and I would have liked to see a lot more of that honestly. And the gearing/mod system is something that is actually pretty cool. I won’t comment on TOR’s raiding game, because I’ve never experienced it. It could be awesome, I don’t know. I do know that there are several very active and successful raiding guilds on my server, so it’s certainly not horrible.

Despite its troubles, TOR remains one of the better MMOs out there. And while it’s not even a year old and already in decline, that I think is more of a general MMO trend, and one inevitable with TOR’s more story-based design. There is still a lot of promise in the game, and if Bioware can pull off regular story-based expansions that actually feel more like a epic single-player experience with an MMO attached to it, I think they can keep this game going for quite some time. (In some ways I think TOR would benefit from the Guild Wars model…no monthly description, but you buy regular expansions).  

But, for me, my time with the game is quickly coming to an end. I’ll be quitting soon, and really I’ve only been logging in for ‘game night’ for over 2 months now anyway. I’ll probably come back to check out its next major expansion (just like I plan to come back to WOW for Mists of Pandaria, even if it’s just to level to 90). But TOR wasn’t able to hold my interest in the long term. And I probably wouldn’t have stayed as long as I had if not for the group I was with taking so long to get to 50 in the first place.

Still, those first two months were the game were a blast, and that while the polish certainly wore off, I’ll probably still look back with my experiences with the game with fondness years from now.  I just wish the developer's had not stuck so close to the WOW formula, and really worked towards making a completely different story-focused experience. The concept feels right to me, and who knows, maybe there's still time for an expansion to fulfill that goal. Or for some other company to take the core concepts in TOR and execute them well.