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So.

I pre-ordered TOR back before it released, but never got around to actually playing it. Don't know why, but I've found myself in the mood for some Jedi action. Question is, is it worth downloading and playing, or should I just run through KotOR II for the umpteenth time? I've heard TOR is basically a single-player game with some MMO functionality, and if that's true, it's exactly what I'm looking for. I've also heard it's complete crap and dying a quick, squirming death. What's the verdict?

It's worth playing through for the storylines.

The leveling experience is the best I've had in any MMO. 1-50 really was a lot of fun.

It's just, after that, there is jack gak to do.

If you're looking for a single-player game you can run through twice (once as Jedi, once as Sith), you found it.

It is. You can treat the entire experience as a single-player one if you want. There's more than enough story and content for each class to keep you occupied if that's what you want.

And yes. Because every class has a fast out of combat heal, combat can get dicy, especially in the early to mid 30's, where some elites will completely, utterly, and unabashingly, rape your face off and dangle it over your corpse. Just be ready and keep your health high (and use your stuns/interrupts) you'll be fine.

I highly recommend the Sith Inquisitor, Imperial Agent, and Trooper for story lines that are very fun. Sith Warrior and the Jedi Knight are both decent. I found Smuggler to suck, and Counsolar is just blah, but ymmv.

TOR is pretty much KotOR III with optional multiplayer. It does have some very amazing storylines, including (finally) ones that are not solely about Light Side Force users. Whether you're looking for badass lightsaber action, clever assassinations to advance your nation's cause, or your character just wants to amass as many credits as he/she can, both the narratives as well as the fighting styles cater well to a number of unique concepts. In my opinion, the writing and voice acting (also featuring the talents of Femshep and Lady Hawke) are generally well done. Some scenes had me awed for their cinematic epicness (Agent), others had me chuckling due to their comedic value (Smuggler), yet others had me captivated just for feeling very oldschool starwarsy (Jedi Knight). As of one of the recent patches, you also get the option to match the colours of your items to whatever you wear on the chest, so people don't have to look like circus clowns anymore and you can design some pretty cool combinations from non-set armours. Plus, many of the companions you get to collect during your journey are pretty cool.

Concerning the multiplayer aspect, I have to say that I wouldn't want to miss it. It is generally fun to run the missions with other people, especially since everybody gets to affect the dialogue with a clever dice roll mechanism, so it truly feels like a living story where you are part of a team instead of doing everything solo. I'm also still having fun in PvP, especially the larger warzones where you have to capture turrets and stuff - I just love sniping other players with my Hapes-born Imperial Intelligence marksman/assassin.

Who is also executing more NPCs in her story than a Commissar.


"It's nothing personal." *BLAM*

Did they fix the ability lag issue yet?

It’s fun to play from lvl 1-50. If you’re looking for a kotor 3 then rejoice because you’ve found it.

After getting to lvl 50 however you'll find little to do except to start a new character imo.

They recently added some new features to the game (that are considered standard in other mmo's) such as a group finder and guild banks. Also they recently axed a load of servers and condensed everyone together, so servers are more populated now.

I have heard though (mmo report) that they are considering going free-to-play as their subscription base has taken a sizeable hit recently. If this happens people who already own the game will get rolled over into the “premium account” category most likely.

What others have said.

The story content is great, IMO. Top notch.

However, the group content and endgame content is completely unremarkable. Bog standard group instances and raids, though I will add I haven't done any of the stuff added in 1.2... still looks like more of the same.

With that said, I still think I prefer it to most other MMOs.

I actually find the dungeons (aka Flashpoints) be be fun for a single run through and then just bog boring, save for the 2 man ones found at the end of starter worlds. Those are very fun and moderately well done, but later ones vary from okay to terrible and Cadimimu I believe is still bugged on the final boss.

If you're looking for SW story to satisfy your itch. This will do it.

However, I got to mid 40's and it just started to get really boring and repetitive to me. And this is coming from a player who's played his fair share of MMO's, from RO/EQ and up.

Great voice acting for the story, if you're in to that, it adds a whole new level of interactivity with NPC's not found in any other MMO to date. (afaik)

Combat, is pretty much like any other MMO (except Tera, it's really the only exception), only you will rely on your stuns/interrupts as previously stated. They become a huge boon for survival later on.

Didn't really get into the PvP to much, since I didn't like playing against max lvl characters with all abilities vs me with like a handful, not very fun.

And didn't get into raids because I just couldn't get past the mid 40's hump due to boredom. But my friends that did, have said the same thing that's been said in here, it's lackluster at best.

Other than that, it's pretty much the cookie-cutter from other MMO's.

Amaya wrote:Did they fix the ability lag issue yet?

For the most part, yes. I had no issues after the patch where they said they fixed it, aside from not being able to get above 30 FPS.

My machine can run any top tier game on max, but SWTOR can't give me more than 15 FPS 90% of the time.

Their engine is gak, a lot like WAR.

Fexor wrote:However, I got to mid 40's and it just started to get really boring and repetitive to me. And this is coming from a player who's played his fair share of MMO's, from RO/EQ and up.

Maybe that is the reason.
There are few to no MMOs that dare deviate from the standards established by WoW - and those that do fail because they don't get enough subscribers. Figures. I guess it's a matter of people being fed up but not exactly knowing why. I'm sure some day a developer will figure it out and present something that manages to capture people again, but until then ...

Fexor wrote:Great voice acting for the story, if you're in to that, it adds a whole new level of interactivity with NPC's not found in any other MMO to date. (afaik)

That reminds me - the interactivity is something I indeed found quite amazing. Often, you are given some mission, but have multiple ways of solving it. It's not just a matter of "from A to B", at times you can even betray the questgiver and cause additional trouble for him rather than helping. Of course, you still get the same reward, but I guess few players would actually appreciate if the game was a bit more realistic here.

Fexor wrote:Didn't really get into the PvP to much, since I didn't like playing against max lvl characters with all abilities vs me with like a handful, not very fun.

I thought it was better than most other games that come with more level brackets but do not scale your stats. Yeah, in TOR your level 11 character may not have all the tools a level 40 character has, but at least the ones you do have the same effect. I've played PvP from low to high level and generally enjoyed it, although I will say that it depends a lot on personal class preference and role selection.

It may also be of note that TOR, as of a few patches, separated level 50 players from all the other levels, so basically has two brackets now - one for max lvl and one for everybody else. I'm a bit torn on this because this means I can't team up with a few of my friends anymore (I still don't have a single lvl 50 char, only L48, L41 and L33 and some more even lower ) and increased queue waiting times during slow nights, but on the other hand it keeps maxed out characters away from pwning newbies. Mhmm.

The new group finder is pretty neat, btw. The only thing bugging me is that it always ports you to the Flashpoint Terminal where you turn in the mission, rather than at least giving you the option to port back to the place where you just were. I mean, you can still join the dialogue remotely via holocomm if somebody wants to turn the mission in right away, right? Here's hoping they change this.

Never had a problem with the engine either, but that is obviously a matter of system specs.

Well they haven't fixed their horrible DLer. I love 300 kb/s downloads and constant repair loops. Thanks Bioware!

Its a matter of the specific model of your video card/cpu, apparently.

Some variations (IE: Different manufacturers) just don't work with it.

Don't know if true, but I've heard it's going F2P. Nothing to back that up, though.

I forgot to mention stuns...

If you don't have alot of stuns/interupts with your class then be prepared to fail hard in some story missions.

I lost track of the number of story missions that had me kill Elite characters with large amounts of health who can self heal themselves for 25% of their max hitpoints.

I ran as a bountryhunter merc, and you only have 1 stun and 1 interrupt (if I recall correctly) and both are on long cooldowns. Its didn't help that mercs are a very static class that needs to be at range and most main story enemies are melee fighters (jedi mostly)

I found the sith juggernaut to be loads of fun however, tons of really fun abilities that you can use to throw your enemies around and deal out some serious pain.

Ma55ter_fett wrote:If you don't have alot of stuns/interupts with your class then be prepared to fail hard in some story missions.

Every class has 1 stun and 1 interrupt. I don't think any have more than 1, some just have more soft CC effects than others. It's actually one reason the game is failing that the classes really aren't that different from each other. They all have the same basic set of abilities with some variation

Slarg232 wrote:Don't know if true, but I've heard it's going F2P. Nothing to back that up, though.

BioWare announced at E3 that in July they were going F2P up to level 20.

Kanluwen wrote:

Slarg232 wrote:Don't know if true, but I've heard it's going F2P. Nothing to back that up, though.

BioWare announced at E3 that in July they were going F2P up to level 20.

Really? Sweet. Sorry to sound like a hater, but I just am not an MMO subscriber type of guy. I liked the TOR beta, but all it did was make me wish there was an old republic single player game.

They seriously need to Language! -Janthkin their downloader. WoW was never this painful to D/L, install, and patch. I've had the launcher running for 4 days trying and failing first to patch it, then to reinstall it...no progress.

kenshin620 wrote:I liked the TOR beta, but all it did was make me wish there was an old republic single player game.

Isn't it much better this way, though? You don't just have one big story, you have eight - granted, they intersect with a lot of identical content, but still. And it's not all about Force users for once. Depending on how you think about stuff like PvP or roleplaying, there's also much more to do between or after you finished all the PvE content. A SP-only KotOR III would be something you touch for 30, 40, maybe even 50 hours (going by BioWare's latest RPGs) and then never again.

The only thing I dislike about the MMO treatment is that it always seems to feth with the background, regardless of which franchise it touches. I'm not sure if TOR would look more close to canon if it were a pure singleplayer game, but looking back at KotOR I & II that may have well been the case. For some reason, MMOs seem to pander to the dreaded "most common denominator" a lot more than SP RPGs do.

I hope it doesn't go to free to play. The servers will be filled with[Mod Edit - Please do not use that word here on Dakka Dakka - thanks!]. My verdict: SWTOR>WOW>Champions Online

Really? In terms of community, I'm way more impressed with CO than I am with WoW. Chiefly because just about everybody plays WoW, and that sadly includes a load of antisocials.
But perhaps my perception is a bit flawed, because I was in contact with CO's vast and incredibly well organized roleplaying community (CORP) from day 1. I'm sure CO has its donkey-caves, too, but between hundreds of amazing people I just didn't notice them that much.

Also, I love customization, so CO was awesome for that alone. The things you could do there ...!

By the way, apparently TOR now offers trial accounts for people to play up to level 15 for free, no time limit. Noticed this last night in the launcher news as I was logging in.

Lynata wrote:Really? In terms of community, I'm way more impressed with CO than I am with WoW. Chiefly because just about everybody plays WoW, and that sadly includes a load of antisocials.
But perhaps my perception is a bit flawed, because I was in contact with CO's vast and incredibly well organized roleplaying community (CORP) from day 1. I'm sure CO has its donkey-caves, too, but between hundreds of amazing people I just didn't notice them that much.

Also, I love customization, so CO was awesome for that alone. The things you could do there ...!

By the way, apparently TOR now offers trial accounts for people to play up to level 15 for free, no time limit. Noticed this last night in the launcher news as I was logging in.

When CO became free I lost a lot of customizablity with my characters. I found that there wasn't much of a community in CO when I played. at launch day there was too many people who were plain annoying. At least with WOW you know that there are bad servers and good, also to avoid trade chats when the trolls are on.

rockerbikie wrote:When CO became free I lost a lot of customizablity with my characters.

Well ... that's like saying "When I stopped paying my subscription I lost the ability to play".
I think CO is one of the best examples of a good F2P model ever. No content restrictions, but huge influence on character customization. Granted, there are few games where customization seems as much a part of the game as in CO ...

Anyways, yeah, I wouldn't want to miss out on the customization either, but when you want to have it, you just have to pay like you did before. No change there.

Although my flatmate told me that you could recently get a single freeform character slot out of some random box, actually.

rockerbikie wrote:I found that there wasn't much of a community in CO when I played. at launch day there was too many people who were plain annoying. At least with WOW you know that there are bad servers and good, also to avoid trade chats when the trolls are on.

Hmm, with CO, I'd say it's just a matter of knowing which chats to join and which to avoid, rather than servers.
Having everyone play on a single big world is, to me, preferrable to segregating people into servers and server regions. At least this way you'll never be forced to miss out on playing with X just because he or she is on another server. And with CO/STO there's also the added bonus that your unique identifier is your @handle, so there will never be a chance that your character's name is already taken. This too is a huge concern for me in games, as it takes me ages to come up with a good one.

Downloading the trial thingy now based off what people in this thread have said.
At some point when I have money i'll probably want to actually buy it though, where the hell do you do that?

Testify wrote:At some point when I have money i'll probably want to actually buy it though, where the hell do you do that?

If you have Origin, the easiest way would probably the Digital Download version right in its store.

Otherwise ... umm, amazon?

[edit] Also, if you want to do anyone here with a TOR account a favor, let them invite you. That way they'll get a fancy new speeder.

rockerbikie wrote:I hope it doesn't go to free to play. The servers will be filled with retards. My verdict: SWTOR>WOW>Champions Online

I'd rather deal with a bunch of idiots, then pay for months on end. But I guess thats just me

kenshin620 wrote:

rockerbikie wrote:I hope it doesn't go to free to play. The servers will be filled with retards. My verdict: SWTOR>WOW>Champions Online

I'd rather deal with a bunch of idiots, then pay for months on end. But I guess thats just me

Agreed, I would love to actually play the game but Im not going to pay that damn subscription. I dont mind paying a one time $60 fee but paying a month... ya no

Lynata wrote:

Testify wrote:At some point when I have money i'll probably want to actually buy it though, where the hell do you do that?

If you have Origin, the easiest way would probably the Digital Download version right in its store.

Otherwise ... umm, amazon?

[edit] Also, if you want to do anyone here with a TOR account a favor, let them invite you. That way they'll get a fancy new speeder.

I have no idea what "origin" is.
Seeing as all I need is the key code, surely there's a way of getting it online without ordering it from amazon and waiting for it to be posted to me?