Originally Posted by
Raeli
The game plays exactly like it WANTS to be WoW - but not wow of today, WoW of 2004. I like the game, but **** me it's like they looked at wow and said "let's ignore EVERY mistake wow has made, so we can make it ourselves and learn the hard way". It's good atm, but it gets boring fast, it is exactly like wow of 2004. Combat is very simple, certain classes such as Jedi Knight/Sith Warrior feeling extremely repetitive. Others are underpowered while soloing because they don't get their best companion for ages, while others get their best companion as their first one. The questing, once you get past the dialogue, which btw, for any non-class quest is the exact same for every class of your faction (well, occasionally they might refer to you as a Jedi Knight or a Trooper, but that's as unique as they get), it's just boring basically - they don't even have basic escort type quests, there are only two types of quests in TOR - KILL LOTS OF SHIT, or Go somewhere and push a button, and possibly still kill lots of shit. Half the game is "phased" - which is not WoW phasing, it's more like wow instancing, so you're spending a lot of the time feeling like you're in a single player game instead of an MMO. Don't get me wrong, It's fun at first, but rolling a new class won't be any more unique or different than it is to roll another class in WoW. Some of the story is really good, but other parts are just meh. The combat and gameplay is, as any Bioware game, slow and clunky, filled with animations that slide your character here and there to get into place to stab that light saber through someone - when they actually line up perfectly, they look awesome, even more so in groups, but you're often seeing things that just look retarded too, which gets worse in PvP when you're doing a 4-6 second long animation of stabbing the guy and he's already off, so you just are left looking like a retard stabbing thin air.
The graphics are extremely stylised, and so are no where near as demanding as most games, the textures of things are fairly low quality, but because it's so stylised, it looks good. Character models are generally well done, but then, there are only 8 in game. Super thin male or female, looks like a malnourished teen, average athletic male or female, super huge body builder male or female (female I swear though is the same one as the male for this body type), and then the fat male or female. Aside from non-human creatures, every humanoid uses one of these, even humanoid aliens, it's not a problem, but considering for females there are only 2-3 hair styles with their hair down (the rest is up in some crazy Leia Esque type buns or in some other way wrapped all over the place), I've seen many many females that end up just looking the exact same. Oh, and Bioware still cannot do Blonde hair to save their lives, I have no idea what the **** it is, but it always looks like some yellow sick colour instead of blonde in Bioware games.
Actual gameplay wise, I'd say it's no more interesting than Rift atm. Certainly has no chance of competing with wow, frankly, unless the next few months show some major changes and improvements, I'd be surprised to see it last a year. Having said all this, I have Pre-ordered and can't wait for it, cause at the end of the day, it is Star Wars, and I did enjoy it a lot, it is ****ing awesome to blow shit up as a Trooper, but I'm not sure how long I will play it when it comes out - but that all depends on the final product, which the version I played, is clearly far from.