Let me start off by saying that because of certain restrictions in place I can’t say what game I’m currently working on, but I have been a part of the gaming world for over 13 years. I had the great pleasure of working on titles including Anarchy Online, Everquest 2, and most recently World of Warcraft.
I don’t pretend to know everything, but I do believe that my experience carries a lot of weight regarding the MMO genre as a whole. This last Beta testing weekend was my first experience with SW:TOR. I came into the game with a completely open mind wanting to give it a fair shot at my opinion. I am not an atypical “fan boy” especially after my very short experience attempting to enjoy SWG. It is fair to say that despite my great adoration for Bioware, that I had a small degree of pessimism about the content of SW:TOR considering the enormity of the task. Having said all of that here is what I think of Star Wars the Old Republic:
SWTOR is simply put, the best fantasy MMORPG that has ever been made to date.
All of the positive reasons are obvious and apparent to anyone that has been a part of the MMO world for any period of time. But I’ve noticed an incredible amount of negativity in the forums. However upon further inspection of the alleged offenses SW:TOR has apparently committed it appears to me that there is an overwhelming lack of comparative knowledge in this community. For instance:
Aion: When this game was released you couldn’t even play it the first few days. Not to mention the content wasn’t really even geared for U.S. players.
Star Wars Galaxies: This game didn’t even launch on the release date and was completely devoid of ANY end game content yet it boasted several expansions, a decent player base, and somehow survived even after the failure of the combat retooling.
Saving the best example for last:
World of Warcraft: WoW faced the same problems and was almost unplayable for the first several weeks from incredibly long queue’s, massive server side lag, endless in game terrain bugs, and quest bugs that made progression almost impossible without a complete grind.
There are literally dozens more MMO’s that were released with far greater number of bugs that made the games unplayable at first. However they have gone on to be very successful because inevitably players realize the positives outweigh the short list of fixable negatives. SW:TOR has the most compelling storyline of any MMO I have ever seen or played, and they have done that with each and every class. Try and separate the negativity for just a moment and ask yourself, does any game come even close to the dynamic character storyline quests that SW:TOR boasts?
The answer is a resounding NO. SW:TOR will be the MMO Game of the Year and will likely steal several million active players from the masses who are knee deep in other MMOs. Before I went to work on WoW I gave the game a similar review and rated it a 9.0/10.0 saying it would be the largest MMO title for years to come. I am rating SW:TOR a 9.5/10.0 and am saying that this game will eclipse WoW within 18 months and take its place as the number 1 played MMO in the U.S. and possibly the world. This game was worth the wait and is far more polished than WoW was in the same time of its Beta at this point. Not to mention their content is simply unmatched from any MMO title anywhere. That may change in the future with the coming of Guild Wars 2, but for now this game is the new Juggernaut of MMO’s.
My hats off to Bioware, this game has brought me right back to the reason why I made gaming my career. Thank you for giving the community a game we all have been waiting for and having been wanting for many years. Regardless of the negative aspects of this game that need tweaking or fixing, SW:TOR has an innumerable amount of positive that make it the new up and coming force to be reckoned with.
Mark my words, SW:TOR is the WoW-Killer of 2012 and beyond. I simply can’t wait for the release.
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