The pros, cons and in-betweens of Star Wars: The Old Republic

April 9, 2013

By Sean Fechtelkotter
Follow @SeanFech

Not so long ago in a galaxy that is actually pretty close by, Bioware released a new titan, one capable of seriously challenging Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. That titan was Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) takes places roughly 300 years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic one and two, and about 3700 years before the events of the films. Like all games, SWTOR does have its pros and cons. I’ll hit the pros first, and then the cons. And I’ll stick a little neutral section in the middle for good measure.

PROS

Story, Characters and Such

First things first; the biggest of these pros is the fact that it actually has a story to it. When I played World of Warcraft (WoW), it was just like oh, go from one zone to the next and level up a little, and oh wait, some of these might have some little intrazone story to it, and that is it. What makes SWTOR so awesome with this whole story thing is the fact that it connects from zone to zone. It’s a story that spans the galaxy. The only one I have done so far is the Sith Warrior. For him you were basically traveling the galaxy, hunting down various objectives in order to further the goals of the Sith Empire and propel the galaxy back into war. Eventually a little thing or two happens which turns your plans and the entire game on its head, but for spoiler reasons, I will not discuss those here.

Along the way you’ll meet a whole host of interesting characters. Five of these people will become companions of yours. Anything you do in dialogue will affect how your current companion views you, for better or for worse. You can either do stuff in line with their views, and they’ll like you, or do whatever the hell you want, and they may get pissed off. But it’s okay; you can always just give them presents. No really, you can have a companion that is a pacifist, that absolutely despises killing, then kill a school bus full of children in front of them, but it’s okay, hey look here’s a present for ya! And then they love you again, because, logic. Also, because this is a Bioware game, it’s perfectly cool for you to go onto your ship, and then waste time having to talk to everyone, learn about them, and get all buddy-buddy with them. And because this is a Bioware game (see Mass Effect), if they are an opposite gender, you can...Well...

....Yeah

Most of the characters you will meet in the game consist of the same various species we have seen in previous installments on all things Star Wars. You have your usual Twi'leks, Gamorreans and Rodians and such, but they also added a few new ones. You have the Flesh Raider from the Jedi home world of Tython.

This thing, the hammerhead shark looking dude.

Then you have another new addition called the Talz. These guys are furry ice-wookie things and they are absolutely adorable. The republic uses them as shock troopers, for obvious reasons.

This one is Broonmark, a Sith Warrior companion. He is so adorably sadistic and blood thirsty.

Then you have the pure Sith. They are basically red-skinned dudes with face tentacles.

Galactic Hellboy?

You have guys like the Voss…

And of course their best friend the Gormak. You don’t get much description on these guys though; I’d be spoiling a really cool story line.

Then there is this thing. His name is Ooren Tai. I don’t know what he is. But he looks like a deformed sentient elephant thing.

Seriously, what is this?

I’m pretty sure that I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the new characters and species, but the point is that where before, Star Wars was just a little poster board with a few things here and there, Bioware has turned it into a living, breathing galaxy. A galaxy that is much improved over what was available before.

Item Modification

In my opinion, the whole item modification and crafting thing in SWTOR is freakin’ awesome, man. It’s so simple. You pick out a mission on a little pop-up screen; send one of your companions out to bring you back some new raw materials. You can also find the raw materials out in the field, but it’s much easier and faster to get them from missions. There are six different levels of materials that you can get from the missions, and the skills themselves go up to 400. It really is simple though, you send your guys out, they bring you stuff. You then take that stuff, and open up your crafting profession. You can either build components to upgrade your current equipment (it needs to be orange or purple quality) or, with more advanced recipes, you can actually build full pieces of equipment, already decked out in mods.

An item modification table.

Neutral

That level 50 boost you get

This section is going to be kind of short, and to be honest, some people will probably see this as a big con. I accept that and see their point of view. But let me explain it all here. When you hit level 50, the game auto-sends you a little letter. In this letter there are 99 of these little guys called Tionese commendations. On my Sith Warrior, I was able to take those and buy a full set of the lowest level 50 super armor and one weapon. I was left with 15/16 commendations to get my second weapon. I then, except for the blue blade, looked like this:

Now the problem that some people may legitimately have is this: All of that gear, with the exception of the crystals I bought by doing dailies, is fitted out with mods far better than anything you can buy from your trainers. It’s also much, much better than any of the gear I could make because I spent 10k per item buying from a trainer. It’s like, “why the hell did I just spend all this money, and waste the time leveling my stuff up if I was going to get better stuff for free?” But I see it as a pro because, well, free stuff. And speaking of Free Stuff.......

The Damn Game is Free-to-Play

Now, I know what some of you are thinking right now, “How in the name of Cthulhu could this possibly be viewed as a con? Couldn’t it only be a pro?” And my answer to that is....Not exactly. Here is the thing, people; while yes, you can play from 1-50 for free, the game seriously cuts down on what you can do. For starters, you get limited on your in-the-field-revives and pvp matches you can do. While that is really annoying, I can understand it. It makes sense. What doesn't make sense is when EA says free-to-play doesn’t get all rewards from quests like subscribers do. And the absolutely batshit insane thing that came up, that made me want to drive up to Bioware/EA and slap them across the face is the stupidity that came with the damn mailboxes.

Damn mailbox.

I’m going to tell you all a story for this one. I was playing one time with a friend of mine, who also happens to be on this website (Hint: It’s the loser who wears a kilt). So anyway, I’m a subscriber. He isn’t. We were running around questing on Korriban, when he looted something that would be better for me than him, because I was an Inquisitor and he a Warrior, and the item had willpower on it. We decided to have him give it to me, but oh look, we can’t trade because he is free-to-play. I think, okay that is understandable, because the game told me that because we couldn't trade, we could use a mailbox. I sent a letter to him first because my name had a bunch of alt codes in it, and that would let him click reply. But here is the problem, when he went to reply, the game was like, hey guess what! Because you are free to play, you can’t send mail! Really, Bioware? Really? How are you going to tell me to use mail because trading doesn't work, and then tell me we can’t use mail because mail doesn’t work? But oh well. In conclusion, the free-to-play is awesome for people who want a trial or just cannot afford the full game, but at the same time, you lose out on a lot of stuff if you go free.

CONS

Combat

As much as I love this game, it suffers severely when it comes to combat. This is the same thing that most MMOs suffer from. To be a successful with your character, you need a particular rotation of moves. This same rotation of moves gets real old, real fast. I’m going to be completely honest here and say that the only thing that kept me attached to this game was the story, because the combat is dreadful and stale. Okay yes, you get some cool things. On my Smuggler I initially thought it was awesome that I could throw bombs, then immediately roll into cover guns blazing and shoot the shit out of everyone in sight, but that got old quick too. There really isn’t much to say about this. Anyone who has ever played an MMO knows this issue, and anyone who is new to an MMO shouldn’t expect big flashy combat going into it. I’m not even going to dignify the space combat by talking about it. In short, you fly along a predetermined path and control a limited X and Y axis while using a little target to shoot enemy fighters/ships/space stations/whatever.

Mounts

This is another thing that seriously annoyed me in this game. Except for a few moderately cool special mounts, every single one is a different paintjob on a very minimal selection of speeder styles. With everything that is Star Wars, they could have gone really far with mounts. They could have had taunton which would be cool. They could have even used that dragon-lizard thing that Obi-Wan rode in Revenge of the Sith. Or even that rhino-looking thing that Anakin made his pet in Attack of the Clones. There was so much potential for awesome mounts and Bioware fell short. Now granted, the game is still very young. It came out on December 2011, and in internet time, that is like a week or something. It has plenty of time to improve, but at the moment, I’m left wanting more. My next problem with the mounts, and the biggest one at that, is that their utility past level two does not match their price. Level two mount training give you plus-100% move speed. Level three gives you a whopping plus-110% move speed. How much does this 10% cost? 150 THOUSAND CREDITS. I mean really? Yes, in WoW it originally cost an exorbitant amount to go from normal mount speed to epic mount speed, but that also gave you plus-40% all the way up to plus-100%. That is 60% versus 10%. Then the flying mounts cost a lot, but that is plus-100% all the way up to plus-300%, and you can freakin' fly! But again, the game is young. They have time to improve, and I really hope they do.

Overview

Overall I’d say this is a very fun game. I highly enjoy it. Yes it has its problems but all games do. Go for the free-to-play option and try it out. Don't like it? Delete it and never play it again. It’s that simple. So yeah guys, try it out. You may find a new game that has you hooked.

(Images are respectively from WikiCheats.GameTrailers.com, KillerGuides.com, BestGameWallpapers.com, HowtoGeek.com, StarWars.Wikia.com, rhc-rp.wikia.com, SilentCouncil.Enjin.com, Ravalation.Blogspot.com, DarthHater.com, Torhead.com, and SWTORHub.com)