SWTOR at +5 months...
...and I'm still enjoying this game quite a bit although the weaknesses and problem areas are definitely becoming more apparent the longer that I play, especially with two characters at the level cap. Still, I have no intention of unsubbing anytime soon.
First some general observations:
1. This game is insanely easy and quick to level up in, especially in comparison to vanilla WoW. I mean seriously, I have two level 50 toons at the five month mark without really pushing all that hard. Compare that to vanilla WoW + the first expansion pack that I played for about three years where I only had one level 60, partially because leveling was such a freaking long slog. In a way, the ease and fun of leveling in SWTOR is a good thing. Even repeating the stories is better than leveling in other MMO's, combined with the fact that you can almost exclusively level through pvp and the space game if you want (which is what I did with my smuggler after awhile) it makes leveling a lot less painless. Then again, you end up with people at the level cap and burning through content a lot quicker, so it has it's drawbacks too.
2. There's a major population problem. Not so much a lack of subscribers (1.3 mil is pretty good for a game six months old), but that they're just spread out over way too many servers. This becomes especially apparent when you join the pvp queue and it takes 40 min to an hour for a game to pop. Luckily Bioware is addressing this with limited server transfers, and I am very much hoping that the server I mostly play on will become a destination server because it really needs new blood. I'm also hoping that Bioware eventually takes this a step or two further and a) starts merging entire servers and b) allows paid character transfers to non designated servers so that people like me who have toons spread out between two servers can consolidate them on the one we play on the most.
3. Stuff to do at the endgame is pretty hit or miss. While I think that a lot of the bitching is over-exaggerated about the lack of endgame content, there are some legitimate gripes. Crafting for one is pretty freaking useless at the level cap, which kind of sucks considering how much money you have to dump into it to make it useful at all. In the end, you just end up crafting gear for your low level alts, which is nice but sort of underwhelming. And while there are other things to do like raiding, 4 man instances, pvp (which is where I spend most of my time), world bosses, datacron hunts, maxing out companion affection (I only have on maxed out atm) etc... most of those things require other people to do - which ties into the population problem mentioned above. What's left is basically grinding the daily quests, which quickly gets old and is something that I just don't bother to do unless I'm grinding money for something specific in mind (like unlocking all of the Republic Zabrak looks for the Imperial side so I can make my dude IA look like exactly how I want).
4. The legacy stuff is a bit... underwhelming at the moment. Sure some of the things are cool - jet packs, unlocking races, family trees (if that's your thing) etc.. but it is sort of annoying that they cost both legacy levels and a crap ton of credits as well, especially when grinding dailies for credits can get seriously mind numbingly boring. Plus the fact that the legacy abilities that you get for finishing out a class (such as dirty kick or sticky grenade) you can only use in super specific instances - which makes their usefulness and coolness rather minimal. I'd like to see those abilities become usable in more situations.
5. PVP battlegrounds, when they are full enough to pop, are really damned fun. That's where I've been spending the majority of my time with my level capped toons, and I really enjoy all four maps. I'm very excited that they're going to add another battleground and ranked warzones in the future - which is probably what I'm looking forward to the most.
Some class specific thoughts:
Smuggler (Gunslinger)
Poor Corso will never understand her.
This was the first toon that I ended up hitting the level cap with and probably the one that I've done the most on (datacron hunts, killing world bosses, pvp and raiding). I love the mechanics of gunslingers, from their ranged attacks to how freaking hard they can hit. Even though they're not super mobile and can be kind of tricky to play due to their squishyness, I really enjoy pvp especially on my sharpshooter.
Story wise, the arc as a whole was really uneven. The first act was by far the strongest of the story arcs, and I liked the very small scale and personal objective of getting back the ship and chasing down Skavik. The final confrontation with Skavik and the choices given my bitchy smuggler were so freaking entertaining that it was my absolute favorite part of the game. The smuggler also gets some hilarious one liners, a glorious trainwreck of a romance if you intentionally play it that way and some really amusing and interesting companions including my favorite companion of the entire game: Guss Tuno.
Guss freaking rocks. His dialogue is hilarious, from the quest chain to get him to the shit he yells out when you go to new areas. I especially love his battle cry of "My friend is going to get you!" and his pathetic "Where am I supposed to go?" when you dismiss him. He also has the best AI scripting out of all of the companions that I've seen yet, with awesome crowd control and fantastic healing. I feel sort of bad because I almost never take the other companions out anymore now that I have him.
On the downside however, the last two story arcs were really weak. I mean, they just didn't grab me at all other than one of the showdowns with an NPC at the very end of the game. The ending itself was rather underwhelming, although that might be because I picked the neutral option.
Don't get me wrong - I love the idea of the smuggler being a privateer - but then the smuggler never gets to do anything that privateers actually did (capturing enemy ships and selling them for a profit). Instead they're shoehorned into the world quest chains that really don't fit them at all and that I can't imagine them giving two shits about, and kind of a lackluster class story that tries to understandably draw them into the greater conflict but really kind of failed to get me invested. After Balmorra, I pretty much gave up trying to shoehorn that character into the world quest chains and leveled by doing the required class quests (which I would have skipped too if I could have) and pvp.
The more that I played my smuggler and bounty hunter the more I really wish Bioware had gone for three factions instead of two. Having a third neutral faction of Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, and another class to make up the balance (droids? Czerka reps? Mandalorians?) would have given those two oddball classes who don't really have any reason to do the Republic and Imperial quest chains a chance to shine and do stuff that actually makes sense for them to do. Don't get me wrong, I get why they didn't since I suspect that it's a management of resources, money, logistics etc... on the part of bioware to only have two factions, but still it really feels like a lost opportunity to do something really awesome and different.
Trooper (Commando)
Yeah I don't know wtf is on her arm either and am sort of disappointed that you can't shoot the spiky things at people.
Like the smuggler, I enjoyed the Trooper's first act the most. After that, it really got generic and less interesting to me as Havoc Squad got pulled into the bigger galactic conflict. On the one hand, the scope can be fun, but on the other hand when you defeat another upper level Imp or take out yet another superweapon, it gets kind of repetitive. Fortunately the slack was picked up with I the world quest chains far more compelling (and much more sense on my trooper than smuggler), as well as Jorgan's personal quest chain than the actual class quests themselves. Still it would be nice to see more quest chains in general that are less "OMG WE MUST SAVE THE GALAXY from ______ ultimate badguy/______ superweapon" and more personal in scope. I mean, seriously, if I never see another superweapon in this game, I'd be so freaking happy.
The NPC's and party members are pretty strong too. General Garza totally rocks and it's nice to see a woman, especially an older one, in a position with that kind of authority without slipping into "mom" mode. I like pretty much everyone on the crew so far, although I really need to work on their approval so I can see all of their conversations. And Jonas Balkar is really cool. I wish they'd let him join the squad just to have a spook mix it up with the "Rah! Rah! Republic" crowd.
That said, this class ended up pissing me off because after reading what dude!Troopers get to do, I really felt like I got the shaft playing a female. They get to actually have a fling with Jaxo, unlike her counterpart Jonas - which is total bullshit. Jaxo actually has a key moment in the plotline where you have to make a choice that's supposed to be difficult. But since I couldn't romance her or even be bffs with her, something that was supposed to have a lot of emotional weight was almost completely meaningless. Coupled with the fact that it doesn't make any sense at all not to let the f!Trooper have a fling with Jonas (who they should let join your squad too), I ended up being rather irritated by this.
The ending however, I thought was okay and not so horribly underwhelming as the smugglers. I actually liked how the choice you have to make at the end. The conflict between the political and military goals, echoes the theme from the very beginning of the game.
Jedi Knight (Guardian)
This grade b superhero outfit is sadly the best I've found for her so far. But at least she gets to rock the tiara.
My guardian continues her derpy flufftastic adventures with mutive's irredeemably evil Lucrecia. I have to admit that while I'm still not the biggest fan of the story, it's growing on me.
I mean sure, there's been an endless string of super weapons for Tanit to stop (an evil death laser from the sky? REALLY? ROFLMAO.) And she is hopelessly goodie goody. But I like both Kira and the Puppy Droid companions so far. Kira has an interesting back story (that might be a bit too much like Mara Jade, but eh), strong willed, self sufficient and doesn't take herself too seriously. The droid is just freaking adorable. And I think Tanit is about to meet Doc, and I cannot freaking wait. So between that and the other cool NPC's that have shown up (that poor cyborg dude on Nar Shadda, Watcher One and Lord Prevan - all of whom I wished could join the crew), I'm warming up to it.
Mechanics wise, I switched to DPS from tanking and I love it so much better so far. Eventually I'm going to have to try playing this toon in Huttball because I have the feeling that she'll be great fun as a ball runner in that battleground.
Bounty Hunter (Powertech)
Not gonna lie, I want to put him on a misfit/dirtbag dream team with Tanno Vik, Guss Tuno, Theran and Doc.
As Kosiah and I continue our crazy bounty hunters, I like this class story more and more. Again, it's the small scale of it that appeals to me - she's not saving the galaxy, she's just trying to win the great hunt. She does seem to fit in more to the Imp world quest chains than the smuggler does on the Rep side, at least so far, but even still, it feels a bit clumsy. On the other hand, she just got Gault as a companion, who is smarmy and cleaver and sarcastic and cowardly (and kicks a lot of ass) so that sort of makes up for it. He's a fantastically amusing NPC and a lot of fun to take around just to see how he reacts to stuff.
Mechanics wise, powertechs are a lot of fun to play. They also kick a lot of ass. I queued into a battleground the other day and even not knowing what the hell I was doing and button mashing, she ended up with 13 medals.
Anyway, I'm still enjoying the game even though the problems are becoming more apparent to me as I play. I'm willing to be patient though and see how the game grows over time with additional content and upgrades. It's already lightyears better than all of the other mmo's I've played, even with it's flaws and I don't know that I could ever go back to a non story driven MMO after being spoiled by this game.
First some general observations:
1. This game is insanely easy and quick to level up in, especially in comparison to vanilla WoW. I mean seriously, I have two level 50 toons at the five month mark without really pushing all that hard. Compare that to vanilla WoW + the first expansion pack that I played for about three years where I only had one level 60, partially because leveling was such a freaking long slog. In a way, the ease and fun of leveling in SWTOR is a good thing. Even repeating the stories is better than leveling in other MMO's, combined with the fact that you can almost exclusively level through pvp and the space game if you want (which is what I did with my smuggler after awhile) it makes leveling a lot less painless. Then again, you end up with people at the level cap and burning through content a lot quicker, so it has it's drawbacks too.
2. There's a major population problem. Not so much a lack of subscribers (1.3 mil is pretty good for a game six months old), but that they're just spread out over way too many servers. This becomes especially apparent when you join the pvp queue and it takes 40 min to an hour for a game to pop. Luckily Bioware is addressing this with limited server transfers, and I am very much hoping that the server I mostly play on will become a destination server because it really needs new blood. I'm also hoping that Bioware eventually takes this a step or two further and a) starts merging entire servers and b) allows paid character transfers to non designated servers so that people like me who have toons spread out between two servers can consolidate them on the one we play on the most.
3. Stuff to do at the endgame is pretty hit or miss. While I think that a lot of the bitching is over-exaggerated about the lack of endgame content, there are some legitimate gripes. Crafting for one is pretty freaking useless at the level cap, which kind of sucks considering how much money you have to dump into it to make it useful at all. In the end, you just end up crafting gear for your low level alts, which is nice but sort of underwhelming. And while there are other things to do like raiding, 4 man instances, pvp (which is where I spend most of my time), world bosses, datacron hunts, maxing out companion affection (I only have on maxed out atm) etc... most of those things require other people to do - which ties into the population problem mentioned above. What's left is basically grinding the daily quests, which quickly gets old and is something that I just don't bother to do unless I'm grinding money for something specific in mind (like unlocking all of the Republic Zabrak looks for the Imperial side so I can make my dude IA look like exactly how I want).
4. The legacy stuff is a bit... underwhelming at the moment. Sure some of the things are cool - jet packs, unlocking races, family trees (if that's your thing) etc.. but it is sort of annoying that they cost both legacy levels and a crap ton of credits as well, especially when grinding dailies for credits can get seriously mind numbingly boring. Plus the fact that the legacy abilities that you get for finishing out a class (such as dirty kick or sticky grenade) you can only use in super specific instances - which makes their usefulness and coolness rather minimal. I'd like to see those abilities become usable in more situations.
5. PVP battlegrounds, when they are full enough to pop, are really damned fun. That's where I've been spending the majority of my time with my level capped toons, and I really enjoy all four maps. I'm very excited that they're going to add another battleground and ranked warzones in the future - which is probably what I'm looking forward to the most.
Some class specific thoughts:
Smuggler (Gunslinger)
Poor Corso will never understand her.
This was the first toon that I ended up hitting the level cap with and probably the one that I've done the most on (datacron hunts, killing world bosses, pvp and raiding). I love the mechanics of gunslingers, from their ranged attacks to how freaking hard they can hit. Even though they're not super mobile and can be kind of tricky to play due to their squishyness, I really enjoy pvp especially on my sharpshooter.
Story wise, the arc as a whole was really uneven. The first act was by far the strongest of the story arcs, and I liked the very small scale and personal objective of getting back the ship and chasing down Skavik. The final confrontation with Skavik and the choices given my bitchy smuggler were so freaking entertaining that it was my absolute favorite part of the game. The smuggler also gets some hilarious one liners, a glorious trainwreck of a romance if you intentionally play it that way and some really amusing and interesting companions including my favorite companion of the entire game: Guss Tuno.
Guss freaking rocks. His dialogue is hilarious, from the quest chain to get him to the shit he yells out when you go to new areas. I especially love his battle cry of "My friend is going to get you!" and his pathetic "Where am I supposed to go?" when you dismiss him. He also has the best AI scripting out of all of the companions that I've seen yet, with awesome crowd control and fantastic healing. I feel sort of bad because I almost never take the other companions out anymore now that I have him.
On the downside however, the last two story arcs were really weak. I mean, they just didn't grab me at all other than one of the showdowns with an NPC at the very end of the game. The ending itself was rather underwhelming, although that might be because I picked the neutral option.
Don't get me wrong - I love the idea of the smuggler being a privateer - but then the smuggler never gets to do anything that privateers actually did (capturing enemy ships and selling them for a profit). Instead they're shoehorned into the world quest chains that really don't fit them at all and that I can't imagine them giving two shits about, and kind of a lackluster class story that tries to understandably draw them into the greater conflict but really kind of failed to get me invested. After Balmorra, I pretty much gave up trying to shoehorn that character into the world quest chains and leveled by doing the required class quests (which I would have skipped too if I could have) and pvp.
The more that I played my smuggler and bounty hunter the more I really wish Bioware had gone for three factions instead of two. Having a third neutral faction of Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, and another class to make up the balance (droids? Czerka reps? Mandalorians?) would have given those two oddball classes who don't really have any reason to do the Republic and Imperial quest chains a chance to shine and do stuff that actually makes sense for them to do. Don't get me wrong, I get why they didn't since I suspect that it's a management of resources, money, logistics etc... on the part of bioware to only have two factions, but still it really feels like a lost opportunity to do something really awesome and different.
Trooper (Commando)
Yeah I don't know wtf is on her arm either and am sort of disappointed that you can't shoot the spiky things at people.
Like the smuggler, I enjoyed the Trooper's first act the most. After that, it really got generic and less interesting to me as Havoc Squad got pulled into the bigger galactic conflict. On the one hand, the scope can be fun, but on the other hand when you defeat another upper level Imp or take out yet another superweapon, it gets kind of repetitive. Fortunately the slack was picked up with I the world quest chains far more compelling (and much more sense on my trooper than smuggler), as well as Jorgan's personal quest chain than the actual class quests themselves. Still it would be nice to see more quest chains in general that are less "OMG WE MUST SAVE THE GALAXY from ______ ultimate badguy/______ superweapon" and more personal in scope. I mean, seriously, if I never see another superweapon in this game, I'd be so freaking happy.
The NPC's and party members are pretty strong too. General Garza totally rocks and it's nice to see a woman, especially an older one, in a position with that kind of authority without slipping into "mom" mode. I like pretty much everyone on the crew so far, although I really need to work on their approval so I can see all of their conversations. And Jonas Balkar is really cool. I wish they'd let him join the squad just to have a spook mix it up with the "Rah! Rah! Republic" crowd.
That said, this class ended up pissing me off because after reading what dude!Troopers get to do, I really felt like I got the shaft playing a female. They get to actually have a fling with Jaxo, unlike her counterpart Jonas - which is total bullshit. Jaxo actually has a key moment in the plotline where you have to make a choice that's supposed to be difficult. But since I couldn't romance her or even be bffs with her, something that was supposed to have a lot of emotional weight was almost completely meaningless. Coupled with the fact that it doesn't make any sense at all not to let the f!Trooper have a fling with Jonas (who they should let join your squad too), I ended up being rather irritated by this.
The ending however, I thought was okay and not so horribly underwhelming as the smugglers. I actually liked how the choice you have to make at the end. The conflict between the political and military goals, echoes the theme from the very beginning of the game.
Jedi Knight (Guardian)
This grade b superhero outfit is sadly the best I've found for her so far. But at least she gets to rock the tiara.
My guardian continues her derpy flufftastic adventures with mutive's irredeemably evil Lucrecia. I have to admit that while I'm still not the biggest fan of the story, it's growing on me.
I mean sure, there's been an endless string of super weapons for Tanit to stop (an evil death laser from the sky? REALLY? ROFLMAO.) And she is hopelessly goodie goody. But I like both Kira and the Puppy Droid companions so far. Kira has an interesting back story (that might be a bit too much like Mara Jade, but eh), strong willed, self sufficient and doesn't take herself too seriously. The droid is just freaking adorable. And I think Tanit is about to meet Doc, and I cannot freaking wait. So between that and the other cool NPC's that have shown up (that poor cyborg dude on Nar Shadda, Watcher One and Lord Prevan - all of whom I wished could join the crew), I'm warming up to it.
Mechanics wise, I switched to DPS from tanking and I love it so much better so far. Eventually I'm going to have to try playing this toon in Huttball because I have the feeling that she'll be great fun as a ball runner in that battleground.
Bounty Hunter (Powertech)
Not gonna lie, I want to put him on a misfit/dirtbag dream team with Tanno Vik, Guss Tuno, Theran and Doc.
As Kosiah and I continue our crazy bounty hunters, I like this class story more and more. Again, it's the small scale of it that appeals to me - she's not saving the galaxy, she's just trying to win the great hunt. She does seem to fit in more to the Imp world quest chains than the smuggler does on the Rep side, at least so far, but even still, it feels a bit clumsy. On the other hand, she just got Gault as a companion, who is smarmy and cleaver and sarcastic and cowardly (and kicks a lot of ass) so that sort of makes up for it. He's a fantastically amusing NPC and a lot of fun to take around just to see how he reacts to stuff.
Mechanics wise, powertechs are a lot of fun to play. They also kick a lot of ass. I queued into a battleground the other day and even not knowing what the hell I was doing and button mashing, she ended up with 13 medals.
Anyway, I'm still enjoying the game even though the problems are becoming more apparent to me as I play. I'm willing to be patient though and see how the game grows over time with additional content and upgrades. It's already lightyears better than all of the other mmo's I've played, even with it's flaws and I don't know that I could ever go back to a non story driven MMO after being spoiled by this game.