Hengist

I’ve really been on hiatus for too long with this blog, but in my defense not too long after the last edition, I received an e-mail from Bioware with an invitation of the sort where you were allowed to say “there is a beta, and I am participating in the beta” and not much more. With that in mind, I felt putting my blog on hiatus was a good thing, because I did not want to spill anything that I knew as a result of beta and that was not public knowledge. So here we are, just a few short weeks until early access begins and with the last big beta weekend nearly complete and it’s finally time to share my own impressions, and I’m going to do it in a fairly blunt manner, so brace yourself.


Overall MMO Design:

I’ve seen idiots suggest that Bioware was really making a single-player or co-op RPG with TOR, and really there is nothing farther from the truth. The most amusing thing, this close to release is that these same single digit IQ folks are trying to justify their point of view thru some pretty ridiculous arguments. The truth of the matter though is pretty different. What Bioware did was simply add a deep storyline to the genre, and while it is scripted it is something that the genre really hasn’t seen, and is fairly welcome. If you are looking for typical MMO conventions they are all there. This is as much an MMO as any post 2004 title has been, without exception.

World Design:

From jungle to ice world, from desert to city, Bioware gives players a diverse group of worlds to adventure on. I use the word adventure because unfortunately I think exploration is one aspect of the The Old Republic that comes up a little bit short. Themepark style MMO’s tend to herd players from quest hub to quest hub, and that’s exactly what The Old Republic does as well. Should you choose to do all the quests available on given planets you will invariably explore 99% of that planet in your normal travels. People who want to see what is over the next hill just for the sake of seeing and knowing might feel a little disappointed. Datacrons are a nice way to inject a little bit of the explorer bug for people, but it really isn’t enough, although solving the puzzle of getting to them is something, it isn’t enough.


I never really considered the concept of how to build a huge city planet before, and have it be satisfying for everyone. How would you build a planet with buildings that are hundreds of stories high, with doors you could enter and explore and make it still feel populated? The path here on Coruscant and Nar Shadda is to make it a “taxi world.” Where certain districts are accessed by taxi, and it feels like the world is split up into smaller playfields instead of one large world. In some ways the illusion works and you feel like you are part of a larger world and in some ways you don’t. My biggest objection on the Republic side is simply that Coruscant and Nar Shadda come too close together so the world feels much slower to open up for a Republic player than it does for a Sith player.

One of the bigger objections I’ve seen about the game is the lack of a day/night cycle. While I’ve appreciated it in other games, I honestly did not notice or miss it in The Old Republic. I understand that Bioware feels setting is essential to telling a story, and while I’d love to see Korriban or Coruscant at night, I never felt like I was missing anything. This is an element of immersion that clearly passed me by. For the vocal crew who seems to feel it is essential, I’d suggest an appointment with a doctor and some medication. I know it is different strokes for different folks, but this objection really strikes me as not being able to see the forest thru a few branches. This game does a great job telling a story, yes your story is the one Bioware wrote not the one you imagined, but take a step back and appreciate it, and I think you’ll find its worth it.

One of the other objections I’ve seen is lack of swimming. In my 4 plus months of adventuring I never found a body of water I said “I need to swim across that.” This is just another item that I never missed, nor did I feel was essential to spending time and enjoying a game.

The final objection I commonly see is that with phasing/instancing it just isn’t a real world, and it’s a co-op world. During this large scale beta weekend, I’ve seen multiple instances of certain planets, but in almost all cases I had 200-300 people in the instance that I was in. To me, that feels like a fully populated place where I can still quest and enjoy the game. Bioware has made it pretty clear that their intention is to use this technology mostly at release in order to make the game more playable. Honestly that sounds like a sharp thing to do, and makes a lot of sense. If it is still being used six months after release then I think we’ve got something to talk about, but I have yet to see any indication that is the case.

Finally, the use of story telling instances is genius. We’ve seen it in other games, usually with a loading screen, but the way Bioware has done it really sets The Old Republic apart. It is smooth, it is seamless and your experience is great. This doesn’t take a bit away from the MMO feeling, to me it adds something, the ability to have my own events without outside interference. It isn’t all the time, and that’s the key.


Art Direction/Graphics:

If you look at the art that was released in 2008 compared to what you see today, there is no comparison. Even in the four months I’ve been participating I’ve seen a dramatic improvement. I’ve seen more detail, more sharpness added, and there are times I’m blown away by it. We obviously aren’t talking photo realistic, but we are seeing the fruits of a direction that wants a good looking game that is accessible by as many people as possible. Sure, Bioware could have went the same direction Funcom did with Age of Conan and tried for the best looking graphics possible, but a limited audience is probably not what they wanted to see.

It can be hotly debated if you like the art style or not, and that’s a valid point of view. For me, I think they work, they don’t make me feel that I’m in a cartoon, and I get incredible FPS and that makes it all the better.

Aside from the obvious taste discussion, the only other objection I see is from people who claim to have the most cutting edge system possible, they run Battlefield 3 at 105 FPS but they can only get 22 FPS on TOR. I handle that objection with a laugh and the knowledge that in general they are completely full of Bantha poodoo. That isn’t to say that some video card drivers degraded performance during beta, because there were a few occasions that they did, rather that I think we should all be smart enough to realize these folks are really stretching for something to dislike. In most cases, it’s something with their internet connection or with their system.

PvE (Player versus Environment)

Did you really think that you were going to escape the “Kill 10 xyz animals and come back” types of quests? If you did, you’d be mistaken. Bioware has tried to couch those quests with voice over, but calling a spade for what it is, it’s what we’ve seen and done before. If someone skips past the voice over, which gives context to the quest, it’s exactly what other MMO’s have done before it. What Bioware really focused on with the voice over, was giving context to just about everything that you are doing in the game. I know that I appreciated this during my first play thru, but I admit the longer I’ve been in beta the less apt I am to sit and listen to parts of the story I already know. This is a huge reason why I cut myself off with certain characters, simply because I did not want to know more.

From a class quest line to flashpoints, to operations, there is an abundance of PvE elements to enjoy. Over the course of beta Bioware has definitely had to tweak experience so players would be at appropriate levels when leaving certain worlds. My short piece of advice to anyone here is simply to do every quest available on a planet and don’t just skip items that don’t apply to your class quest. I’m always amused when I see a level 6 character wondering why he/she can’t kill the level 9 elite mobs they need for a particular quest.


PvP (Player versus Player)

My lasting enjoyment of any game is usually found thru PvP, and that’s the eye thru which I look at The Old Republic. I’ll start by saying that if it reminds me of any other game, it is definitely Warhammer Online, so the EA partnership with Mythic certainly is evident. PvP is paced much slower than a game like World of Warcraft, where I could stun-lock someone with my rogue and kill them without them being able to do a thing. I think that PvP in The Old Republic is more new player friendly, and allows for a greater depth because of that design. New players can “make mistakes” in PvP and still recover, it gives them a greater opportunity to have fun. Veteran players on the other hand work towards playing mistake free.

The addition of PvP lakes with control points and larger scale PvP are great. That being said they have been added relatively late in the process and I haven’t spent near enough time with them to understand them, or to enjoy them completely. This is something that I’m pretty confident that I will enjoy, but just don’t have enough time with to say with passion.


My biggest issues with PvP involve class survivability, which I will get into later, and an overabundance of crowd control abilities. These two items though are fairly large issues that need to be addressed, especially for the PvP viability of several classes. For me, at this point that means there are several classes that I wont consider playing because of those reasons alone, no matter how much I want to experience that story.


Part 2-Gameplay
Part 3- UI and Misc
Part 4- Classes