Umbral Echoes Blog

When I first heard about this game, I was somewhat excited, but the more development blogs I read, the more it seemed that it would be a money that Bioware pumped big bucks into in order to make a WoW clone with lightsabers, with some window dressing added on.

It turns out, that window dressing makes all the difference. I’ll get into that in a minute, but first I will go into the things that don’t impress me about the game.

Also, I will give the caveat that I am somewhat fresh to this game; I have not yet played all classes, and I have much more experience with the Empire (the “bad guys”) than the Republic. And I haven’t done space combat yet either, though I’ve seen it and it’s basically a Star Wars version of Star Fox (for those familiar with the old SNES game) — basically, a rails shooter.

Some downers

• Combat is mostly standard MMO fare. The combat really is like WoW with lightsabers instead of swords, blasters and force lightning instead of magic. You have a tank, a DPS role, a healer class, and some “trick” abilities (traps, bombs, etc.). There are some departures from this here and there.  For example: the Imperial Agent class does have a cool “take cover” ability that requires you to actually find some cover (and then use an ability to roll into that cover and take a position), from which you can use sniping and various other abilities.
• The dialog options are unclear. When talking to NPCs, you are given several options, sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure book.  However, the option presented does not actually reflect the exact words that you say, and sometimes the connotation of what is presented is different than what you end up saying. For example, “Intelligence can assist with that,” becomes, “I’ll let you know any information I find.” But, as you can see in the image here, you can at least tell beforehand which options will gain you light side points and which will gain you dark side points, however.
• Rough in-game help/tutorial system. I think this is an area that all MMOs are lacking in, but making good progress on.

Some awesome things

• The storylines are actually compelling. This is the biggest one for me. It makes the game fun, and not feel like a grind. At the very beginning of the game, you get the Star Wars fading-int-the-distance text, as if this is a movie and your character is persinally the center of it. Even though part of you knows that everyone else is going through the same stories, they are well-written enough that you feel unique in this universe. As a Sith Warrior, I feel like a supreme badass with far greater potential than everyone else. As a former slave-cum-Sith Inquisitor, I feel that I am being looked down on and really have to work hard to prove myself.
• Companion characters are awesome. This is the second biggest point of awesomeness for me. You get several companions over the course of your story. These are NPCs that can come along with you on missions and aid you.
• This allows for easier soloing — if you are a DPS class with a glass jaw, you can take along a tank companion to take the hits for you.
• Companions add a new dimension to the game. They are actively involved — sometimes they pipe in during your conversations with other NPCs, and you gain or lose affection points with them based on your dialog choices with other NPCs. Mostly, companions evoke actual emotions, ranging from pride to annoyance.
• Companions can take care of the minutiae like selling crap items. Just click and tell the companion to go sell your junk items, they disappear for a few minutes, them return with credits.
• You can equip your companions, which makes them feel a lot more like “real” characters and less like pets.
• There are even romance options, wherein you can become romantically involved with one of your companions. I have not explored this as of yet.
• Voice acting. I thought this would be really cheesy at first, but it actually does help the immersion, a lot.
• Waypoints show you exactly where to go.  Even down to which staircases you need to use. I suppose this may be downside for explorers, but damn do I hate running around wasting time trying to figure out where to go. Especially in a world like this, where one would presumably have a GPS type device. Speaking of which… why are places on the map greyed out until you go there? That seems a bit silly of an MMO troupe to carry over.
• Level 10 email. I got an email at level 10 congratulating me, and linking to some further information and tips on what to do from here, including maps on where to go and what options you will have. Here is an example for the Sith Inquisitor class. That was a very nice touch. This is the level that you choose your class specialization (tank, DPS, healer, whatever), so I think this would be helpful for new players.  Of course, it came days after I reached level 10, so… it would have been nice for that to have been more timely.
• The loading screen shows your story so far. Instead of showing random world lore or tip, the loading screen shows you what’s going on right now with your character. Not only does this make the game feel more “yours,” it’s great for me because I love alts, and tend to forget exactly what’s going on with each character, so it serves as a nice snippet for getting me back up to speed. Here’s an example:
  

Things I would like to see

• Low/high-level grouping. Some sort of apprenticeship system or something, wherein while a level 12 dude groups with a level 35 dude, he is brought up to par. So maybe artificially bumping him to level 35, and boosting gear stats accordingly, just not giving any of the extra abilities/talents.
• The ability to name companions. This is one of the breakers for suspension of disbelief for me. When I see 20 dudes running around with a helper that has the exact same name as mine, that feels a little silly. Just alter the dialog so that other NPCs don’t speak the name of your companions, and this could be pretty easily done.
• Single-server environment. This is a pipe dream, but already I have run into the issue of, “Oh, you’re playing TOR too?  What server?  Aww, I’m on a different server, so we can’t play together.” Why do MMOs insist on this? EVE Online has everyone on the same server, and so does Champions Online. Sharded servers are so early 2000’s, guys.
• Cross-server chatting. Since a single server is a pipe dream, it would at least be nice to be able to chat with friends on other servers.
• Choose your own voice. It would be cool if they had some choices for what voice you want. I know this isn’t realistic — it already took a lot of resources to get the voice acting done, and every other choice would require re-recording all of that dialog.

Overall Star Wars: the Old Republic is a great MMO, and I believe it has the potential to be even greater as time goes on. Will it be a WoW-killer? No, nothing will. If/when WoW declines, it will be because of several awesome new games like TOR coming out and chipping away its subscriber base, not one giant game to rule them all.