Lemme get two things straight right away:
1. This is merely my opinion. If I always had a clue what the fuck I was talking about, do you think I'd waste time writting shitty blogs all day?
2. To kill it before it comes up - I'm not a massive WoW fan. Not gonna piss on its grave when D-day finally arrives, not gonna put down flowers, either.
So. That game with the lightsabres and aliens and stuff is out. The majority of people will join six days from now, pre-order customers and the press (aka me) are already taking part in the headstart event. And as most of you probably know by now from beta and stress test events - the game is pretty damn good. I mean it. I'm having fun. Is it gonna be the next big thing? I don't think so.
To me, SW:ToR's biggest selling point is also its biggest flaw. It's the bastard child of Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) and World of Warcraft. You're supposed to get the best of both worlds, but I'm not fully satisfied in either department.
I love offline RPGs. I liked KOTOR a lot. You're the main hero, the most important character, the entire world revolves around you. If you screw up or do something you'd rather undo again, it's as simple as loading your savegame. Most of all, you get to play at your own pace. Nobody calls you a pussy if you secretly pick the lowest difficulty setting (between us, though, I pity you). Nobody knows if you cheat. Yeah sure, we've all downloaded GateKeeper for testing purposes and nothing else, right? :P
Yesterday, I teamed up with one of those typical singleplayer folks. A guy, god bless him, who usually stays away from MMOs and only installed SW:ToR, because it's Star Wars and it's Bioware. We were planning on doing the heroic group quests, which you face towards the end of the tutorial zone. Not a big deal, two semi-talented players can finish them together just fine.
So I waited at the dungeon entrance and the guy never reached me. Said he just had to fight his way through. And he died to a bunch of level 6 baddies. Again. And again. When I came to help him, it turned out he wasn't really using any abilities or special attacks. God knows whether he ever figured out how to learn new skills at his trainer.
Don't get me wrong. I am not trying to make fun of him in any way. The poor guy has probably never touched an online game before. He had no clue what he was doing, got his ass kicked by monsters 2 levels below him and there is no difficulty slider, no cheats, no savegames. Chances are, he's gonna get frustrated and he'll give up on the game if he hasn't done so already.
Sure, nobody forces him to do the group-based stuff. He can keep doing solo quests, grind baddies whenever he runs out of stuff to do from avoiding dungeons and heroic quests and just play this game like a single player RPG with lots of Chuck Norris jokes in global chat going on all the time. Right. Like that's gonna happen.
Naturally, not every passionate RPG fan is a complete MMO-newbie. Some of them know what they're doing and they enjoy a good story. And that creates a whole new problem once you get into Flashpoints - the instanced dungeons in SW:ToR. Chances are, you'll spend half as much time in there chatting with NPCs as you do fighting baddies. Now, if you do care for the story, that's a great thing. It's not so great when the rest of your team already knows all the dialogue or simply doesn't care for it and urges you to skip it all. If you're the one guy to slow down your entire party by wanting to enjoy all the dialogue, you'll have to be ready to get booted. Yes, it does happen.
Of course this also works the other way 'round. Maybe you've finished the Flashpoint before. Maybe your last team failed at the second last boss and you're starting over with a whole new group. Maybe they all want to see all the dialogue which you already know, meaning you'll spend ages listening to the same crap all over again.
Most of all, as it is entirely randomized which party member gets to act and respond to dialogue, your group might not always do what you would want them to. They might kill an NPC you would have left alive or vice versa. It's not a deal breaker, but anyone who likes to be in charge and have full control over what's going on is not going to enjoy this.
And here's another thing: Those players, who intend on playing SW:ToR like it was some kind of offline RPG will eventually reach the level cap. They might roll a different toon, go for some different dialogue options, but that's where the fun stops. They're not gonna raid. They won't care for the PvP. And ultimately, they're gonna quit, at least until the first expansion or massive content update. Oh, did I mention that Bioware are working on Mass Effect 3, they wanna crank out a 3rd Dragon Age and they just got the license for Command & Conquer? Good luck getting a whole lot of new quality content!
Surely, the vast majority of gamers on there love their MMOs and they're gonna enjoy raids, pvp and whatever the devs throw at them for their endgame experience. But the magic of lightsabers and Jedi-lore only lasts for so long until they're gonna realize that, below the surface, this game does absolutely nothing new. Yeah, yeah, fucking companions, light side, dark side... it's still just WoW with lightsabres. The classes, the combat, the skill trees, the whole thing is *so* much like WoW, the one good reason to play SW:ToR is because you don't know every fucking quest in your sleep. Yet. Wait another month. Maybe two. The setting won't feel all new and exciting anymore and you're paying for yet another MMO, which feels and plays just like... well, you know where this is going. And then what? Well, see ya in Pandaria.
Seriously. If you're looking for another kickass Bioware-esque storyline and an awesome solo-experience, this is not it. And if you want something "better than" or at least different to WoW... well, move along.
I'm not saying this game is bad. Heck, it's pretty damn good, really! But it's not hurting WoW anywhere near as much as the fucking pandas.
-Cat
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