My smuggler is level 36 now and off to Quesh to work on the latest piece of his class quest. I’m still enjoying the game – it’s a fairly vanilla MMO but I kept my expectations low for this one and haven’t been too disappointed. Even the let’s-ride-a-roller-coaster-and-shoot-things-over-the-railing space battles have been fun as a mini-game.
Having played the game for a bit now, I’m noticing some things more and more that have started flecking that new MMO paint off here and there.
Bugs:
- A player’s companions each have a place to be when you’re all in your ship. Corso stands next to me at the helm, Bowdaar is in the galley, Risha is in the engine room, etc. But I’ve noticed that, depending on which planet my ship is over, the NPCs don’t always appear the way they should. Over some planets, Risha is still in the engine room but also back at her old station in the cargo bay. Bowdaar disappeared on me once. And there’s also a strange dude hanging out in my medical bay. I’m assuming he’s a future NPC helper … or maybe he’s a stowaway. It’s sort of like operating a ghost ship with the Ghosts of NPCs Past haunting their old stomping grounds until their horrible deaths – being forced to stand stock-still while handing out missions, no doubt – are avenged.
- There are some mob balance issues that I’ve noticed. Like the bugs in Balmorra – most elites I can take down at even level with just me and my companion. These elites con green and they’re still exceptionally difficult. Either the bugs need a nerf or the quest needs to be a group quest.
- Some quests cannot be abandoned. I have stuff in my log from Tatooine that I have no intention of completing and yet I can’t get rid of the stupid quest.
Look, buddy: pay me for the ride or start swabbing decks.
Grumbles:
In addition to stuff I think is broken, there are some issues I have with various aspects of the game.
- The chat wheel choices, while often done well enough, sometimes make no sense. Sometimes they’re even non-choices.
- Like too many MMOs, there is nothing underwater. In fact all waterways are filled in so they are only knee-deep. This is one thing WoW did exactly right: water has various depths and sometimes you can even swim underneath the surface!
- Less encouragement towards grouping. The game allows grouping, of course. But other than heroics and the other odd instance, there’s really no reason to. The single-player nature of the game is fine, especially for me – a casual player, but I would like to see more group-based activities here and there. In a game based on stories, it would be nice to see group stories (for small play groups) or guild stories for a whole guild.
- Tunnel-vision: at times I feel like I’m being driven down a tunnel (the class storyline) which contains a few off-branches here and there but follows it’s own line from level one to the end of the class leveling process. On one hand, the primacy of the class quest is good: it provides a central point of all the character’s actions and forms the major story thread around which all other narrative threads weave. On the other hand, it’s giving me some worries. Particularly: what happens when I hit the cap and the story stops? Is that it? Do I cancel my subscription and go back to something else? I suspect that Bioware (and its financiers) would prefer I didn’t. So what’s next? Grinding for gear? Pointless re-runs of the same old instances? I’ve asked some friends of mine who are at the cap and that’s basically what they’re doing. This does not bode well.
And I’ll wrap up with some more about that last bullet point. Some of the best game play I’ve encountered in MMOs is free and open in the sense that the players are creating something for themselves. There are unscripted events that can happen when you have large groups of players gathering to do something or a large, open game world to play in. In spite of its failings, the tower sieges in WAR were a blast. Large numbers of players swarming keeps and battling across map after map were loads of fun. (Getting those kinds of battles to start was a sticking point, but once they got rolling, it was on.) Discovery is another fun thing to many people in games. With a surplus of game space, discovery of the unique can be a real booster to the fun of a game. When I located the Weathered Hills ruins in LotRO part of the fun was that those ruins were in a place that no one goes. They served no purpose. They just were and I found them and sneaked around in them as a lowbie burglar. Sadly, they are now a quest hub and are less special as a result.
In spite of the bugs and issues I see with the game, I’m still having fun with it. I think the next six to twelve months will be telling for SWTOR. Can they implement new content in a timely manner (especially with the voice-acting)? Can they fix the issues with the game? Can they add content to spur wonder and allow players to create something for themselves? Time will tell.
