SWTOR v SWG

Although it's still early I think I've seen enough of TOR to offer some opinions about how it compares to the previous Star Wars MMO.

Look

Actually, they're incredibly similar, at least on the low quality settings I run SWTOR at. Running around SWTOR it's easy to forget which game you're in if you're a SWG veteran. I think the graphics are fine although I do want to gripe about performance. For a game that looks rather dated SWTOR is a beast. When I first started playing it defaulted to low on everything which was borderline unplayable until I turned shadows off. It still chugs and loads slowly.

I sometimes fantasise about running a games company and one of the things I would do is put a Computer of Death into the office. This is the weakest machine we want our game to run on, an old Pentium I found in a jumble sale. And all the staff would spend a week on it at a time. Chosen by drawing straws on Friday afternoons. Because if the people developing these games didn't have state of the art overclocked beasts to work on all the time then maybe we would see games that are play decently on a normal machine.

It's particularly disappointing after Bioware recognised that too high systems specs had previously been a problem with many games (notably Age of Conan and Vanguard) and made a special effort to ensure this game would "run on a toaster".

To be fair SWG released as a horrible buggy mess that crashed to desktop and bluescreened so SWTOR wins on graphics, just.

The cutscenes

These are very well done, beautifully produced and well acted. Some of the plot twists are amazing and some of the dialogue are clever. The acting is genuinely brilliant, you can read a subtitle and think that's not an impressive answer, then hear it spoken and think "oh yeah!"

SWG hardly had any cutscenes, just a little bit with Han Solo at the beginning as I recall and the iconic scrolling slanting text so SWTOR is a winner here. It's a good feature, beautifully made.

Pacing

That does however bring me on to a serious criticism of SWTOR, in fact what may be it's deepest flaw. The game is badly paced. Cutscenes are great but they come so thick and fast it's hard to tell whether I'm playing a game with lots of film or watching a film with interactive bits. It gets too much. I found myself space-barring them after a few days because I'd had enough of cutscenes.

More importantly there's an overall rush to SWTOR that is very unappealing. People got to 50 in a few days. Now barely 2 weeks in almost everyone in my guild is 50. You don't really learn and explore a planet because you're only there for a day or two. You don't really learn and explore your skills because you get new ones every few hours. It just scrolls by too fast.

As players we optimise ourselves to beat and push the system but we need the system to also push back to create a fun dynamic. Push at SWTOR and you win, you max out, you save the universe. It lacks substance.

WoW, remember built itself up as a game where it took on average about 6 months to max level. There were people who still hadn't maxxed out a character by the end of Vanilla despite playing regularly. When we did Stranglethorn Valley we spend a fun 3 weeks there. Now although WoW isn't like this now, and you can level very fast, that early slow leveling played a crucial part in establishing WoW's popularity. It seems people look at WoW and copy what it is now without realising what it had before that got it to the top.

SWG, despite being remembered as a sandbox, was very much a leveling game and quite a slow one. It took months before anyone mastered an Advanced Profession if we don't count Architects who mastered because a whole guild gave them Ore. Those months were some of the most enjoyable times I've ever had in a MMO.

I think SWTOR loses on this aspect as do several other recent MMOs like Rift. Content becomes meaningless when it zips by in a flash. WoW can get away with it because WoW is established but WoW established itself on a game based on slow paced leveling.

Group content

I've been disappointed with SWTOR's group content because it's quite hard to get groups. I'll admit to having been spoiled by LFD tools but I can't be bothered to send out tons of tells and slowly build a friends list in the old-fashioned way. It's annoying enough that I was thinking it's probably best to let my sub lapse and come back when they've put one in. I really like doing group content as I quest through the solo content. There's no chance of finding a group while out questing and it's a tedious process hanging around the Fleet space station spamming.

SWG on the other hand despite not having proper instances did have some fun group content that emerged out of classes interdependence. The Ranger class for instance had to make camps for people to progress so Ranger players tended to organise interesting expeditions for other players. It had caves like the Squill Cave on Tatooine which attracted crowds of people in very chaotic public raids

The Rails

To compare these two games we need to look at the rails, the system where the game channels you towards the content it chooses.

In SWTOR rails are firmly in place but nicely crafted. You can only do what the designers had planned for you to do but it's good enjoyable content. In SWG the designers had a sandbox philosophy, they put in stuff that could be interacted with but didn't necessarily know how players would interact with it.

Each side has its fans but my concern with regard to SWTOR is that the rails may simply run out. What happens when the train reachs the end of the line? You can roll an alt or raid or pvp but none of those things are quite enough for me. The sub-based model implies that the game will be your main or even your only game and will endlessly immerse you. Where I think SWTOR is heading is what I saw in my Rift raid guild. At the end of a raid people would ask "when's the next raid?" be told Tuesday then say "cya Tuesday" and not log on until then. There was no point playing.

That's a serious flaw in an MMO. SWG always had something to do so it wins clearly here.

PvP

SWG had asymmetrical spontaneous pvp where SWTOR has pvp battlegrounds that you queue up for and where you face a matched team. I'm miles in favour of asymmetrical pvp. It feels like pvp as war, with strategic depth, rather than pvp as sport.

I probably shouldn't assign SWTOR as the loser as many people prefer that instanced sanatised safe form of combat. Let me just say it doesn't particularly appeal to me, for me pvp should feel dangerous.

The economy

OK, the design teams have come from completely opposite poles and I'm going to plunge in and say that SWTOR's philosophy here was half-baked and terrible.

In Galaxies economic professions were a fundamental part of the economy and almost everything was made by players. Resources were rare, searching them out was time-consuming, the top crafters were astonishingly hardcore. Later on this philosophy, as with many aspects of Galaxies became diluted but in 2003 the economy was fascinating.

In SWTOR the philosophy is throw it all at the players so they won't whine. Have unlimited money with a gathering profession that literally just gathers cash. Level to max in a few days. Have 5 crafting characters on one with your crew of willing slaves working 24/7. Oh and the Auction House is a worse database than one I could build on Open Office freeware in an afternoon.

Some elements of it are well-designed. The crafting/missions/gathering division is elegant as is the reverse engineering mechanic and some of the item design. But the whole thing more ressembles Kid in a Sweetshop than Economic Simulation. Bioware have profoundly failed crafter players.

SWG of course had one of the most interesting and admired crafter economies ever done.

Space combat

SWTOR wins hands down. I really like the space combat minigame. SWG launched with none but then added a space game that was just too hard for me.

Player housing and cities

One of the outstanding SWG features. In SWTOR you get a ship which serves as a player house and is nice but it really feels barren without the ability to fill it with junk and decorate it.

Overall

SWTOR is too generous, too casual and simply too finite. It feels like a single-player game, like there's a point where I'll say "Done!" and I really will be done. It's very worth playing for a time, an improvement on the KOTOR series which were very good single-player games. But that's the thing - it feels like a massively single-player game. All the elements that should encourage interaction are absent or half-baked. There's a lack of cool things to find because it's all on rails. There's a lack of groups because there's no LFD tool. There's no economy. There's no war.

SWG will remain a high point of my gaming experiences. Hopefully its demise will catalyse other products that suit the people who liked it. It's a very strong influence on Dominus which I'm looking forward to more than ever now. And I feel that when SWTOR fails to retain the numbers it was built for, when it fails to "kill WoW", people will look back to older game designs and see if there was anything there that can be delivered in fresh ways to modern audiences.

SWTOR: There's a lot to love

After being negative about SWTOR I thought it about time I concentrated on some of the positives in what is in many ways a beautifully made game

First of all I have to say I love the look. Many people don't so I've read, I do. Possibly it's because my first in-depth MMO was SWG and that's the standard by which I judge MMOs. And SWTOR does look very like SWG.

Star Wars is arguably the best game IP out there. It's immensely popular. It comprises both fantasy and sci fi so it covers all bases. If you want to be a sword-wielding Wizard you can, if you want to be a starfighter pilot you can. Droids and some of the animals and races are very charming. Or at least interesting even if technically I have to admit that Gungans aren't actually charming. It's more streetwise than Star Trek, more idealist than Battlestar Galactica.

Clothes and customisation are nicely done and I like the fact that your appearance gear isn't different from what you're actually wearing. It's a bit unimmersive if the plate-wearing tank is actually wearing 15 lbs of mithril-alloyed titanium on his head but appears to be wearing a top hat. So I'm glad they avoided going the route of appearance slots.

The music is very good. It's Star Wars style and occasionally directly from Star Wars as distinct from Galaxies which simply used film music for everything. I couldn't help but wonder about the economics. If you have access to the Star Wars IP why pay someone to compose new music? They're not going to do it better than John Williams. But if EA don't mind throwing some spare cash towards starving musicians who am I to quibble? And the new stuff is Star Wars style and nicely composed and played.

Combat is quite nicely done. On my Sniper I take cover, line up my shot and open up, with some snazzy area effect strafing, grenade tossing and pot shots to taste. My companion, when she can tear herself away from slicing missions, provides very decent support. She's Kaliyo, a somewhat paper tank of unpleasant temperament who, although she hits the deck a lot, tends to keep opponents busy long enough for me to win and then ress her. Plus she cheers enthusiastically when I do anything Evil.

The main storyline is excellent a twisty labyrinth of intrigue and double-dealing which I am scything through with the Direct Approach (tm). Conniving double agents seem to have issues when it comes to outwitting a bullet in the kneecap. The other stories are very nicely done too although sometimes when I'm tired it all gets a bit samey. Another long explanation of why I should Kill Ten Rebs? I think I'll spacebar through. I do feel that I should avoid doing too much of that though as I'm loathe to rush through too fast.

I love alting. The other classes feel very different and I enjoy picking a personality for a new alt. I have a Rude Sith Warrior who simply picks whatever conversation option seems rudest. He's very entertaining and it turns out you can be pretty cheeky to Sith Lords without getting your head stuck on a Force-pike. Who knew?

There's a space mission minigame which I really like. Now let me confess, I suck at space fighting games and flight sims. But this is really easy. Hold left mouse button down and try to keep the mouse pointer over the baddies. That's basically it. A space flight game that even I can play! (For reference SWG's Jump To Lightspeed was too hard for me).

Crafting is fun and I'm a big fan of time-based crafting. My main is primarily a Slicer, although I also have enough Armstech to load my Sniper Rifle with the latest Barrel. I have a Biochemist alt and I love that profession. I do suggest Slicing as first pick because even after they nerfed it it's still a constant stream of free money.

There's a nice account security feature. It collects data for 5 different security questions then sometimes asks you a random one when you log in. So even if you get key-logged the key-logger might well lack the answer needed to get into your account.

It's a good game and I'd thoroughly recommend it to any readers. I think sometimes there's a feeling that buying a MMO should be tantamount to getting married, that it should be an exclusive commitment involving dumping all previous games and avoiding at least 6 months worth of new releases. That's silly. It's worth a look and at £35 or so it's reasonably affordable. It's certainly a lot of content for your money even if one accepts Tobold's opinion that it's a game with lots of content but not much gameplay.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you have a pleasant day over-eating, getting sleepy, spending time with the family, getting drunk and possibly a little video game playing if it fits into the packed schedule!

SWTOR: the great subscription scam

From the official site:

You have 29 days of play time remaining. You must sign up for a recurring subscription plan or redeem a Game Time Code before you can play. If you sign up for a recurring subscription, you will be billed automatically at the end of your current remaining play time.

Let's check that again. I have 29 days of play time remaining. I can't actually play however. I can't play because even though it's in my free month I have to subscribe using a credit card or add game time using a game card.

It's a scam. I have a free month but I don't have a free month.

I don't quite frankly mind giving them my debit card number but sadly their site isn't working at the moment and I can't even get to the page where I would enter its details.

And of course anyone who pays by game cards must buy two months worth of game time even if you had only wanted to play your free month then decide later.

I'm sure whichever accountant thought this particular swindle up is chortling his way home with a fat Christmas bonus but these things always bite back in the long run. Blizzard leads the way in MMOs because people respect the name. EA is not adapting to its competitor's success.

SWTOR: First impressions

I've started playing SWTOR and it has to be said it's a beautifully crafted game. I have Stabs, an Imperial Agent on the Red Eclipse EU server. Level 17 now, the highest level we know of on the server is 50 (the maximum) and someone in our guild is 41.

So in terms of leveling speed it's probably too fast. Arguably the game's great strength is its beautifully and expensively made quest content. For one player that seems to have lasted him about 4 days. Is the end-game going to be enough to retain hardcore players? We'll see in a month.

As someone who loves to alt and who isn't hardcore it will certainly retain me. I'm planning to level several alts and it will probably take me at least a month to level the first one. So perhaps what we have here is a game that isn't interested in the hardcore vocal minority that gobbles up content so fast?

And that brings the question, will it attract an alternative audience of more casual people, maybe players who've never even tried WoW? I think it could. It is rather like a movie with interactive prompts at times and the pacing between running around shooting stuff and stopping to watch another excellent cutscene is good.

The economy is mildly broken with the overpowered skill Slicing. It's a gathering skill that gathers money. It levels independently of your character and my henchperson is just about never not on a Slicing mission. She's doing level 40 content while I'm level 17. I've bought my first bag slot for 5k credits and have about 17k left. If I didn't have slicing I'd be broke.

The auction house assigns a default price which I rather like and which allows for a certain amount of predatory opportunism. You see, it seems to give price more or less on item type and level. A level 15 blue item will be about the same price as a level 15 green item. This means you can search by quality and pick up some bargains very easily.

I started with Slicing, Scavenging and Investigation but I've realised I'd never get a chance to use Investigation due to permanently running slicing missions so I've changed that one to Archaeology where there's at least a chance to find nodes you can gather from in the wild. All three of those allow you to hit nodes and as a result my minimap, which I keep zoomed out, is often festooned with stars like a little round Christmas tree.

The Imperial Agent is very cool, a gadget-based action spy with a suave British accent. James Bond in space, what's not to like? I went down the Sniper tree partly as a consequence of the game's early structure. Most classes it seems build you up well in one of the areas of speciality from 1-10 then ask you to choose an advanced class. At level 10 I was a superb shot, sometimes killing mobs in one hit but I also had a fairly weak dagger attack and no stealth nor healing. So when the game asked me if I wanted to shoot things for a living or be a rogue/healer it felt like a duh! question. Yes I want to easily one-shot and two-shot my way through the game. I expected though that I'd be respeccing later but the choice is permanent. Not a disaster but certainly a surprise.

Overall it's immensely fun and very charming. There's a very strong Star Wars feel and I'm getting flashbacks to Galaxies in 2003. While it lacks some of the features of Galaxies I'd say it's every bit as good, as fun. Whether I'll be quite so hooked in the longer term depends on how the game feels after I've consumed the content. There's a danger of an extended Tortage effect. Everyone who played Age of Conan loved Tortage then felt very let down by the bland game that came after you'd finished Tortage (the starting city). There's clearly a lot more than just a city but it's still consumable content and in some cases it's being consumed at astonishing speed. So will the game hold people who hit level 50 before Christmas and don't want to make an alt? It will be interesting to see.

Eve Online: a new home

A new home for my armada of PI alts. I'm sending a scanning ship and 5 cloaky haulers off to a new wormhole. This one has lots of lovely planets and is very quiet. According to DOTLAN there have only been 2 players ships and no pods killed in the last month. No jumps at all in the last couple of weeks and combat against NPC seems very occasional.

I check everyone has an up-to-date clone and an insured ship. In one case I repair the armour and half the structure of an exceptionally fortunate Badger. And launch 3 clients and have them all autopilot while I type this. I also send them 200 million isk each to cover set up costs and export taxes for the next several months.

Once I've placed my ships inside I'll scout their POS with my cov ops and get the corp ticker. I'll use that to work out their timezone with the idea of only exporting PI goods when they're all asleep. For good measure I'll add any name I can deduce to my watchlist for extra hauling safety.

At some point they may decide to put up POCOs at which point it will be time to move again. Until then I'll pay 17% tax and like it!

Eve Online: Poco wars, part 9 (this time it really is final)

I moved a fleet into the wormhole yesterday morning during a gap in their coverage. A Talos Tier 3 Battlecruiser, an Oracle Tier 3 Battlecruiser and a Rifter tackling Frigate. The ships were fitted to be able to pvp and to deliver sustained dps.

Late last night I noticed only one of my opponents was on. I decided to start killing pocos as I felt confident against a single opponent.

I spotted a Hound stealth bomber on D-scan, then a bit later spotted some core scan probes (he was scanning for the way out) and orbited the office shooting it, with orbits set to optimal range so if he tried bombing he'd be unlikely to catch all 3 ships.

He dropped in with a Drake battlecruiser at 60 km and started shooting the Talos.

I flubbed my response a little, not being used to coordinating alts in pvp. I sent the Talos towards him, alt tabbed sent the rifter in, back to the Talos, locked, scrammed and webbed him and started shooting, over to the Rifter, locked scrammed and webbed him and started shooting, alt tabbed to the Oracle, sent it towards him slowly (it wasn't fitted with a propulsion module). A ship started screaming, alt tabbed saw it was the Rifter, ok no worries it's a noob character in a cheapo frigate, he can have that one, went back to the oracle to see if I could lock him yet, another ship started screaming. My Talos was in trouble - doh! I'd left the microwarp drive on. By doing so I'd massively increased my signature radius which meant his missiles were hitting me super-hard. I watched for a few seconds to see if the armour repairer would cope with the incoming damage, it couldn't. OK, time to leave. I turned the MWD back on and burned toward a random point in space to get out of his warp disruption range and hit Warp. Unfortunately I hit warp too early and was still pointed, so nothing happened. I rather panicked and aligned to the Sun and left the MWD on. Unfortunately the sun was back past the Drake so my ship turned around, its MWD making it bulk up huge, and headed back into the enemy fire. Argghhh! I turned back around and tried to run off but the ship blew up. I warped off in my pod, alt tabbed to the Oracle, still 38km from the enemy and warped off in him.

I lost:
a T1 fit Rifter (about 40k isk value after insurance)
a pod (no implants no re-cloning costs)
a Talos Tier 3 Battlecruiser (about 60m isk value after insurance)

Big kudos to him. I might have misplayed my fleet but he took on 3 ships with one and played really well. It took both balls and skill to do what he did.

So I had a rethink. My pressure on their pocos was based on the idea that they'd need a few people to stop me because I have multiple accounts. If one person can beat me 1 vs 3 then I'm probably wasting my time. Also it means that I'd only be able to operate when none of them were on if I wished to continue my campaign of asymmetrical warfare. (I had anticipated being able to kill a poco one day when not enough of them were around). That now escalated to having to spend time reinforcing a poco then needing none of them to be on in order to kill it without getting my butt kicked.

Better to cut my losses, pull out, find another wormhole with its Interbus customs offices still up and farm that paying 17% tax. So I've decided to throw in the towel and pull out.

I'm not unhappy, it was enormous fun and the pvp fight was really exciting. I also learned important lessons about pvp, including my first ever attempt to coordinate 3 accounts in a fight at once. I'll evac late tonight or tomorrow night once all good Russians are tucked up in bed and then start scouting. I'm tempted to try to find a corp but with Star Wars starting and having just been rejected from one I wanted to join for "being a spy" it's probably best to aim for a low maintenance low profile Eve gaming style.