So, is it fun or just shiny and new?

[Ghambit]

As much as I dont like doing the bonus quests, I gotta say I did a really nice one the other day on Balmorra (in the droid zone).  They START you with kill 10 foozles, but it ends up being a 3-linked chain of quests that lead up to killing a miniboss droid.  The function of the entire chain was to draw the miniboss out.  It was nicely done and the loot and xp were great.  Made me not want to skip them anymore.  Kinda wondered why they went through all that trouble for an optional bonus quest you only pop if you kill "x" mob, but it's nice to see them make the effort towards quest exploration.

The negative?  You get over-leveled and sidetracked.

But I digress:   I find it interesting that people have been bringing up Rift a LOT both on this forum and the SWTOR one.  It's almost like people are just now realizing how much better put together the Trion product is than BW's.  Even though TOR is flat out more fun short term.

[Ingmar]

Didn't enjoy Rift at all, personally. /shrug

[Nebu]

But I digress:   If find it interesting that people have been bringing up Rift a LOT both on this forum and the SWTOR one.  It's almost like people are just now realizing how much better put together the Trion product is than BW's.  Even though TOR is flat out more fun short term.

Rift = better MMO from top to bottom in terms of design and mechanics. Lacked depth and soul.

SWTOR = better game (as in fun to play). Wonder if it will have any staying power.  I'll make it 3 months, but have doubts beyond that.

Shame someone can't find a middle ground.

[Threash]

But I digress:   If find it interesting that people have been bringing up Rift a LOT both on this forum and the SWTOR one.  It's almost like people are just now realizing how much better put together the Trion product is than BW's.  Even though TOR is flat out more fun short term.

Everyone realized what a well put together game Rift was from the beginning, it was just a bland boring extremely well polished game.  This one isn't bland and boring but it most certainly isn't nearly as well put together as Rift was at launch or WoW with x years development.

[Simond]

But I digress:   If find it interesting that people have been bringing up Rift a LOT both on this forum and the SWTOR one.  It's almost like people are just now realizing how much better put together the Trion product is than BW's.  Even though TOR is flat out more fun short term.

Rift = better MMO from top to bottom in terms of design and mechanics. Lacked depth and soul.

SWTOR = better game (as in fun to play). Wonder if it will have any staying power.  I'll make it 3 months, but have doubts beyond that.

Shame someone can't find a middle ground.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?board=26.0

 

[Merusk]

They burned all the Casual's goodwill pretty hardcore with Cata.  It sounds like they'll be burning Hardcore's goodwill with "omg fucking pandas."  (  )  I was tired of arguing with dipshits in guild and general about how Pandarans are older than most of their first erections.

[Paelos]

They burned all the Casual's goodwill pretty hardcore with Cata.  It sounds like they'll be burning Hardcore's goodwill with "omg fucking pandas."  (  )  I was tired of arguing with dipshits in guild and general about how Pandarans are older than most of their first erections.

While SWTOR is winning hearts and minds right now, the real battle will be fought in July.

[sam, an eggplant]

I was tired of arguing with dipshits in guild and general about how Pandarans are older than most of their first erections.

So are alvin and the chipmunks, which incidentally have a very similar goofy feel to kung-fu pandas, and I wouldn't want them in my MMO either. It's all kiddie crap.

[Merusk]

 

[El Gallo]

They burned all the Casual's goodwill pretty hardcore with Cata.  It sounds like they'll be burning Hardcore's goodwill with "omg fucking pandas."  (  )  I was tired of arguing with dipshits in guild and general about how Pandarans are older than most of their first erections.

It's now more casual friendly than it's ever been, even at the end of WotLK.  Too bad it took them so many months to learn that lesson.  I wonder if most of those casuals will go back to WoW for the next xpac or if they will leave the MMO scene entirely (they won't be in TOR unless its MMO elements get overhauled soon). 

[Sky]

Shit. I missed the election where we made you Spokesperson for casual mmo players.

[El Gallo]

Shit. I missed the election where we made you Spokesperson for casual mmo players.

You need to watch more CNN -p
Besides, I was replying to a post stating that Blizzard burned the goodwill of "all" casuals with their last expansion.  You've been here more than long enough to know that we all speak for everybody in the world at all times, and in the most sweeping, overblown language possible.  

[Sky]

 

Double-plus fun for me as a casual who isn't a WoW player. It's like talking blues with guitarists who constantly talk about SRV. Hell, I should make a new version of the blues called the purples.

[El Gallo]

Double-plus fun for me as a casual who isn't a WoW player. It's like talking blues with guitarists who constantly talk about SRV. Hell, I should make a new version of the blues called the purples.

We've officially gone too meta.

[Surlyboi]

Not meta enough.

And nice reference, Sky.

[Ratman_tf]

After Uldum, I expect the Pandaren starter zone to just be one long Kung Fu Panda reference. Blizzard should be paying out royalties for this kind of shit. And try to get some of their humor back while they're at it.

[Lucas]

Lum's impressions over at his blog : "My Life With The Jedi Kill Kult"

[Lakov_Sanite]

They burned all the Casual's goodwill pretty hardcore with Cata.  It sounds like they'll be burning Hardcore's goodwill with "omg fucking pandas."  (  )  I was tired of arguing with dipshits in guild and general about how Pandarans are older than most of their first erections.

While SWTOR is winning hearts and minds right now, the real battle will be fought in July.

Honestly, I think D3 is gonna be SWTOR's first real test.

[Pezzle]

Double-plus fun for me as a casual who isn't a WoW player. It's like talking blues with guitarists who constantly talk about SRV. Hell, I should make a new version of the blues called the purples.

Damn...

[Hawkbit]

I was pretty harsh on this during my short time in beta.  I received it for Xmas, so I figured I'll just play it instead of taking it back.  Loaded it up last night and played a bit today. 

It's actually not terrible, and nowhere near as bad as my first impressions.  I wish it did more to feel less mmorpg and more action oriented, but the story helps to fill the gaps in gameplay. 

[Phred]

But I can't stomach another DIKU, and Bioware's recent single player stuff has left me feeling cold as well. 

I think if you don't like diku and aren't into Bioware stuff lately asking if you'd like this game is self explanatory.

[Rasix]

I don't feel the need to compulsively play this game.  But, I do find myself enjoying it when I'm playing.  

I have my gripes.  There's too many group quests in the leveling content.  Feels like old school WoW on steroids in that fashion.  I'm OK with gating instance story content like that, but not in my leveling.  Plus, there are waaaay too many abilities.  I guess that's what you get with every class essentially being 2 classes.  Rift did this shit too, fucking hell, there's no way I need these many different attacks.  

It has completely killed off my desire to play any more WoW.  I'm leveling really slow, so it'll also be quite a long time before I hit cap and run into the social end game wall.  There's a lot of content here for me.  

[Thrawn]

Canceled my sub already.  I may play enough to hit max level still, but I don't forsee me adding on sub time when my 30 days or whatever is up unless something pretty major changes.  All the shiny has worn off and the cracks are showing worse the more I play, feels exactly like WoW did when I quit already.  Don't login to play a game and have fun, login to grind for the next carrot on a stick.

[Miasma]

As I level more the mediocre mmo side of the game is really starting to interfere and ruin the enjoyable storyline and questing.  I like exploring, I like the quests a lot, the voice acting but the core mmo systems aren't very good.  I mean the bad UI, laughable lfg, weak class abilities/trees, pointless crafting, being forced to use the healing companion who I don't like, terrible economy, heroic areas etc.

I don't even bother trying to do the group quests anymore, I just collect them, untrack them and then abandon them all when I leave the planet so that I don't have to see the quest markers all over.  I don't know what they were thinking putting in so many group only areas.  General chat is 90% lfm/lfg spam that seems to go unanswered.

In the end it was the combat that did me in though.  It was always a little clunky but since it was something that had to be done to get the quests I overlooked it, it was fine so long as I was able to quickly and easily kill mobs.  The combat definitely isn't enjoyable so there is no point in prolonging it but now in the 20's combat seems to be taking longer and longer and there is more of it.  I can't overlook it anymore, it's in my face shitting on my fun.

I've cancelled too, I'll come back in a year or two when they fix the mmo side of things.

Additional random gripe:  Lieutenants have way too much fucking health.

[Soln]

I have a 60 day time card but I imagine I won't be on that much.  My brother is playing, so I'm levelling up to be with him.  But he is definitely not an MMO guy.


It's not a bad game, or a horrible MMO, but in the wake of WoW1.5 and Rift and LotRO and others, it needs more.   And frankly I find the design confusing.  The contradictions keep me from the fun.

1. For example, it's supposed to be about "your story" but all the quests are the same for everyone.  How are they different if they are all 1. yes 2. maybe 3. refuse-quest?
2. There's supposed to be personalization, but for your character there's only 26? ugly preprogrammed faces that you have to use (but 36 beards!).
3. It's supposed to be epic, but you have to run forever and k10rats quests for everything.   And there's even VO's for k10foozles quests, which is jarring when you're trying to follow the path of a Jedi or a tough BH...
4. It's supposed to pseudo-moral/personalized with light/dark points, but they are only for gear?  W.T.F?   I assume then those pts can be grinded, so it's just another kind of rep mechanic. 
5. Where's the exploration, when it's all story rails and zones like CoX?   No open world when it supposed to "SW"?
6. And for socialization, as noted elsewhere, there's no real LFG or LFD tool.   The whole game for me to lvl 16 so far has been pretty empty except for seeing the occasional racer with an alt.
7. Finally, without any argument to back it, I find the art style horrible.  WoW was cute and somehow made sense.  LotRO is beautiful.  This hurts my head and stomach, the same way the art did in EQ2.  Something is broken, like it was in EQ2 with photorealistic animals in a fantasy setting.

So I dunno.  It's not bad, it's just I don't have the positive feedback loop to spend 50+ hrs in it to get to the fun or learn what I'm doing wrong.  The game should tell me or carrot me to keep going when-its-fun and not just-a-grind-to-better-armor.

[Ingmar]

I don't feel the need to compulsively play this game.  But, I do find myself enjoying it when I'm playing.  

I have my gripes.  There's too many group quests in the leveling content.  Feels like old school WoW on steroids in that fashion.  I'm OK with gating instance story content like that, but not in my leveling.  Plus, there are waaaay too many abilities.  I guess that's what you get with every class essentially being 2 classes.  Rift did this shit too, fucking hell, there's no way I need these many different attacks.  

It has completely killed off my desire to play any more WoW.  I'm leveling really slow, so it'll also be quite a long time before I hit cap and run into the social end game wall.  There's a lot of content here for me.  

None of those group quests in the leveling content are necessary from an XP curve standpoint or a story standpoint, they're as optional as it gets.

[Cyrrex]

I don't feel the need to compulsively play this game.  But, I do find myself enjoying it when I'm playing.  

I have my gripes.  There's too many group quests in the leveling content.  Feels like old school WoW on steroids in that fashion.  I'm OK with gating instance story content like that, but not in my leveling.  Plus, there are waaaay too many abilities.  I guess that's what you get with every class essentially being 2 classes.  Rift did this shit too, fucking hell, there's no way I need these many different attacks.  

It has completely killed off my desire to play any more WoW.  I'm leveling really slow, so it'll also be quite a long time before I hit cap and run into the social end game wall.  There's a lot of content here for me.  

None of those group quests in the leveling content are necessary from an XP curve standpoint or a story standpoint, they're as optional as it gets.

This.  I am a couple levels overleveled without having done practically any of the group stuff.

[Wolf]

I like the game, but I only play it very casually. Also I'm a sucker for both bioware and star wars, so that helps. I was not liking my class story & mechanics much, so I switched from the Inquisitor to the Agent and I'm having much more fun. I didn't even get into the guild on the agent, I have general turned on in the second tab of the chat, so most of the time I'm just soloing stuff and when I get to a heroic quest I just poke my head in the 'other' tab and find a group, most of the time pretty easily. If I want to do a flashpoint I jump to the fleet and get a group together there. I do everything on my schedule and when it's convinient for me, which is a nice change  

The MMO bit is just bad. The combat is clunky. You have way too much abilities, I've played enough games to clear my bar off of the abilities I don't use, but most newbies will have a very hard time reckognizing which abilities to use, and which they can dump. Cata talent trees do a very good job with that. The Sniper is sufficiently op, has a pretty decent shot priority that's starting to shape up and the energy mechanic is fun - that's going to keep me interested for at least 20 more levels.

Long term - I don't see myself playing this after my pre-paid card runs out. It should be enough time to level my agent and one republic character to 50 and dip my toes in the end game to check it out. I did watch some raid encounter movies on youtube and they have a long way to go before they catch up to wow, and that's the endgame that interests me.

edit: oh, and I got ~300k off of the slicing deal, so that should keep me decked out for the next couple of months :)

[Miasma]

I don't feel the need to compulsively play this game.  But, I do find myself enjoying it when I'm playing.  

I have my gripes.  There's too many group quests in the leveling content.  Feels like old school WoW on steroids in that fashion.  I'm OK with gating instance story content like that, but not in my leveling.  Plus, there are waaaay too many abilities.  I guess that's what you get with every class essentially being 2 classes.  Rift did this shit too, fucking hell, there's no way I need these many different attacks.  

It has completely killed off my desire to play any more WoW.  I'm leveling really slow, so it'll also be quite a long time before I hit cap and run into the social end game wall.  There's a lot of content here for me.  

None of those group quests in the leveling content are necessary from an XP curve standpoint or a story standpoint, they're as optional as it gets.

This.  I am a couple levels overleveled without having done practically any of the group stuff.

I mainly want to do the group stuff because I like the quests, not for reasons of xp and loot.  There was a mission given by two battle droids, one of which was implanted with a prototype emotion chip and the other just a logical bot, the latter was injured and "dying".  The emotional one kept going on about how "we're gonna patch you up buddy, don't you worry!" and wouldn't fight until his freind was fixed.  I was supposed to get a repair piece and either fix up his buddy or do what the logical one wanted and overwrite the emotional one's chip since he wasn't doing his job.

I did not get to see how that turned out because fuck heroic quests.  This one was so far out of the way that I had never even seen it in the lfg/lfm spam, no one wanted to do it.  I am planning on over levelling and coming back, that is my only recourse.

[Threash]

I don't feel the need to compulsively play this game.  But, I do find myself enjoying it when I'm playing.  

I have my gripes.  There's too many group quests in the leveling content.  Feels like old school WoW on steroids in that fashion.  I'm OK with gating instance story content like that, but not in my leveling.  Plus, there are waaaay too many abilities.  I guess that's what you get with every class essentially being 2 classes.  Rift did this shit too, fucking hell, there's no way I need these many different attacks.  

It has completely killed off my desire to play any more WoW.  I'm leveling really slow, so it'll also be quite a long time before I hit cap and run into the social end game wall.  There's a lot of content here for me.  

None of those group quests in the leveling content are necessary from an XP curve standpoint or a story standpoint, they're as optional as it gets.

This.  I am a couple levels overleveled without having done practically any of the group stuff.

I mainly want to do the group stuff because I like the quests, not for reasons of xp and loot.  There was a mission given by two battle droids, one of which was implanted with a prototype emotion chip and the other just a logical bot, the latter was injured and "dying".  The emotional one kept going on about how "we're gonna patch you up buddy, don't you worry!" and wouldn't fight until his freind was fixed.  I was supposed to get a repair piece and either fix up his buddy or do what the logical one wanted and overwrite the emotional one's chip since he wasn't doing his job.

I did not get to see how that turned out because fuck heroic quests.  This one was so far out of the way that I had never even seen it in the lfg/lfm spam, no one wanted to do it.  I am planning on over levelling and coming back, that is my only recourse.

The worst part about that quest is that it was split up by the choice you made, so even if people did it there was a 50% chance they were doing the one you wanted.  Also, fuck emo droid.

[Draegan]

I don't feel the need to compulsively play this game.  But, I do find myself enjoying it when I'm playing.  

I have my gripes.  There's too many group quests in the leveling content.  Feels like old school WoW on steroids in that fashion.  I'm OK with gating instance story content like that, but not in my leveling.  Plus, there are waaaay too many abilities.  I guess that's what you get with every class essentially being 2 classes.  Rift did this shit too, fucking hell, there's no way I need these many different attacks.  

It has completely killed off my desire to play any more WoW.  I'm leveling really slow, so it'll also be quite a long time before I hit cap and run into the social end game wall.  There's a lot of content here for me.  

How are there too many group quests?  Up through Taris (Empire) there have been like 2-6 per planet out of all the normal quests and none of them have to do with the story at all.  Even on my Merc BH there aren't a lot of abilities I use.  Even in RIFT there weren't a lot of abilities at all (as a Rogue).

I think you're doing something wrong.

[kildorn]

Bonus series tend to have a bunch of group quests. What I see as the basic pattern is that an area (each planet being like, 3-5 "areas") has 1-2 heroics in them, leaning heavily on the "1" side. Heroics are completely irrelevant to the leveling experience, and if you do not plan on doing them just remove them from tracking so you don't accidentally keep picking it up when you go to the quest hubs.

They give nice rewards, and I'd love to just go sweep through a bunch of older ones some day just to flag the ones that give pretty orange outfits <3

[Murgos]

I've found that you can do the heroic +2s pretty well at lvl +2/3 solo.

Personally, I think people are being overly critical of what are basically launch hiccups. LFG, coming soon. UI, coming soon. Economy, in progress. Etc...

[Thrawn]

I've found that you can do the heroic +2s pretty well at lvl +2/3 solo.

Personally, I think people are being overly critical of what are basically launch hiccups. LFG, coming soon. UI, coming soon. Economy, in progress. Etc...

The problem is "coming soon' in MMO's means 1month - Infinity.  I could be 5 years before the UI gets updated.

[Sky]

Even on my Merc BH there aren't a lot of abilities I use. 

This. There are a lot of base class skills that just don't mesh with the AC, like Unload for my tank PT. I keep it on the fringes of my usable hotkeys, because I use it every now and again while soloing and there's that one mob out of melee range with just enough hps I don't feel like rapid shotting him down. Lots of stuff like that. I'm actually in the process of weeding out a couple other things and refining my rotation right now through practice on the champ mob Furi and I have been lightly farming. Good way to see how stuff plays out on a resistant mob without making a group suffer :)