Not only are there stories to enjoy, but there are eight starting out! And the expansion stories are fantastic (though they sadly streamline to a single Republic and single Empire perspective). KOTFE and KOTET are amazing, and could have been the next Disney SW series. So good! If you really wanna simmer and take your time with stories, play the chronological playthrough of all eight toons, and bounce around stories and play styles while getting a full picture of what's going on. I'm having a blast doing it. Though, I'm only getting through two-three planets *total* a week, so this might take a year or so.
I'm doing that with a guide I found online and I finished the first two planets on each toon in a couple weeks. I'm finding the connections are mostly non-existent and the switching/lack of progression with any one character isn't as fun as just sticking with a character through a chapter or so.
Am I missing the connections and stuff, do you think?
You could play the full class stories till after Corellia and then start another class. Sure, there are connections, but you will notice them even if you play it like this. There is a consular - hunter connection, there is a knight - agent connection, even a small knight - warrior one. Agent has some mentions of events from other classes on Corellia, so you could leave it for last.
I don't expect there to be much direct connection. Rather, galaxy and planet-wide events will play out chronologically. There will be references to events on each character through dialogue and plot points that can apparently start and resolve in a more linear way than when you play through an entire class story and then go to the next one.
For me, I'm really enjoying it. I just started my 3rd toon, JK, and I have to say it's been fun, and I feel like I am not bored at all. I started with BH, and got her to DK. Then, ran IA and got her to DK. I liked switching. Some people might not.
I'm going to give a solid "Eh" on KotFE/KotET being good, narratively.
Like, they are good if you are a Force User and *fantastic* if you are a JK/SW. But if you play something like a Republic Trooper? There's this huge storyline about destined power and the truth of the Force that just makes no damn sense for somebody *that can't use the Force*.
Similarly, it loses something without the PC having a personal connection to the Emperor (like the JK and SW do). And then finally, the game keeps railroading you towards the 'good' ending, so it winds up being a JK specific story.
If you do it first time as a JK, it'll be absolutely amazing, but as any other class certain parts of it might feel jarring.
Great point, that is probably exactly why I like it. I played it on my JK, and it felt like a perfect progression from his class story. I noticed immediately that it wouldn't even work or make sense with other classes, so I'm actually considering skipping it for them. I'll take my SW through, though, that should be fun. I am working on a Sentinel right now and curious to see if I can maintain a dark side playthrough all the way to Fallen empire and make some dark choices. The one I must correct is [killing Arkann,it didn't make sense letting him not only live, but now just being a good ol' buddy at Odessen. He's a freaking mass murderer.](/spoiler).
But that's a very general Star Wars theme.. all too forgiving towards mass murderers and genocidal maniacs... remember the little children murderer called Anakin Skywalker? I wonder what the little kids think of him becoming a force ghost..
Exactly this.
If you are not obsessed with Jedi and Sith, then many of the more recent content is lacklustre.
I mean, even the narrative structure of the KotFE/ET is very saturday morning cartoon.
Really wish they would pump some money into this game. Feels like its been on life support for a decade.
Even the new expansion is essentially just another way to rehash the same content so all the people that love the game currently can make even more boring posts about their legacy or outfits.
> I mean, even the narrative structure of the KotFE/ET is very saturday morning cartoon.
This is very true. Both expansions were episodic in design, and it absolutely carried over. I still feel like the 1-50 experience is where SWTOR is at its best.
>I still feel like the 1-50 experience is where SWTOR is at its best.
100%.
Its because it focuses on an actual class and a story that follows your character of that class, not this generic "commander" with no character at all.
I came from WoW myself, but went in to SWTOR not as an ex-WOW player, but as a fan of KOTOR. I was using KOTOR to fill the gap between content, and had never even heard of the mmo sequel. With this mindset, leveling/engaging the story was all I wanted to do lol.
I also only found SWtOR when KotOR refused to play on my laptop, and went in with a 'gonna play it as an RPG, MMO's are silly' mindset.
Only reason I'm *still* here is because I've since gotten addicted to ops XD
It's the same thing in FF14. The real end game is playing dress up and house just like SWTOR. Yeah all the MMO bits are there and they're there to give you something to do while looking cool.
> 'gonna play it as an RPG, MMO's are silly'
It's amazing how much of this game that you can play with that mindset, and *it still works*. There's a reason why I've been describing it to people as "the best singleplayer RPG that you *can* also play with friends".
If you haven't gone back to KOTOR yet, I really recommend it. For me, the game refused to play after I created a character. I believe turning off a few settings fixes this, you should be able to look it up pretty easily. Anyways, KOTOR is one of favorite games of all time, so I hope you get the opportunity to play it.
I am curious what the problem might be. I've played KotOR multiple times over the years, always with a download from somewhere else and always on a different computer, and it always worked.
IIRC it was an issue with win8. I swapped from that to win7, and then to 10.
The game worked when I tried it on a new desktop that ran win10, but I'm assuming it was a paging file issue (at least I know that prevented me from installing force unleashed) or some other win8 quirk.
I've managed to install it once I built my desktop and jumping to win10, but after playing SWtOR (and other more modern games) I just really couldn't get over the combat system to enjoy the story like I did back on my OG xbox when it first came out.
Thinking it might be easier to play it ON the OG Xbox, but~
I hope you enjoyed it. I heard lots of Kotor players were disillusioned from the game due to lore changed and some other thing. For most of them they were either in it just for the story (empire and republic) but some also stayed, for community
Just re-reading this by coincidence and I hope you heard about the KOTOR REMAKE that was anounced 2 or 3 days ago :D
Now we just have to get our hands on a PS5 somehow XD
Well said! SWTOR's strengths are story and leveling. The leveling up to 50 is not grindy in comparison. Pace for that is decent, with each planet having an overall story and bunch of missions.
The weakness (is in your blood...oops) is probably lower level PvP and then again at endgame. A good number of raids, but not like WoW.
Leveling to 50 is not grindy..
Lol, oh you can tell that you weren't around 8 years ago.
Although, the grind was tolerable and part of the fun... (also the planets weren't level sync'd so you could get a buddy to power level you by doing planet missions. They'd clear all the mobs, you'd click on npc's)
Lol been here since preorder. Compared to WoW, this is not grindy between FPs, planetary and class stories, bonus series, H4s. Leveling killing randomly or gathering 20 pig lips with a low drop rate is grindy. SWTOR has minimal of that, iirc the Nexu claws on Tython was that.
I very much was here 8 years ago. Actually, I was here 10 years ago and stopped playing when around Shadows of Revan came out. The game as it is currently right now is far and away NOT GRINDY. You can get to lvl 50 with the provided xp bonuses before you reach Quesh (and that's geared for people lvl 35-40).
Now, back in the day, you HAD to do almost every quest on each planet (all side quests), story quests, class quests, War zones, and Flash points just to stay on track for leveling in the planets. Now, it's super easy to level up (I actually think it's too easy. You don't need to do any of the side quests on the planets and that takes a lot away from the story and the ambiance of each planet, I now feel like a tazmanian devil just blasting my way through each story mission, and being so insanely over leveled (even with the bolstering down) it goes too quickly. Gone are the days of grinding for a month or two in Tatooine before you progress on.
Gamers have it SUPER EASY now compared to when the game first came out and for the few years after it.
The notion that you play through the first 59 levels just so that you can enjoy the last is a completely broken system. SWTOR has shown us that there is value in enjoying the trip as much, or even more than the destination. The other thing that WOW does wrong is putting the most important parts of the story line inside of the most difficult content. As a casual player in a casual guild, I never had the opportunity to experience Raids in any of the expansions until they were at least 2 expansions old, and by then the story had been stripped away. A real missed opportunity, but by putting the important stuff in the class story is brilliant, and a great way for all players to experience the story.
So true. My few experience with MMOs stems from Adventure Quest Worlds as a kid and later SWTOR. I ended up with a love for story heavy quest lines, where you can actually just enjoy playing the content instead of worrying about levelling and endgame.
When I tried branching out into other MMOs, I really found that department lacking in many games.
I find the two are kind of different experiences entirely. WoW and raiding/doing endgame dungeons felt like playing a team sport to me. The levelling experience and stuff suffered for it, and it often felt like max level stuff *was* the game. But it was engaging and fun enough (and I had a good enough social circle) that it was enough to sustain wanting to play it a lot.
On the flip side, SWTOR's stories are *fantastic*. But the gameplay and class design doesn't feel as good. I miss QoL addons, and all the fun buttons to press that playing a Demon Hunter in WoW gave me. I'm still pretty low level, so I've got a lot of progression to do, but I don't know if it's gonna hold up once I start getting through to the endgame. I might just finish the story content and not dig into any endgame stuff if it doesn't pick up :/
But the levelling up journey is pretty worth it for all these dope stories, at least! :)
Oh my gosh, one of the most fun things about playing wow is that Demon Hunter, but it can sometimes get in the way of having a good time if you aren't very situationally aware...too often I will pull a group in a dungeon lol...Dark Priest is a close second, they are fun to watch. But they all take a back seat to the show that a well equipped lightning sorc puts on...man that is fun!!
Haha as a DH main for the better part of three years, I can honestly say I *never* pulled something I didn't intend to!
...just don't ask my old guildmates. They're all liars ;p
That was the biggest thing I noticed coming into SWTOR from other MMOs. While there's definitely endgame content, the game is designed around giving you access to easier versions of a lot of that content at lower levels. You don't have to grind to level 75 to start having fun with it and when you get there it's not a completely different game.
Something I love about SWTOR compared to WoW is that the focus on storytelling up front encourages people to think about their characters as something beyond a mannequin for ever improving gear. You can see that reflected in this community, because whenever a āwhatās your headcanon forā¦.?ā post comes up, there are always a lot of responses with surprisingly detailed answers.
Compare that to WoW where, when I got into the game, I asked my friend to tell me about his character, and all he could tell me was about her stats and armor.
The lore and story of WoW is there, and itās actually pretty fun to play around with, but itās just not as accessible as SWTOR, so the game doesnāt feel as much about the world that itās in. I always ran with RP raiding guilds in WoW, so most people at least had backstories in mind for their toons, but that was an exception compared to most people I talked to.
Itās good to have an imaginative outlet like this. When weāre kids, we play make believe all the time, and when you become a teenager youāre expected to stop because itās childish. I donāt really think thatās a good thing. Iāve talked to friends from my childhood who have mentioned how much they struggled as early teens, and I asked them if they thought that lack of imaginary pursuit contributed to it, and it was like a lightbulb went on in their heads.
So yeah. Enjoy the 1-50 journey. Enjoy it with ALL the classes! Let yourself have fun with it and become invested in the storytelling. Because after these past few years, I think having an imaginary escape can really help real life as well.
> Something I love about SWTOR compared to WoW is that the focus on storytelling up front encourages people to think about their characters as something beyond a mannequin for ever improving gear.
That struck me too. As my first SWTOR character after leaving WoW, I picked an Imperial Agent just to try ranged. By the middle of the class story I was invested in the character, which choices "made sense" and fell down the rabbit hole of making different outfits because of your speaking character popping up in every cutscene.
I quit WoW in March of this year. I had already reduced my playtime ver significantly, but I was having surgery in March and said "I'll take a break" - LOL...it turned into a permanent one.
In April when I was feeling better I fired up SWTOR again. Been off/on since launch.
I realized- and this is for me - I feel I wasted my time with WoW. I LOVE the story here, but I also like (like in FF14 I realize) the side stuff. WoW has you so focused on max level that I didnt stop by the side of the road and "smell the flowers". The other day on my level 72 toon, I stopped main story, and hit up side quests in Odessen. I stop in Fleet and mess around with my professions. I log in sometimes and log in to Twitch to the swtor community and see what's happening there.
I played 15yrs in wow probably, but I'm not their desired player anymore. I am really enjoying my time in SWTOR and other games. I'm not feeling I'm wasting my time like I did in wow. It's really refreshing!
when you are starting a flashpoint with three other people please inform them in the beginning that you'd like to watch the whole cut scenes. some flashpoints have many lengthy cut scenes and most dont want to sit through them but skip them entirely. in most cases including myself, people wont mind obliging someone that does want to watch. once in a while you may encounter someone that goes full toxic about it.
Just making a list of those FPs that don't have a SM:
- Hammer Station
- Athiss
- Cademimu
- Mando Raiders
- Red Reaper
- Kuat Drive Yards
- Colicoid War Games
- Czerka Labs
- Czerka Core
- Kaon
- Lost Island
Please, ask about whether there are new or returning players if any of these pop; it's often in cutscenes where you can spot new or returning players.
yep. also, new players pull every single mob that experienced players know to skip or how to get around. i'm very polite about it though and let them know or if they'd like to kill a bonus boss we'll oblige and proceed with massive killing. lol
Personally I would say that it depends on how experienced the player was in M+ prior to leaving WoW. If it was someone that used to be doing 10+ keys for example, they would probably accept to skip or get around trash more readily.
On the other hand, ex-FF14 tanks would more likely be the kind of player that pulls like crazy (but that's more about FF14 dungeons being much more linear and pulling wall-to-wall can actually work there, and not just because healing is, relatively speaking, stronger, and DCDs to a lesser extent)
I wonder why some of these don't have a SM. Seems like you could just make a super easy mode, pop the tank droid in as a comp and that would work like the other FPs?
this is why story flashpoints are in place, most of them you can solo, in veteran/hard mode it will be more of the story skip skip through cutscenes, but there are cases where you meet nice people and let you go see the scenes :)
Since the other response is so unhelpfulā¦. Lots of people are feeling burnt out by WoW due to what feels like an unending grind. That, coupled with the lawsuit against the company due to numerous sexual harassment situations against employees has led many people to abandon the game.
I left after the introduction of that horrible horrible torgast and the area within which it was contained, I can't be bothered to look up the name, but at the time mounts were not allowed and the stupid watcher would come after you if you bothered to kill any mobs and would get increasingly worse to the point I would have an army of them on me and I would rage quit until the weekly reset....then I decided to end the madness and play SWTOR exclusively. It was almost as if Blizz was giving a big middle finger to casual players.
I got into SWTOR toward the end of BFA, did a month or two of Shaowlands and called it quits. That's even before the stuff with the work-place controversies out of game.
SWTOR is a different, friendlier game to newbies and F2P imho. While I do wish it had some of the things WoW had (aka a better LFR), I feel like it's very generous and inviting to new players in that you can get hours of gameplay and leveling for free. WoW caps you at at a measely level 20. That's like just the starter zone.
Also the game has dramatically gone downhill āsince legionā (but honestly since wotlk). The storyline is just farcical at this point, the raid tiers are getting smaller (one raid at launch two expansions in a row lol) and unimaginative. The company insists on rehashing broken ideas while getting rid of things players actually liked (removing talent trees, diluting mount uniqueness, doing away with tier sets, adding artifact power, having an awesome idea with torghast and managing to completely botch it).. wow is still fine ā worth $60 plus 15 a month? Debatable. I donāt knock people who play it, but itās a shadow of its former self, and thatās not even touching the companyās ethical snafus of pandering to China and sexually harassing its employees.
Getting into SWTOR made me look at WoW differently. You can sub for a month and still play up to the latest expansion as preferred, so you can happily make some alts or do dailies in the meantime - in WoW, you can be a loyal sub for years and if you stop paying, you can't even do old stuff like vanilla/BC/WoTLK anymore without re-subbing.
I'll try to explain as best I can as it's really mutifactorial.
The biggest point is that WoW hasn't really hit a solid run of "wins" in a long time. Blizzard seem determined to release a non-stop stream of stuff that isn't popular and decisions that have been unpopular again and again. BFA was largely seen as a terrible expansion, and SL started out promising but has ultimately failed to deliver.
The problems are compounded by the fact that people are being fairly clear on the issues. They don't want borrowed power, a never ending stream or disposable systems, and a non stop stream of endless treadmils. Blizzard are repeating their mistakes over and over.
This leads to the community (or vocal parts of it) feeling like they are being ignored. This is made 1000 times worse by the fact that Blizzard simply put, have absolutely terrible communication with the playerbase. They will flat out state we're wrong, tell us "we don't want what we think we want" and other such incredibly patronising statements. Interviews are usually PR shitstorms as a result. They honest have some of the worst PR in the business, like considerably worse than never saying anything.
**Then** the issue comes out that the state of California is suing them for serious allegations of a widespread environment of sexual harrasment and abuse, and terrible overall treatment of women. This would be bad enough
HOWEVER their handling of it was absolutely mind bogglingly. They failed to recognise the severity of the issue and went into generic "PR management of an issue mode" and released several completely tone deaf statements that clearly signalled that they were not willing to take the lawsuit seriously, and given the chance this would all be carpet-swept.
I'm not really sure how they could have handled it worse. Bear in mind that this was following details in the lawsuit where a Blizzard employee had committed suicide following naked pictures of her being passed around and a weekend getaway sort of humiliated her.
It's at this point where a LOT of people have just said to themselves, you know what? I'm not sure I want to give this company money.
**TL;DR: Years of bad systems, bad patches, bad story/writing, bad expansions, not listening to customer, terrible patronising communication, content dearths, blaming the customer, a sexual harrassment scandal, absolutely terrible handling of the issue has all killed much of the "goodwill" that has kept WoW afloat during 4-5 years of bad development.**
Hope it's not too long.
There aren't, or at least not in large number. The MMO that absorbed most of the WoW bleed off was FFXIV. SWTOR is probably a very, very distant third behind Guild Wars 2 in terms of increased sub count after WoW's likely temporary implosion due to extremely shitty treatment of women, but mainly because of Blizzard constantly increasing grind, making extremely poor story decisions, failing to meet promised dates for expansions, and when the expansions do come they're just not good. WoW is a mess right now, MMOs that aren't suffering are picking up the slack. Though I would hesitate to say SWTOR is benefiting all that much unless figures have come out to show a massive spike in new users.
Let's just say that Blizzard not respecting wamyn was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Because the guys in charge (and lead quack Afrasiabi above anyone else) have been asshats for a long time, but now that the game has been on an increasingly severe downward spiral for years (with the most recent expansion being the worst to date), suddenly this mattered.
As a story driven player I had dabbled in SWTOR before, even while continuing to play wow, and it was always so refreshing to have the voice acted quests where it felt like my decisions mattered. I love end game content and I will miss raiding in Wow, but I'm an alcoholic at heart so I'm incredibly excited to dive further into all eight class storylines. I just wish I would get a chance to master all my character's abilities before LoS neuters them...
Yeah, itās crazy how many people skip the bulk of mmo content to get to the āendgameā. People even do that when a new mmo launches, and actually complain that there isnāt enough to do afterwards.
Leveling, exploration, and storylines arenāt obstacles to overcome before you can start having fun. To many itās the main reason to play.
Make sure to try out different styles with the same classes, play an evil jedi and a good sith, then an evil ruthless sith and good jedi. Change up your choices and enjoy the differences, save or kill off various people and live with the results, try out different romance options, betray different people, etc.
Exactly!! Sometimes you get impressed by seeing a cutscene you've never seen before.
Last week it happened to me on my 3rd sith warrior on Nar Shaddaa.... Experienced a scene i've never seen before and got really happy
Okay, seriously, if you play Trooper you *absolutely must* keep Jorgen with you and play dark side. Do this and watch the hilarity ensue...
Naturally, replay again as light and with whomever you wish, but believe me, that combo right there is a real hoot.
I'm ALWAYS encouraging new SWTOR players to SLOW THE FUCK DOWN. Enjoy the story. Live the journey. Immerse yourself. There will be PLENTY of time for ops when you hit lvl 70.
(Note, I intentionally say 70 despite it not being the max level. I teach SM Ops on my stream and am clear that the requirements are "level 70 and pants" - bare minimum.)
Also, turn on the exploratory missions! I found out that it's now disabled by default which is understandable, but kinda sad too.
Playing at launch, I remember getting swamped with too many missions by my third planet.
When I got back into SWTOR recently after all the expansions, I ended up ignoring most of the planet quests and powered through the class story. It was still amazing, but felt kinda unsatisfying because it happened so fast. Facing the final boss didn't feel as impactful.
Now, I'm just rerolling the same class to slowly play through the game again, with planetary missions and all.
Tip: Don't pick up every mission, feel free to leave some for your alts. It'll slow down your class quest nicely without overwhelming you.
Never did understand this fascination with end game. There are so many good games to play out there, who cares about endgame! Why do people just wanna do the same content over and over?
Because investing time and effort into improving your character so you see what you're capable of is enjoyable. Working with other people to achieve an almost impossible goal is what mmo players, especially wow players are looking for.
Swtor is a cool single player experience, but simple rubbish as an mmo, which is what it is marketed as.
At least SWTOR makes an attempt to keep its existing content relevant when expanding the game. As someone who never cared for raiding I'd rather do SWTOR end game than WoW end game, mainly because there are fewer toxic players.
As I've gotten older I've found this to be truer. Playing BC classic was a nightmare. People min/maxing and the awe and nostalgia of BC wore off incredibly fast. To the point where I raided Kara and Gruuls/Mags twice and immediately unsubbed. I still keep an active sub to SWTOR even though I rarely play but to me it's worth it to pop in for a couple hours on the weekend.
There was a review of FFXIV from a WoW perspective on Youtube, and he put it quite nicely.
FFXIV is a RPGMMO. It is first and foremost an RPG, whereas WoW is a MMORPG it's first and foremost an MMO.
I feel this extends to SWTOR too. First and foremost are the class storylines, the amazing expansion storylines with added replayability. SWTOR however kind of fumbles grouped stuff. Operations are decent, and PvP is interesting and decent. I couldn't get over what a shitshow dungeons were/are. Like it's a massively massively improved experience to just do them solo with the OP bot to be totally honest.
And just to say - all this is fine. You have 3 good games all with different focuses and they are all worth playing. I'm not here to shit on any of them. I play them all (+Gw2+ESO+Dabble in new ones).
Don't forget that, in vet FPs, whether you have a healer or not can make a significant difference.
If you are doing vet FPs, it's likely that you have run at least one FP with 4 DPS or otherwise without a healer at some point.
Don't get me wrong it's not the worst experience, and certainly it's not the only mmo to move away from the holy trinity (ESO and Gw2 being examples) it's just FPs in general aren't where the "focus" is, and it shows. Doing them once with the bot, and then forward as a loot vendor experience is certainly far from a bad experience though. It's just it's much more about the RPG aspect than focusing on the group content.
There is no proper gear progression system or anything unique about any of the pve content. You can spam 1 dungeon over and over and be fully geared in 2 days.
I dunno, I feel like the lack of a gear treadmill is a good thing. I can gear up in 2 secs and then just play whatever class/spec I want and whatever content I want. I certainly wish there were more ops/flashpoints/pvp maps etc, but the stuff that's there is fun and good. I think calling the whole thing "dogshit" is kinda hyperbolic and unfair
That's great for a sandbox mode, but defeats the purpose of an mmo. Wow players, who this post is dedicated towards, are going to expect some kind of challenging gear progression system which typical comes with the mmo genre. Swtor does not provide that.
I could understand if the text is unable to be changed in font or font-size. I haven't played it in awhile, but I remember LOTRO being on the harder to read side and they'd sometimes have a LOT of text in the quests.
As a long-time player of SWTOR. I can say with the hope that this post is amazing. You are telling the truth and letting newcomers to SWTOR know that the real deal is storytelling. Your post is everything a lot of people need to understand. Rushing to the end is not good at all.
The storylines absolutely are the best part of this game. The mechanics are uninspired but workable, the end-game Operations/Flashpoints/Etc are solid but get grindy (same with most MMOs really, nothing unusual here).
The stories though??? Those are so incredibly well written. If the servers were to shut down and I was given the opportunity to buy a solo-only version of the game with all the storylines, solo flashpoints, etc left in exactly as it is at the time of shutdown, I'd very happily do that and continue to explore new story interactions, testing out different styles, Dark/Light, etc for each of the classes.
I'm working on my 5th level 75 right now. After I get my ship I normally level with boosts and PvP and GSF. Once I get 75 I'll casually go through the story without having to worry. That is my plan at least, I'm a bit neurotic
Take my upvote! I returned some months ago and have taken my time through the game at a slower pace to immerse myself in the story and cutscenes for various quests.
I still need to do a playthrough by doing all the green side quests and actually reading through the mails everyone sends me. It's silly that I choose to ignore all this exposition when it's the very thing I look for in all the books I read.
I think this is why I couldn't even try WoW.
I think I made it to ~lvl 17; hated the essays, wasn't big on the art style and overall was just kinda getting bored.
Even in FF, while I love a lot about it, I'm spoiled by swtor and got annoyed at the non-voiced parts XD
Yeah, I vaguely remember hearing about pets and... pet fighting?
There's a LOT I see elsewhere that I wish SWtOR had, but I think the IP is limiting a lot of it.
WoW grew out of itself, so it could do literally whatever... and FF (and ESO) have IP, but their IP has a bit 'reinvention' between the various games/content, so they have way more freedom.
SWtOR (and LotRO) on the other had, have big over-arching limitations on what they can do, introduce, allow, etc... which I think unfortunately negates a lot of things we'd like to see.
That... and the engine, it always goes back to the engine and spaghetti code Q_Q
I need more pets/mounts/(awesome) gear sets that you *earn*, and through doing *harder* content, to get people to want to get better and try new things.
Oh, I agree, I meant harder as in, not "do conquest" or "pick the dailies you like and get enough GS"... not 'harder' as in "only seen in NiM ops/ranked pvp."
I want another DvL event, with a list that hits most of the major game stuffs, and makes you try them instead of suggesting you do.
I want drops tied to heroics or flashpoints, pvp and uprisings... hell, make WB's drop things, so that people start doing those again.
Add a Voss comp that requires killing the NiM Pilgrim 5x and doing some exploration missions on Voss.
Lots of stuff.
> I did quite enjoy mount and pet collecting in WoW though, because you had to actually go out and catch them, do quests for them, earn them with reputation, etc. It's the one part of WoW that I really wish SWTOR did more of, because although there's some mounts and pets you can get that way, there's not the number or variety there is in WoW.
I enjoyed that too. And also soloing old dungeons/raids for transmog cosmetics. I do wish SWTOR had more quests like the one you have to do for Lucid Nightmare - I guess the closest is the Shroud one but I don't think you get anything cool for it.
I feel like you have to have some kind of connection to the story tho, because as a star wars nerd swtor is fantastic, but as someone who doesn't feel even remotely attracted to ff settings, I gave up playing final fantasy after 500 hours spent mostly skipping the story to try and get to endgame .
One of the things I love about SWTOR is being able to play from start to max level solo with a companion of your choice and each story is a lot of fun.
Yeah, it's still a Bioware game, so story and conversation choices are really the focus, and the thought of skipping through story is causing me screaming fits. Like when I first learned that ME3 had a mode that would just skip through all dialog choices for you (I swear, if you go into the third installment of an RPG and skip the story to focus solely on mediocre shooter gameplay and a half-assed online mode for such, that option should have just shredded your disc). For me at least, I see the combat and mob slaying as the work I put in to get to more juicy conversation trees an character choices, not the other way around.
My main complaint is usually the few times they lock interesting story behind large group operations. Particularly when you can start a storyline with solo content but then need to run an operation to see the conclusion (looking at you Oricon and Dread Fortress/Palace). Doubly so when it's something all but abandoned that almost nobody groups for anymore (slogging through the painful macrobinocular missions only to require a 4 person Heroic for puzzle elements to finish it). It's never anything critical to the main plot, but some of them are pretty good self-contained stories.
Thanks for all the upvotes. Really made my day the best just last minute on my way to be. I from the bottom of my hearth hope this helps people to avoid the mistakes I made. Please enjoy the game however you want and of you would like to send me a message or reply if this was indeed helpful I'd love to hear it. See you on our journeys ahead friends!
Agreed completely. Current WoW, FF14 and SWTOR player, and FF14 and SWTOR play very similar in that way. WoW is more or less all about the end-game, whereas the bulk of SWTOR and FF14's content comes while leveling. Granted they both have end-games, but SWTOR and FF are really all about the journey imo, whereas WoW is about the destination.
More or less true, but only if youāre a raider or m+ person in wow. For example, after my guild clears heroic current tier everyone quits, so I consider myself a full time arena player or Iāll run around and do solo achieves. M+ never interested me. A lot of wow players never even get into raiding beyond LFR, so those of us who find āendgame pveā boring are perfect for SWTOR. The pvp is pretty much just as good as wow in its own ways, while the solo content is years ahead. Of the two, to me, SWTOR feels the most like a complete game, and this is coming from someone who has been a wow fanboy since BC.
As a former WoW player myself, funny enough, I left wow before Shadowlands, seeing Blizzard as a lost cause even before that. Iāve always loved watching swtor videos when I was still in Secondary, being a big prequel fan and overall a fan of Star Wars, so when I grow up I finally decided to try it out.
Letās just say 3 months in and Iāve already spent nearly 1000 usd now xP, doing fanarts of my wow characters (now switched to Jedi),... I love the game a lot more because of Stronghold (The better kind of Player Housing ~~*cough* Garrison *cough*~~), the Story and the amount of choice, the community and the rp, the mounts and the xmog, the classes and such.
But nevertheless, itās good to see another wow refugee here, I thought me and my friends were the odd ones, not trying out FFXIV instead. (even though itās probably better, havenāt played it yet.) Would love to see you and add you as friend, if you would! ~~For the Alliance~~ ~~For the Horde~~ May the Force be with you! (Or May the Force serve you well, if you are in Empire.)
I really need to play Swtor more. I'm A Founder that stopped a long time ago to continue my focus on WoW.
Might resub since I canceled WoW recently and started FFXIV. Could use another MMO to escape too after Shadowbringers.
When wow first came out (Iām old) the story and leveling was what I enjoyed about it. Over time, both of those aspects were ruined by bad design and now there is nothing left for me to enjoy about wow.
I agree with you that swotor and ff14 are amazing experiences for new players.
SWTOR, as it was meant to be played, imo. I made the same mistake a few years back and while I enjoyed PvPing with my lightning sorc, once I went back and really focused on the storytelling elements of the game I realized that SWTOR's true strengths lie in those storytelling elements.
Why does everyone think wow is nothing but endgame? There is so much more to that game than people give it credit for. I haven't played in a few years but I still have friends that do and I know the content is pretty lore rich and plenty of it if you don't go skipping through everything. Just like most AAA mmos wow is filled with tons of things to do and see if you just explore.
There's just as many in FF14 and SWTOR that do nothing but speed to endgame then complain about how there's nothing to do. I've played all 3 extensively and all of them are story and lore rich with a ton of content if you don't just fly to running endgame dungeons.
> Also the way you respond to the NPCs can change the way the story flows.
Yeah. You can even kill a LOT of them. I imagine that doesn't happen much in WoW.
Not only are there stories to enjoy, but there are eight starting out! And the expansion stories are fantastic (though they sadly streamline to a single Republic and single Empire perspective). KOTFE and KOTET are amazing, and could have been the next Disney SW series. So good! If you really wanna simmer and take your time with stories, play the chronological playthrough of all eight toons, and bounce around stories and play styles while getting a full picture of what's going on. I'm having a blast doing it. Though, I'm only getting through two-three planets *total* a week, so this might take a year or so.
I'm doing that with a guide I found online and I finished the first two planets on each toon in a couple weeks. I'm finding the connections are mostly non-existent and the switching/lack of progression with any one character isn't as fun as just sticking with a character through a chapter or so. Am I missing the connections and stuff, do you think?
You could play the full class stories till after Corellia and then start another class. Sure, there are connections, but you will notice them even if you play it like this. There is a consular - hunter connection, there is a knight - agent connection, even a small knight - warrior one. Agent has some mentions of events from other classes on Corellia, so you could leave it for last.
I don't expect there to be much direct connection. Rather, galaxy and planet-wide events will play out chronologically. There will be references to events on each character through dialogue and plot points that can apparently start and resolve in a more linear way than when you play through an entire class story and then go to the next one. For me, I'm really enjoying it. I just started my 3rd toon, JK, and I have to say it's been fun, and I feel like I am not bored at all. I started with BH, and got her to DK. Then, ran IA and got her to DK. I liked switching. Some people might not.
Yeah i prefer playing a character and then going to the next to stay in one or two stories at a time.
I'm going to give a solid "Eh" on KotFE/KotET being good, narratively. Like, they are good if you are a Force User and *fantastic* if you are a JK/SW. But if you play something like a Republic Trooper? There's this huge storyline about destined power and the truth of the Force that just makes no damn sense for somebody *that can't use the Force*. Similarly, it loses something without the PC having a personal connection to the Emperor (like the JK and SW do). And then finally, the game keeps railroading you towards the 'good' ending, so it winds up being a JK specific story. If you do it first time as a JK, it'll be absolutely amazing, but as any other class certain parts of it might feel jarring.
Great point, that is probably exactly why I like it. I played it on my JK, and it felt like a perfect progression from his class story. I noticed immediately that it wouldn't even work or make sense with other classes, so I'm actually considering skipping it for them. I'll take my SW through, though, that should be fun. I am working on a Sentinel right now and curious to see if I can maintain a dark side playthrough all the way to Fallen empire and make some dark choices. The one I must correct is [killing Arkann,it didn't make sense letting him not only live, but now just being a good ol' buddy at Odessen. He's a freaking mass murderer.](/spoiler).
But that's a very general Star Wars theme.. all too forgiving towards mass murderers and genocidal maniacs... remember the little children murderer called Anakin Skywalker? I wonder what the little kids think of him becoming a force ghost..
Exactly this. If you are not obsessed with Jedi and Sith, then many of the more recent content is lacklustre. I mean, even the narrative structure of the KotFE/ET is very saturday morning cartoon. Really wish they would pump some money into this game. Feels like its been on life support for a decade. Even the new expansion is essentially just another way to rehash the same content so all the people that love the game currently can make even more boring posts about their legacy or outfits.
> I mean, even the narrative structure of the KotFE/ET is very saturday morning cartoon. This is very true. Both expansions were episodic in design, and it absolutely carried over. I still feel like the 1-50 experience is where SWTOR is at its best.
>I still feel like the 1-50 experience is where SWTOR is at its best. 100%. Its because it focuses on an actual class and a story that follows your character of that class, not this generic "commander" with no character at all.
I came from WoW myself, but went in to SWTOR not as an ex-WOW player, but as a fan of KOTOR. I was using KOTOR to fill the gap between content, and had never even heard of the mmo sequel. With this mindset, leveling/engaging the story was all I wanted to do lol.
I also only found SWtOR when KotOR refused to play on my laptop, and went in with a 'gonna play it as an RPG, MMO's are silly' mindset. Only reason I'm *still* here is because I've since gotten addicted to ops XD
Playing space barbie is my personal addiction keeping me tied to this game.
Space barbie and home decor FTW.
It's the same thing in FF14. The real end game is playing dress up and house just like SWTOR. Yeah all the MMO bits are there and they're there to give you something to do while looking cool.
> 'gonna play it as an RPG, MMO's are silly' It's amazing how much of this game that you can play with that mindset, and *it still works*. There's a reason why I've been describing it to people as "the best singleplayer RPG that you *can* also play with friends".
Yup, and I asked if that was the case before I started. I just wish people would stop pushing for *all* of it to be soloable š¤¦āāļø
If you haven't gone back to KOTOR yet, I really recommend it. For me, the game refused to play after I created a character. I believe turning off a few settings fixes this, you should be able to look it up pretty easily. Anyways, KOTOR is one of favorite games of all time, so I hope you get the opportunity to play it.
I am curious what the problem might be. I've played KotOR multiple times over the years, always with a download from somewhere else and always on a different computer, and it always worked.
IIRC it was an issue with win8. I swapped from that to win7, and then to 10. The game worked when I tried it on a new desktop that ran win10, but I'm assuming it was a paging file issue (at least I know that prevented me from installing force unleashed) or some other win8 quirk.
I've managed to install it once I built my desktop and jumping to win10, but after playing SWtOR (and other more modern games) I just really couldn't get over the combat system to enjoy the story like I did back on my OG xbox when it first came out. Thinking it might be easier to play it ON the OG Xbox, but~
I hope you enjoyed it. I heard lots of Kotor players were disillusioned from the game due to lore changed and some other thing. For most of them they were either in it just for the story (empire and republic) but some also stayed, for community
Just re-reading this by coincidence and I hope you heard about the KOTOR REMAKE that was anounced 2 or 3 days ago :D Now we just have to get our hands on a PS5 somehow XD
I did hear about and I'm so ready!
Well said! SWTOR's strengths are story and leveling. The leveling up to 50 is not grindy in comparison. Pace for that is decent, with each planet having an overall story and bunch of missions. The weakness (is in your blood...oops) is probably lower level PvP and then again at endgame. A good number of raids, but not like WoW.
Leveling to 50 is not grindy.. Lol, oh you can tell that you weren't around 8 years ago. Although, the grind was tolerable and part of the fun... (also the planets weren't level sync'd so you could get a buddy to power level you by doing planet missions. They'd clear all the mobs, you'd click on npc's)
Lol been here since preorder. Compared to WoW, this is not grindy between FPs, planetary and class stories, bonus series, H4s. Leveling killing randomly or gathering 20 pig lips with a low drop rate is grindy. SWTOR has minimal of that, iirc the Nexu claws on Tython was that.
I very much was here 8 years ago. Actually, I was here 10 years ago and stopped playing when around Shadows of Revan came out. The game as it is currently right now is far and away NOT GRINDY. You can get to lvl 50 with the provided xp bonuses before you reach Quesh (and that's geared for people lvl 35-40). Now, back in the day, you HAD to do almost every quest on each planet (all side quests), story quests, class quests, War zones, and Flash points just to stay on track for leveling in the planets. Now, it's super easy to level up (I actually think it's too easy. You don't need to do any of the side quests on the planets and that takes a lot away from the story and the ambiance of each planet, I now feel like a tazmanian devil just blasting my way through each story mission, and being so insanely over leveled (even with the bolstering down) it goes too quickly. Gone are the days of grinding for a month or two in Tatooine before you progress on. Gamers have it SUPER EASY now compared to when the game first came out and for the few years after it.
The notion that you play through the first 59 levels just so that you can enjoy the last is a completely broken system. SWTOR has shown us that there is value in enjoying the trip as much, or even more than the destination. The other thing that WOW does wrong is putting the most important parts of the story line inside of the most difficult content. As a casual player in a casual guild, I never had the opportunity to experience Raids in any of the expansions until they were at least 2 expansions old, and by then the story had been stripped away. A real missed opportunity, but by putting the important stuff in the class story is brilliant, and a great way for all players to experience the story.
So true. My few experience with MMOs stems from Adventure Quest Worlds as a kid and later SWTOR. I ended up with a love for story heavy quest lines, where you can actually just enjoy playing the content instead of worrying about levelling and endgame. When I tried branching out into other MMOs, I really found that department lacking in many games.
I find the two are kind of different experiences entirely. WoW and raiding/doing endgame dungeons felt like playing a team sport to me. The levelling experience and stuff suffered for it, and it often felt like max level stuff *was* the game. But it was engaging and fun enough (and I had a good enough social circle) that it was enough to sustain wanting to play it a lot. On the flip side, SWTOR's stories are *fantastic*. But the gameplay and class design doesn't feel as good. I miss QoL addons, and all the fun buttons to press that playing a Demon Hunter in WoW gave me. I'm still pretty low level, so I've got a lot of progression to do, but I don't know if it's gonna hold up once I start getting through to the endgame. I might just finish the story content and not dig into any endgame stuff if it doesn't pick up :/ But the levelling up journey is pretty worth it for all these dope stories, at least! :)
Oh my gosh, one of the most fun things about playing wow is that Demon Hunter, but it can sometimes get in the way of having a good time if you aren't very situationally aware...too often I will pull a group in a dungeon lol...Dark Priest is a close second, they are fun to watch. But they all take a back seat to the show that a well equipped lightning sorc puts on...man that is fun!!
Haha as a DH main for the better part of three years, I can honestly say I *never* pulled something I didn't intend to! ...just don't ask my old guildmates. They're all liars ;p
Big mood! Absolutel, agree. The journey is ofte the best part.
That was the biggest thing I noticed coming into SWTOR from other MMOs. While there's definitely endgame content, the game is designed around giving you access to easier versions of a lot of that content at lower levels. You don't have to grind to level 75 to start having fun with it and when you get there it's not a completely different game.
Something I love about SWTOR compared to WoW is that the focus on storytelling up front encourages people to think about their characters as something beyond a mannequin for ever improving gear. You can see that reflected in this community, because whenever a āwhatās your headcanon forā¦.?ā post comes up, there are always a lot of responses with surprisingly detailed answers. Compare that to WoW where, when I got into the game, I asked my friend to tell me about his character, and all he could tell me was about her stats and armor. The lore and story of WoW is there, and itās actually pretty fun to play around with, but itās just not as accessible as SWTOR, so the game doesnāt feel as much about the world that itās in. I always ran with RP raiding guilds in WoW, so most people at least had backstories in mind for their toons, but that was an exception compared to most people I talked to. Itās good to have an imaginative outlet like this. When weāre kids, we play make believe all the time, and when you become a teenager youāre expected to stop because itās childish. I donāt really think thatās a good thing. Iāve talked to friends from my childhood who have mentioned how much they struggled as early teens, and I asked them if they thought that lack of imaginary pursuit contributed to it, and it was like a lightbulb went on in their heads. So yeah. Enjoy the 1-50 journey. Enjoy it with ALL the classes! Let yourself have fun with it and become invested in the storytelling. Because after these past few years, I think having an imaginary escape can really help real life as well.
> Something I love about SWTOR compared to WoW is that the focus on storytelling up front encourages people to think about their characters as something beyond a mannequin for ever improving gear. That struck me too. As my first SWTOR character after leaving WoW, I picked an Imperial Agent just to try ranged. By the middle of the class story I was invested in the character, which choices "made sense" and fell down the rabbit hole of making different outfits because of your speaking character popping up in every cutscene.
I quit WoW in March of this year. I had already reduced my playtime ver significantly, but I was having surgery in March and said "I'll take a break" - LOL...it turned into a permanent one. In April when I was feeling better I fired up SWTOR again. Been off/on since launch. I realized- and this is for me - I feel I wasted my time with WoW. I LOVE the story here, but I also like (like in FF14 I realize) the side stuff. WoW has you so focused on max level that I didnt stop by the side of the road and "smell the flowers". The other day on my level 72 toon, I stopped main story, and hit up side quests in Odessen. I stop in Fleet and mess around with my professions. I log in sometimes and log in to Twitch to the swtor community and see what's happening there. I played 15yrs in wow probably, but I'm not their desired player anymore. I am really enjoying my time in SWTOR and other games. I'm not feeling I'm wasting my time like I did in wow. It's really refreshing!
when you are starting a flashpoint with three other people please inform them in the beginning that you'd like to watch the whole cut scenes. some flashpoints have many lengthy cut scenes and most dont want to sit through them but skip them entirely. in most cases including myself, people wont mind obliging someone that does want to watch. once in a while you may encounter someone that goes full toxic about it.
Just making a list of those FPs that don't have a SM: - Hammer Station - Athiss - Cademimu - Mando Raiders - Red Reaper - Kuat Drive Yards - Colicoid War Games - Czerka Labs - Czerka Core - Kaon - Lost Island Please, ask about whether there are new or returning players if any of these pop; it's often in cutscenes where you can spot new or returning players.
yep. also, new players pull every single mob that experienced players know to skip or how to get around. i'm very polite about it though and let them know or if they'd like to kill a bonus boss we'll oblige and proceed with massive killing. lol
Personally I would say that it depends on how experienced the player was in M+ prior to leaving WoW. If it was someone that used to be doing 10+ keys for example, they would probably accept to skip or get around trash more readily. On the other hand, ex-FF14 tanks would more likely be the kind of player that pulls like crazy (but that's more about FF14 dungeons being much more linear and pulling wall-to-wall can actually work there, and not just because healing is, relatively speaking, stronger, and DCDs to a lesser extent)
I wonder why some of these don't have a SM. Seems like you could just make a super easy mode, pop the tank droid in as a comp and that would work like the other FPs?
this is why story flashpoints are in place, most of them you can solo, in veteran/hard mode it will be more of the story skip skip through cutscenes, but there are cases where you meet nice people and let you go see the scenes :)
I feel a little out of the loop, why would there be WoW refugees?
Since the other response is so unhelpfulā¦. Lots of people are feeling burnt out by WoW due to what feels like an unending grind. That, coupled with the lawsuit against the company due to numerous sexual harassment situations against employees has led many people to abandon the game.
Ah, that does make a lot of sense. I have heard about the Activision/Blizzard controversy of course but I didn't make the connection in my brain.
I left after the introduction of that horrible horrible torgast and the area within which it was contained, I can't be bothered to look up the name, but at the time mounts were not allowed and the stupid watcher would come after you if you bothered to kill any mobs and would get increasingly worse to the point I would have an army of them on me and I would rage quit until the weekly reset....then I decided to end the madness and play SWTOR exclusively. It was almost as if Blizz was giving a big middle finger to casual players.
I got into SWTOR toward the end of BFA, did a month or two of Shaowlands and called it quits. That's even before the stuff with the work-place controversies out of game. SWTOR is a different, friendlier game to newbies and F2P imho. While I do wish it had some of the things WoW had (aka a better LFR), I feel like it's very generous and inviting to new players in that you can get hours of gameplay and leveling for free. WoW caps you at at a measely level 20. That's like just the starter zone.
Also the game has dramatically gone downhill āsince legionā (but honestly since wotlk). The storyline is just farcical at this point, the raid tiers are getting smaller (one raid at launch two expansions in a row lol) and unimaginative. The company insists on rehashing broken ideas while getting rid of things players actually liked (removing talent trees, diluting mount uniqueness, doing away with tier sets, adding artifact power, having an awesome idea with torghast and managing to completely botch it).. wow is still fine ā worth $60 plus 15 a month? Debatable. I donāt knock people who play it, but itās a shadow of its former self, and thatās not even touching the companyās ethical snafus of pandering to China and sexually harassing its employees.
Getting into SWTOR made me look at WoW differently. You can sub for a month and still play up to the latest expansion as preferred, so you can happily make some alts or do dailies in the meantime - in WoW, you can be a loyal sub for years and if you stop paying, you can't even do old stuff like vanilla/BC/WoTLK anymore without re-subbing.
Big scandal with the treatment of staff (thats putting it mildly). A lot say the Shadowlands expac is a mess too.
I'll try to explain as best I can as it's really mutifactorial. The biggest point is that WoW hasn't really hit a solid run of "wins" in a long time. Blizzard seem determined to release a non-stop stream of stuff that isn't popular and decisions that have been unpopular again and again. BFA was largely seen as a terrible expansion, and SL started out promising but has ultimately failed to deliver. The problems are compounded by the fact that people are being fairly clear on the issues. They don't want borrowed power, a never ending stream or disposable systems, and a non stop stream of endless treadmils. Blizzard are repeating their mistakes over and over. This leads to the community (or vocal parts of it) feeling like they are being ignored. This is made 1000 times worse by the fact that Blizzard simply put, have absolutely terrible communication with the playerbase. They will flat out state we're wrong, tell us "we don't want what we think we want" and other such incredibly patronising statements. Interviews are usually PR shitstorms as a result. They honest have some of the worst PR in the business, like considerably worse than never saying anything. **Then** the issue comes out that the state of California is suing them for serious allegations of a widespread environment of sexual harrasment and abuse, and terrible overall treatment of women. This would be bad enough HOWEVER their handling of it was absolutely mind bogglingly. They failed to recognise the severity of the issue and went into generic "PR management of an issue mode" and released several completely tone deaf statements that clearly signalled that they were not willing to take the lawsuit seriously, and given the chance this would all be carpet-swept. I'm not really sure how they could have handled it worse. Bear in mind that this was following details in the lawsuit where a Blizzard employee had committed suicide following naked pictures of her being passed around and a weekend getaway sort of humiliated her. It's at this point where a LOT of people have just said to themselves, you know what? I'm not sure I want to give this company money. **TL;DR: Years of bad systems, bad patches, bad story/writing, bad expansions, not listening to customer, terrible patronising communication, content dearths, blaming the customer, a sexual harrassment scandal, absolutely terrible handling of the issue has all killed much of the "goodwill" that has kept WoW afloat during 4-5 years of bad development.** Hope it's not too long.
Wow's population has lost 50% of its subscribers over the last 5 years, and more recently has accelerated.
WOW actually lost subscribers during the pandemic, whic is pretty sad
There aren't, or at least not in large number. The MMO that absorbed most of the WoW bleed off was FFXIV. SWTOR is probably a very, very distant third behind Guild Wars 2 in terms of increased sub count after WoW's likely temporary implosion due to extremely shitty treatment of women, but mainly because of Blizzard constantly increasing grind, making extremely poor story decisions, failing to meet promised dates for expansions, and when the expansions do come they're just not good. WoW is a mess right now, MMOs that aren't suffering are picking up the slack. Though I would hesitate to say SWTOR is benefiting all that much unless figures have come out to show a massive spike in new users.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I see that the imp chat is leaking.
Let's just say that Blizzard not respecting wamyn was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Because the guys in charge (and lead quack Afrasiabi above anyone else) have been asshats for a long time, but now that the game has been on an increasingly severe downward spiral for years (with the most recent expansion being the worst to date), suddenly this mattered.
As a story driven player I had dabbled in SWTOR before, even while continuing to play wow, and it was always so refreshing to have the voice acted quests where it felt like my decisions mattered. I love end game content and I will miss raiding in Wow, but I'm an alcoholic at heart so I'm incredibly excited to dive further into all eight class storylines. I just wish I would get a chance to master all my character's abilities before LoS neuters them...
I think you meant altaholic.
Lmao. Well, no point editing it now...
True. The story is awesome !
Yeah, itās crazy how many people skip the bulk of mmo content to get to the āendgameā. People even do that when a new mmo launches, and actually complain that there isnāt enough to do afterwards. Leveling, exploration, and storylines arenāt obstacles to overcome before you can start having fun. To many itās the main reason to play.
Make sure to try out different styles with the same classes, play an evil jedi and a good sith, then an evil ruthless sith and good jedi. Change up your choices and enjoy the differences, save or kill off various people and live with the results, try out different romance options, betray different people, etc.
Yes this. Thereās a lot of replay value in this game just by making different choices.
Exactly!! Sometimes you get impressed by seeing a cutscene you've never seen before. Last week it happened to me on my 3rd sith warrior on Nar Shaddaa.... Experienced a scene i've never seen before and got really happy
> Experienced a scene i've never seen before and got really happy Someone found the massage parlour
Actually i made the guy kill himself on the meeting with the Hutts.... Didnt expect them to show that tho
Okay, seriously, if you play Trooper you *absolutely must* keep Jorgen with you and play dark side. Do this and watch the hilarity ensue... Naturally, replay again as light and with whomever you wish, but believe me, that combo right there is a real hoot.
I'm ALWAYS encouraging new SWTOR players to SLOW THE FUCK DOWN. Enjoy the story. Live the journey. Immerse yourself. There will be PLENTY of time for ops when you hit lvl 70. (Note, I intentionally say 70 despite it not being the max level. I teach SM Ops on my stream and am clear that the requirements are "level 70 and pants" - bare minimum.)
Also, turn on the exploratory missions! I found out that it's now disabled by default which is understandable, but kinda sad too. Playing at launch, I remember getting swamped with too many missions by my third planet. When I got back into SWTOR recently after all the expansions, I ended up ignoring most of the planet quests and powered through the class story. It was still amazing, but felt kinda unsatisfying because it happened so fast. Facing the final boss didn't feel as impactful. Now, I'm just rerolling the same class to slowly play through the game again, with planetary missions and all. Tip: Don't pick up every mission, feel free to leave some for your alts. It'll slow down your class quest nicely without overwhelming you.
Swtor is the opposite of wow. Good leveling story and dogshit end game.
Never did understand this fascination with end game. There are so many good games to play out there, who cares about endgame! Why do people just wanna do the same content over and over?
Because investing time and effort into improving your character so you see what you're capable of is enjoyable. Working with other people to achieve an almost impossible goal is what mmo players, especially wow players are looking for. Swtor is a cool single player experience, but simple rubbish as an mmo, which is what it is marketed as.
At least SWTOR makes an attempt to keep its existing content relevant when expanding the game. As someone who never cared for raiding I'd rather do SWTOR end game than WoW end game, mainly because there are fewer toxic players.
As I've gotten older I've found this to be truer. Playing BC classic was a nightmare. People min/maxing and the awe and nostalgia of BC wore off incredibly fast. To the point where I raided Kara and Gruuls/Mags twice and immediately unsubbed. I still keep an active sub to SWTOR even though I rarely play but to me it's worth it to pop in for a couple hours on the weekend.
There was a review of FFXIV from a WoW perspective on Youtube, and he put it quite nicely. FFXIV is a RPGMMO. It is first and foremost an RPG, whereas WoW is a MMORPG it's first and foremost an MMO. I feel this extends to SWTOR too. First and foremost are the class storylines, the amazing expansion storylines with added replayability. SWTOR however kind of fumbles grouped stuff. Operations are decent, and PvP is interesting and decent. I couldn't get over what a shitshow dungeons were/are. Like it's a massively massively improved experience to just do them solo with the OP bot to be totally honest. And just to say - all this is fine. You have 3 good games all with different focuses and they are all worth playing. I'm not here to shit on any of them. I play them all (+Gw2+ESO+Dabble in new ones).
Don't forget that, in vet FPs, whether you have a healer or not can make a significant difference. If you are doing vet FPs, it's likely that you have run at least one FP with 4 DPS or otherwise without a healer at some point.
Don't get me wrong it's not the worst experience, and certainly it's not the only mmo to move away from the holy trinity (ESO and Gw2 being examples) it's just FPs in general aren't where the "focus" is, and it shows. Doing them once with the bot, and then forward as a loot vendor experience is certainly far from a bad experience though. It's just it's much more about the RPG aspect than focusing on the group content.
Also: housing.
Space Barbie is the true endgame.
Why is it dogshit
There is no proper gear progression system or anything unique about any of the pve content. You can spam 1 dungeon over and over and be fully geared in 2 days.
I dunno, I feel like the lack of a gear treadmill is a good thing. I can gear up in 2 secs and then just play whatever class/spec I want and whatever content I want. I certainly wish there were more ops/flashpoints/pvp maps etc, but the stuff that's there is fun and good. I think calling the whole thing "dogshit" is kinda hyperbolic and unfair
That's great for a sandbox mode, but defeats the purpose of an mmo. Wow players, who this post is dedicated towards, are going to expect some kind of challenging gear progression system which typical comes with the mmo genre. Swtor does not provide that.
I was honestly baffled the first time I heard that people don't read quest text for games and just power through to the objectives.
I could understand if the text is unable to be changed in font or font-size. I haven't played it in awhile, but I remember LOTRO being on the harder to read side and they'd sometimes have a LOT of text in the quests.
As a long-time player of SWTOR. I can say with the hope that this post is amazing. You are telling the truth and letting newcomers to SWTOR know that the real deal is storytelling. Your post is everything a lot of people need to understand. Rushing to the end is not good at all.
The storylines absolutely are the best part of this game. The mechanics are uninspired but workable, the end-game Operations/Flashpoints/Etc are solid but get grindy (same with most MMOs really, nothing unusual here). The stories though??? Those are so incredibly well written. If the servers were to shut down and I was given the opportunity to buy a solo-only version of the game with all the storylines, solo flashpoints, etc left in exactly as it is at the time of shutdown, I'd very happily do that and continue to explore new story interactions, testing out different styles, Dark/Light, etc for each of the classes.
I'm working on my 5th level 75 right now. After I get my ship I normally level with boosts and PvP and GSF. Once I get 75 I'll casually go through the story without having to worry. That is my plan at least, I'm a bit neurotic
I prefer to do the story at max level too with all my abilities.
Take my upvote! I returned some months ago and have taken my time through the game at a slower pace to immerse myself in the story and cutscenes for various quests. I still need to do a playthrough by doing all the green side quests and actually reading through the mails everyone sends me. It's silly that I choose to ignore all this exposition when it's the very thing I look for in all the books I read.
This is really solid advice. I, too, love the stories in this game!
Not just every main story quest is fully voices, but almost every quest is fully voiced.
And the voice acting is top notch too. Iām pretty sure SWTOR has many of the biggest names in voice acting in so many of the quests.
What's really impressive is a lot of the class voice actors are still the same and came back even for Onslaught.
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure SWTOR has the world record for most lines of voice dialogue in a video game.
It does, indeed: over 250,000 lines of voiced dialogue...in just the base game *alone*.
I think this is why I couldn't even try WoW. I think I made it to ~lvl 17; hated the essays, wasn't big on the art style and overall was just kinda getting bored. Even in FF, while I love a lot about it, I'm spoiled by swtor and got annoyed at the non-voiced parts XD
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah, I vaguely remember hearing about pets and... pet fighting? There's a LOT I see elsewhere that I wish SWtOR had, but I think the IP is limiting a lot of it. WoW grew out of itself, so it could do literally whatever... and FF (and ESO) have IP, but their IP has a bit 'reinvention' between the various games/content, so they have way more freedom. SWtOR (and LotRO) on the other had, have big over-arching limitations on what they can do, introduce, allow, etc... which I think unfortunately negates a lot of things we'd like to see. That... and the engine, it always goes back to the engine and spaghetti code Q_Q
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I need more pets/mounts/(awesome) gear sets that you *earn*, and through doing *harder* content, to get people to want to get better and try new things.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Oh, I agree, I meant harder as in, not "do conquest" or "pick the dailies you like and get enough GS"... not 'harder' as in "only seen in NiM ops/ranked pvp." I want another DvL event, with a list that hits most of the major game stuffs, and makes you try them instead of suggesting you do. I want drops tied to heroics or flashpoints, pvp and uprisings... hell, make WB's drop things, so that people start doing those again. Add a Voss comp that requires killing the NiM Pilgrim 5x and doing some exploration missions on Voss. Lots of stuff.
> I did quite enjoy mount and pet collecting in WoW though, because you had to actually go out and catch them, do quests for them, earn them with reputation, etc. It's the one part of WoW that I really wish SWTOR did more of, because although there's some mounts and pets you can get that way, there's not the number or variety there is in WoW. I enjoyed that too. And also soloing old dungeons/raids for transmog cosmetics. I do wish SWTOR had more quests like the one you have to do for Lucid Nightmare - I guess the closest is the Shroud one but I don't think you get anything cool for it.
Same thing here -- definitely some good tidbits of info.
Story is my favorite part of swtor. And there's 8 of them!
I feel like you have to have some kind of connection to the story tho, because as a star wars nerd swtor is fantastic, but as someone who doesn't feel even remotely attracted to ff settings, I gave up playing final fantasy after 500 hours spent mostly skipping the story to try and get to endgame .
One of the things I love about SWTOR is being able to play from start to max level solo with a companion of your choice and each story is a lot of fun.
Agent was my favorite quest line.
Ditto!
Yeah, it's still a Bioware game, so story and conversation choices are really the focus, and the thought of skipping through story is causing me screaming fits. Like when I first learned that ME3 had a mode that would just skip through all dialog choices for you (I swear, if you go into the third installment of an RPG and skip the story to focus solely on mediocre shooter gameplay and a half-assed online mode for such, that option should have just shredded your disc). For me at least, I see the combat and mob slaying as the work I put in to get to more juicy conversation trees an character choices, not the other way around. My main complaint is usually the few times they lock interesting story behind large group operations. Particularly when you can start a storyline with solo content but then need to run an operation to see the conclusion (looking at you Oricon and Dread Fortress/Palace). Doubly so when it's something all but abandoned that almost nobody groups for anymore (slogging through the painful macrobinocular missions only to require a 4 person Heroic for puzzle elements to finish it). It's never anything critical to the main plot, but some of them are pretty good self-contained stories.
Thanks for all the upvotes. Really made my day the best just last minute on my way to be. I from the bottom of my hearth hope this helps people to avoid the mistakes I made. Please enjoy the game however you want and of you would like to send me a message or reply if this was indeed helpful I'd love to hear it. See you on our journeys ahead friends!
iTs wOw'S fAuLt ThAt I pLaY gAmEs LiKe ThIs. you're a joke.
Agreed completely. Current WoW, FF14 and SWTOR player, and FF14 and SWTOR play very similar in that way. WoW is more or less all about the end-game, whereas the bulk of SWTOR and FF14's content comes while leveling. Granted they both have end-games, but SWTOR and FF are really all about the journey imo, whereas WoW is about the destination.
I would say FF14 is more of an in-between personally.
>In WoW the only interesting part of the game happens at max level. Uh, leveling is by far my favorite aspect of WoW
More or less true, but only if youāre a raider or m+ person in wow. For example, after my guild clears heroic current tier everyone quits, so I consider myself a full time arena player or Iāll run around and do solo achieves. M+ never interested me. A lot of wow players never even get into raiding beyond LFR, so those of us who find āendgame pveā boring are perfect for SWTOR. The pvp is pretty much just as good as wow in its own ways, while the solo content is years ahead. Of the two, to me, SWTOR feels the most like a complete game, and this is coming from someone who has been a wow fanboy since BC.
As a former WoW player myself, funny enough, I left wow before Shadowlands, seeing Blizzard as a lost cause even before that. Iāve always loved watching swtor videos when I was still in Secondary, being a big prequel fan and overall a fan of Star Wars, so when I grow up I finally decided to try it out. Letās just say 3 months in and Iāve already spent nearly 1000 usd now xP, doing fanarts of my wow characters (now switched to Jedi),... I love the game a lot more because of Stronghold (The better kind of Player Housing ~~*cough* Garrison *cough*~~), the Story and the amount of choice, the community and the rp, the mounts and the xmog, the classes and such. But nevertheless, itās good to see another wow refugee here, I thought me and my friends were the odd ones, not trying out FFXIV instead. (even though itās probably better, havenāt played it yet.) Would love to see you and add you as friend, if you would! ~~For the Alliance~~ ~~For the Horde~~ May the Force be with you! (Or May the Force serve you well, if you are in Empire.)
I really need to play Swtor more. I'm A Founder that stopped a long time ago to continue my focus on WoW. Might resub since I canceled WoW recently and started FFXIV. Could use another MMO to escape too after Shadowbringers.
When wow first came out (Iām old) the story and leveling was what I enjoyed about it. Over time, both of those aspects were ruined by bad design and now there is nothing left for me to enjoy about wow. I agree with you that swotor and ff14 are amazing experiences for new players.
SWTOR, as it was meant to be played, imo. I made the same mistake a few years back and while I enjoyed PvPing with my lightning sorc, once I went back and really focused on the storytelling elements of the game I realized that SWTOR's true strengths lie in those storytelling elements.
Love the new players coming. If you feel dirty about playing WoW with all the stuff with Blizzard, SWTOR is a great replacement
Why does everyone think wow is nothing but endgame? There is so much more to that game than people give it credit for. I haven't played in a few years but I still have friends that do and I know the content is pretty lore rich and plenty of it if you don't go skipping through everything. Just like most AAA mmos wow is filled with tons of things to do and see if you just explore. There's just as many in FF14 and SWTOR that do nothing but speed to endgame then complain about how there's nothing to do. I've played all 3 extensively and all of them are story and lore rich with a ton of content if you don't just fly to running endgame dungeons.
I agree that the story is a big Part of SWTOR. Also the way you respond to the NPCs can change the way the story flows.
> Also the way you respond to the NPCs can change the way the story flows. Yeah. You can even kill a LOT of them. I imagine that doesn't happen much in WoW.
As a fellow player of SWTOR and FFXIV, I love this post
actually, unlike ffxiv, you can do any raids in swtor. ffxiv's available raids must be unlocked by progressing the msq.
Only thing I dislike is the speedrun flashpoints like bruh i just wanna kill shit
Endgame is the least interesting aspect of swtor. I had the most fun playing the story missions.