SW:TOR Failed

..for me.


But looks like for the rest of the blogosphere, not for you.
Bioware did a great job and i'm just being a bit playful when saying it failed b/c it did a great job.


For an mmo that seemed to concentrate on personal stories with countless in-game conversations and dialogue trees, it certainly raised the bar for storytelling. Probably what I liked best about TOR, it made you care about what your character was about and who you travelled (companion) with. 

As a Sith Inquisitor, there were countless times I roleplayed a kind Sith/Revanite, when it probably would have been easier to be naturally cruel and dominant. My Imperial Agent (Sniper) was all about doing what he wanted, being a flirt and being a space ace. Unfortunately Kaliyo is bi-polar and very hard to read, resulting in frequently failed dialogues. Being impulsive (greedy yet merciful unless being pushed around) resulted in alot of darkside points.. but looking in the mirror scared me to be a bit nicer and appear less corrupted. My bounty hunter was all about honor, mercy and money which was normally about lightside points but I couldn't see my face b/c it was covered by (normally) nice-looking helmets. I showered my heal-bot Mako with countless technology-related gifts which gave me a quest for Nar Shaddaa.. which appeared to be bugged.


I enjoyed playing my Sith Assassin b/c he was able to stealth and will always remember the time I was in a Balmorran droid factory and smartly told my gf to wait while I jumped down a shaft to explore. The place was crawling with high level champion droids. Thanks to stealth, i carefully made my way back up without dying.


The Sniper got the farthest; Alderaan. It was incredibly tough to keep Kaliyo geared; maybe its b/c no one was healing her, but even fights against 3 weak creatures, she'd come away with only a quarter life left. She frequently died, especially when fighting bosses. The only character to play pvp, I could see it being a good class to play pvp when specced correctly, though difficult with the current way the cover system works.


The Powertech bounty hunter was fun, but could see it wouldn't be too good in pvp as it seemed like most abilites required me to be stationary which isn't usually a good idea. I loved Mako, always keeping me up.. kinda found her two speccs (healing or dps) a bit silly as neither gave too big a bonus. Probably the only companion that I associated with; she was loyal to her friends but also liked making a profit. Was specced to lower heat periodically which resulted in never overheating again; best specc ever.


Storyline isn't everything though; the same things that bothered be at the beginning, continued to the end without any attention/patching. PvP without tiers was kind of stupid imho; sure it allowed you to play with your friends ... unless they were already lvl 50. The rewards for pvp though good, didn't have a big enough effect; WAR had the ability to take keeps and storm your enemy's capital city sometimes restricting your own access. THAT was interesting. Isn't there supposed to be a war between Jedi and Sith? Sure, but only in instanced areas.. or if you consider Illum's zone control swapping 'pvp.' I think when I saw the youtube video of Jedi and Sith taking turns to be slaughtered to get zone control points, I lost all respect for pvp. Not to mention Huttball... which.. is just silly.


Other things that was too annoying for me for a triple A mmo was the stacking of items and companion follow distance. Seemingly small things, they are actually important to an mmo to me. How does the game not know to smartly put similar items into the same stack? And as I said before, the companions stood too close resulting on clicking on them instead of the corpse to loot. Of course it could be the opposite, like in Skyrim where you are attacking a creature and expect your companion to help when they are nowhere to be found. Or when you lose them completely and can't get them back, the follow distance for Skyrim was flawed as well. Bioware did good in some respects for follow distance but like Neverwinter Nights, I'd prefer to set the distance between close, medium or far. 


So thats it? Storyline-centric, stacking and follow distance breaks the game for me?
I never really intended on TOR to be my main interest; Guild Wars 2 was supposed to be it and I didn't even plan on trying TOR. TOR does a respectable job but 'respectable' doesn't carry everyone's interest forever. 


ps. Kudos for good looking non-human races (Chiss, Twi'lek) but I don't like the jumping puzzles for Holocrons