(Ok, yeah it was a year and 3 months -I know someone would have corrected me on that eventually, but you get the point... )
Amongst friends, this little MMORPG is called SWTOR.
It has been speculated that SWTOR was the most expensive MMO ever made and you can actually see why (the brand, the voice acting on EVERYTHING to name a few) but regardless it went free to play within the first year of its life.
The Saga Begins
The story takes place thousands of years before the events in the Star Wars films (which was a bit of a disappointment for myself personally because I really wanted to have Darth Vader as my companion! :P) The Republic and the Empire are at peace (kinda) after centuries long war but the whole galaxy is divided in two.
So you get the point, good versus evil - pretty much what Star Wars has always been about.
When you start the game, you get to choose your side (Dark Side for me all the way!) as well as your race and your job. There are 9 races and 4 classes to choose from (and all classes have 2 different choices to specialize in).
I chose to play a Sith Sorcerer (Oh what a surprise that I choose a class that can cast magic...well in this case USE THE FORCE). My boyfriend went for the Bounty Hunter.
I actually bought this game (Collector's Edition with all the geeky bits, like the Darth Malgus statue!!) already around this time last year.
Back then the game felt more like offline single player game rather than a MMO. There was hardly anyone ever in the fleet (an area where everyone supposedly gathered) and you were able to progress in the game on your own without any trouble.
The storyline was good and it kept me interested for a good month or two, but that is relatively short time for a MMO which is supposed to keep players paying for subsciptions for years.
So, few weeks ago I decided to dust off my security token and log on my character to see if it REALLY had gotten that bad that BioWare felt the need to end the subscriptions and let everyone and their mother come and swing a bit of lightsaber.
I logged on and I was really surprised to find the fleet full of people:
Gaining Levels
Just like in all RPGs you start as a level 1 noobie who doesn't know how to equip a weapon and basically gets oneshotted by the first monster that comes across your way (In my case, I was a slave dreaming of becoming a Sith Lord).
Soon enough however you are running from one quest to another, gaining some levels and learning new abilities and spells.
In SWTOR there is no such thing as "grinding for exp" - well I mean I guess you could do that, but the quests give you more than enough exp to level your character. In fact I found that if you do all the quests on your way, you will soon be "too high" for the storyline and you can just fly through them - even as a squishy sorcerer.
You can also gain exp by doing warzones. It's like a PVP (player vs. player) area where you have different tasks, like for example take over the turrets before the enemy does, or play spectator sport called Huttball where you need to co-ordinate your team to take the ball across the opponent line. Naturally you also kill other players while you do this... or in my case get killed and be the easy pray everyone goes after for extra points...
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| Huttball Arena |
Aaaand then there are the spacebattles which before used to give ****loads of exp but now hardly any, however they are still fun! (Not quite like the king of retro spaceshooters R-type, but you still feel pride at your mouse clicking skills when you finish a battle succesfully)
Ok, so it's safe to say I am quite enjoying playing SWTOR again, running around, doing missions for the storyline, however I am not 100% convinced if I will continue playing once I finish the storyline. The cap level at the moment is 50 and I am 47 - so I don't have that much to go.
ANYWAYS, moving on...
Free to Play
Like I said earlier, the game went free to play (In November 2012) but because I was a paying customer before I had something called "Preferred member" account, which meant that I still had access to some of the cool things, like sprint at level 15 and cargo bay when I finally got my own ship, two things I would not be able to play the game without.
However some other things weren't free to even the preferred members anymore, which made me pretty sad, afterall I had paid quite a bit for the game AND I had paid several months for subsciptions.
I soon noticed that everything that was even remotely handy or cool looking cost extra money. You had to pay extra to be able to hide your headgear (because lets face it, some of the headgear can be pretty damn ugly...) you had to pay extra to customize your crew members appearance, you had to pay extra to be able to sell more items in the markets etc... So after only one day of playing I decided to become a subscriber again (to a free to play game) because buying all these things on their own would have ended up costing a lot more than 1 month subscription.
Plus what's the point playing a MMO if you cant customize your gear to look awesome????
Shall I recommend this?
If you have never played SWTOR before, buy it from Amazon for £7.22 with free delivery. You would spend that money on beer or junk food anyway, so no harm done!
(UPDATE: I think you can actually download the game for free at: https://account.swtor.com/signup - So go get the beers after all!)
The game is fun for a while until you get bored doing the quests.
Protip: When you buy the game, remember to order a 2nd copy for your gamer friend and make them create a character with you!
The game is a lot more fun with someone else and quite frankly I probably wouldn't log on if I had to do all the quests on my own. Not because they are hard but because it's just simply more fun with someone else.
If you don't have any friends who play games (or who don't admit to play games because even though it is 2013 gaming in some societies is considered lame :P) then at least try to get into a guild and befriend the people who are already playing the game.
And by the way, the best reality check is to join a guild which is run by a 13 year old kid... I do feel old sometimes!
Regarding end game... I have no idea unfortunately. If I get there and decide to do more than one raid, I will let you know what I think about it. But there are so many games coming out and only so little time in a day (especially when I work as well!!) that it might be that once I become the new emperor I might let my Sith go rogue and rule the galaxy on her own.
Oh and my character's name by the way is Ig'Alima Ningirsu - anyone know where that name comes from?
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| My Boyfriends Bounty Hunter |
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| I might be alone with this, but I can imagine Meg popping out from that as a massive Sandworm.... |
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| My Ship!! |
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