Not everyone who has tried SWTOR loves it. In fact, some people just don’t like it at all. Others point out some positives but their overall impressions are well… not that impressed. The latter would be the case of Lewis B. of Tap Repeatedly, who basically calls it a WoW clone.
What do you think? Is he on to something or just full of crap?
Lewis posts his impressions on the Tap Repeatedly site on Wednesday and while he had a couple of positives to add, he seemed mostly disappointed with the game. Let’s start by explaining that he played it at the Eurogamer Expo demo and his playtime was limited. He explains:
The first was that the booth was surprisingly small, with Alienware laptops setup in two circles just in front of the over 18’s area. Queues were predictably long and so the demo time was quite limited (around fifteen minutes).
Lucky for Lewis, he had a press pass that got him straight to the demo and he says he was able to play for a few times throughout the weekend. The review itself is pretty lengthy and not sectioned out very well to allow for easy reading. Here are some highlights:
The positive:
Characters aren’t only convincing, but are flawless in delivery and whilst the script may never be Oscar worthy, it is pitched at exactly the right level; not too long and completely entertaining.
The negative:
If there is one thing that lets these cutscenes down it is yet again in the animations, where characters express themselves clumsily or awkwardly which tends to shatter the illusion somewhat.
It seems he’s being pretty fair and then he cuts to the WoW-clone jargon:
“Undoubtedly the similarities between SWTOR and World of Warcraft are glaring. For anyone to tell you otherwise has no eyes.”
Ouch!
He adds:
Down to the smallest of details Bioware have shamelessly replicated all that World of Warcraft has to offer (whilst pinching a few bits from other games).
So just what is it that he thinks they have copied?
The user interface is the most prominent similarity and is identical to World of Warcrafts in almost every way but is a distractingly grotesque colour, in an awful neon blue.
These bugs aside, the game plays exactly the same as World of Warcraft or Rift or any number of replicas that have launched in the last five years.
Thirdly, quests are boring. Entirely boring. I don’t know about the rest of the MMOG community, but I am sick of kill and collect quests and unfortunately, SWTOR is full of them.
He goes on and on, offering many examples to back up his opinions and towards the end, he leaves us with:
What I cannot forgive, is the fact they have failed to recognise the fundamental flaws in the design (and wider genre) and have ploughed on with a game that plays more like a mod than an independent product. Shoe-horning class archtypes into Star Wars is agonisingly dumb whilst using a combat system the same as World of Warcrafts is even worse.
From my experiences with SWTOR, I beg to differ. There are some similarities to WoW, just as there will be some similarities in all MMORPGs, much the same as you will see similarities in first-person-shooters. I don’t, however, consider SWTOR to be a WoW clone. WoW also had similarities to EQ and other MMOs that came before it. It’s a shame that some people calling themselves “gamers” don’t seem to have any experiences with MMOs pre-WoW.
Anyway, check out his less-than-diplomatic review and let us know what you think. If you’ve tried SWTOR for yourself, we especially want to hear your thoughts.
