General impressions of SWTOR beta from a WoW veteran

Lisa Clark Beta, game testing, gameplay, review

One game tester posted today while the servers were down for maintenance about his impressions on the game so far. As a WoW veteran, he had some opinion about SWTOR so far. This is a great write-up on one person’s perspective from the game and what they have gotten out of it so far. Since so many people keep comparing SWTOR to WoW, it’s interesting to hear from WoW players who are getting to try their hand at SWTOR.

A snippet to start:

First of all, I’m a real sucker for animations. I think that, for MMOs in particular, the animations make or break a game. I have, for instance, played Rift and feel like the characters are stunted, wooden puppets without much range of motion. The attack animations in Rift (et al.) are boring and unimaginative to the point that, by level 10 you’re really hoping for something new and not getting it. In part I think this is one of the reasons why WoW was so successful, that their character animations had weight… gravitas if you will. They might not have been extremely realistic but they looked good, ran smoothly and didn’t rake your nerves even after hundreds of hours worth of gameplay.

Good points. The reviewer agrees that TOR is the same way. From what I have seen from SWTOR so far, I have to agree, and I have also been a longtime WoW player. The reviewer agrees that TOR is the same way. Then he talks about environments and gameplay.
As for the environments, some have complained about lack of free roaming and the size of the zones, something that this poster also addresses. He describes different zones and how big they are. From what I’ve seen so far, he’s right on target. They’re plenty big past the starting zones.
A word on the mod system (a beta complaint):
One of the big things that is being screamed about in the forums is the change to the “mod system” that had been in the previous build. Prior to the current build almost every piece of gear had “slots” (kind of like gem slots in WoW) and you could put various upgrades into those slots to improve the item. The mods were either crafted by the various professions or looted from mobs/chests or as quest rewards. The thing that people really liked was being able to find, say, a piece of gear you really liked the look of at level 10 or whatever, and being able to keep it and scale it with your level by replacing it with better (level dependent) mods.
The complaints that have spilled from the beta forums over into the general forums are basically snippets of info blown way out of proportion. The mod system was not taken away but rather needed some tweaking and adjusting before launch. A lot of people are also complaining about space combat not being exactly what they thought it would be but most of this is again, a lot of fuss over nothing.
The poster ends with some notes about warzones, PvP, voice acting, class specs, playstyle and the space combat. One of the best parts of the post is that he turned it into a Q&A, allowing people to ask him questions about certain things. Again, it’s only one person’s opinon but it’s a pretty good read and worth the time to check out. It also doesn’t contain any game spoilers; just basic impressions on the game testing and the game in general.

Lisa Clark

Lisa has been an avid gamer since she was old enough to hold her first controller and a game writer for more than a decade. A child of the Nintendo generation, she believes they just don’t make games like they used to but sometimes, they make them even better! While consoles will always be her first love, Lisa spends most of her gaming time on the PC these days- on MMOs and first-person shooters in particular.