Bioware’s entry into the MMORPG genre has actually made me hate myself a little, I only have myself to blame though. I knew that if I bought The Old Republic I would regret it. I knew that this was not the Star Wars game I was looking for, and had every intention of cancelling my pre-order. Unfortunately, a serious case of boredom coupled with that thing that killed the proverbial cat lowered my resolve. I plunked down the cash to pick up my pre-ordered copy anyway.

Graphics:

While the Hero Engine does have it’s detractors in the development community, I can’t toss all the guilt at the engine driving The Old Republic itself. Most of said guilt must be laid at the feet of Bioware who not only chose such an unstable engine in the first place, but then launched with performance issues they had known about since early beta and did nothing about. It seems that both Bioware and EA were so intent with having a smooth launch, and to their credit they succeeded for the most part, that many of these known issues got pushed to the back burner. Currently much of the player base is experiencing massive frame rate drops, especially those using ATI cards making many Warzones and populated areas unplayable.

The art style of The Old Republic is another issue entirely and is more of a personal preference than anything else. Why in gods name did Bioware decide to go with this cartoon like, ridiculous art style for the game and not try to achieve something similar to those amazing trailers we’ve all been drooling over for months? It makes no sense to me. Star Wars in all it’s various incarnations has always had a very realistic (well as realistic as a sci-fi fantasy IP can be, but you get what I’m saying), and gritty feel to it. The game opens with the aforementioned trailers making the player think he is about to experience something grand and visually striking, only to find that the reality is a crayola colored game that looks like it was designed for a child of six. I don’t know many six year old children who play MMORPGs, do you?

Gameplay:

Many of The Old Republics detractors are citing the fact that this feels much more like a single player or co-op game than an actual MMORPG, and they are right. The majority of my time in game has been spent alone, encountering very few other players along my storyline. The few players I did encounter would usually sprint past me without a wave, or stopping to chat as they were immersed in progressing through their own storylines. Since The Old Republic doesn’t really provide a reason for the community to interact with one another outside of Flashpoints and PVP, interaction between the games community seems pretty non-existent compared to other MMORPG’s.

This in itself might be the games Achilles’ Heel. Talk to anyone who has been playing MMO’s for more than five minutes and they will inevitably tell you that the reason they keep coming back and playing through the same content over and over is because of the people they are playing with. Whether as a part of a Raid, PvP, or PvE guild the majority of people who play MMORPG’s continue to do so because they have fallen in with a group of players that they truly enjoy interacting with. Unfortunately, The Old Republic does not make grouping with other players a priority, hence the few groups you do end up in feel very single serving. After the Flashpoint or Warzone ends, more than likely you will end up going your separate ways and never speak again. There is a nice feature which makes it easy to add group members to your friends list which I have taken advantage of a few times. My friends list and I rarely speak though, because as I stated before we’re all immersed in our own storyline.

Let’s be very clear about this, The Old Republic does not have any open world Player Vs. Player combat. Hell the game doesn’t have an open world, but that’s a different paragraph. While the game insists on letting you know when you are, and are not flagged for PvP, not once have I encountered any sort of spontaneous battles outside of a Warzone or that broken mess of a PvP zone Ilum.

Warzone’s consist of two teams battling it out in objective based arenas. I’ve never been a big fan of arena based PvP, preferring the spontaneity and drama of open world PvP. To Bioware’s credit the three arenas that The Old Republic launched with seem to be something I would enjoy, that is of course if they were working as intended. Bugs, class balance, pre-made groups of level 50 players, and lack of a bracket system is currently killing the PvP in The Old Republic. This is something that needs to addressed in the first major patch as most MMO’s live an die by two things, their high end raiding guilds, and the top PvP guilds. As these two groups of players go, usually so goes the community. Just ask the developers of Rift if you don’t believe me as they have seen 10 of their 25 top guilds leave for greener pastures due to gameplay issues that were not being addressed in a timely fashion.

Just for the record…Huttball is BALLS! Nuff said.

With every MMORPG, there will be players who power level to get to the end-game content. That’s where the phat lootz are and that’s what these players get off on. Once again Bioware has fallen short of the mark though as most of The Old Republics end-game content is riddled with bugs that prevent what is supposed to be the best part of an MMO from being enjoyable. Once again I can only assume that Bioware was so dead set on having a smooth launch that these issues got pushed. Maybe they thought there would be more time to patch before the elite players hit level 50 and discovered the giant dookie that Bioware had left there.

Randomly despawning bosses, broken loot drops, one shot kills, and non-completing quests are all issues that the max level community is dealing with at the moment without any word from Bioware on when they can expect a fix. Some classes like Bounty Hunter can not even finish their class quests due to a game breaking bugs that have been a known issue for awhile now.

I absolutely hate the fact that everyone in The Old Republic looks exactly the same, it kills me. I enjoy the idea of being a special little snowflake, and I’m sorry but The Old Republic’s limited selection of races, body types, character customization, and available gear just doesn’t allow for that. I did appreciate the open mod slots on various armor and clothing though. It was nice to actually find that instead of switching to new hideous looking gear with higher stats, I could just pull the mods from them and place them in gear that didn’t make me look like the Lord of the Dance. NPC’s suffer from the games limited customization options as well, especially the woman who 9 times out of 10 will default to the giant rack, phat ass body type.

Space combat is just as tacked on as most players originally thought with the player clicking his left and right mouse button while his ship flies a predetermined path through various space battles. While The Old Republic’s space combat missions provide a nice diversion if a player starts to get tired of running quests and a generous amount of XP as well, it is not something that I can imagine anyone will dedicate any real time to. It absolutely pales in comparison to what Star Wars Galaxies accomplished with Jump To Lightspeed.

Story:

The story of The Old Republic is one of the games only saving graces in my opinion. It’s Bioware! Telling stories in an interactive setting is their specialty, so no one should be surprised by this. Is it the best Star Wars story ever told, no. It is good though and makes the grind to level 50 feel less like an actual grind than any other MMORPG to date. The only real fault I found is in the pacing. Players are presented with an abundant amount of side quests while progressing through the main storyline which for the most part are pretty hit and miss. I spent much of my time traveling to complete these side quests, and progressing through the main storyline became an afterthought at points. The completionist in me drove me to doing as many as I could stand though, which unfortunately got me to a higher level than was called for in the next zone. This meant that I only earned about 5xp for every subsequent quest completed which was a total bummer and also needs to be addressed immediately.

While the story starts rather small in scope, it expands to a galaxy spanning epic fairly quickly. Players will visit iconic locations like Coruscant, Hoth, and Tatooine. Bioware has even included some Star Wars locales that we haven’t seen before like Nar Shaddaa, Korriban, and Alderaan. If The Old Republic fails, it will not be due to lack of content. In total the game currently has seventeen planets to visit, all with their own story lines, side quests, flashpoints, and random encounters for players to enjoy. Those of you who are expecting these planets to be fully realized are in for a bit of a disappointment. The Old Republic is not an open world game by any stretch of the imagination. Each planet consists of a large zone which the player will experience. These zones have instances that the player, or group of players can partake in, but there really isn’t any true exploration or discovery to be had in The Old Republic.

Scripted but surprise encounters with boss level NPC’s at various points in the game was a stroke of genius, and I wish that Bioware would have included more of these as they really brought me back to attention after logging long hours at the keyboard. They also provided the rare opportunities to interact with your companion characters, which for the life of me I can’t figure out why they are so under utilized. I swear that Kira is only there to provide random bits of sarcasm and look pretty in her Jedi Robes. Companions AI does perform well in combat though, and while the tactics they employ aren’t as deep and customizable as say Dragon Age: Origins. There is enough there to not make them a total pain in the ass like other games that shall not be named…cough SKYRIM cough.

The voice over work in The Old Republic is another high note as it is pretty top shelf. While I do have my issues with the game itself, I can not imagine going back to another text based MMORPG ever again. Adding voices to the characters you encounter in The Old Republic instantly adds a layer of depth and immersion that we have not seen in the MMO genre. It’s a great feature, one that I’m sure we’ll see become a standard in the genre in the next few years. Ever present is Bioware’s dialogue wheel which allows the player to interact with NPC’s through various dialogue choices. Responses take the form of the very familiar binary choice system of light and dark. Points are awarded depending on which path the players walk, and those points determine certain aspects of how the story transpires, and how the player is regarded by certain NPC’s. It’s nothing we haven’t seen in every other Bioware game ever made, and it works. What else can you say?

Replayability:

Despite all my complaints about the game, I did enjoy the main quest line and many of the side quests/flashpoints. The question is whether or not it was good enough to roll another toon and experience the same story from a different perspective. Throw the bugs, the framerate issues, the lack of community interaction, and all that other nonsense out for a moment. Bioware’s biggest hurdle with The Old Republic is to keep players subbed up and playing through the same zones, fighting the same NPC’s, experiencing the same end game content, all while re-rolling multiple times in the process. Fortunately it appears that Bioware is dedicated to adding fresh content to the game on a fairly regular basis which should negate the burnout that comes with playing an MMORPG for an extended length of time.

Getting Warzone’s, Raids, and Ilum fixed will also directly affect The Old Republics replayability and people’s decision on whether or not to resubscribe. But is The Old Republic good enough to warrant the subscription?

Conclusion:

Unfortunately no, at least not at the present time. Subscription based MMORPGs are a dying breed, with only a few being truly successful. The problem is that The Old Republic isn’t an MMO, it’s a single player game with multiplayer components tacked on. EvE Online is an MMORPG, Star Wars Galaxies was an MMORPG! This is MMO-light and does not draw me back in like those games did. Well not so much WoW but absolutely the other two. It’s harsh, but that’s how I feel when I play the game. While I enjoyed aspects of my time with the The Old Republic, there really was not enough there to warrant a monthly fee to continue playing. Especially with the aspects that I enjoy most in an MMORPG being so wildly broken and pointless right now.

If Bioware and Electronic Arts would have gone with a micro-trans free to play model and charged for expansions, I wouldn’t have cancelled my account this morning. Their decision to go subscription based seems a little short-sighted in today’s market, and smacks of over confidence in the power of the Star Wars IP. Finally, games of this nature are never truly finished (and no I will not be calling The Old Republic and MMO from this point forward). There is no final retail product, no perfect version of the game. The best way to describe the situation is fluid and ever changing. While I didn’t find The Old Republic enjoyable enough to subscribe after my free 30 days, I’m sure there is a metric shit ton of players who do. That also doesn’t mean that the game will not improve over time and someday be enjoyable enough to earn my subscription.