I’ve been slacking lately, and haven’t posted anything meaningful to my blog in a while. I’ve been a bit busy, but had been meaning to write about SWTOR for a few weeks. Fact is I haven’t been playing SWTOR in a few weeks and I keep getting emails from Bioware alerting me to Khem Val’s loneliness.
I also received an email from Bioware requesting I provide some input and observations regarding SWTOR, and thought it would make for an excellent means to highlight some of the areas I think they should focus on to improve SWTOR. And since I’m a blogger, I want to share those observations with my readers as well. Foremost let us all understand that SWTOR is a new game and the developers obviously have much to do. It’s not really realistic to compare a recently released game against a 7 year old WoW, yet there’s much of that going on. I won’t be one of those who do it, though the lack of many common elements we’re used to after playing WoW for so long do affect me obviously. I understand that it takes time to build up into a fuller game experience, and I’ve decided I’m going to play other games while I wait for some improvements. First among them should be a true Looking for Group (LFG) system. When I was playing I basically gave up on running Flash Points, and as my schedule doesn’t give me much time to raid and I’m in a small guild anyway, it essentially stranded me in the game.
Secondly, Bioware needs to address the tremendous disparity between the leveling experience and the post-level 50 experience. I knew going into it that SWTOR followed the WoW model with precision, meaning the intended game play at “end game” is raiding or PVPing. But the experience up to level 50 is so fantastic and the the experience after level 50 is so stark by comparison that it truly detracts from the game. In WoW no one cares about the leveling experience and rushes through it as fast as possible. But in SWTOR you actually PLAY the game, which is a all together different experience than in WoW. The lack of similar content at level 50 is a lot more disturbing than I would have thought it was when I started playing. Especially in that I don’t raid.
There are a lot of other issues, which I would label as more minor, that I believe Bioware should work on as well but will only mention in passing now. Like the UI which is uncustomizable at the moment. The lack of customization, and specifically the lack of access to data (damage meters, etc) is a real turn off. I found it utterly disconcerting that I couldn’t tell how I was doing in combat. I didn’t know if my rotations were right, whether my gear was right, or even whether others in my group were contributing meaningfully.
I’m sure that Bioware will come to realize these issues before too much longer, if they haven’t already. And will address them in time. But for now I’ve unsubbed and will return when they do.
