I am a weak, weak man. I put up a valiant fight but in the end, the draw of SWTOR proved to be too much. Oh sure I struggled and put on a good show but you all knew I would cave. Every one of you was expecting this article and I know it. I could almost hear what you were thinking. “He’s gonna buy it. There is no way he can’t buy it.” Now that we both know I bought the damn thing, lets get on with the show shall we?
SWTOR – Installing the game
After pondering for about 30 minutes or so, I decided to buy the Digital Deluxe Edition of SWTOR. It comes with a few extra goodies, including a mount, so for me it was the obvious choice. The purchase was as expected and relatively pain free.
The download of the game is monstrous. Fully installed on my hard drive the game folder is just over 19Gb. I am positive the file size while download was somewhere in the 25Gb range and it took FOREVER. It almost felt like two complete downloads of the game after the patching process completed. Any “pre-game anticipation” I had was chewed up by the download.
Once downloaded and installed the game ran flawlessly. When I talked with Razor about the game, I mentioned that I wasn’t overly impressed with the graphics. That opinion changed once I realized that my graphics settings were on low. After bumping those up, the game looks great.
SWTOR – Game Play: Initial Thoughts
The game play is very intuitive. Just about everything you can think of is right where you would expect it. It is obvious that no one who is developing MMORPG type games is interested in re-inventing the wheel when it comes to the UI. With that said, the current lack of UI customization is almost painfully obvious here. Compared to a game like Rift where everything on the screen can be moved/customized, SWTOR falls far short.
Everything about SWTOR feels familiar. If you have anytime logged playing a decently popular MMORPG you will feel very comfortable with SWTOR. Other than the game being based in the Star Wars universe it will feel like most other MMORPGs.
I plan on continuing my look at Star Wars The Old Republic in a future posts in order to prevent this post from being too long. In future posts I will cover things such as questing, professions, dungeons and any other SWTOR goodness I can think of.
For now just let me end with this. There is something different about this game. It is hard to put into words because it is an experience. It is as simple as that. Playing this game is unlike any other MMORPG I have played previously. This is the first time I have REALLY enjoyed the experience of quest NPC interaction in a game. This is the first time I actually enjoyed nearly everything about low level play. The story line is fantastic and more importantly it is FUN!
Surprisingly enough I am in no rush to see max level. Unlike WoW and Rift, in SWTOR the game STARTS at level one, not max level. You read that correctly, the game is engaging at level 1. Not only is the game engaging at level 1 it is also FUN!
SWOTR may not be the perfect MMO but it is one hell of a good time!
