I had written a rough draft of my Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) beta impressions previously, but I ended up scrapping it a few days ago because I wasn’t happy with it. I went into too many details for a game that is still undergoing considerable change with each build.

Just Thursday, a new build was released with completely new end-game gear vendors that didn’t exist in its immediate predecessors. Furthermore, a new system called the “Legacy” system was implemented. As it is described, the system will allow you to share surnames and titles across multiple characters on the same server on your account. It will also provide some rewards that are shared across all of your characters. That’s a pretty vague description and people are still discovering just how it works.

But enough of the details of such new features. Let’s summarize various parts of the game and what I think about my overall beta experience.

What’s New

Storytelling and the Companion System

SWTOR brings a few new things to the MMO genre. Most prominently, it has solid storytelling with a high quality of production. Anyone who’s ever played a BioWare game will be familiar with the cinematic dialog system SWTOR brings to the table. Each quest is fully-voiced, well-written, superbly acted, and the characters are given unique animations to express their emotions and actions with more than adequacy. This alone makes SWTOR worth playing.

SWTOR’s stories play out in two separate categories. First, there are the class stories. Each base class comes with its own story, which begins the moment you roll a character and ends in its final levels. While you could technically complete the class story sooner, it would be nearly impossible to finish any earlier than level 48. This is because it is difficult to kill anything more than a few levels higher than your character.

There are eight class stories in total. However, because you can make light and dark choices in your conversations, the stories can have a different feel each time you play them through. This doesn’t mean the consequences for your actions will radically change. For the most part, being a nice guy means letting people off easy, while playing the dark side means giving no one a second chance. That said, making the opposing decisions each time through can change the dialog and overall feel of the story dramatically. Especially for your class quests.

The other category of storytelling is faction-based. Each planet and flashpoint—essentially a four-man dungeon—has a major narrative, and these are either Imperial or Republic in nature. So while two different Imperial players would see some of the same quests on a planet like Corellia, Imperial and Republic players would have completely different experiences. So if you want the highest amount of replay value, roll once as an Imperial and once as a member of the Republic.

It is also important to note the faction-based quests can be completed as a part of a group. In this case, players roll against each other to decide whose conversational choices are used. Don’t worry, however. If your friend picks the light side choice, and you pick the dark side, you won’t be penalized for his decision if he wins the roll. The system will still give you dark side points, even though the story progresses with the light side choice in mind.

Also playing into the story is the companion system. Along the way, you will come across characters who decide to join your band of merry (or evil) men. These companions can fight alongside you, albeit one at a time. They will also react to your actions, positively or negatively. For example, if you play a sith warrior, the first companion you acquire is a slave named Vette. Considering her recent past, she will look down on any support for subordination. Such decisions come with minimal risk, however, because most affection gains are larger in statistical number than affection losses. So a net gain is likely, unless your companion always disagrees with your decisions.

In any case, you can always give your companions gifts to make them feel better. This does cheapen the storytelling slightly when it involves them. A companion is unlikely to desert your character, even if your character’s ideals are the polar opposite of theirs. “Oh, you’ve killed swaths of innocent people? No worries! You gave me that awesome flat screen for Christmas! I forgive you!” It’s easy to exaggerate this flaw, however. It had a minimal effect on my overall enjoyment of the game’s storytelling.

Space Combat

Space combat isn’t something new to the genre. It’s been done before, in games like EVE Online and Star Wars Galaxies. But the style of space combat is completely different. In essence, it is a mini-game people can participate in to take a break from questing, running flashpoints or operations (raids), and PvP. A space combat mission plays like a stage from Star Fox. You’re put on a rail with limited movement around that rail. You do have to dodge things like asteroids, and you do have to destroy enemy ships and other objects using various abilities.

It’s not a very complicated system at all. Your friends can’t join you on your ship and man one of the blasters. It’s a solo game. And it’s nowhere near as complex as other Star Wars flight games like TIE Fighter or X-Wing. While some may yearn for space combat more along the lines of those titles, others will find it a nice distraction. And, honestly, if you look at it merely as a mini-game, having it is better than not. And it does have a lot of room for expansion in the future.

Personally, I’ve enjoyed the space combat in SWTOR. It’s a nice way to earn credits when you need a break from other parts of the game.

What’s Old

Aside from its emphasis on story and its inclusion of space combat, SWTOR is very much an MMO. Classes play out like they do in any other MMO, with talent trees and more abilities than you can reasonably hotkey. A myriad of stats will make optimizing your character’s gear an exercise in math, and balancing classes a nightmare for BioWare. The same-old targeting and ability-resolution functionality will make performing actions frustrating at times, especially when you accidentally target the wrong player or NPC. The holy trinity of class roles (healing, damage and tank) will create some of the same issues nearly all MMOs face. And some tasks are just plain grindy (I’m looking at you, holocrons).

That said, it does a few things better. Crafting and gathering, for example, isn’t an exercise in watching progress bars. Instead, you send your companions off to perform the tasks, while playing the game normally. Regardless, even though you don’t have to sit there and watch your character shuffle his or her hands around until the task is complete, it is just as simple as it is in most other MMOs. An item usually takes X amount of one material, Y amount of another, and Z of yet another. So while it’s not annoying, it’s not particularly compelling.

Gearing is difficult to assess. It has changed radically for each major build release since I started playing. Right now, various tasks reward you with exactly the same gear. The gear you can get from PvP is the same as the gear you can get from running operations. This coincides with BioWare’s comments on letting people play the game how they want to play without making them feel unrewarded. If it remains the way it is now, it will definitely upset the people who think people should acquire better rewards for what they view as harder tasks (no matter how arguable such a fact is). But, honestly, I have come to despise that attitude. For one, it makes guild in-fighting absolutely atrocious when people argue about who deserves an uber piece of gear more than another. And it also places too much emphasis on risk and reward, rather than having fun. But the gearing system could be completely different for release, so take this paragraph with a grain of salt. BioWare has been doing a lot of experimentation in recent builds to gauge player feedback.

PvP is a strange thing in SWTOR. Most of it focuses on warzones, which are 8v8 matches, each with their own style of play. These warzones can be amazingly fun, and I think their general design is a notch above WoW’s battlegrounds. But they are not perfect. The biggest issue I have is that the general PvP system is not very robust. First and foremost, there is no organized or competitive PvP whatsoever. There is no site to keep track of various statistics in a given season. There are no competitive ladders. And you cannot queue with a group larger than four people, meaning at least half of your team will always be random. This is disappointing. I don’t mind random solo or small group queues, but I’d also like some level of competition to be supported.

The weirdest thing about PvP is its scalability. Level 10 players can be placed in warzones with people at the cap. This is possible because lower level players get a buff called bolster. Bolster raises their stats to a level on par with people at the cap. However, this comes with issues. For one, if a player has quest rewards that exceed their level, this can make them have higher stats than others. It also doesn’t solve any sort of talent tree imbalance. Someone at level 50 will have spent 41 talents and have all of their class abilities, while someone at level 10 is going to have spent merely one talent point and won’t have some of the abilities you get at the higher levels. Personally, I don’t understand why they don’t create a separate bracket just for people who are at the cap. It’s nice that I can PvP with my friends when they are a low level, but the balancing issues are going to become annoying eventually if it remains unchanged.

End-game PvE is something I don’t think anyone can talk about in great detail, yet. None of the operations have been tested. And most beta testers haven’t bothered doing the end-game flashpoints. This is mainly because only a very small percentage has even reached the cap, but it is also because some people who have don’t want to spoil the game any more than they already have. I will say, however, I’m a little skeptical about the PvE end-game. With the holy trinity and the same statistical scheme most games use, I don’t think the encounters in operations will be any more exciting than they are in a game like WoW. However, the story presented in flashpoints is better than anything I’ve seen from dungeons in any other MMO to date. And that should apply to operations, as well. So I have a strong desire to do them at least a few times.

With that said, it seems to me like the PvE end-game is going to boil down to content—how much, how fast, and how good.

The leveling game is really where it’s at in SWTOR, right now. With the proposed Legacy system, a unique story for each base class, and completely different quests for each faction, altoholics should be more than pleased with the game. And since they will also have to do some work to fully gear each character at the cap, the replay value should be high for them. That should give BioWare some time to continue fleshing out the end-game without worrying too much about subscription rates.

It All Boils Down to Content and How You Play

Overall, it seems to me like BioWare wants to make SWTOR all about its story. Yes, it has PvP and PvE content at the end-game. But it’s left to be seen how good it is at release, and how good it will be a year from now. With a lot of the same game play mechanics used by most MMOs, I’m not confident the end-game can stand on its own once the story elements have lost their luster. But that won’t matter if BioWare can produce new content quickly and with the same quality as the rest of the game’s story. If BioWare can manage to do that, people will continue playing the game with each new patch and expansion. But that’s easier said than done, and no company producing an MMO has successfully produced content at an adequate rate and with a high degree of quality (in my experience).

In any case, the leveling content alone makes the game worth playing. Especially considering it should take roughly 80 hours for someone to play through all of the major story points with their first class, assuming they don’t skip any dialog. Subsequent characters may take less time, but for someone planning to level one of each and every base class, I estimate the game could take somewhere around 400 hours. For someone playing three hours each day, that could amount to 133 real days. Even factoring in a subscription fee, that’s an amazing value. And that doesn’t include any time spent maximizing crew skills and end-game gear, nor potentially time spent leveling any extra advanced classes.