Bloodarrow's Hunter Blog

This weekend I was fortunate enough to get into the SWOTOR beta test. Being a life long Star Wars fan, I decided this was one game I must try. I researched classes and races, and decided to go Jedi Knight. After playing the story line for 3 days, while waiting for patch 4.3 to drop, I decided I should write about my first impressions, as a WOW player.

Things I like better than WOW:

• Choose your own adventure dialog when interacting with quest givers.
• Each quest is a cut scene which includes the toon you created.
• Quests are a big part of the story line. Unlike the random (collect firewood, kill x type quests in WOW).
• Companions are cool and you are introduced to them through the story

Things I think WOW does better:

• Cool fancy quest delivery, while cool the first time through, will get old when attempting to re-roll an alt character (unless I choose something other than Jedi).
• Character movement feels stiff in SWOTOR. Lacks the speed and fluidness of WOW. This is also how targets and others players appear. Very choppy and unrealistic.
• Combat is laggy. Press an attach and there is a noticeable delay before your toon performs the attack. This surely will have an impact in later levels.
• Mobs are difficult to see. Most mobs in the Jedi starting area are too difficult to see, causing you to “run into” targets instead of stalking and killing them.
• The look of a WOW character looks cooler as you change equipment. I must have changed a ton of armor and weapons and hardly saw a difference to my character.
• Interface is easier on the eyes and more colorful. SWOTOR uses the typical neon blue from the movies for all of the do-hickies on the screen. Because it all looks the same, I found my self hunting and pecking too much for the information I wanted.
• Quest givers are difficult to find. WOW’s bright yellow “!” is fantastic. The “<>” like symbol is difficult to see. I simply ran around and if I saw a group of players with the [...] balloon over their heads I knew a quest giver was there.
• Many WOW quests have a bit of humor and integrated pop culture. While this doesn’t stick to the serious side of Warcraft, it provides fun little experiences that make questing fun.

So will SWOTOR take over as the MMORPG of choice with me? After spending a weekend with the game, I am very interested in the storyline. But no more than if I was reading the story instead of playing. The game play is unpolished and lags far behind World of Warcraft. I do not see SWOTOR as the WOW killer it was claimed. And with Patch 4.3 due out in a few short days, many WOW players will be back to take advantage of all the new features in the game.