The Old Republic vs. Final Fantasy XI (and XIV, WoW, Rift, etc.)

Over the past two weekends, I've been taking part in the Star Wars: The Old Republic beta... well, more of a stress test and advertising campaign than a beta really! The game is finished, polished and has virtually no bugs. The gameplay is smooth, absolutely no lag and plays well with all graphics options turned on (unlike some other soon-to-be-pay-to-play MMOs)

I figured that I'd give my own impressions, mainly comparing TOR to FFXI and other MMOs I've played. During the beta period, I pretty much gave almost every class a try to get a feel of the class mechanics and inital storylines. I played two classes to level 10+, when you can choose an advanced class: the Republic Trooper and the Sith Warrior. Unfortunately, screenshots were not working when I played the Trooper so all the shots below are from the Sith Warrior.

Initial Impressions
Star Wars themed World of Warcraft clone. There's no way to avoid that initial impression. After you go through the initial setup of choosing a side, class, race and the initial opening movie, you're dumped right into an instanced starting area with an initial quest to get you started. Like WoW, the graphics lean towards the cartoony side (think Clone Wars) instead of trying to be realistic. Just like WoW, there is an action bar at the bottom, minimap to one side, and the chat box is pretty small to one corner unlike the text box that goes across the screen in FFXI. It's a game clearly designed for the PC.

Probe Droid! Do not want!

Not that there's anything wrong with this approach. Lots of other MMOs also use the same formula... Aion, Rift and my initial impression of FFXIV was that it was similar.

Exping, Quests
Like WoW and Rift, exping is done mainly in the form of quests instead of grinding mobs. You can still grind mobs for exp, but you'll get a lot faster progress (1.5-5k exp per quest vs. 50-500 exp per mob). Like WoW, quest giving NPCs are obvious with triangular symbols above their heads. Similarly, finding the NPCs to turn in the quest, or your next objective is very simple, with the minimap showing where to go. (I think WoW requires an add-on for this functionality). Unlike WoW, instead of having to pick up tons of quests whenever you enter a new area, you'll get a much smaller set. The quest givers do not have "Kill 6 mobs of XXX type" as quests, but will be sending you to accomplish objectives like "Activate this tower at this location". Instead, you get automatic "bonus quests" which start automatically when you kill mobs in different areas, giving you a nice little bonus for killing things that you will be fighting anyway. It's kinda like the FOV system in FFXI, but fully automatic so that it's a minor part of gameplay instead of something that you're concentrating on doing.

Exp pacing is decent as well. If you just follow the storyline and do all the quests, you'll be on the way to finish a zone at an appropriate level without having to grind extra mobs. By the time you finish with your starter planet (zone), you'll be level 10 even if you don't go out to fight extra mobs. I approve of this form of gameplay as it takes away from the pure grinding that other MMOs are famous for. For FFXI players, think of it this way... if you just worked on your nation quests when you started, and did various convenient quests along the way, you would have progressed through the starter city zone, all the way through to Jeuno for your rank 5 quest without having to spend (RL) days grinding outside Selbina!

In WoW, quests generally consist of... click NPC, read the background text on why you're being asked to do the quest, read objectives and do the quest. The objectives tend to be similar... kill X beast, collect Y items, go to Z and pop a mob to fight. After doing the same types of quests in WoW in a few different cities, you'll soon realize that the text is really meaningless and you'll just click through quickly and go off to finish the quest objectives.

In TOR, instead of getting a screenful of text to read, quest givers are fully voiced with decent dialog. You also have to interact with the quest givers and make dialog choices, exactly like Mass Effect and Dragon Age (after all, this is a Bioware game). Your choices do have consequences as well, light side and dark side points (paragon & renegade in Mass Effect) and can affect what you do. In one of the Sith cutscenes, I could decide if I wanted to kill one of the other acolytes (and enter combat right there in the city) or let them go. Of course, this doesn't have any major effect on the world as a whole, but it does affect your own small story.

In the middle of quest. Objective updated

The voice acting is done very well. I think a good 1/3 of the game install was dedicated to movies, and about as much to voice acting! Of course, they hired professionals to do the voice acting, including Jennifer Hale who did the female Commander Shepard for Mass Effect. She's the female Republic Trooper.

Instancing is done very seamlessly. To enter an instance, all you have to do is walk through a green "force field". There is no transition, just walking from the common area into an instance (like WoW). Other people can help you in your class-specific instances as well, and the best part is that when you're helping someone else, you get to see their cutscene and dialog choices as a spectator. Especially interesting if you're helping someone who is playing a different class!

Group Play
I've joked that WoW is a MMOSPG, Massively Multiplayer Online Single Player Game... it just seems that way to me in the time I played it that the exping part of the game was mostly single player, going from place to place and finishing quests, and that the multiplayer portion would only come about when you hit level cap and could take part in raids.

TOR is somewhat similar... a good portion of the quests are designed so that you can tackle them alone without grouping with anyone. The class-specific quests which advance your plot can definitely be handled alone as long as you're at the appropriate level, though it's easier and fun if you partner up with someone. However, there are specific things that are designed for grouping and they are clearly marked. There are "Heroics", quests which have harder mobs which one person can't handle. They are clearly marked and have recommended group numbers, i.e. "Heroic +2". These are quests that are short, but give good rewards for the level.

The other group event is called "flashpoints", which would be equal to a raid in WoW. Instanced areas in which a number of different objectives have to be done. At first I thought that a flashpoint would be fast, go in, do some fights, get out, but they are much more involved. Flashpoints have multi-person dialog options where you and the other players can make choices on what to do, how to act. For example, in the "Black Talon" flashpoint, there is a point where we can choose whether to let the captain of the ship we are on live(light side), or kill him(dark side). Depending on which we choose, the fights that follow can be easier or harder. Each member of the group can make a choice and depending on who wins the dice roll, the flashpoint can go one way or the other.

Cutscene closeup. Bad timing on the screenshot, but you can see the dialog dice roll area on the lower left corner

This makes flashpoints quite a lot of fun in my opinion. It's not merely going in to kill stuff, but rather taking part in another storyline. The flashpoint I did took almost 2 hours to complete, so they are quite involved as well. (though, to be honest, we were also undermanned with only two people)

Overall... gameplay feels very similar to Mass Effect. Flashpoints feel like various missions that you get sent on, you get similar dialog choices with the dialog wheel, you have people around you as you charge into enemy strongholds(though this time they are real people) and there's even the ethics system.

Combat
Combat is fast paced and feels like a mix of WoW & Mass Effect, at least to me. The force users (Jedi & Sith) tend to be close combat where they run & jump into the midst of the action, while the blaster users (Trooper, Agent, Bounty Hunter, Smuggler) were more hang back and shoot from a distance like Mass Effect. All classes have a lot of abilities, crowd control and more.

Combat is also designed to make you feel powerful. After all, you are the heroes! Combat is almost never one-on-one, and taking on groups of enemies with ease is the norm. None of this pulling enemies carefully and being afraid that a 2nd 'easy prey" will link! You want to charge in and take everyone out!

Combat can get chaotic! And yes, I'm dual-wielding lightsabers!

There is no auto-attack mechanic, so combat feels a lot faster compared to FFXI. You're always choosing between different abilities, and the animations are fast, between 1-3 seconds in length so you have to make fast decisions. It feels slightly slower than WoW & Rift, but still a decent pace with reaction abilities as well as timed ones.

The penalty for death in TOR is minimal. If you die, you can wait to be revived by a medical droid right where you died, or go back to a nearby bind point. Death only damages your gear which you can get repaired easily. The wait for a medical droid starts off short, under 10 seconds, but rapidly increases if you die too frequently. This is a huge improvement over FFXI (exp loss, 5 minute weakness, or having to travel all the way out again), or even WoW (running back to your corpse).

One interesting thing is that I *believe* that Bioware has decided to instance some zones. When you play, there is a population counter in the upper left side of the screen. I never saw this exceed 200 even though I know there were a ton of players in the starter zones. It appears that they are spreading the starting zones in different instances so that you will always have mobs to fight instead of having to fight for 'claim' (http://torwars.com/2011/09/09/zoeller-on-launch-day-world-instancing-dealing-with-gankers/). There were a ton of people playing and I saw lots of people running around, but it never felt crowded.

Gear
One of the nice things about questing to exp is that you get rewards along the way. most of the basic gear you need is basically handed to you as part of your quests. You can choose armor appropriate for your class and what you want as gear rewards.

Choices choices...

In this picture, you can see that I've just turned in one quest. As part of the quest, I can choose between a few different rewards, one for my class, one for another class, and another "commendation" that can be saved up and later turned in for even bigger rewards. One nice thing that TOR does is that it has a built-in comparison system to make it easier to figure out which piece of gear is better. All you have to do is mouse-over what you are comparing and it'll bring up stats for you to see. I believe this was another thing that had to be done in an add-on in WoW. FFXI has the whole "secret stats" thing going on.

One other thing... according to the developers, the "item enhancement" system in the game is such that if you like the look of a specific piece of gear, you can basically upgrade it all the way to endgame instead of constantly switching beteen different pieces of gear. I've seen this in action with the weapons in the lower levels and it is pretty extensive, able to change almost all status and more.

Other things
There are a few things that are unique to TOR...

Companions -- If you played Mass Effect or Dragon Age, you'll remember the NPCs that you take on the missions with you. You had up to two companions with you, and you get to equip them and give them instructions. You can talk to them, take on quests for them, give them gifts. They will react to your dialog choices and you can gain or lose affection depending on your choices. For example, the Sith Warrior's first companion is a Twi'lek called Vette. She's a slave that you get when you are on the last quests of the starter zone. She hates authority so she'll agree with any decision that is rebelling against authority. She also has an affection towards slaves, so if you make decisions that result in the death of slaves, she'll hate you for it. Making choices isn't as easy as simply choosing the dark side or light side options. In combat, she plays as a dual-blaster damage dealer. Each class has their own sets of companions and you'll meet more as you play. Like other Bioware games, there are romance options with your companions as well. You can also send your companion off on tasks, like send them off to do crafting while you tackle quests, or send them off to sell the junk you've collected to vendors instead of having to make a trip to town.

Vette also does not like the Imperial capitol planet

Ships -- I never got to this level, but as part of your class quests, you'll eventually get a personal ship. I guess this is the "mog house" where you can keep your things, talk to companions, etc. There is also space combat and you can upgrade your ship, though from what I've seen, it's more of a "shooter on rails" type of thing like Starfox.

Advanced Classes -- At level 10, you can choose an advanced class. Basically specialize. Each class can specialize in two ways to take on different roles. For example, the Trooper can specialize into either a Command (heavy DD + healing) or a Vanguard (tank + DD). Like WoW, and unlike FFXI, your character is fixed in a single class & advanced class. You can't switch between them.

Final thoughts
I'm really liking TOR so far. I think of it more of... 8 Mass Effect games & storylines in one game instead of a MMO. I figure that about 7/10 of the content I've seen so far is solo, with the remaining 3/10 (flashpoints + heroics) as needing to group up to do. Unlike WoW or FFXI, I don't feel like I'm grinding away to get levels, more that I'm playing a game to unveil the plot. Exp in WoW & FFXI always felt mindless... especially in FFXI. No matter what form exp took (regular exp parties, FoV, Abyssea), it was always dumb grinding, not too much fun.

I'm definitely picking TOR up, and from what I've seen of the starting storylines... well... I'd want to play through all 8 stories. Lots of gameplay for one game, and admirable for a MMO!

Of course, that might change once you hit level cap and actually *finish* the different storylines... Who knows what endgame in TOR will be like... 1500 heavy metal plates anyone?