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Shame – I waited years for it, but it’s as shallow as a puddle of pi$$. Here’s what I wrote anyway.

Hi,

Sad to say, I’m not really enjoying SWTOR at the moment. The buzz wore off very quickly (a few days) and I’m left with quite a hollow feeling towards ther experience. Here’s why that is (for me at least);

Storyline

The story for Jedi Consellor is a little repetative

• Go to planet one – then do the following;
• Quest line to find and help Jedi Master with disease
• Quest line to help locals with group of "insurgents" or "imperial agents"

..when finished..Goto planet two and start again.

UI

The user interface hinders me a little, nothing is where I would find it intuitively. I find myself healing a recently beaten mob rather than my companion sometimes, all sorts of things I don’t like about the interface (it’s too BIG for a start – it’s like a 5 year old child’s toy) Really needs to be customizable.

Character customization.

CC seems underdeveloped. I am very limited in what I can wear, and despite buying new items every few levels my character’s "look" is more or less unaltered. I see other JC’s running around, and they all like just like me. I don’t feel like a hero, or even an individual, I feel like "Jedi Counsellor Clone 3354b"

Crafting

Crafting is dull. I can craft a whole list of virtually identical mods for armour and weapons. They all look the same, and no-one (not even me) can find any use for them. I can stick them on the the trade for 500 credits an no-one wants them

"xxxxx mod 9" looks exactly the same as

"xxxxxx mod 8"….. and despite keeping my crafting up with my character levelling, I have yet to find an item I craft that I actually have a use for myself – i.e is even marginally better than a mob drop I have already found or someone else has found and put on the Gal trade network.

Crafting itself is uninvolved. It’s not a sub game, it’s not a challenge, What it is is being interrupted during combat when one of your companions comes back and sats "Here’s your stuff" and just pressing "Make this" or "go there".

The only slight interaction I have is to ensure that I have enough of the vendor sold re-agents in stock or storage.  There are these descriptions of the missions your companion is oging on "Visit a deserted spacecraft and see if they have XXXXX" but after the first five goes… you just press the button

That is 100% of your crafting experience in a nutshell..press a button to send a companion off…. wait 20 minutes till he or she comes back….then press it again.

Trading

Should be interesting. But it’s not. There is not enough data to make informed stock choices or to "play the market". I perhaps spend 40% of my solo time at end level in other MMO’s playing the market. It’s great fun. Sure EvE and some other games (PotBS) have really good involved economics tied in with harvesting and crafting, but even WoW, Aion, Rift and FFXI have  a fun factor.  X-faction trading, storage and logistics etc.SWTOR has none of this, or at best very stunted and unerdeveloped trade and trading tools.

Community

Grouping takes so long, and with so few people looking to run any particular flashpoint or heroic, I have just given up on it. I am planning to give multi (or at least dual) boxing a try, as the lack of community means I am missing so much of the content I might well enjoy -  I might buy a standard retail copy and give it a go for a month. But eventually I see me leaving SWTOR in a few months for a game with more scope (more involved trading and commercial aspects, better and more involved crafting)

At the moment there is not enough depth to make the game a stayer for me. I can quite happily solo while a community builds up, but all I’m doing is grinding quests. No secondary professions, dull crafting, dull trading and awkward interface, coupled with a plot line (for JC’s at least) which just seems to be an endless repeat of the same tasks – just with the level numbers changed. If I have to "Save another Jedi Grand Master" …Arrrggggghhhh!

I understand SWTOR is a "theme park" and I have no issue with that. WoW is a theme park, Aion is a theme park, FFXI is a theme park I love those games. But they seem to have a lot more "rides" than SWTOR.

With a real lack of involvement and depth in crafting, trading, sub professions etc, SWTOR is like a theme park with one ride..levelling.

Summary

• Group finding  (Flashpoints and Heroics being missed due to no groups and very few flagged as LFG)
• GUI customization (lack of) Poor GUI, targets, etc all in fixed and none intuitive places
• Professions (dull, uninvolving "click button  – wait – click again")
• No "Extra" professions to kill time when soloing. As you don’t even craft personally. If your not levelling – your doing nothing  – and that’s not good at all.
• Trade Network (dull, no incentive for engrossing trading/stock play – no economic tools)
• JC plot line repetiton (Save Jedi Grand Master, goto planet two  – rinse and repeat)
• CHARACTER APPEARANCE CUSTOMIZATION (Limited in what I can buy – and no matter what I DO buy I end up looking 99% the same)

You’ll see from my stats that I’m playing less and less. I’m hoping for big news on improvement soon. Story alone is not going to make up for lack of  varied gameplay elements. And I’m not that impressed with the story (for JC at least)

I’m paid up till mid April, and sadly I think that will probably be the end of my time with SWTOR unless there are really big improvements. ESSP with more involved and varied gameplay elements added.

I expect you’ll get more money from me though. Mass Effect 3 in a few weeks etc.

I’m not sure MMO’s are going to be your strong point though. Too much emphasis on story and not near enough "game" to go with it.

Scritty

Oh well

What?

No Blizzcon in 2012 of course.

It’s rare that I have news as amazing as today’s. But Blizzard has officially announced that there will be no Blizzcon in 2012.

A spokesman for the company cited the release of three games in this financial year as a reason why the company said they did not have the time for resources to put on a major events such as Blizzcon.

Diablo III, Mists of Pandaria and the new Starcraft game are all being released in the next 8 to 10 months.

Ok so they have a lot to finish and promote, but surely, with a high profile games being released now is exactly the time you would have a major event to promote them, wouldn’t you?

An event which guarantees tens of thousands of visitors, a huge boost in publicity and is already established in the calendar of many gamers throughout the world.

Don’t forget, taking a break of the year and sometimes completely lose focus, people will find something else to do to that particular week and it may not come back with the same pizzazz as it left with.

I put a link to the official statement in the image with this post, I’m just off to have a couple of very strong coffee to get over the shock.

As of now patch 10 for the latest beta client has just been released. And tonight there is an opportunity to see it being played live. In lieu of those few who have managed to make the closed beta this could be one of your last opportunities to judge yourself how well the game’s progress since the early videos were well touted on Youtube.

Personally I’m looking to see more depth in the game. A jazzed up Diablo II is not what I’m after it all, I have Titan Quest, Torchlight and several other games in my drawer to scratch that itch..

I’m looking for real characterisation, progression, teamwork and a hell of a lot more than just spamming two or three attack keys over and over again.

Anyway, follow the link here and judge for yourself tonight.

Full notes below.

World of Warcraft Patch 4.3.2

• Classes: General Vengeance is no longer triggered by receiving damage from other players.
• Druids The Tier 13 Balance Druid 4-piece bonus now also increases the damage of Starsurge by 10%, in addition to its current effect.
• Hunters Aspect of the Hawk now grants roughly 35% more attack power.
  Deterrence now also reduces damage taken by 30% while active.
  Black Arrow now ticks every 2 seconds for 20 seconds, as opposed to every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. The total damage dealt by the ability is unchanged.
  Lock and Load no longer benefits Arcane Shot, nor is it consumed by Arcane Shot.
• Mages Fireball damage has been reduced by roughly 6%.
  Pyroblast damage has been reduced by roughly 6%.
• Paladins Holy Radiance now costs 40% of base mana, up from 35%.
• Priests Mass Dispel should again prefer dispelling targets that have magic effects that can be dispelled.
• Dungeons & Raids You can now form same-faction raids with Real ID friends, allowing you to enter Raid Finder in groups larger than 5, run older normal or heroic raids, or participate in Battlegrounds. You will not yet be able to run normal or heroic Dragon Soul with cross-realm raids of Real ID friends.
   
• Several typo fixes and clarified descriptions have been added to the Dungeon Journal entries for Dragon Soul.
• Players can no longer win multiple copies of the same item on a single Raid Finder boss kill. For example, a player who chooses Need on two set piece tokens or two weapons and wins the first, will not be eligible for the second on that particular boss.

One of these “Financial calls” is due in the next few days, and it comes at a very fluid time for the software developers.

Blizzard are expected to announce the release of Diablo III very soon..

Mike Morhaime is widely expected to use the upcoming call to make a release date announcement.

But for those of us still playing World of Warcraft, the financial situation of Blizzard has a much deeper interest, and one that I’ve not seen reported elsewhere.

As most of you are aware, there is a project on-going at Blizzard called “Titan” and this has been described as a “ new casual role-playing game”.

That’s the title that baffles me. Any game where I have to pay a monthly description I would expect to play for many hours per month to get value for my subscription fee. I’m not sure where the word “casual” comes into it?

More importantly even than that is that reports over the last three months have been that up to 1.4 million subscribers have cancelled their Warcraft craft accounts.

While this still leaves Blizzard with a game many times more popular than any other MMO on the market, it does represent a huge and very rapid drop in subscription. Let’s face it, WoW is now over seven years old and at its very heart a lot of its infrastructure is pretty dated..

This is never more apparent than when creating a new character with one of the original races. The rather gormless looking caricature faces for humans, dwarfs and gnomes, not to mention the very limited choices in facial features is the first indicator that this game is based on a very old platform.

Of course like most people we value depth of game-play above visual aesthetics, but there comes a time when you really are stretching the elastic, and something needs to give.

I predict that this next economic update from Blizzard will at least hint at a change to the subscription style that they operate or, conversely that following the Pandaria update, Warcraft will undergo a massive and fundamental change in engine and design.

Of course there is a third option, that Warcraft will gradually be phased out, going free to play in the next 18 months or so to make room in the market place for “Titan”.

Here at Wowgoldeliteguide we will have the full update after the call the call

Quite a while now we been aware that Blizzard were considering adding references to Skyrim, a single player role-playing game from rival company Bethesda Softworks.

Some of the trash mobs that raiding parties had to encounter before doing the Ultraxion content were named or referenced the story and characters from Bethesdas record-breaking game.

I have scoured the net and not seen any representatives or anybody involved with the production of Skyrim complain about this idea at all, yet in the Blizzard forums there seems to be quite a heated debate about an “implied insult”.

Think of it this way, if you did not realise that other people were insulted by this would you consider it as an insult at all, or simply a homage to another game?

I’m firmly in the second camp, Warcraft has often cross-referenced popular culture in the past, and there is no direct competition between WoW and Skyrim.

One is a massively multiplayer game, the one a single player only.

In fact if anything, they probably compliment one another in keeping the “swords and sorcery” theme alive. I won both – as do many people I know. I am not choosing one over the other, they are quite different and…..oh well

Sadly, (in my opinion anyway), Blizzard seem to be considering removing or changing this content.

The spoilsports and killjoys win again.