i loved the game. but it didnt feel like an mmo. there is really no aspect of the game that feels multiplayer :\
and the game lacked space... there are no ships to fly. you go into your ship "house" and you are teleported to locations from it. that is very anti- star wars.
They absolutely forgeted up with the use of ships in The Old Republic.
They just did not try.
They have some stuffty re-styling of Ship combat from Lego Star Wars, but that's dreadful.
It's basically an arcade style "train-track" game. You have no control in it, bar where you shoot or some times dodging.
If they had taken a note out of Star Trek Online's book, then they could have implemented some similarly great 3D space battling.
But they decided not to.
I really love The Old Republic, and I play it a lot with a friend.
Having a multiplayer only game is a lot of fun to do.
The only downside is when your friend doesn't want to play at the same time as you.
With my friend, we have alternate single-player accounts that we do whatever on.
Which is good.
Except for the fact that it only really means that we have to play the game twice. With very little being different.
If you choose the Empire or the Republic, you get your missions that take you to each planet in sequence.
And the story of your class is very entertaining.
But if you want to choose another class and try out it's story, you then have to trail through every single planet in the same sequence again.
And if you want to make it to the next planet (and not turn up and be destroyed by every single enemy that happens to be 4-5 levels higher than you) then you need to do the side-quests too.
And those are absolutely identical, so you don't even get the benefit of having a new story to play.
It's just repeating the game in order to play 1 new thing, which however exciting the individual class stories may be, is still a punishment to do.
And because the game has a really awkward scaling system in levels (no matter how much extra work you put in as a free-2-play or preferred status player, you will always be underlevelled since the game cuts your XP intake if you're not a subscriber), you get stuck having to repeat missions.
Or gain XP from multiplayer PvP games. Which are rewarding and fun, but as a free player, you only have a limited number per week.
So, back to doing every mission again.
There's also the really awkward system in levelling where, if you happen to be underlevelled, the game decides to just make you entirely uneffective against higher levelled enemies.
Now, that might seem normal.
But to me, if I'm fighting a higher level enemy, I'm expecting to have to deal less damage to him, and take more damage. Making the fight more difficult and increasing the chances of me failing.
But instead, The Old Republic decides that you're not going to do minor damage to the enemy, you'll simply "Miss" every single attack, and do 0 damage.
Guaranteeing the fact that you can't take on trickier high-level enemies. Even if you're in a group and working together.
So, what that also means is that you can't use a lower levelled character to be of any help to a higher levelled character, entirely cutting off an area of interaction.
I find the game a lot of fun, but only when It's running smoothly.
It just trips itself up too much.
If you're not giving lots of money to the game, you're not going to be able to play it at your leisure.
(and if I was playing, I don't feel like I can play at leisure, since it's subscription based, and I'd hate to think that my taking it slow means I don't make the most out of my money).
The storylines are great, and the voice acting is superb. (although have a non-english speaking alien or robot and it's either ridiculously slow or ridiculous fast to read the subtitling)
But the game really makes you work to play, and it feels like a punishment to want to enjoy all the stories the game supplies, unless you want to go through every other identical story too.
