Anyone playing.

I'm not. But I did try it out. The $60 pricetag made me very hesitant to give it a try (PC games in general don't cost that much in the first place, but when you're talking about a subscription-based MMO in the first place, it's just highway robbery and there's no excuse). So I created a couple characters on a friend's account and played around. Got two people up to level 12. And the whole time, every second, I was aware of the fact that not one single bit of it--aside from the lightsabers glowing left and right--felt anything like Star Wars. If not for those lightsabers and the logo on the box, I'd never have noticed I was playing a Star Wars game. And that's 75% of what killed it for me.

WoW is a game I originally got into, back when it launched, because I love Warcraft. I love Warcraft 1, I love Warcraft II, and...wait...I hated Warcraft III. But that's beside the point. WoW held my interest by taking place in a world I was interested in, and by doing things with that world, and the people from it, that I was genuinely interested to see.
I had hoped SWTOR would be another example of the same thing. But SWTOR is not Star Wars. It's generic scifi univers 336,234,234,178,434,573,233,638,347 with light sabers and the words Sith and Jedi added to the dialog.
I thought the race options (almost universally 3 humans and one human with bumpy head per class) were absolutely abysmal and killed interest in making my character mine right off the bat.
And I thought the dependence on what I say in dialog was actually a hindrance rather than a boon, because I felt like I was losing out for making "wrong" choices based on rules and moralities that are invented and unpredictable and that I don't understand and can't. Even being a Sith, sometimes you're supposed to make "good" chioces and it's impossible to tell when the game wants you to and when it wants you to be an evil d!ck. It's not fun to participate in that kind of thing when you're punished for even trying. If there are going to be actual in-game consequences for the choices, those consequences need to be clear. And if you're going to make a dialog system with the intent that people will explore it, you can't punish them for exploring it!!!!! It's like handing someone a rubix cube and then slapping their hand when they don't approach it the way you want. They're not you, they can't know how you'd do it. And more importantly: there's more than one right answer, and acting like there's only one right way to do it undermines the whole purpose of the puzzle. And the fun.

The other 25% that killed it was the gameplay. Combat is every other MMO ever. And while the story/dialog/interactive quest stuff was neat, it's not what I want in a game that's already designed to consume my time. But worse, it feels like Bioware put 90% of their resources into the dialog and quest giving and only 10% into the gameplay and quest DOING. Nothing felt engaging, and nothing stood out.
And then there's the lack of customization and mod/addon support, there's the "out of the box is how it works" feel of the game. Addons and customization are part of what kept WoW valid after years and years. None of that in SWTOR.

Is anyone else playing this? Anyone playing it and enjoying it?

These days it takes a lot to make the idea of a subscription fee of ANY price appealing to me. SWTOR didn't manage it. WoW can't anymore. I don't know that any MMO will, though I really really really hope The Secret World will, if only because it's a Ragnar Tornquist project that involves the Lovecraft mythos.

I'm definitely not paying $60 for SWTOR off the shelf. And I'm definitely not paying $15 to be generic-scifi'd to death on a monthly basis by it.

Oh...and I find it Ironic that Bioware can conjur an amazing sci-fi universe from their own minds (Mass Effect) but they can't manage to do anything worthwhile with one that's already there. I didn't like either KOTOR game, either, and felt them to be flat RPGs full of errand running and fetch quests and with combat that lacked appeal and interesting mechanics.

So, even worse than Star Wars: Galaxies?

Encryptshun wrote:So, even worse than Star Wars: Galaxies?

Before or after the Wowification patch?

Rhetorical questions aside, the answer is: yes. SWG at least felt and looked like Star Wars. The Old Republic doesn't do either. TOR is ultra-generic in every way, except the light-sabers. Every class has a prominent "oh...I'm playing a [insert x WoW class name here] but with a [blaster or light saber]" feel to it. Sith Warrior feels like a Death Knight, and a Rogue. EXACTLY LIKE IT. But with light sabers.

That's it: WoW with light sabers. NOT Star Wars. WoW with light sabers.

MinisterofDOOM wrote: Oh...and I find it Ironic that Bioware can conjur an amazing sci-fi universe from their own minds (Mass Effect) but they can't manage to do anything worthwhile with one that's already there. I didn't like either KOTOR game, either, and felt them to be flat RPGs full of errand running and fetch quests and with combat that lacked appeal and interesting mechanics.

Same thoughts here, except that I enjoyed the first KOTOR...the second was just SSDD.

I would love to see a Bioware driven Mass Effect MMO. I really love the universe and they've already done so much background development that it would be a waste not to use it. I can already see you playing some tight-lipped, no-nonsense Turian.

Bioware used to be great at games, and outside of Mass Effect the only other title of theirs I really play is the original Neverwinter Nights.