Why I Canceled My Old Republic Account Today

For the past few years, I kept a not so close eye on Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Watching the development of any MMO can be maddening, so I feel that you can only fall into into one of two camps - the die hard need to know everything players, and the people who just want to play the game.  I clearly fell into the second.  As someone who played WoW as an end game rogue from Vanilla through Wrath of the Lich King, I just wanted to enjoy the universe on this one and not pour over spreadsheets figuring out which gem was going to boost my DPS.

Whichever I needed was going to cost 2,000 apiece, anyway

I'm also a big fan of the Knights of the Old republic and 90% of the Knights of the Old Republic 2 games (why only 90%?  That's because that's all Bioware actually finished).  So it came as no surprise to anybody that not only did I hop onto the Old Republic bandwagon, but also got several friends to join in and even joined up with a fairly laid back but put together guild.  This is a big deal because we had all sworn off of MMO's back when we burned out on WoW.  But Bioware was making this one, it's based off of a franchise that I already know and love, why not give it a shot.

I'm happy to report that I'm not sorry that I did.  The Old Republic is probably the second most well put together MMO that I have played.  The only thing better than it is World of Warcraft, but it's not because of anything that could be considered bad.  WoW has had time to listen to player feedback and implement features that we now take for granted. 

Unfortunately, it's these features that Blizzard has managed to put in are what The Old Republic really needs.  Things like queueing for a dungeon with a random group, or an auction house with a very intuitive interface.  Add-ons that allowed players to figure out things in the game like what the best rotations are, and which classes are more suited to getting past obstacles in the late game. Cross realm battle grounds and instances.  These relatively minor things are what kept me playing, because it wasn't a huge hassle to find something to do.  That isn't so in The Old Republic.

To LFG in TOR, you add a comment to yourself so people can look at the LFG list and not know anything about you or what you want to do

A final item that players are complaining about is what they perceive to be "Dead Servers".  What had happened was in the initial player rush, many servers filled up and created long (30+ minute) queues to sign in with.  That's very exciting for a launch, but now that many people have gotten their fill of the game and left, the remaining players are scattered across 170 or so servers.  There are reports that at peak on the Republic side fleet that there are only about 25 players logged in on some servers.  Things like this just make it more frustrating to get anything done in the game.

And here's where I come in.  I had the extreme fortune of being on the Imperial side, which hosts considerably more players.  Unfortunately, I play in the later evening hours, so I still got to feel the Republic's pain.  It is impossible to find enough people to do anything with.  I had specced as a tank class, knowing from my days in WoW that Tanks and Healers are always needed, and instead find myself unable to do anything because there's nobody around to do anything with.  While finishing up my class quests, I had to turn down every Heroic quest since there was only seven people on the entire planet.

Though they may all have been on Illum destroying the Republic 10 - 1.

I know there's other things that I could have been doing.  I could level up other characters, except the Legacy system isn't implemented yet.  I could PvP, but it was unappealing because of the lack of design in the levels that didn't offer coordination between players who didn't know each other.  I could frustrate myself with finishing what are essentially platforming puzzles in an MMO and collect Holocrons that you essentially have to have a guide to know where to get.

People like 45 minute spawns for a 30 minute balloon ride that randomly despawns, right?

SWTOR does a lot of things right.  The story, the environment, and especially the dialog are all just fantastic.  When I went off to do a quest, I knew why I wanted to do it.  But there's enough missing from the current offering that makes me not want to play anymore.  I think Bioware can pull itself together and get a lot of this fixed, and as many have said before, WoW was a pale shadow of what it is now.  I think SWTOR can be a real powerhouse game, and I'm glad I got my character up to 50 and finished my story.  But for now, I am going to have to see what they've got in store to make their game a bit friendlier.  Good luck guys, drop me an email when you've got something a bit more magical.

The Ones to Watch - March 2012

After a much needed break, VG30 is back and ready to look into the future of 2012.  We have a lot of plans, and a lot of news that will be happening this year, as well as some expected announcements from the big three.  Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's take a look at what's coming out in March.

Street Fighter X Tekken - 3/6/12 - Multiple Systems

Capcom continues to beat its cash cow by crossing over with Tekken in a something that fighting game fans should probably be excited about.  Controls for both sides are designed to work for their respective games, meaning that playing as Heihachi won't be a bastardization of the Tekken scheme.  One note of warning, however.  Based solely on Capcom's track record, there's very likely going to be an "Ultimate Edition" by the end of the year for $40, so if you're just curious about it, save your money until then.


Mass Effect 3 - 3/6/12 - Multiple Systems

The sequel to VG30's 2010 Game of the Year is about to come out, thus heralding the 2012 age of gaming.  Oh sure, there's been some news in the past few months, the Vita came out, Kingdoms of Amalur wasn't too shabby, but let's face it, there hasn't been a block buster yet this year.  Mass Effect 3 is very likely to be that blockbuster.  There's lots of controversy going on right now in regards to EA's Origin system, and some rumors that the source of the Xbox Live account hacks are tied directly to it, but I'm willing to bet many people will choose to forget about it for a little while while Mass Effect 3 shows us what games are supposed to be like all over again.


Mario Party 9 - 3.11.12 - Wii

The franchise that will never say die, Mario Party 9 returns to us just in time to watch the Wii get sunset without anybody ever officially saying it's being sunset.  A new mechanic allows the players to all move together, creating some questions on how useful the board design is at that point.  Time will tell if the masses will accept it into their collections.


Silent Hill: Downpour - 3.13.12 - Multiple Consoles

The latest Silent Hill offering is about to be released, likely disappointing fans everywhere.  For newcomers to the series, somebody is inexplicably drawn to the foggy town of Silent Hill in which their nightmares come to life along with various other unsettling creatures inhabitants.  The last couple of Silent Hill games have been met with less than stellar reviews, can they bring it back into the lime light with this one?


Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City - 3.20.12 - Multi-Release

Capcom's latest attempt to bring the action back to Zombies and the T-Virus as well as the backdrop for the second best Resident Evil game, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is a "3rd Person Team Based Shooter".  There hasn't been much success with this formula in the past for them, and with Resident Evil 6 on its way, this feels like a way to placate fans for little while. 

Protest against SOPA and PIPA

Video, Gaming at 30 is a small site that I put together a couple years ago so I could express my love for gaming, and get my opinion out into the world about anything that I wanted to.  When I first began hearing about SOPA and PIPA, I wondered how it would impact the site, and it didn't take me long to realize that videogamingat30.com couldn't exist under these proposed laws.

I'm a small gaming review site, but I do have an audience.  So I'm going to do what I can to help support the cause.


PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

It's hard to stand up to giant corporations, but we've got many on our side in this fight.  To lend your support, head over to Google and click their SOPA / PIPA link to add your name to the petition and share the message.  The internet and all the information in it should be free to everyone.

The 30's - Game of the Year

 

Gears of War 3 wins the Video, Gaming at 30 awards for best Xbox 360 Game (that we actually played) as well as the coveted Game of the Year.

There's a lot of good reasons to not pick Gears of War 3 as Game of the Year.  Most publications gave it to Skyrim, but as you can tell from my Day 1 post, I felt that it didn't really deserve such high honors.  There's better online experiences.  There's better single player experiences.  There's something special here, though.  It's something that brought friends together to enjoy a game.

VG30 contributors got together weekly to play through the demo.  Then six months later, we did the same in the campaign, and then Hoard, and Beast modes.  And when we were all done with that, we came back when the Season Pass content hit, and even now we're planning on when we're going to get together next to play. 

That's not something that's easily done for any game.  It took players of all skill levels, of loves of different styles of games, different genres and environments, and brought us all together to enjoy ripping apart baddies with chainsaws.  It was a lot of fun, and it has to be recognized by somebody just how great it is.  Cliffy B, you've got a great team and I look forward to seeing what you do next.

The 74th Annual 30's! - Day 4

Day four is here and we have to cram in everything else that we wanted to make mention of for the year!

Best Game That Could Have Been Even Better

Don't get me wrong here, I liked Arkham City a lot, but it always felt like it was missing something.  The best comparison I can draw here is Assassin's Creed.  Much like Altair, Batman has an open city that he can swoop around and hunt out his prey.  He tries to get from one section of the city to another, except there's an occasional puzzle or boss fight, and in those regards Batman wins hands down.  But the freedom in Assassin's Creed is what Batman is missing.  You can't just wander around the city cleaning up crime in the same sense that Ezio can.  Sure you can fly around, but you kind of HAVE to fly around because there's piles of garbage everywhere locking the sections of the city into smaller manageable pieces that respawn over time, giving you no sense that you're actually accomplishing anything.

Here's what I want to see:  Batman:  Gotham City.  It's the life of Batman, a crime gets committed, and you can go check it out and play detective, and it leads you to the supervillian's lair or heck, just some punk gang that got lucky.  When you're done, you can wander the streets keeping them safe, or retire back to the Batcave and train or upgrade your gear.  Hell, throw some living the life of Bruce Wayne in there a bit if it makes sense.  You can build an overarching story in there, but keep each section it's own special bit.  I know I'd be excited to see this game.

Best Multi-Platform Game

It's hard not to gush about Portal 2, it's a fantastic single player experience that gives fans of the first game more of what they want.  It's also a fun filled multi-player cooperative experience that we just don't see that often anymore.  Valve really delivered here, and everybody needs to play this game.  Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace.

Best iOS Game

No game got more play time from the VG30 crew than Ascension on the iOS.  We played it at home, we played it at work, we played it at Gencon, we played it in the beta, we played it in the expansion beta, and we're still playing it in the expansion.  Gary Games and Incinerator Studios did a great job of putting everything together, and all of the hard work shows in the finished product.  Still waiting on the hard difficulty though ;).

Just these three awards today, there's just a couple categories left, including Game of the Year, check back tomorrow to find out what it's going to be!