Late to the Party Again: The Old Republic

I’ve said this before - I’m not really an MMO player.  There are very few instances in which I’ve found grinding to be enjoyable, I’ve found that the massive nature of the games doesn’t lend itself to gripping storylines, and I’m still hanging on to my poor-college-student aversion to monthly subscription fees.  When I found out Bioware was making a Star Wars MMORPG I thought about changing my ways, but for some reason when the game came out it just kind of slipped my mind.  However, I have some friends who play and its free now so I downloaded it.  In the middle of NaNo.  But since I’m a certified NaNoRebel writing about my first impressions totally counts towards my total words.  After some thought I decided to drop $30 on a 60-day subscription, but so far I have not played as a subscriber so this will all be from the perspective of a free player.  Also, I’ve had a monogomish relationship with Starcraft since I stopped playing Guild Wars and perhaps its time for some variety.  Don’t worry, baby, you’ll always be my main love-muffin.  I can’t quit you.

So here’s my review of the first few hours of The Old Republic: Cheapskate Edition, broken down into delicious bite sized niblets!  With grades.  Stay in school, kids.

Character Creation:  A-

As a free player I only had access to 3 races - humans, cyborgs, and those Darth Maul-looking folks.  I stopped following the EU quite a while ago, so while I do know that Admiral Thrawn is a member of the Chiss race I have no idea what they ended up calling Darth Maul’s race.  Not a terrible array of choices - I ended up going with cyborg.  Overall I was impressed with the customization options, although I docked points for cyborgs basically just being humans with cool facewear.  There are a lot of ways to make your avatar special - hairstyles, makeup, scars, skin texture and color.  There’s a limited but acceptable number of body types, and I went with your standard tall hotness.  I like my characters pretty, what can I say?  For the class options, I’ll admit I went into it with a bias.  I figured out which class lets you dual-wield lightsabers and went straight for that one with no consideration of the others.  Force powers, schmorsh powers - let me introduce you to my friends Cauterize Jackson and Dismemberment McGillicutty.  But with the base classes and advanced classes there are a lot of options for those who aren’t as laser-focused as I am.  So I came out of the process quite satisfied - my character is a white-mohawked chocolate beauty with dangerous-but-sexy facial scars and a Borg implant named Kirasca.

Yes, there’s a K.  There will always be a K, for K is my favorite letter.  If K were a person, she would be an exotic beauty with come-hither eyes and a smashing rack.  She would have expensive tastes but know how to live on the run.  Men would want to bang her and women would want to be her best friend.  Her voice would flow like flow like silk and burn like acid.  K is magnificent, got it?

Alignment System: C-

I almost gave the Dark/Light side points system an F, but I realized that was because I am biased against binary moral systems in general so I reevaluated.  This system could also be called the Way of the Jedi/Way of the Feels - some of the things that give you dark side points aren’t things that are necessarily evil or even selfish, but choices that involve letting your emotions have free reign.  For instance, I got dark side points because I decided to become sisters-from-another-mother with a Twi’lek girl because the Jedi way is serenity and staying detached.  So that’s pretty true to the whole Star Wars philosophy about the way to serenity being detachment from passions and whatnot.  I think this was a little more emphasized in the prequel movies than in the originals, or maybe it was just more ham-handed.

The other reason I wanted to give the alignment system such a low rating at first is because I can’t find any tangible rewards in the game for staying neutral.  I’m a huge fan of staying in the grey area - in Fallout 3 I took that perk that gives you stupid bonuses to Speech if your karma’s neutral and I wish there were more bonuses like that.  But of course there aren’t, and of course there’s all sorts of fancy gear associated with being either a total kitten-nuking dickbag or a saintly, tooth-rotting paragon of goodness and purity.  So if I play my character the way I plan to, by role-playing my choices according to how I believe she would react (which, given my history, generally tends to keep me in the grey), I’m going to be locking myself out of a bunch of gear.  But I’m still going to play it that way - YOU CAN’T CHANGE ME, GAME.

Crew Skills: A fucking plus so far

Wait… a crafting system where I can send my minions (er, friends) out to gather the stuff for me?  I don’t have to grind through dozens of low-level idiots and hope they’ll drop some frikkin jute rags so I can level my Tailoring??  Sign me the HELL up.  So far I’ve only been able to learn 1 crew skill (free version) and I picked Archeology because suck it, Doctor.  Its also a bonus because that T-7 droid annoys me, so sending it away to fetch stuff for me is a double bonus.  I’m sure the crafting system will get become mundane and frustrating over time as these things are wont to do, but for now I’m pretty pleased.

Story:  C (Thpoilerth)

Granted, I’ve only played through the first few hours of my class story, but its pretty humdrum stuff so far.  What I’ve come to rely upon in Bioware games is their well-developed characters and none of the ones I’ve met so far have really struck me except for Bengal Moor.  He had some depth, so to reward him for not being a boring milquetoast I let him live instead of killing him or knocking him out and delivering him to the Jedi Council.  It seemed like what Kirasca would do, anyway.  So now I have a “Dark Jedi Lightsaber” - I have a feeling my character is going to end up a rogue Jedi.  Not a Dark Jedi, but just one who chafed a little too much under the oppressive taupe mantle of the Jedi proper.  I really hope things get more interesting later, but its an MMO so I don’t have much hope.

Companions:  Submit a 500-word essay by Monday

I have only encountered one companion so far, the aforementioned droid that annoys me.  He gets pissed off when I talk about how awesome I am, and seeing as that is going to be a fixed pattern we will probably not get along well unless I bribe him.  I gained great satisfaction in wiping his memory of me letting Bengal Moor go.  We will see how the other companions measure up once I get there, but I will be curious to see if this game can produce any characters that live up to the likes of Varric, Oghren, Fenris, and Shale.  But on to the more important question - this is a Bioware game.  Where are my love interests and how long will it be before I can shag them?  I have priorities.

Free to Play Version:  B+

In the first few hours of the game, I did not notice anything prohibitive about being a free player.  I picked up a customization item I couldn’t use and the vendor prices are higher, but neither of those things really affect me much.  I don’t often buy equipment in games - I’m a serious miser because I know that once I spend a bunch of money on equipment something is going to drop that is better than what I have.  However, I can see that once you get further into the game sticking with the Cheapskate Edition will get annoying.  But, if you’re going to play the game for more than a few hours you should probably drop a few dollars on it anyway.  Which was my reasoning for buying a subscription.  I’m enjoying it, $30 will pay for itself fairly quickly, and I want to be able to display my Legacy name.

As a closing note - I really wonder if Legacy names are unique to the whole game, or only to the server you’re playing on, or at all.  Because if they are unique there are two years worth of players who missed out on locking down the awesomest surname in the Star Wars universe - Sunrider.  If you are unfortunate enough to not know who I’m referring to, let me lay some knowledge down.  Nomi Sunrider was a Jedi Knight in the Tales of the Jedi comics and has a tie with Mara Jade for Most Kickass Star Wars Lady.  She fought against Exar Kun and her lover, the fallen Ulic Qel-Droma, in the Great Sith War.  When the Sith were defeated Ulic had repented his ways, but not before murdering his own brother and Nomi was so pissed at him that she cut him off from the Force completely.  For good.  You do not want to piss this Legacy off, is basically what I’m saying.