A couple of years ago I wanted something other to play than the MMO fantasy style of Everquest 2. I had lots of characters in the game, I had fun but I longed for space travel. I grew up with games like Elite and the traveler through the stars and building a strong spaceship just appealed to me. I got heavily into MMO when I was hired to work at Sony Online Entertainment. I was a Game Master when their Star Wars game was launched.

I liked that game a lot, in the beginning. Of course, everyone wanted to be a Jedi but at the time to become a Jedi you had to find, work at and complete a bunch of complicated missions to unlock that ability. For someone like myself, when I saw the era that game was set in, which was the time after SW Episode 4 was released, it made sense that you didn’t have hordes of Jedi roaming the game. It was nice that you could be a smuggler, a bounty hunter or any number of other exciting occupations in the game.

Well, it seems the gaming public hated the first version of the game because they couldn’t be Jedis. They yelled it was too hard to become a Jedi. They hated what they thought was a complicated process to work your way up career ladders. Because of the outcry, in my opinion changes were made to the game to dumb it down. Jedis were soon a class in the game, something you could pick out right from the start. You can guess what happened. Most players wanted to be Jedis. My character would go into cities and thousands of lightsaber wielding Jedis were running all over the place. An element from those changes I liked was the space simulator add on. That gave me some fun playtime in the game, flying from spaceports and shooting down enemies.

When I left the company, it took less than a year for me to grow tired of the game, simply because a lot of the campaigns and missions set up, in my opinion, were Jedi based. I liked the flying, but not much more.

Two games came out a few years ago that intrigued me because they were based on popular space franchises. One was Star Wars: The Old Republic. Unlike the Star Wars game launched by Sony Online Entertainment, this game was set thousands of years before events in the Star Wars movies, when Jedis were all over the galaxy. Another game was Star Trek Online. I tried both games back then and they were sort of fun, but not that interesting for me. A lot of the troubles I had with both games I believe stemmed from them being new. I wasn’t keen on the graphics and the thought of paying money every month for a game I didn’t like discouraged me. So after the free first month I removed them from my system.

A week ago an old friend from high school told me he played both SWTOR and STO. They had changed their gaming model, just like many game companies have done, so you could play the game for free and if you wanted to unlock certain missions, advancement levels and the like you could pay. Since I had upgraded a couple of my computers, especially my main desktop computer, with a lot of high end gaming parts, I decided to give both games a try again.

SWTOR – I love customizing characters. I like having options to make the character not look like anyone else in the game. I had gotten used to the options in EQ2, which have been OK. A game like DC Online, which I also played when it initially launched, left me wanting more because of the restricted design pattern and the unnatural look of characters. SWTOR improved their options for designs greatly. I couldn’t access a lot of the variety in the game because those were locked out in the free version, but within 30 minutes (I’m very picky when I design a character) I was able to create an acceptable looking character.

I started off, like everyone else, playing a Jedi. As expected, the Jedi area was full of players running around. Some of the early missions were tough to complete not because of difficulty but because of the crowded playing field. I finally got smart and created another character. I went with the class Imperial Intelligence. That class allowed for my bad side to come out. But, this is Star Wars and bad isn’t really bad, but more on that later. The first thing that was odd was accents. No really, accents! The short time when I played the Jedi character, all of the characters has American accents, including mine. Playing the Imperial character, my superiors and I had British accents. Other characters has American accents but if you were part of the Empire, you were Brit. Seems to me not a great trait for a character that is supposed to be an infiltrator. You’re gonna get caught every time if you have a distinct accent.

Just like most MMO games in the beginning, I was given a mission and ran around a lot killing things for money and fame. Also like many MMOs, the tutorial is basic and a better flow of the instructions in game, or better if I had taken time to read the ins and outs of combat, interaction and upgrades would have been helpful. The music and the look gives a classic Star Wars feel but even an adjustment of the graphics to get them to a high level left the feeling of artificial. I wanted to get sucked in to the gameplay but I kept thinking it was a game and a close approximation to Star Wars but not quite there.

STO – The character customization on this game for me was insane! Even though I was in the free to play mode, the characters and the possibilities for changes were amazing! I started by building a Star Fleet Vulcan officer. I got the character to look a little like me. I will say there is a bit of a learning curve when playing the game. There is so much going on that it can be overwhelming if you aren’t prepared for it. When I got myself into a Star Trek mode, and I mean non Abrams Star Trek, the mechanics of the game started making sense.

What I like about Star Trek Online in the beginning stages is it doesn’t feel stripped down. In SWTOR, there were constant reminders about what you couldn’t do. Rooms you couldn’t enter, items you couldn’t access and NPCs you couldn’t talk to. There are items and NPCs you can’t access in STO, but what you do have access to is pretty impressive. The longer I played the game the more freedom I saw the game had. Yes, there are well laid out campaigns, but you can go off script to harvest items for trade or to explore areas off the beaten path. In fact, part of the game is to explore areas that might be off the regular path to make sure the interest of the Federation or Klingons is intact.

Things are really multi tactical in the game. There is space combat and being big ships is more like naval ship warfare than dogfighting. There is ground combat which is the run, shoot and gather part of the game. I will say space feels like space in that it can take some time to travel distances. It’s not forever and a day, because if that was the case you would lose members, but space feels vast, not a like a trip to the corner store. Another aspect I like about the game is you can have four character slots to start the game. For me it meant I could explore the Federation, Romulan and Klingon centered areas without deleting a character in another path.

A quibble I have about the game has to do with the Romulans. If you use that race, you find out there is a conflict between two factions of Romulans. You can only join one side, even though at a crucial part of the tutorial for that section you are given a change to choose either side. At another point in the tutorial you are given an option to be independent of both factions. You really don’t have a choice in the matter.

My assessment is that SWTOR might be fin for people who grew up on Star Wars The Clone Wars. It’s not cartoony, not in the sense of being silly, but if you want to run around and kill stuff, this would be the game for you and it’s not too gory as to upset the kids. STO, even though it’s set in the future, reminds me of a tabletop D&D game. There’s the spaceship battles and ground combat but you have to manage the loadout of your spaceship and your NPC crew, as well as manage your own upgrades and advancements. It feels and looks like a game for older teenagers and adults.

UPDATE – I lost interest in SWTOR. It just wasn’t my style of gameplay. STO has been fun on every level for me, other than the frustration of seeing stuff I would like to get for my ship and I can’t afford them in game. Like any MMO, it can take time to acquire in game credits to get things, but unlike SWTOR, I can see if I do the grind I can get fairly good items. Of course, if I were a paying customer I would really get the good stuff and maybe in a few months I might go that route. For now the free to play has kept my interest.

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MMO Review: SWTOR and STO - July 07, 2015
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