Post by Allya on Dec 20, 2011 9:54:12 GMT -5
Top 10 Reasons why Star Wars: The Old Republic is my WoW Killer
When World of Warcraft launched in late 2004 I was ready for a change. I had been playing Star Wars Galaxies for over a year and that experience had brought me nothing but a violent, burning hatred of Sony Online Entertainment. (I will not dance for money Sony. You can wave that light saber in front of me all you want, but it won’t turn me into a digital stripper.) The colorful graphics, ease of game-play, and interesting new storylines mended my broken soul and provided me with cheap entertainment for over 6 years. But now, just like all great stories, my characters in World of Warcraft have met their end. In the end it wasn’t dragons, naga, undead minions, or little kobolds that killed them off. No, it was a new hope.
So without further adieu, I give you the top ten reasons why Star Wars: The Old Republic is my WoW killer.
#10 – I’m Tired of Fantasy Games
It’s almost hard to say this after spending weeks in Skyrim but I really am tired of fantasy games. Wizards, mages, druids, and plate armor just don’t do it for me anymore. I have been playing in a world of Elves and Undead, Dwarves and Orcs, for over half a decade. The shine has worn off just a bit.
Yawn.
While games like Fallout and Mass Effect have given me breaks here and there, I find that I am ready to commit to a brave new online world, a world where I have a spaceship and a smartass droid.
#9 – Spaceships!
In World of Warcraft when you just *have* to be somewhere you have several options. You can ride one of the many animal mounts, hop aboard a boat at port, or bribe a very crabby mage to port you to a major city. Sadly, none of these options involve spaceflight.
Not Pictured: Space
Don’t get me wrong. I love my bear, elephant, horse, gryphon, and dragon mounts as much as anyone. (Except for the hippogryph. You know what you did.) But I am tired of traveling via circus animal and now want to ride at light-speed with my flesh pressed into the cold metal of my very own space corvette. There’s even room for my friends and companions!
#8 – Companions
While some classes in World of Warcraft do have companions, they simply aren’t available to the classes I tend to favor. For those classes that do get a companion, they essentially become a part of your arsenal or fighting style. They do not, by themselves, have any meaningful dialogue or input. Perhaps most important of all, they cannot run errands for you.
Slacker.
In Star Wars: The Old Republic I can be stranded in an ice cavern on Hoth and send my buddies off to complete diplomatic missions or dig for artifacts. They will even take all the junk I picked up from the corpses of my enemies, sell it to a local vendor, and then bring the credits back to me!
However the most important benefit to my new minions, I mean companions, is that one of them is a doctor. That’s right. In the new Star Wars game you can literally have a heal-bot follow you around and throw heals at you. All. Day. Long.
I…I think I love you.
#7 – Pandas
With the imminent release of Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft has officially jumped the shark for me. I cannot explain why after playing in a world where moon-turkeys, dancing trees, space-squid, and walrus-men exist, I draw a line at pandas. But there it is Blizzard. That’s my line and I’m not crossing it. Pandas.
You’re just mocking me now, aren’t you?
I simply cannot play in a world where the furries have won. The internet has done far too much to help that demographic along and I will not bear witness to their digital triumph.
Stop looking at me like that.
No, I want to play in a world where even the bad guys are attractive and none of them are samurai bears. Besides, that which holds the image of the Panda becomes itself a Panda. Blizzard, you have been warned.
#6 – Eye Candy
When World of Warcraft first launched, it was quite obvious that some races were far more attractive then others. The only way they could entice players to play certain races was to give them arguably game-breaking perks. (I’m looking at you fear-ward.) While the uneven racial perks eventually went away, Warcraft was forever changed. It was a world dominated by hideous looking races with strangely attractive bodies.
Please, God, put your milkshake away!
In Star Wars: The Old Republic every race can be attractive. Each race is humanoid in some capacity which means I no longer have to give up looks for special abilities. This is something that Warcraft never seemed to learn. At the end of a long day at work I do not want to come home and play a dwarf. I am five-foot-three in real life so I sacrificed an important skill just so I could be a super tall elf.
No, just, no
Because, in the end, if I’m going to pretend to be a character in a fantasy world, I better have a nice ass and be able to see above the counters.
Dead Sexy.
#5 – Infinite Expandability
As World of Warcraft progressed with subsequent expansions whole new continents appeared on the planet. Although I was already playing in a world where I could be ported via a hole in the sky to the other side of the planet, it boggled my mind that a new continent would just inexplicably appear and that everyone went about their lives like that wasn’t a big deal. Hell, one city completely uprooted and decided to float in the sky instead. (Incidentally, if we can do that with Baltimore, MD I am completely on board.)
Your move, Omar.
It would temporarily break my immersion in the game. All I ask of my online role-playing games is that they make me forget to be logical for a little while.
Star Wars takes place in space with multitudes of new planets to discover. It would not be at all out of the question for the discovery of a new planet to occur or for a new race of people to suddenly appear.
All your space are belong to us!
#4 – Well Known Storyline
Speaking of storyline, unlike World of Warcraft, Star Wars has enjoyed a massive following for decades including several movies that revolutionized the movie industry.
No, not you. You go back in your hole.
There are cartoons, comics, toys, and books all dedicated to the phenomenon that is Star Wars. Star Wars: The Old Republic exists because of these stories, not the other way around and that is huge. When I first started playing World of Warcraft I had a big learning curve. I had to learn all about the culture of the game I was playing to truly appreciate the world in which it existed. While I am sure there was a core group of gamers who knew the Warcraft lore before they played WoW, I am even surer that the majority did not. I’ll go one step further. I bet you that a minimum of ten percent of those still playing World of Warcraft do not know the lore.
I know this because one of those people is my husband. My husband will never know the lore of World of Warcraft because he is not reading a book, quest, or article about a game unless it tells him how to kill things more efficiently or generally be more badass. I don’t care how rich your game history is, if it isn’t on video you aren’t going to reach people like him. Which brings me to…
#3 – Voice Acting
With the exception of the occasional cut-scene and the one-liners uttered by NPCs, World of Warcraft does not have voice acting. I didn’t realize how much of a problem this was until I played the new Star Wars game. In Star Wars: The Old Republic almost every quest is voice-acted and it’s done very well. This means that for the first time I’m truly immersed in a game and care about why I am completing a quest.
My husband and I used to have a running joke about our play-style in WoW. He would follow me around, I would point at a mob of bad guys, and he would kill them. He had no idea why he was killing them. His play-style was 1) Click on the quest, 2) Follow my Wife, 3)…., 4) Profit. To this day I do not know why that was enjoyable to him. If he wasn’t following me around, he wasn’t questing. Instead, he just went to random areas and killed things to get loot.
So. Much. Fun.
In Star Wars: The Old Republic each quest takes you deeper and deeper into the storyline. When you combine impressive voice acting with a built-in system that directs you to quest objectives you create a player that doesn’t auto-follow his wife until it’s time to kick ass.
Except during smoke-breaks. Voice acting can’t fix that.
#2 – Special Effects
As I stated earlier, I’m tired of having magic fireballs fly from my hands. Except that, OMG, I’m totally not tired of explosions firing from my rocket-cuff. I’m not tired of force blasting everything in a five yard radius and I am definitely not tired of picking up huge random objects and chucking them at bad guys. Replace magic fireballs with force lightning and I am once again on board.
POWAH! UNLIMITED POWAH!!!
Within the first hour of playing you can do all of these things depending upon which class you choose. And that of course means…
#1 – You Start the Game as a Badass
With most video games you have to start as a low-level peon. Even in Skyrim you have to kill giant sewer rats before you’re ready to slay dragons. In World of Warcraft you began the game as a fragile flower that had to dodge scary crocolisks just to get to the auction house.
Dammit.
It’s a crawl-before-you-can-walk style that occurs in almost every game. While you do still level in Star Wars, you are not made to feel like you are inferior the minute you log on. In fact, everyone treats you like you are already a badass.
Awesome, this is.
Which means after a hard day of crunching numbers at my day job I can come home and unleash the force on some inferior bad guys like I am the best Jedi on the planet. And really, isn’t that what we want in a game?
So yes, Star Wars: The Old Republic is my WoW Killer. I loved my time in World of Warcraft. I met many friends, defeated many awesome enemies, and even got a poem published in their Gadgetzan Times, but this chapter has ended. Now my new saga begins…
Tell Your Friends
When I'm all out of bubblegum you can find my alter ego, Allya on the Rubat Crystal Server in Star Wars: The Old Republic. You can also see more of my work and collaborate with other writers on awritersrecluse.proboards.com.
And check out www.latman.com if you're looking for cheap mobile gaming apps for your kids. I mean if their accountant is this funny just imagine how awesome their games are!
When World of Warcraft launched in late 2004 I was ready for a change. I had been playing Star Wars Galaxies for over a year and that experience had brought me nothing but a violent, burning hatred of Sony Online Entertainment. (I will not dance for money Sony. You can wave that light saber in front of me all you want, but it won’t turn me into a digital stripper.) The colorful graphics, ease of game-play, and interesting new storylines mended my broken soul and provided me with cheap entertainment for over 6 years. But now, just like all great stories, my characters in World of Warcraft have met their end. In the end it wasn’t dragons, naga, undead minions, or little kobolds that killed them off. No, it was a new hope.
So without further adieu, I give you the top ten reasons why Star Wars: The Old Republic is my WoW killer.
#10 – I’m Tired of Fantasy Games
It’s almost hard to say this after spending weeks in Skyrim but I really am tired of fantasy games. Wizards, mages, druids, and plate armor just don’t do it for me anymore. I have been playing in a world of Elves and Undead, Dwarves and Orcs, for over half a decade. The shine has worn off just a bit.
Yawn.
While games like Fallout and Mass Effect have given me breaks here and there, I find that I am ready to commit to a brave new online world, a world where I have a spaceship and a smartass droid.
#9 – Spaceships!
In World of Warcraft when you just *have* to be somewhere you have several options. You can ride one of the many animal mounts, hop aboard a boat at port, or bribe a very crabby mage to port you to a major city. Sadly, none of these options involve spaceflight.
Not Pictured: Space
Don’t get me wrong. I love my bear, elephant, horse, gryphon, and dragon mounts as much as anyone. (Except for the hippogryph. You know what you did.) But I am tired of traveling via circus animal and now want to ride at light-speed with my flesh pressed into the cold metal of my very own space corvette. There’s even room for my friends and companions!
#8 – Companions
While some classes in World of Warcraft do have companions, they simply aren’t available to the classes I tend to favor. For those classes that do get a companion, they essentially become a part of your arsenal or fighting style. They do not, by themselves, have any meaningful dialogue or input. Perhaps most important of all, they cannot run errands for you.
Slacker.
In Star Wars: The Old Republic I can be stranded in an ice cavern on Hoth and send my buddies off to complete diplomatic missions or dig for artifacts. They will even take all the junk I picked up from the corpses of my enemies, sell it to a local vendor, and then bring the credits back to me!
However the most important benefit to my new minions, I mean companions, is that one of them is a doctor. That’s right. In the new Star Wars game you can literally have a heal-bot follow you around and throw heals at you. All. Day. Long.
I…I think I love you.
#7 – Pandas
With the imminent release of Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft has officially jumped the shark for me. I cannot explain why after playing in a world where moon-turkeys, dancing trees, space-squid, and walrus-men exist, I draw a line at pandas. But there it is Blizzard. That’s my line and I’m not crossing it. Pandas.
You’re just mocking me now, aren’t you?
I simply cannot play in a world where the furries have won. The internet has done far too much to help that demographic along and I will not bear witness to their digital triumph.
Stop looking at me like that.
No, I want to play in a world where even the bad guys are attractive and none of them are samurai bears. Besides, that which holds the image of the Panda becomes itself a Panda. Blizzard, you have been warned.
#6 – Eye Candy
When World of Warcraft first launched, it was quite obvious that some races were far more attractive then others. The only way they could entice players to play certain races was to give them arguably game-breaking perks. (I’m looking at you fear-ward.) While the uneven racial perks eventually went away, Warcraft was forever changed. It was a world dominated by hideous looking races with strangely attractive bodies.
Please, God, put your milkshake away!
In Star Wars: The Old Republic every race can be attractive. Each race is humanoid in some capacity which means I no longer have to give up looks for special abilities. This is something that Warcraft never seemed to learn. At the end of a long day at work I do not want to come home and play a dwarf. I am five-foot-three in real life so I sacrificed an important skill just so I could be a super tall elf.
No, just, no
Because, in the end, if I’m going to pretend to be a character in a fantasy world, I better have a nice ass and be able to see above the counters.
Dead Sexy.
#5 – Infinite Expandability
As World of Warcraft progressed with subsequent expansions whole new continents appeared on the planet. Although I was already playing in a world where I could be ported via a hole in the sky to the other side of the planet, it boggled my mind that a new continent would just inexplicably appear and that everyone went about their lives like that wasn’t a big deal. Hell, one city completely uprooted and decided to float in the sky instead. (Incidentally, if we can do that with Baltimore, MD I am completely on board.)
Your move, Omar.
It would temporarily break my immersion in the game. All I ask of my online role-playing games is that they make me forget to be logical for a little while.
Star Wars takes place in space with multitudes of new planets to discover. It would not be at all out of the question for the discovery of a new planet to occur or for a new race of people to suddenly appear.
All your space are belong to us!
#4 – Well Known Storyline
Speaking of storyline, unlike World of Warcraft, Star Wars has enjoyed a massive following for decades including several movies that revolutionized the movie industry.
No, not you. You go back in your hole.
There are cartoons, comics, toys, and books all dedicated to the phenomenon that is Star Wars. Star Wars: The Old Republic exists because of these stories, not the other way around and that is huge. When I first started playing World of Warcraft I had a big learning curve. I had to learn all about the culture of the game I was playing to truly appreciate the world in which it existed. While I am sure there was a core group of gamers who knew the Warcraft lore before they played WoW, I am even surer that the majority did not. I’ll go one step further. I bet you that a minimum of ten percent of those still playing World of Warcraft do not know the lore.
I know this because one of those people is my husband. My husband will never know the lore of World of Warcraft because he is not reading a book, quest, or article about a game unless it tells him how to kill things more efficiently or generally be more badass. I don’t care how rich your game history is, if it isn’t on video you aren’t going to reach people like him. Which brings me to…
#3 – Voice Acting
With the exception of the occasional cut-scene and the one-liners uttered by NPCs, World of Warcraft does not have voice acting. I didn’t realize how much of a problem this was until I played the new Star Wars game. In Star Wars: The Old Republic almost every quest is voice-acted and it’s done very well. This means that for the first time I’m truly immersed in a game and care about why I am completing a quest.
My husband and I used to have a running joke about our play-style in WoW. He would follow me around, I would point at a mob of bad guys, and he would kill them. He had no idea why he was killing them. His play-style was 1) Click on the quest, 2) Follow my Wife, 3)…., 4) Profit. To this day I do not know why that was enjoyable to him. If he wasn’t following me around, he wasn’t questing. Instead, he just went to random areas and killed things to get loot.
So. Much. Fun.
In Star Wars: The Old Republic each quest takes you deeper and deeper into the storyline. When you combine impressive voice acting with a built-in system that directs you to quest objectives you create a player that doesn’t auto-follow his wife until it’s time to kick ass.
Except during smoke-breaks. Voice acting can’t fix that.
#2 – Special Effects
As I stated earlier, I’m tired of having magic fireballs fly from my hands. Except that, OMG, I’m totally not tired of explosions firing from my rocket-cuff. I’m not tired of force blasting everything in a five yard radius and I am definitely not tired of picking up huge random objects and chucking them at bad guys. Replace magic fireballs with force lightning and I am once again on board.
POWAH! UNLIMITED POWAH!!!
Within the first hour of playing you can do all of these things depending upon which class you choose. And that of course means…
#1 – You Start the Game as a Badass
With most video games you have to start as a low-level peon. Even in Skyrim you have to kill giant sewer rats before you’re ready to slay dragons. In World of Warcraft you began the game as a fragile flower that had to dodge scary crocolisks just to get to the auction house.
Dammit.
It’s a crawl-before-you-can-walk style that occurs in almost every game. While you do still level in Star Wars, you are not made to feel like you are inferior the minute you log on. In fact, everyone treats you like you are already a badass.
Awesome, this is.
Which means after a hard day of crunching numbers at my day job I can come home and unleash the force on some inferior bad guys like I am the best Jedi on the planet. And really, isn’t that what we want in a game?
So yes, Star Wars: The Old Republic is my WoW Killer. I loved my time in World of Warcraft. I met many friends, defeated many awesome enemies, and even got a poem published in their Gadgetzan Times, but this chapter has ended. Now my new saga begins…
Tell Your Friends
When I'm all out of bubblegum you can find my alter ego, Allya on the Rubat Crystal Server in Star Wars: The Old Republic. You can also see more of my work and collaborate with other writers on awritersrecluse.proboards.com.
And check out www.latman.com if you're looking for cheap mobile gaming apps for your kids. I mean if their accountant is this funny just imagine how awesome their games are!
