Star Wars: The Old Republic – Checking Up
Games are, by necessity of their core components, a systematic affair. The artistry of game design is in getting us to ignore that system by obfuscating it behind engaging narrative or providing enough variety that we fail to notice the mechanics at work behind the scenes (with rare exceptions, in which the systematic elements are designed to be the focus of the game). It’s a pretty safe generalization to say that the longer one spends with a game, the more the seams of its structure will begin to show; role-playing games, which often freely expose their underlying numbers, and fighting games, for which high level competition involves a deep understanding of its meta-game that comes only from practice, are perhaps the two most apparent examples of this trend.
As such, an MMO, which is meant to lock in players for months upon months while consistently stacking additional content on the same, basic frame, extrapolates this phenomenon to its extreme. Its tends to focus on the “variety” side of things, ferrying its players to new locales and regaling them with an epic story or allowing them to experience the core gameplay in new situations, such as against other players or in tremendous multiple-party dungeons and battles. This is the formula on which Star Wars: The Old Republic relies—on which we knew it was going to rely from day one—and it begs the question: Is it all we should demand?
I wasn’t originally planning to purchase The Old Republic. Despite the BioWare pedigree, even accounting for the magic of the original Knights of the Old Republic, I had been burned by and disappointing MMOs too many times in years past to approach it with any real fervor. That changed when my friends bought it and I got the chance to see it in action, during the early start, immediately flipping that “nerd” switch in the back of my mind that deems anything with the Star Wars name worthy of at least a glance.
And so I played it, for a month, and paid for another as I journeyed across Tython and Hutta and blazed a trail through Korriban, Dromund Kaas, and Coruscant (I may have an alt addiction). It was, generally speaking, a pleasure to play. As has been noted in the past , BioWare knows how to do story, and engaging in dialogue is the most addictive, personalizing element of the entire TOR experience. As long as that is the focus, things work very, very well, and everything swings in the MMO’s favor.
That was the case, for the most part, until I reached Balmorra. The first issue I took with the planet was that, for its heroics, it generally demanded larger groups, which disabled everyone’s companion characters, pulling away that level of interaction (and thus personalization). The second concern is that Balmorra seems to stretch on for an eternity, and is neither interesting to look at nor particularly well laid out. A lot of time is spent completing uninteresting quests for less-than-compelling characters, such that the experience becomes an absolute grind, and the weaknesses in the game begin to show. Because, at its core, The Old Republic draws its basic gameplay from the hot-bar tradition of its MMO forebears: World of Warcraft, Aion, and Everquest, to name three within a veritable pantheon.
I never managed to get past Balmorra. The friend I was leveling with and I decided to try out some different character classes. It wasn’t long, however, before I realized that, other than each class’ main quest line and a few gender-centric interactions, every character who quests on a given planet has access to the exact same side missions. What felt special and interesting the first time through became busy-work the next, as I made sure to pick up all the side quests I remembered so that I’d gain the necessary experience to level and not have to worry about being underpowered when I got to some of the tougher portions of the early game. That enjoyment I had felt, the illusion that I was progressing toward a poignant goal, became a matter of running on a treadmill with occasional breaks for rest. Refreshing, always, but not enduring enough to satisfy.
And what if I did proceed onward to the end-game? What would have happened? Tim Buckley of Ctrl+Alt+Del revealed that, upon hitting the max level and completing his character’s final story mission, he was left only with playing for the sake of the game’s equivalent of raids, or its PvP. For what it’s worth, his account has lapsed. The issue with building a game around story is that, eventually, that story must end. That doesn’t mean BioWare has, or will, stop producing content for the game or refining the entire experience (a tremendous patch is on the way as I write this), but it does make it seem possible that the story alone isn’t enough to keep subscribers locked in for month upon month. At the beginning of February, the game was nearing 2 million subscribers; as of March, it seemed to have stabilized at approximately 1.7 million. It’s too early to say whether that will rise, remain constant, or drop off (and it’s an impressive number, to be sure; one that EA bolsters by asserting that most of said players have already used their free trials and are paying for their subscriptions), but does that excuse the failings of the gameplay in the first place? No.
BioWare’s other major sci-fi work, Mass Effect, drew me in, in part, because of its gameplay. It and its sequels are fun enough as shooters that the reward of leveling was secondary to the experience of exploring new places, meeting interesting aliens, and capping them in the face. The Old Republic, when one strips away the license that coats it and the conversation that peppers it, comes to a somewhat dated core that falls, in the end, on the wrong side of “tedious.”
 | By Shelby Reiches Contributing Writer  @Shelby_Arr Date: April 10, 2012 |
*The views expressed within this article are solely the opinion of the author and do not express the views held by Cheat Code Central. This week’s is also purely a work of fiction*