The Old Republic Features Summary

So I've been keeping up to date with Guild Wars 2 and I always hear about the Old Republic when people mention their favourite MMO for 2011. I've been looking forward to GW2 for years now and I'm very excited for their new features, like removing tanking and healing and their dynamic event system, but I still don't know anything about ToR, other than a lot of story. Could anyone give me a summary of its features, game play mechanics and combat? I'd like to know what all the hype about ToR is about if it's competing with GW2. I don't feel like going through endless forums to figure out all the new innovations for myself, and their website doesn't seem to give me any information.

I haven't been following TOR much, but I think it's similar to WoW. There are more tanking oriented classes and more DPS oriented classes. I'm not sure about healing. From the little I've read, it seems the classes will have some flexibility. Like it will be easier to switch from DPS to tanking. Maybe the same gear can be used for both or something like that. A lot of people see it as the next big step in the Everquest-style MMO, with full voice-over for all NPCs and in-engine cutscenes for every quest.

Do you know if you can fly around the galaxy or will they stick to KoTR, where you were stuck on land throughout the game? And if you can't freely fly around can you at least do anything in space?

Do you know if you can fly around the galaxy or will they stick to KoTR, where you were stuck on land throughout the game? And if you can't freely fly around can you at least do anything in space?

nechiken

Its like kotor, you load up the galaxy map on your ship and select your destination. There is space combat, but those sections are much more actiony and scripted.

They have announced space combat and it looks good but its " on rails shooting" such as you follow a predetermined path. Dont get your hopes up about being able to fly around the galaxie as awesome as that would be :P

One of the problems developers of sci-fi MMOs have to worry about is the scope of the whole thing. A game like WoW is just one "planet", but TOR has to have multiple planets plus some semblance of space. There's just no way to do all that and make it as detailed as a "smaller" MMO like WoW. The developers have to make cuts somewhere. I'm sure Bioware will make better space combat if the game does really well. I think they did something like that in Galaxies with a space combat expansion.

I got a few reasons as to why I am very excited for TOR. Easy suggestions is that it is Bioware and Star wars, that alone is worth some points. Aside from that though, the space combat looks imo GREAT for an MMO, anything a new MMO these days can do that is completely original is great. The game world is going to be MASSIVE. I recall that there is roughly 16 planets, and one of the dev's stated that 1 planet is roughly 7 zones in WoW, which means these are going to feel pretty massive scale-wise.

Im excited for story in an MMO, will be a great experience that will push back so much of the grind feel of modern MMOs. The crafting system is interesting, you get your own crew and you can issue orders for them to do assignments for you, and they said the crafting system will actually be useful unlike many MMO's where it almost feels pointless to craft when the 5 man dungeon you just did dropped stuff better than the things you can make after spending hours with it.

These are a few key points off the top of my head, truthfully there is still a lot of "unknowns" with this game still. Im also excited for GW2 as well, but TOR is number 1 on my list, and I'm not even a big Star Wars fan. I'm just excited to see what Bioware can do with an MMO.