Well, it's finally official the MMO we all have been waiting for, the answer to all our problems, the WoW killer and the new MMO king ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2, has launched. However can this game really live up to everyone’s expectations?

Let me start off by saying the game is certainly good. However I am not sure if GW2 will be the WoW killer we have all been waiting for.

What I like!

GW2 has certainly innovated the MMO genre. Allot of the things that make you mad about leveling in other MMOs are fixed in GW2. To really understand this you really have to play Guild Wars 2 but here are some of my favorite improvements.

Automatic quests are one of my favorite things in GW2. You no longer have to clear spiders to get to a quest giver just to find out that he wants you to kill 10 spiders. It’s all automatic, say you walk up to a farm that is spider infested, your quest will automatically appear saying kill spiders, and disappear when you leave the area so your quest list is never cluttered. Also when you finish the quest you get your experience immediately and the reward is mailed to you. You can also check your mail anywhere :)

Dynamic events are also great. Once a while you will get a notice saying there is dynamic event happening. It’s just a quest that happens at random times that requires a large group of people to complete. However it is fun as many people in that area will run to complete the event. So you will find yourself in a group of 20 people fighting centaurs or protecting a caravan etc. It’s actually allot of fun

No need to party. You do not need to be in a party to play with other people. If you help someone down an enemy you both get the reward. You can’t steal other people’s kills. You simply just find a group of people that seem to be on your quest and help each other down enemies. This really promotes group play and makes it even more fun to play.

Automatic down leveling. This is also a great idea. I have friends that play GW2 but I may behind them in questing. No problem if they join me in a level 10 area they will automatically down level to 10 making the fights challenging. However they will still get rewards equal to their level. You can also party with people on different servers which is an amazing feature that I think is long overdue.

What is also good?

I want go into too much detail on these areas but the graphics & combat are very good. The combat feels very much action packed although it’s still hot bar based. Graphics are excellent both from a style perspective and visual appeal. Also your gear color can be changed anytime.

World vs. World vs. World

This is also a very unique and potentially fun part of GW2. Players from 3 servers fighting to capture keeps and supplies using siege engines in a persistent battleground (resets every few weeks). I was really looking forward to this and I have to say I am both pleased and annoyed. I am pleased because when you actually get into a large fight over a keep it could be allot of fun. However I am annoyed because when you die you have to teleport to the nearest waypoint. And it’s far. You have to walk and walk and walk back and if you get unlucky you can die in 1 minute of fighting and teleport back and walk and walk and walk again. Also my server sucks so we are really getting our buts kicked in WvWvW.

I will reserve my judgment over WvWvW because I think I am still too low level to really enjoy it. Also as I learn the map and how to fight better I think it will be allot more fun than it is.

World of Warcaft Killer?

There is still allot of content that I have not experienced in this game that will take some time to discover. Is this game a WoW killer for me? I do not think so. GW2 is different it lacks things like Raids, mount collecting, custom add-ons like the recount DPS meter, tank & healer roles (which many people like) & item level which are ever so present in WoW. I think WoW can (and will) adopt many of the innovations that GW2 has introduced and be just as successful as it is now. At the end of the day I think GW2 will hit other free to play titles the most. GW2 is probably the best free-to-play title available today. There are many WoW players that will switch but I am just not sure if GW2 will ever hit the 10 million player mark.

I do want to add that Blizzard certainly paid attention to GW2 releasing WoW’s patch 5.0.4 on the same day as the GW2 release. I am not sure how well that worked out though as during WoW’s server outage I was playing Guild Wars 2 :)

The day has finally come. Star Wars: The Old Republic is here. Having done both the beta testing and having pre-ordered had early access to the game, I would like to now share some of my experiences with SWTOR.

At the time of writing this review I have only reached level 16, so this will not be a full game review but rather my initial impressions. I will do another review dedicated to some higher level content at a later time. Mainly I wanted to reach level 16 before writing this review because by that level I had access to:

• Companions
• Flashpoints
• Personal Ship
• Crafting
• PVP

This review is full of my personal opinions and I understand that everyone will not agree. Also I believe I had high expectations going into this game and I am a bit tainted by all the other MMOs or games I play. Still this game was in development for 3 years, and they hype before the game was launched was unprecedented. So it is difficult to not build up you expectations first time you play SWTOR and I think this review reflects that although maybe a bit unfairly.

Graphics

I want to start this review with graphics because they are immediately both rewarding and challenging. This game will require a good computer to run even on low settings. I am not going to get technical about the type of graphic card you need, however I can tell you I have an Alienware M15x (which is 2 years old and no longer all that) and I can only run this game on the lowest settings. My advice is to disable shadows in the graphics preferences. The game will probably set shadows to low automatically if your computer is not up to par. However I found setting Shadows to off will give you a large performance boost.

Here is my gripe with the high graphics requirements. I have a Playstation 3 which originally cost about $500. Years later it can still play games like Skyrim with beautiful graphics without any problems. However I have a laptop which cost $1500 and it is obsolete within 2 years. I am not sure if Bioware is to blame for this or if it is a Windows problem, or if it has to do with the fact that a PS3 is a dedicated gaming system. However it is an issue that I think will prevent many people from enjoying this game, as not everyone is willing to spend extra money to update their computer before purchasing the game.

I do have to admit that even on low settings this game kicks the graphical crap out of most MMOs out there. I can only imagine how it looks like on high level. As of now I am still trying to find a friend who has the horsepower to run it on high graphic settings.

Once you get past the graphics requirement, the game is in fact beautiful. The graphics are done in what BioWare calls cartoon realism. What this allows the character models to be a bit more expressive. We have all seen games where the character models are attempting to match real live humans just do end up with that dead look in their eyes. This does not happen in SWTOR. I believe this was a good decision and it works for the game very well. I want to conclude that players should not be worried about how the game will look like even if their current computer cannot run the game on anything other than low settings. Don’t let the word “Low” ruin this game for you because in low settings the game will still look way better than WOW or LOTRO or DDO in their highest graphical settings (put together).

Character Creation

Character creation met my minimum expectations but did not exceed. Don’t get me wrong it will leave WOW or DDO or LOTRO character creation in the dust. However it is not as good as a game like Skyrim. The character models look good. I can even say that they look great. You can even make them fat which was a first for me.

However I would like a slightly larger variety of options. Fox example you can choose from a pre-set number of face models which all look good, however you cannot modify the face model to make his chin or nose larger, something we have seen in Oblivion years ago. I would also like to have the option to make my characters model look a bit older. Right now he looks like he just finished high school. Another gripe is that I can make my character’s hair white, but his eyebrows are always brown. That just looks weird. Again this is nothing that will prevent you from enjoying the game; however it did not exceed my expectations either.

Combat

Out of all the gripes I have with this game, combat is probably the largest. It is a direct copy of WOW’s combat system. This means you have a hot bar of icons and you click (or use keyboard or gaming mouse) on each one to do a different type of attack. After a while you will figure out which order gives you the largest benefit and you will start clicking the hot bar in certain order or combination to achieve maximum DPS.

This is a combat system from the last decade. If you look at the combat system of a MMO like DDO you will see right away how crappy the combat system is in SWTOR. Play any modern PS3 game like Skyrim or Infamous and it is hard to believe that this is the best the MMO community has to offer. To be fair I do see the logic of copying WOW’s combat system, considering that it is the most popular MMO out there, and attracting WOW’s players is what all new MMOs try to do. I just wish there was even a small level of improvement.

I do want to add that once you get over the whole hot bar issue, the characters looks great swinging their light sabres. They even block and parry. It actually looks like you are having a light saber fight. So I would say poor marks on the combat interface, great marks on the visuals.

Lore

Star Wars: The Old Republic takes place thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader and the Clone Wars. This is a time when the Sith Empire was as strong as the Jedi Republic. The story takes place after the end of a violent conflict between the Republic and the Sith empire during a fragile peace between the two factions.

I have to say this is brilliant. Let’s face it the Clone Wars and the 3 prequels did allot of damage to the Star Wars franchise and are enjoyed only by the most hard core fans and little kids. However in this game we get to play the Sith in their prime, against the equally balanced Jedi. I have to give full marks to BioWare and Lucas Arts on the Lore of this game and for making such a great world and lore.

I don’t think Bioware had a blank canvas to work with. They already had several games that took place in that timeline and there are books written that tell stories about the Sith Empire and the Republic conflict. I did not read these books or play the previous games so I can’t judge how accurate they were in creating their world compared to the existing lore. However I do want to say I found the Lore in this game to be deep and well done. I believe allot of time was spent developing that part of the game.

Storyline & Questing

Finally a game that does not require me to go kill 10 rats over and over again. Yes there is some of that in the side quests. However mostly there are beautifully written stories with voice overs that make you feel like you are actually accomplishing something. Yes even the go kill 10 rats side quests have voice overs. Furthermore similar to other BioWare games you get to make some choices about how you answer the NPCs. Some of the choices you make have consequences and earn you either light side or dark side points which have other consequences later on in the game. I think this is the first game where I did not simply fast forward to quest text to get to the end so I can start killing my 10 rats. I found I actually sat there and listened to every quest conversation and participated in the answers. I know this is kind of hard to explain, I know when I read about it I was thinking “Story who cares”. However it really works and it is really well done, and surprisingly it makes all the difference. I give SWTOR high marks in this department and believe they truly had set a high bar for any future released MMO.

Crafting and Companions

Similar to other MMOs in SWTOR you get a companion (NPCs that helps you). Which companion you get depends on the class you choose. Each class will eventually unlock several companions. What is different here is that these companions have their unique story, personality and roles. They interact with you. You can flirt or even marry some of them. They can be happy or unhappy with your decisions, and you can give them gifts to make them happier. Now if this was not well done it would be kind of cheesy, however this game excels at storytelling so it is not cheesy and you will probably find that you like your companion.

Companions have different roles and they are actually very useful. I have heard somewhere that a companion is equal to about a 60% of a player, which I think is fairly close to what I have experienced.

Companions can also take care of some of the more boring parts of playing an MMO like selling vendor junk, collecting crafting ingredients and even crafting items. You just click on your companion and tell him to sell your items, and he disappears for a few minutes than comes back with the cash. You also send them on a mission and they come back 3 minutes later with the reward. I think this is a great innovation for MMOs and again I think it will set a high bar for future MMO developers.

Flashpoints

Flashpoints are repeatable group instance quests. They are long and they usually have a rich story and great rewards. It is well done and enjoyable. However I do not like the fact that you can’t just join the instance from anywhere. You have to actually walk up to the entrance. Walking to a flashpoint is boring and they are often not located close to your current quest area. However there is quick travel in the game so getting there is not all that difficult and it does make the flashpoint feel a bit more “real” if you have to walk up to it.

I would also like to have an instance finder that allows you to be automatically matched with a flashpoint group. Currently to find a group you stand in front of the entrance and spam the chat channel with “LFG Black Talon”. This is the same for any other instance quest. This game really should have an instance finder; I hope this is something that gets added in the future.

PVP

There is no open world PVP, which is ok with me. There are some open PVP areas on PVP servers, there are PVP instances called Warzones on all servers and there are duels. I have not yet heard about any class imbalances, and my experience with PVP was fun. The open PVP areas are kind of pointless since you get very little or no rewards. You can’t loot the loosing player. Warzone PVP is where it is at and where I think most PVP action will happen.

Warzones are still a bit limited in party size and they are random but I think this will be remedied in the future. Is the PVP as good as what I have seen in the upcoming Guild Wars 2? I would have to say no. But it is fun.

Traveling

SWTOR worlds are large enough to make you feel like it’s a real place but not too large to make you feel alone. There is instant travel (30 minutes cool down) to an unlocked location similar to WOW except you can pick from many locations not just one. You can take a taxi to an unlocked location. You can walk and at higher levels you can get a speeder. I have not yet seen animal mounts. You also get a personal ship to travel between planets or you can take a shuttle. There is enough traveling to make you feel like it is a real place, but not too much to make it too boring.

Personal Ship

Your personal ship is not only used for traveling and space missions but it is also your home. It’s one of the few places where you can talk to your companions. I am a big fan of MMO housing so I was very much looking forward to getting my ship. Although I is instance based so it can’t compare to some of the housing in sandbox MMOs, however in other MMOs you can’t take your house into a space battle so I can't really complain.

Conclusion

Based on the pre-order numbers, the hype in the MMO community I think SWTOR is here to stay. The real question how big is it going to be? In order for the game to really make headway it will need to attract existing MMO players. I think the time for this has never been better. WOW is still huge but declining. Their best hope is the Disney Panda expansion which has the MMO community rolling their eyes. Other than WOW, Rift and some F2P titles, there is no real competition on the market.

Furthermore there are many non MMO players that will try this game because it is Star Wars. Many will solo play the excellent storyline, get bored and uninstall the game. However I think quite a few of these new players will try the MMO aspects of the game and get hooked.

My personal prediction is that SWTOR will do well, and might even reach a steady 2-3 million subscriptions. It will certainly be larger than any other MMO with the exception of WOW. Is SWTOR perfect? Absolutely not. Some of the problems will get fixed in future updates; some will never get fixed because they are such an integrated part of the game mechanics (like combat).

However on a whole the attraction of the Star Wars IP, the great story, great graphics and great gameplay, great marketing and great timing will make this game a winner. I certainly will keep playing.

While waiting for the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic I decided to give Lord of the Rings Online another try. Although I have played the game before, last time I did not give it a good enough chance and only spent a few hours playing it.

This time I am going to commit to stick with it to at least level 20 even if I do end up liking the game. I selected level 20 because there are several things that are unlocked by that level providing me with a fuller experience of the game.

By level 20 I am looking to unlock:

• Housing (Unlocked at level 15)
• Skirmishes
• Mounts

Character Creation

Character creation is actually where this game fell apart for me last time. There is just something wrong with the way elf and human characters look like. I think I boiled it down to the fact that their waist is too small in comparison to the chest (like Barbie dolls) and in the same time their feet are too large to be anatomically correct.

This time around I knew that this would bother me so I tried to compensate in the character creation screen to make the character a bit more anatomically correct. Still, the character creation is disappointing and is definitely not on par with the graphics that are found in the rest of the game. To be fair LOTRO’s character creation screen is much better than one found in World of Warcraft where human players always look like they have a brown nose. I also have to add that by the time your character get’s some better gear, they do somehow start looking more anatomically correct.

As expected when you first start your character, you will not have amazing polished armour. You will not even have Strider’s hooded cloak. The good news is that as you level and you acquire better gear, you will start looking a bit better.

Graphics

The graphics in LOTRO are done in a cartoon-realism style and they are beautiful. The grass actually looks like grass; the trees cast shadows that appear on your character when you walk through them. None of it is picture realistic; however it is done well enough to lure you into enjoying the vast landscapes while traveling on your quests.

Lore

Many people will be attracted to this game because of the Tolkien’s books or even movies. I myself remember reading Lord of the Rings and imagining how cool it would be to have a Lord of the Rings game. The problem is that the game consists mostly of side stories related to the lore but not found in the original books. So for example Strider is in the game, but he is asking you to kill 10 rats or go see that person, rather than asking to help Frodo.

Since we can’t change the books to all of the sudden fit in my character I can understand the design decision here. I don’t really have a good solution. I just want to make the point that this is an MMO about the world of Lord of the Rings and not so much participating in the main story in the books. Never the less it is fun to see some of the LOR characters in the game as NPCs even if they are constantly asking you to go kill 10 rats. Also having Lore written by a great author is way better than some of the stuff other MMOs make up.

Travel

LOTROs quests are spread over a large landmass hence travel is a very important part of the game. To get around you have several options. Your character can have one quick travel option you can use once every hour. You can change your quick travel location by accessing Milestones located in all cities and throughout the land. You also have one quick travel option back to your house and one back to your kinship’s (guild) house.

If quick travel is no possible you have 3 other traveling options. You can run which is very slow, you can rent a horse that will take you to another stable you have visited in the past or you can buy the horse which requires the riding skill.

Fairly early in the game I received a 24 hours temporary horse. It was great as it allowed me to get to and from my quests much faster. I was some angry when I found out that the horse disappeared after 24 hours and there was no way to get it back without purchasing the Riding Skill from the LOTRO store. The bad news is it will take a few levels to earn the 95 Turbine Points to buy the skill for free. It will also take you a while to earn the 500 silver required to buy the horse. In retrospect, the one thing I would change about the first 20 levels I played would be to include the riding skill for free and make it available early to everyone.

Questing

Speaking of traveling, you will be doing quite a bit of that to get to and from your quest. Similarly to World of Warcraft you will start in a small village/city where you will be given tasks and quests. When you finish with the quests in that village you will move on to the next larger city and so on. Some of them will be instanced quests telling a deep story, while many will be your traditional go kill 10 rats. Most of the instance story like quests will be a part of the epic storyline and they will have names such as Volume I Book 1. While it would be nice if you could complete the game simply by doing the epic storyline, you will soon find out that the experience gained though that quest line is not enough to level you fast enough to be able to complete the next chapter. So in order to level up (at least to level 20) you will end up doing your traditional kill 10 rats, escort this NPC and go bring me something quests. As with any MMOs these quests are boring.

Skirmishes

I love raiding. There is something exciting about being in a group of people working together to complete an objective. I personally don’t have time to sit in guild chat and try to organise a group together to ride for 30 minutes to get to the quest entrance and after 2 hours maybe complete the objective. I don’t have time for that. I personally want to be able to click be matched up in a random group and be teleported to a quest/raid that I can finish in about 20-30 minutes, teleport back sell stuff and log out. This is why I was especially looking forward to LOTRO’s Skirmishes.

Skirmishes are instant, start from anywhere fun and a great way to level without having to run boring generic quests. You can join a Skirmish from almost anywhere in the world and after you complete it, you just get teleported back to where you started. There are two main types of Skirmishes Offence and Defence which can be soloed as well as Classic Skirmishes which are more like quests/dungeons and require a fellowship (group).

Yes the content does get stale after repeating the same Skirmish several times but I think there is enough variety to keep you occupied for a while. At level 20 I unlocked 2 free Skirmishes and 3 instance quests. Doing these quests/skirmishes 2 times each took me from level 20 to level 24. On top of great experience, skirmishes drop Skirmish Marks as rewards that can be traded for great armour, weapons, cloaks and jewellery. Just by doing 2 Skirmishes my character went from rags to looking quite respectable.

With Update 5 released, Skirmishes are even more fun. Instead of looking for a party though the LFF chat, you can now get the game to match you with other players interested in doing the same quest/skirmish. This makes it really easy to log-in, match to a party, play a skirmish and log out, all taking about 30 minutes of your real life.

Skirmishes are unfortunately not all free. You get 2 that are free but after that its pay to play. However skirmishes scale in difficulty. This means that you can be running the same free Skirmishes at level 65 that you ran at level 20 for free and use them to gain experience and gear all the way to higher levels.

Another interesting aspect of Skirmishes are the Soldiers. These are alike NPC companions that will help you during your Skirmish adventures. You get various Soldier types with various soldier abilities. I personally choose the Herbalist which is a healer class. Originally I was not all that excited about Soldiers, however after a few Skirmishes I found that they are quite a bit of fun and not a huge management hassle (which I thought they would be).

Free-to-Play Model

Turbines (LOTRO’s Developer) Free-To-Play model is probably one of the best ones out there. I say that because if you really do not want to pay any money you can eventually unlock everything in the game for free. It will be very boring and it will take a very long time but it is possible.

This is how it works; for most of the things you do in the game you can unlock achievements which will give you a reward in the form of LOTROs virtual currency called Turbine Points. So you kill 30 spiders you get 5 Turbine Points, reach the next tier achievement (60 Spiders) get 10 Turbine points. Not every monster unlocks an achievement however enough that by the time I reached level 20, I had the 95 Turbine Points necessary to get the mount riding skill for free.

Turbine Points are account level so some people will actually farm Turbine Points by creating a character, killing monsters to earn the Turbine points, deleting the character and starting again with a new one. This is actually allowed and not considered an exploit of the game. (There is a similar system for Dungeons & Dragons Online also made by Turbine)

The game as a whole is quite generous, at level 20 I have not yet reached a quest which asked me to pay money. The only thing I really wanted to buy was the Riding skill so I can ride a horse, but even that was easily unlocked with the 95 free Turbine Points I received just for doing regular questing.

To be fair I know for a fact that at higher levels the game is less generous and you will run into questing content that will no longer be free. On the other hand the entire epic storyline is free and the level cap is the same for paying and non-paying players.

The only additional note I want to make about the LOTROs free-to-play model is that even if you are premium players (you spent some money at the store) you still have a 5 gold pieces limit on your character. I do not feel this is fair. Although it can be unlocked by an in-game purchase (395 turbine points) I feel that premium players that purchase in-game content and support the game differently (buying rather than renting) should not be penalized this way. On the other hand I can see that by level 30-40 I should be able to save up enough free turbine points to remove this limit anyways. In closing I want to say that I give the free-to-play model for LOTRO fairly high marks, yes there is the gold limit issue even for paying non VIP members, but considering that you get all the free content, it is way better than some of the other free-to-play games.

Crafting

I will not spend allot of time explaining crafting because it is not particularly exciting. You collect some raw materials; you make stuff out of them. I will however say that it is an ok way to make in-game gold. Even if you are not planning to spend hours crafting high level items I think it is worth at least having crafting/collecting skills to make basic stuff to earn some easy silver. I know it helped me stop feeling cash poor all the time.

Housing

Being a long time Ultima Online player I was very interested in the housing in LOTRO. Having spent so long playing Dungeons & Dragons Online (which has no housing) I looked forward to finally owning a virtual house again.

There are 4 separate housing Neighbourhoods (1 for each race). Each one has 30 pre-build houses which you can purchase. The houses are various sized and priced. The smallest costs about 1 gold, and the largest Kinship (Guild) house costs 15 gold. Houses also have a maintenance cost which has to be paid so that you don’t lose your house. Unlike Ultima Online LOTRO will never run out houses because the Neighbourhoods are instanced. If one Neighbourhood gets full another one gets added in the exact same location. When you choose to enter a Neighbourhood it will ask you which one you actually want to enter.

As far as I can see there really is little real purpose to housing other than instant travel, extra storage and fun. You can decorate your house inside and outside and you can place a chest in your house that can store more items. You also get instant travel ability to your house, which allows you to return home easily. This can be an advantage and many people will move their house to a Neighbourhood closer to their questing location. You also get a small vendor discount in your Neighbourhood which helps offset the maintenance cost.

All in all I had fun purchasing my house and decorating it and even though the house has no real value and little purpose, I kind of like having a single place for my character to log out off at the end of the night.

Conclusion

I guess the best way I can rate this game is by asking myself; will I continue playing after I complete this review. My answer surprisingly is yes. I think it started to happen around level 15 where I thought maybe I can play this. At around level 20 I was hooked. Is LOTRO a perfect game, absolutely no, it has issues and parts that are boring and involve allot of grind. However there is far less necessary grind at higher levels and the game has enough fun to hook me into it.

I don’t think this will be my primary MMO but I will continue playing LOTRO. In fact I wish I was playing right now. My goal will be to take at least one character to max level and experience some of the higher level content. I will probably end up buying Turbine Points to purchase things like higher level Skirmishes and expansions and I will feel great to be able to support this great game.

My advice is to try this game to at least level 20. I don’t think you can give LOTRO a fair try, until you play Skirmishes and instance quests. I have a feeling many of you will enjoy the experience.