Loving SWTOR so far, much much more than I expected to. Here's a mini review for those thinking about playing.
The PVE is wonderful, great voice acting and storytelling as you'd expect from Bioware, but they've gone one better than their previous games which is saying something. I'm playing the Imperial Agent storyline and it's been an incredible journey so far (level 26) with some genuinely exciting and intruiging plot twists. Quite a dark and edgy story too, with plenty of surprises. I hear the Jedi and Sith force user storylines are a little more cliched, but I'm genuinely gripped by the Imperial Agent one, it's unfolding like a great spy novel. The male voice acting for the Imp Agent is a Brit guy too, which helps set the slightly sarcastic / edgy mood. I hear the Empire's Smuggler story is good too if you want something away from the somewhat predictable "use the force" stuff the Jedi and Sith get.
The graphics are quite simply stunning. Really stunning. Huge variety and attention to detail. Dunno why some haters are complaining. I love Bioware's graphical style anyway, but they've really exceled themselves. I keep stopping in my tracks to take screenies like some sad space tourist, but screenies can't do it justice as they don't show the atmospherics, the sense of scale and the combat effects. Will post some screenies in another thread.
Gameplay is great. I'm playing a Sniper and the mechanics are lots of fun, like a WoW Hunter on steroids, but a long way from just being a Hunter clone, the Sniper has a lot of unique tricks of its own. A few bugs with entering cover while sniping but nothing major. Have only played the other classes in the noob areas to test them but the melee and caster mechanics seem fun too. Mob AI is better than most MMOs but not up to what you'd get from a single player RPG, but that's to be expected. At least they got the spawn rate right, so you don't usually have to fight your way into quest locations and then clear the same mobs again on the way out like in so many games.
The companion mechanic is fabulous and brings you all the roleplay elements you'd expect from games like Mass Effect, DA:O etc. Really enjoying my first companion's storyline. Best of all, the companion AI is very good and they assist well when xping, tank pets tank properly, dps pets hit the right targets and they all observe crowd control properly. Much much better than WoW pets. Impressive. Companions assist with crafting and can be sent on crafting missions. But best of all, when out in the field you can send your companion off to vendor all your grey junk (takes about a minute). Wonderful!
PvP I've no idea about. I'm deliberately staying well away. I didn't enjoy WoW and Rift PvP and there's no indication I'll enjoy SWTOR's either, same sort of model. So rather than allowing it to make me grumpy I'm staying carebear
Oh and there's a space combat minigame with your own ship you can upgrade, and it's a lot more fun than you'd think.
Another huge postive is no macros or addons! I know the WoW crowd will see this as a negative, but I think it's great. L2P
Niggles are a rather lacklustre auction house which looks like they added it in a horrible hurry the day before launch. Needs a lot of work. Also some UI niggles to do with clumsy window overlapping (the UI doesn't currently scale) and a lack of profession linking in chat. Also no antialiasing on the graphics yet. But all these things they'll fix for sure.
So, overall lots of positive things to say.
BUT ..... (and it's a rather big but) .....
I'm still not convinced it's a MMO
They've done as well as anyone possibly could to fuse the story-driven RPG and MMO genres. But does it ultimately work? For me the jury is out because it hangs on the endgame. Yes it 100% works while levelling, it makes levelling really engaging because let's face it most people solo while levelling in MMOs these days and Bioware have understood this and the mission, storyline and companion mechanic make levelling as enjoyable as any RPG. You can (and do) group for heroic quests and instances while levelling of course My concern is what happens at endgame, I'm not sure how they are going to shift the emphasis from storytelling towards player interaction and get everyone playing together happily without nagging each other to skip the storyline cutscenes.
Will have to see.
PS: those playing fluffy side, get yer butts over to the Dark Side, Imps have more fun