Worst MMO Ever? - Star Wars: The Old Republic 

Playing a light side Sith Warrior was probably one of the best Star Wars experiences I ever had, all the NPCs are just flabbergasted, I am a Sith who is Schooling Jedi Masters on the Jedi Code, kicking their teeth in and sparing their lives as I go on with my mission

I think you nailed it when you said that SWTOR was an MMO for people who've already played MMOs. I never looked at the tutorials and I just googled whatever info I needed for whatever system I was working on when I needed it.

My best experience with the game was when I was playing as a Sith and the rebel leader started dictating terms to me in exchange for information. I could have fulfilled his conditions, but the game gave me the opportunity to start killing this leader's people, friends and loved ones. And so I got the data I needed, killing everyone except for a random person who asked a legitimate question - "why did you kill everyone, but not me." The answer is also natural - I'm a Sith, I'm fucked up. This was spectacular.

the other stories are even better. the sith inquisitor story line literally has you become a sith lord, and it feels SO worth it, like you struggled and got beaten down the entire way and finally connived your way up

Oh man, I remember when companions were class locked. The game was genuinely hard back then and the bosses at the end of the class chapters would WRECK you.

This is the only MMO I've ever played that really felt like a roleplaying game, where I could pretend all the other players were just random people in Star Wars and I was the main character, where my choices mattered and the story was really solid Unfortunately, it's still an MMO and the cracks start to show pretty quickly, I still recommend this to anyone but it just didn't hold my attention

One change that was made to SWTOR that I absolutely hate is how you get to choose your advanced class type during character creation. The game originally had you start off with just your base class (Jedi Knight, Smuggler, Trooper, etc.) and introduced you to advanced classes after you leave the starter world, so you get a feeling of how your class feels WITHOUT the extra moves and could better understand how your advanced class will alter the gameplay. I have no idea why this was cut.

The Imperial Agent story is amazing. It still to this day is one of the greatest pieces of narrative gaming I've played. It has four significant ways that Chapter 1 can end based on your choices throughout the entire chapter (not just by the conversation options, those let you pick between the two versions your previous choices determined). There are three different outcomes for Chapter 3, and one of them is only available if you made certain decisions in Chapter 2!

Regarding the shared overworld items, I remember when there was a casino event, but due to the shared overworld, if too many players tried to use a slot machine at once, the machine would bug out. It was the first time I've ever seen players politely, and of their own volition, form an actual, honest to god line in game.

Not only is the voice of Solid Snake (David Hayter) the voice of the male Jedi Knight, but the voice of the very first NPC you meet in the Jedi Knight questline is voiced by Cam Clarke AKA Liquid Snake! Someone in casting knew what they were doing, the cheeky bastards

SWTOR is actually, truly a great game whose best elements are also its downfall. The role play elements used to be extremely strong, uniquely great for a MOG. The stories are extraordinarily great, the voice acting is often amazing, the sidekicks are a blast, the settings are really quite amazing looking, etc. But the questing is basically killing 48923 things, the stories are very linear and specific so once you've played one through the variety ends. But once you have gone through those stories, once you have done each class's storyline and each follower's story... its not nearly as fresh. It works against you by making the same thing over again more tedious. And all that voice acting that is so easy to appreciate is EXPEN$$$$IVE for the company, making expansions more difficult and costly than they could be in other games. For being as old as it is, the graphics are quite good and the sound is amazing, and it is actually quite fun to play through, so much so that every few years I get on and play more again. It really is recommended even though the game economy is utterly ridiculous. Seriously, high end stuff costs hundreds of MILLIONS of credits. And yes, the story thing causes very odd and troubled events and there are a lot of bugs, many of them added in by the latest expansion and change in the game.

The foundation hasnt necessarily been neglected, its been reworked poorly. A lot of your gripes are due to how the early game has been restructured. It definitely could use some new structure changes. Btw if you get stuck in the environment again just type /stuck

Josh: "flirting is always the correct option" Josh once he plays through tatooine with his imperial agent: "I have made a severe lapse in judgement"

I also want to point out how good the story decision making is. For instance, that last Flashpoint you showed where you kill the captain and the Lieutenant has to take charge. If you kill the captain, she believes that the pods are a distraction and allow them to attach to the ship. However, if you let the captain live, he is experience enough to know that they contain shock troopers targeting the generators, giving the player a better way to complete the Flashpoint.

Biggest thing to note is all the instruction boxes and difficulty of early game changed a few years back when the game went free to play. Originally any missions stating Heroic 2+ were generally difficult, flashpoints wern't soloable and you had to visit trainers to learn skills etc, however when the player count dropped they added the reduced difficulties to enable players to solo these and get trhe information they needed without requiring a guild.

Its so sad to see the state of SWTOR in this day and age, because nearly all those things you mentioned you didn't like such as the tutorial system, how it TP you to the dungeon etc, never used to be a thing, everything followed the narrative so much closer when it was first released. But it then got loads of criticism for being a story first MMO, which was its strength and which i loved, so after all these years its now just a bit of a convoluted mess. Such a shame because to me the first 2 years of SWTOR are some of the best MMO memories i have.

I remember playing this with a friend. We flipped a coin, went Dark Side. they were a Sith Warrior, I was a Sith Inquisitor. It was actually pretty cool seeing these two Sith who had very different backgrounds see each other as a good partner for each to rise through the ranks. It was also cool how when we did side quests we each could speak up and change things for each other. Friend may of been trying to be peaceful, but I possibly insulted the guy's mother and now we're stuck fighting because I couldn't shut my mouth.

The worst part is that originally the tutorials were story linked, but after a few years and some probably one-sided player feedback about the lack of new players, they ditched the existing flow and replaced it with what you experienced.

I like to think that The Old Republic was the last actually good game done by Bioware before EA milked Mass Effect dry and decided to make its days numbered. I remember playing TOR back when it became free to play, and I remarked that it felt legitimately like KOTOR 3, and I meant it. The UI, granted, was changed and it was in an MMO space, so I had to share my adventure with other players and an internet connection. But everything else was still there - the mystical and ancient feel of the worlds, the impact of what my character did to the people around them, the high quality of the characters and the narration between them. It's a feeling that I still admittedly feel whenever I pick the game up again. I just wish EA didn't still have their grubby hands smeared all over it.

The saddest part of SWTOR eventually shutting down would be the lost opportunity for people to play through the imperial agent storyline. It trumps darkside KOTOR/KOTOR2 by such a massive margin that it is a shame it isn't its own standalone singleplayer game. I still haven't forgotten the emotion when you get the conclusion to your watcher's storyline, whom I had started to romance. I actually couldn't believe they provided closure for that plot so long after the surrounding plots had concluded, and it hits me right in the feels to this day.

My favorite part of this game has to be Co-op cutscenes where you and your friends both talk and both have a chance to choose what you do leads to some cool roleplay moments

I laughed when you realized you would rather be the villain you're chasing. I think I agree. It would have been a better story for a smuggler.

Tbh Swtor is underrated as hell. The story alone makes it worth playing if your into Star Wars. The expansion story is one of my favorite gaming experiences. The game play is kinda like a diet wow but it has enough depth to it to keep things interesting and each class has a different unique play style.

I love the touch of describing an English accent in the game as 'An Imperial Accent' Apparently the Empire literally all speak with English accents normally, and in order to disguise themselves sound more 'Galactic Basic'' (American) This is such a beautiful combination of meta and world building. Even Imperials speak in different ways according to status (more scrappier imperials speaking with Cockney accents)

The most fun i have had with this game was playing through the bounty hunter story with my friend playing an imperial agent. we played as if our characters were actually working together from the chance meeting on hutta.

The Flashpoint system made a lot more sense, especially the first one, when they required you to get to a certain point in the story to unlock. The first one, for example, is actually woven into the narrative as something that happens while you're going from the planet you start on to your faction's hub zone. It's an example of changing something for...really no good reason other than "GROUP CONTENT EARLY HURRAH!"

I tried a lot of MMOs in early teens to college years. Ultima Online, EverQuest 1 and 2, RuneScape, Star Wars Galaxies, ArcheAge, Star Trek Online, Elder Scrolls Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and Guild Wars. World of Warcraft and this game were the only two that kept my attention and were fun enough for me to actually reach the end game in them. Lots of fond memories of SWTOR and WoW raids. The narrative direction of this MMO really made it stand out and made a solo experience feel like less of a grind compared to all of the others I played.

So, couple of thoughts here. The game USED to introduce you to systems naturally. There was a quest revamp like mid 2010's that stripped out most of the main quests, religated many to legacy quests, broke the planets story and in general just shortened the game. This is fine. The problem is many of the quests that were removed were designed specifically to teach you these systems and slowly introduce you to the game. Hence they added in all those tutoral boxes to explain things rather than acutally use the system. In fact many things like the reason you can modify everywhere, or limitations on the systems that were put in place for narrative reasons were REMOVED through MARKETING feedback. Yes the worst kind of feedback who'se goal will be to dumb everything down to make it as accessible as possible. This death spiral is indeed exactly the problem with the game right now. Basically, the game used to play like a RPG, getting from start to max was a journey, not a destination. The problem was once you did the game once on one character, people wanted to skip ahead and be able to skip planets on other characters because it's rehashing stuff they already did. That is reasonable. The solution they came up with though made the story irrelevant on your FIRST!!! playthrough. Which was the problem. Second, difficulty. it used to be that companions did specific things, some were healers, some were dps, some were tanks... this was terrible. So they fixed it and allowed you to customize your companion into whatever form you wanted them to take. This was great! And the process it also removed a lot of companion gear, which was great! (companions stats used to be tied to the gear they were wearing, yes... that means that you had to gear them AND your character if you wanted them to be like, useful). The problem was the Dragon Age problem. In order to make things possible to defeat WITHOUT a healer companion... you had to drastically dumb down the encounter as the healer companions made solo combat trivial with a healer. That and buffs to players to make them feel more 'epic' and cater for retarded monkeys who cant push buttons but get mad because they lose they cant means that quests that should be epic are trival because of the aforementioned problems. In short, its a failure of balance. Bugs... yeah, those have existed since the beginning. The game was NOT ready for prime time and was shoved out to meet a financial quarter/year/expectation and failed within a year because of it... since then held together with a shoestring budget. Still it's a good story if you like star wars legacy (pre-disney woke trash). And some of the newer expansions are good as well...

The sad part as others I'm sure have mentioned is that there used to be in game tutorials for all these systems and the fights were actually more challenging. But for some unknow reason all the systems were "revamped" and the game was made to be much easier on all levels.

To be fair. . when this game first came out, fights WERE harder. They took longer AND your companions roles were locked so it was tougher. At times it felt like a slog too. . . .

That first Flashpoint actually makes sense if you pick up the quest from its original location. Kinda sad that you don't unlock it there first before being able to just auto queue for it. It's supposed to be your transport to Coruscant after you get to the space station. Coruscant is the next planet in the main story after Ord Mantell. And the fact it doesnt put you back on Ord Mantell where you queued up for it is a huge problem

Interesting info: The reason all speeders dont have companions get in or hop on is because of the Trooper droid companion. They scrapped the entire system before launch because of him. We picked on our Main Healer trooper for a looooong time about that.

Its interesting, because at launch, most of the things you suggested... were in the game. There were (some) quested tutorials, Flashpoints were sequential and often part of the story progression, you were narrative locked in most places and couldnt sequence skip through things like Flashpoint groups. People hated them, and they changed it to emphasise the MMO, and made it much worse worse. Most of the problems with the game are directly resultant from player feedback.

20:36 Fights like that *used* to be significantly harder because you had a fraction as many powerful abilities which *used* to come later, after picking an advanced class - which you only had access to after leaving the starting area. I.E. Smuggler could be gunslinger or scoundrel - but not until you made it off Ord mantel and onto the republic fleet station where you would get the quest to *pick* an advanced class. As a result, you literally didn't have access to the aoe ability you just used to down those npcs. Also, companions could, previously, only have one dedicated role. So that fight was much - much - harder, once upon a time.

A major thing you missed out is the harassment support system Two reasons people stay for this game 1: It Star Wars, Obvious 2: You can nearly get away with anything, You can troll, Attack, Harass and say nearly all the worst words you can think of, People have used special letters to have names like Nazi or Hitler or other words I rather not repeat I seen multiple people brag they got banned from Final Finatasy or another game and so came back to SWTOR till the ban is up Nobody is around to read or address the problems, You can have piles of evidance and 9/10 nothing will happen Also have been reports when people tried to edit a report ticket with information and details they just get a error and lose all the progress So players and guilds tend to police themselves by reporting to the point they get "squalched" which is muting them from using general chats and whispers Among other savoury options

Best moment in this MMO was taking on the biggest guild on the server in Galactic Conquest, fought them to the very last minute for points and a random guildie logged on and pushed us ahead in the last 60 seconds of competition. The cries of joy from our guild and the anguish of the opposing guild rang across the universe.

Just some common tips 1. In the map you can enable extra missions, called exploration missions 2. In the settings you can have it identify alignment choices(dark and light side) to make faster decisions when talking 3. The map problem of only being ale to see shops or taxi are also changeable in the settings menu 4. The plus sign near your health and energy bar can be used to expand how many bars you have and allow you to use more abilities 5. Like everything tutorials are turn off-able 6. When using AOE type attacks you can press the key or icon twice to auto target a hostile 7. The green people are cover opportunities that when you click either F on your keyboard or the crouching icon you will roll to said location and be in cover automatically 8. You can have cool downs have numbers present(in settings) This may be a lot, if not sweet. If you use any of these just spread the love of knowledge :)

The more I play this game the more I realize that it really doesn't need to be an MMO lol. I barely notice other people, I never found myself needing to find a group (I did mostly beginner stuff though), and it just feels like the highlight is the story which only really involves the player.

one thing i felt was weird about the art design is how absolutely GARGANTUANE everything is compared to the player character, doors, ships, hangar bays, everything is just insanely massive it almost feels like the architecture was designed for a long dead race of giants, could be just a perspective thing, but still.

The game died as soon the developers said no more class stories

One of the coolest things about SWTOR that wasn't mentioned was, as a Sith, as you accumulate dark-side points, you can watch as your character changes too. Like more red eyes and distressed facial features. Very immersive.

Fun fact that they changed in the February mega update: smuggler and imperial agents...the ones who primarily use cover, can equip a "roll to cover" option that sticks them into cover for added defense instead of just crouching. Originally this was the default but for some reason crouching became the default and rolling was something you could equip in the ability manager later on.

Your score made me actually burst out laughing it’s sooo accurate to what you said lmaoooo 44:18

Weirdly enough the Esseles and Black Talon Flashpoints are introduced via the story. When you are told to take a shuttle from the Fleet to your capital planet, the game makes you walk past the respective Flashpoints. There's an NPC who talks about how taking a shuttle can take a few days but a faster option had been arranged for your character, that being the Esseles or Black Talon cruiser.

Note on that first flashpoint: IIRC, it was originally presented as an alternative route from the tutorial world to the capital city. The flashpoint entrance was on the space station above the tutorial world, it was narratively integrated into the rest of the game, and once it was over you would arrive at the main story's next destination.

The game used to be deeper. The modifications system was nerfed into nothing by the changes to the initial story section, for the current game it's irrelivent until end game now. This happened when they decided you should only have to do the class story so you got to the newer content faster. It's sad, some of the old quests (all fully voiced) were removed.

Bring it to console up vote this and spread it on all things Star Wars the old republic!!

Great video. I've been playing this one since launch and I loved how the eight stories overlapped (with some companions knowing the companions of other classes). The game certainly has some issues, and the graphics could use a re-haul, but it's still one of my favorite mmorpgs to play. Definitely some graphics glitches like the one you showed with the blaster firing while holstered, or my favorite where you put away a fully extended lightsaber...into your leg :D

Swtor is the only mmorpg that ever really HOOKED me after learning the mechanics. The role play is so much more immersive. The fact that EVERYTHING is voiced makes a huge difference. The dialog options and infinate ways to design your toon's "look" really help you get into character. Plus, I really love dungeon content, and swtor has some seriously excellent dungeons. Also, the player base IS really nice & welcoming.

Probably one of the best and most honest reviews of SWTOR I've seen in quite a while. Well done, Josh. I've played the game off and on since beta, so I've had the pleasure and displeasure of riding the waves of changes that either were a benefit the game, or served as a detriment to it. I still love it and I go back to it for short periods of time, but only for the story. PvP? HARD pass. Flashpoints? Meh. Events? Can sometimes be fun, but it depends on which event it is. Space combat with your class ship? Not worth bothering with, really. So, yeah, your perspective about how this serves better as an RPG with multiplayer elements is spot-on. The story is where it's at in this game, because unlike other MMOs, where the "story" of your character is as thin as a post-it note because all the devs (and other players, usually) care about is "EnDgAmE!1!!", SWTOR's class storylines give you a reason to care about what you're doing...at least, it does for me. I see other people play the game on streams and in YT videos and they skip the dialogue and cut-scenes, and those people annoy the bejeezus out of me. The one MMO that actually gives a shit about story, and you're skipping it to get to the combat? Even if you've played them a bazillion times, skipping over what sets this game apart from others in its genre just seems wrong. You're completely right about the Imperial Agent storyline; best one in the game by a mile. I do also recommend the Bounty Hunter one, because for a good chunk of the progression, you're actually doing bounty-hunter stuff. I'm also fond of the Sith Warrior and Jedi Knight storylines, because if you want to be either Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker, those are the paths to follow, and the expansion content just works better in those classes. Honestly, there are great story moments throughout all of them, but a few are just more entertaining than others.

Interesting thing about how you mentioned that on the republic flashpoint, there is a moral choice where being good makes the mission harder. The opposite is true for the Imperial flashpoint. If you keep the Black Talon's captain alive, because he is an experienced captain, he avoids some of the boarding torpedoes.

Enemies and bosses used to be a WHOLE lot harder than they are now. Around the time we got role-changing on companions they then made the difficulty easier. Same with XP, usually you would reach lvl 10 on your last mission in the start even after doing ALL sidequests, and you only reached level 12/13 in the end of the prologue if you used xp boosts. After the change story missions gave more xp and made content a little easier, therefore mitigating the need for side-questing. Problem was you were now always over-leveled if you did 1 side-quest and you fight bosses 3 levels under you, plus their nerf Until probably 2016 (?) I died often, had to use med-packs and play strategic. After that update i have probably only used med-packs in a flashpoint, and can play the game as a bulldozer just walking. Its fun to have combat where you can get good action packed parts, and not fight bullet-sponges that just have 20 000 hp for no reason does almost not damage you, but they overnerfed especially the starterplanets.

A lot of the problems Josh points out, actually only started with the recent 7.0 update. Bugs and UI stuff. They really took a step back with 7.0 in terms of usability. It's why I stepped away from the game currently.

I remember when this game first released, the onboarding of new players was actually pretty organic. Most everything felt like it was a part of the character's main storyline, even that first weird flashpoint is *supposed* to be the character's dramatic trip from the faction's main fleet to the next planet, and you couldn't just teleport to it until you had actively finished the events of your starting planet, (Ord Mantell, Typhon, Nal Hutta, or Korriban) Hell, there was even a small little story quest where your character got to select their class specialization where you talked to an npc representative of your class and they actually explained the role of your expanded class specialization in a way that felt organic and interesting, (now days you select the specialization at character creation and just are that subclass from the start). Not to mention that companion NPCs actually had specifically assigned combat roles, which made the decisions of which companion you were bringing with you actually feel legitimately important, as if you had the tank npc, and you were playing a dps class, then you were about to learn the definition of genuine pain, when both you and your tank got fucking melted by enemy blaster fire almost immediately with no healing in sight. It's worth noting that the combat encounters on the tutorial planets were also more difficult in that early time, and if you were not careful, you would die and need to retry mission beats over and over again until you could get through them. Cut to... Jesus... eleven years later, now and the game has been "Streamlined" to make it more immediately accessible to more people, yet it feels more like a mass produced generic copy of the vibrantly interesting game that it began as. All in all, I miss the early days of Old Republic for it's immersiveness, but I'm still glad that it exists today.

The flashpoint thing is undeniably true, but it did use to be that you had to get that flashpoint by reaching the fleet, talking to an npc and accepting a quest and then boarding the ship that flashpoint was taking place on. Its sort of been messed up due to the age of the game and most people having done it. You are right that it was much better without actually doing anything the text dumps tell you to do. I ignored them in the beginning and ignore them now(obviously).

Awesome video. I played The Old Republic when it was first released, then again after a long break, a few years ago. It gave me the perspective to see some of the changes first hand. In particular I was annoyed on my return to discover that one of my previously created characters was locked because while it's race type had been a part of the base free game, it had subsequently been paywalled into an elite class threshold which required purchase. Also, six of my eight characters were in some kind of 'sleep' mode, as apparently another change was that free accounts couldn't have more than two active characters. So while i didn't lose those extras, I had to go through some additional song and dance to 'wake' them, and each one that I reactivated required that I selected one of my active characters for the carbon freeze treatment. I'm not a fan at all of the 'oops, we gave you too much free and rather than make more and make that the selling lure, we're just going to sneaky snik some of this stuff back and pretend it wasn't free', shuffle. But I am even less of a fan of the 'permissions revoked, cant have you dirty pagans touching our good stuff for free'! If someone, somehow had access to something you now want to monetize, the worst way to sell it to them is to just take it away and demand they pay for it now when it was free before. That and several other overt monetization changes just killed the game for me. DC Online was the same. I enjoyed the game but over time the monetization creep just turned me off once it got to the point that you needed special purchased tokens to access quest rewards relative to the seasonal stuff, and each season it was something different so good luck if you had a pocket full of x token, because that was last season, now you need new and improved y token. Basically you had to pay to get the rng rewards for the quests you were doing, effectively negating the reason why you were playing in the first place.

For the fights not feeling like Boss fights: Everything below 60 for me feels like "okay, game got updated, old AddOns and bosses got weaker due to squishes" - Some later boss fights actually take much longer and look very nice. Not very dangerous for singleplayer modes, i grant that, but they are fun, and in "Veteran"-Mode even challenging! And for the Plot point: Actually you do not get your ship back on Ord Mantell anyway, but you notice Skavak has fled the planet with it. You need to follow him to Coruscant before you get it, which you do by traveling with a Shuttle to the Fleet, and continue with a ship to Coruscant, and heres the point: The Esseles was one of two options to travel to Coruscant, and you just tried to get a friendly travel when the attack happens. What your problem in that situation was, is also, due to the strong leveling that is going on with the change of XP: You leveled into a stage where you get a classical group finder, which wasn't there back in the day, and get the Dungeon before you would - back in the day -accessed it! So thats a trouble of "Old Content" Problems many MMOs have. The only one that didn't throw me into dungeons early in old content, was Final Fantasy 14, which just locks them into the main story line, so you can't accidentally "get in too early".

Finally Josh is covering SWTOR, was my Main MMO for awhile, it has seen better days, ever since the Eternal Empire expansions, the games been on the decline, the new expansions like Onslaught and Legacy of the Sith haven't been that exciting and a little disappointing and the gameplay loop has gotten exhausting, that's why I stopped playing Hopefully an expansion like Knights of the Fallen Empire comes one day, to pull people back towards the game, but that seems unlikely

Playing this was one of my favorite MMO experiences and I still remember doing raids with my guild and figuring out which bug was active that week (can't kill the boss the stairs are glitched again)

"I'm about to do the two most dangerous things you can on the internet. 1. I'm gonna say bad things about Star wars and then 2. I'm going to say good things about Star Wars, so everyone's equally upset." YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE!!!!! It was said you'd destroy the debaters not join them!! Bring balance to the comment section, not leave it in the darkness! ...You were my Josh! ...I loved you...

A couple things I haven't seen mentioned: 1) You can toggle multiple filters for the map, but you have to find and turn on a setting in the preferences menu to do it. 2) There's actually a third level to how much you spend on the game - once you have spent any amount of real money on a subscription or cartel coins, you gain "preferred" status. Even if you let a subscription lapse, you keep that status indefinitely. It comes with a few more privileges than free2play, though you don't get access to new expansions when they drop, and you still need to pay to use artifact equipment. 3) There is a way to earn cartel coins without spending any real money! If you sign up for a 2FA security key (which is free), you get a small amount of cartel coins every month, regardless of your subscription status, or if you even log into the game.

The community is very welcoming; every time I dip my toes back into this game I always find amazing people that are willing to help and explain things.

19:00 the tooltip thing is an option. I prefer it detached personally. In the UI editor, when you select an element, you can scroll down in its options to usually find several check boxes for different options.

I played as a sith warrior and it has a very good story as well where you dispatch the enemies of your master who uses them to provoke a war against the republic. That battleship mission can also be played with all the imperial factions. My favourite for now are the 2 missions where you have to overthrow the false emperor who has eliminated the legitimate sith emperor.

My first character in the game was the Jedi Consular and I stopped playing after a few days. I tried playing again after a few months, as an Imperial Agent, and weeks of my life disappeared as I was so immersed in the story. There were multiple times I would forget I was playing an "MMO" game. The Imperial Agent story line is just that good.

My favorite aspect was the ability to ESC out of a conversation choice "playing out" if you didn't like the effect on your dark/light/companion relationship and try another option. The worst is thematic strange things like playing a Jedi with a convoluted into mission where you craft your first lightsaber, and then a little later some twelve year old kid thanks you for rescuing her brother by handing you a better lightsaber... as if they were on sale at Wal-Mart. Also, if you had played Jedi or Sith (also the name of a race that scoffs at any other races being Sith), you would have had some extra systems involving stances that change skills, and some more... magical... storylines. (Since I was a player back when it cost money - i.e. before it was free - I have some perks even when I play for free.)

I love the shade thrown at TLJ

One of the most underrated games of all time. I had a blast playing through every class story. Have nothing but fond memories of it. Loved the co-op play, which sadly was lacking in the later expansion content.

What's interesting to note is that some of these systems like gear customisation actually used to be explained ! As for the smuggler story, it gets better after the first act. And yes, I think that every Empire story is better than the Republic side. Ithink there's no bad story in this game, but the "less good" ones are all Republic side. At the end of the day it's all subjective, there's not really a bad class story as every story is good at what it does. Many say the consular's story is the worst but it's one of my favs. In the end, every story fits it's class, and that's what matters.

SWTOR is my main mmo. I love it, I'm so glad this video exists! A note to potential new players: Please don't worry about the in-game tutorials. Look up tutorials on RU-vid instead. I'd recommend looking up Swtorista and going through some of her videos.

IMPORTANT FOR NEW PLAYERS: you can press escape to reverse and end the current conversation, including cutscenes. You'll just have to click on the person again and start over with all options still available.

Was absolutely amazing. The Sith Inqusitor and Sith Warrior storylines combined with the customisation and lore / fantasy to make you feel like an actual Sith were off the charts.

This was one of my mains for years until college started kicking my ass and I had to step away. I knew this was coming. I was nervous as hell, but... I had no reason to be. You did this game justice for both its positives and negatives, as you do with every game you cover. Truthfully, I think that is what has made you such a great reviewer. You don't do shit for the views, or to pander. You make, honest, good, faithful content. Thank you for all you do.

Remember folks, especially to the new viewers, Josh is pretty fair with his reviews, he’ll praise the positives just as much as he points out the negatives. The previous Worst MMO video has shown this, so chill out. Just felt the need to do a little PSA because of the game he’s choosing to cover on this series with a pretty negative name.

I first tried swotr 2016 and chosed sith warrior, i loved every second of story that class has even if i played 2 months at time and took breaks due rl. Light side sith warrior who force choked every nuisance npc and acted like a gentleman towards ladies was really fun to play. I started sith inquisitor and have slowly played it over this last year, this game has really good dialogue options and music as well cutscenes. Swotr is interesting rpg and small amounts at time fun to play, i know its not everyone cup of tea and it took also me a sometime to warm up. I can recommend to give it a try and see if you like it yourself. Thank you for vids josh

When I first moved to America. I played this game for hours in 2010-2011. I spoke no English but people in the game still invited me to their Skype to chat and play with me . Eventually they started helping me speak better. The best gaming community I ever met

Virtually everything I experienced with this game could be summed up with "the Imperial version is cool and the Republic version feels like a complete afterthought". Then the developers were confused why they had a massive population imbalance the second the game launched...

The irony is that everything he's complaining about as a new player was added to the game in an effort to make it easier for new players. The tutorial popups are a relatively new addition because the developers thought it was too hard for new players to learn stuff at the beginning. Same thing with the teleporting to dungeons that got him stuck on Carrick Station. The good news is you can avoid all these problems by just turning the tutorials off. Just disable all the popups, and you'll figure out everything naturally.

the first flashpoint plot is actually supposed to start when you go to the second planet (as you don't have a ship yet) through the dungeon instead of using a shuttle but if you queue up with another player it doesn't detect properly, however you can party up and all go on the ship together and continue the plot without missing a beat but the queue showing up makes it stupid, luckily i missed the queue option on my first character

As somebody who played this game since beta, it's honestly insane watching what it's like for a new player nowadays. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, you actually did learn the systems through gameplay and these text dump tutorials were few and far between, and the combat was SO different, it didn't take you 3 planets for enemies to actually hurt you. I remember playing a Sith Warrior as my first character and the first little mini boss that had a cutscene (the one you comically destroyed with one AOE) was so difficult i had to stock up on medpacs, buy new armor, and enlist help from other players to finish my story mission so i could build my lightsaber. Flashpoints weren't thrown in your face like that either you had to find the quest for one before you could queue up to do it, allowing the player to learn what they were organically. Crazy to see how much the new devs ruined the difficulty of the game while at the same time making the game extremely confusing for new players.

Probably irrelevant at this point, but from what I recall from playing it many years ago, that tutorial flashpoint on the republic side is actually integrated into the overall class story progression, just like it was on the sith side (and as a fun side note, if I recall it is the same in-universe event played from two different perspectives depending on faction). It seems that they messed up the timing of when the pop-up and the ability to queue for it show up. If a new player ignores that, they should arrive at it way more organically with any of the classes by just following the story... which would avoid the confusion. Ironic that the text tutorial was apparently what caused it.

Having played SWTOR at launch, and trying to come back to it a few times (I also started Imp Agent, and wholeheartedly agree with it being a phenomenal story), I feel like this all really does encapsulate my experiences. Extremely good game, but terribly managed. Guild Wars 2 and this have to be the two 'biggest potential, most mundane execution' in modern gaming

Tbf to the first flashpoint. It (at least used to) required you to get to the fleet before starting it, where you would board the ship from there as an alternative to your personal ship iirc

22:42 the narrative structure of that mission works a lot better if you find it in the world instead of queueing. Basically, after you leave Ord Mantell, you need to go to Coruscant. But on the way there, you stopover at the main starbase hub. While you are there, on your way to the shuttle to Coruscant, the quest giver is standing right there and is like "hey I know you can take a shuttle, but you wanna riude on this luxury starship instead?" And if you say yes, BAM, you are riding to Coruscant to try and get your ship and then this whole disaster happens.

SWTOR for new players could be a heaven. Some of the the stories in this game saurpass every SW movie. Ancient Sith Lords compared to the likes of Darth Vader or Luke are like Titans to an ant. Some are so well written that you'd be wanting a movie based story. Also the Empire in this game is portrayed not like in the movies "all evil and cringe". In fact most brutal kills ever made in this universe, is made by Jedi, not Sith. Also some classes have 2 or 3 replayability because it has different outcomes in the story

"Skavak is having the adventure I should be having!" is the funniest epiphany ever. xD

It was made as a World of Warcraft competitor. Coming from WoW, there was close to zero problems learning this game. They were so similar many people had hoped they would have been more different.

I've just started playing SWTOR again after a several year break and some of the changes since then are pretty jarring. But some of the issues you identified I think are due to the swap to F2P from Sub based at launch. Enemies used to be much more of a threat at low levels on the starting planets. You originally couldn't change the stance of your companion and they filled a role. Corso was originally a DPS companion and you didn't get a healing or tanking companion until later in the game. the Jedi Knight gets a healer at like level 30ish on the planet Balmorra, so many encounters were actually difficult without that healing. When they made some changes to how companions work, they made it so each one can do all three roles so you can choose who to bring no matter the situation. The Flashpoint taking you to the fleet is also a relic of this. You used to only be able to do the flash point when you get to carrack station naturally, at the end of the starting planet you get told to go to the capital, when you get to the station you need to head to the shuttle bay to fly to the capital, but then you're given the option of taking a shuttle directly there, or doing the intro flashpoint which is a ship on the way to the capital and gets attacked. Either way, you wind up on the capital planet once you either take the shuttle or the flashpoint. Since they went F2P and made so many system changes, it's all jumbled up now. for example, I'm playing the jedi Knight Story (1-50) and I'm level 57 right now, but I'm only on the level 45 planets. But since I'm also 57, I'm allowed to do the content for the new expansions that start at 50+ while I haven't even finished the main story line. but overall, it's still a super fun game once you get past the quirkiness.

Damn, so many memories. And I am saying this because I actually was on the testing team back in the day at this game at EA. I remember encountering bugs, submitting them then reviewing if they were actually fixed, checking the mechanics, the mission flow was not obstructed and that it can be completed and so on. I decided to write this comment because my tester instinct kicked in at the minute 13:36 when for half a second the room in front of Josh disappeared. That is actually a bug named occluder and if you stay in that area and move the camera around slowly you will actually see that you can reproduce it.

25:32 That is one of the biggest pet peeves I have with the companions. The game is really inconsistent in acknowledging them. For most of the time you could actually roleplay as if they were some ghost you imagine, since the game mostly totally ignores your companions. But ever so often, suddenly an NPC will acknowledge your companion in a cut scene, which proves they are there... only to totally ignore them standing beside them in the next scene.

Josh mate, this video was amazing. Your ability to break things down is unbelievable, 💪

I'm here to start a petition to see Star Trek Online in an episode of Worst MMO Ever.

Well said. "Great RPG, not a great MMO." I was a day 1 player, then EA ruined everything. How did they ruin everything? Only paid players may wear purple (epic) items. My clothes and weapons all fell off!!

"I've given up caring what Corso thinks." A true TOR player right here.

“The choices don’t always relate to the line you’ll say.” Wait a minute…

Don't know if someone has commented this or not, but the map issue you mentioned can be fixed by going into the preferences menu and toggling a thing that allows you to activate everything all at once. Ive never witnessed a majority of the bugs you mentioned except for the one where the weapons don't get drawn and the Taxi thing. And I literally never used the tutotials, I just learned through playing it. Also, a few years ago, I had an issue where using interfleet transport caused everything to disappear and softlocked my character.

just a short list of things i remember having changes: Companions: These used to be class locked (DPS, Heal, Tank) So you needed to get to a specific point in the story before you would get a certain class helper. Mods: As mentioned in the video any mods required use of the mod table. Quick travel locations: You used to need to interact with travel stations in order to unlock a location for quick travel use. Class trainers: Your class abilities used to be locked to a trainer that you were required to unlock new skills from. Subclasses: Each class only had 2 subclasses originally. now they have been cross merged (2 knight classes + 2 counciler classes = 4 total subclasses under either story choice) this adds an interesting dynamic to class story and their combat allowing a play through to be more dynamic. Leveling: The leveling system is much improved since the days gone by of F2P being constantly 2-3 levels under recommended. and as the game was based around this model the fights become very easy when you are at or above the recommended level. the shop: The Cartel Market used to be much simpler in scope. mainly serving to grant subscriber benifits or unlocks or to buy special outfits or mounts. this has exploded in order to scrape as much money as possible from the currently running (movies or shows) Star Wars content. I am sure there is more but this is what I remember.

I remember playing first as a light side sith inquisitor. I was really impressed how they actually let you play something whacky like that and make it feel good in the story.

the weird thing about this is that some of the issues got changed in the game like the map can now have multiple things selected, when playing my 4th character this was such a helpful change

i remember getting my friend to try this game out back in the day and he made a republic trooper. there’s a small story beat where a private comes to you begging to help him because his commanding officer is corrupt and is probably going to get him killed, and without hesitation my friend immediately hit the third dialogue option which was “GET LOST.” i nearly pissed my pants laughing that night especially when he got the message later that the private died after being sent into a minefield or whatever. this game was the shit.