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Massively, which deals in the immense universe of massively multiplayer games that do not take place in Azeroth, has put together an informative guide for
WoW players playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. With the number of comparisons being made between
The Old Republic and
World of Warcraft, one would think that there would be a sizable amount of overlap in terms of necessary skills and familiarity. As it turns out, there are a lot more differences in the minutiae than predicted.
If you're a
WoW player heading to a galaxy far, far away while your raid takes some time off (or you just like seeing what's out there), you'll find some great tips over at
Massively.
Tags: guide-to-star-wars-wow-players, massively, swtor, the-old-republic, wow, wow-players
Filed under: News items
Jan 20th 2012 at 7:00PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Blazing Rain Jan 20th 2012 8:49PM
Yeah, maybe predicted by the haters proclaiming "WoW Clone!". In SWTOR we use those clones to fight a war.
evantill Jan 20th 2012 9:49PM
Yea...the creativity was there, but...no...
RogueJedi86 Jan 21st 2012 2:48PM
There are no clones in the era of SWTOR, do a little more research on the setting. :P
Blazing Rain Jan 22nd 2012 4:36AM
Rogue, if I'm going to be super nit picky, there were in fact Rakata clones existing in this era, but the original mistake was mine, my wording was off kilter to what I was trying to bring across, and I intended that to end "... and in the star wars universe, we use those clones to fight wars!". Of course if you were referring specifically to the clones of Jango Fett, then yes, you are technically correct.
Peebers Jan 21st 2012 2:54AM
no thanks.
Thander Jan 21st 2012 3:50AM
It seems like there actually is very little overlap of the communities. I know there's a few former WoW players in TOR and possibly a few disappointed TOR players in WoW, but for the most part they are separate communities. I've read stories how the TOR community is mostly new to MMOs, so they are probably have a blast.
Melissa Jan 21st 2012 9:11AM
There are plenty of wow players in tor. Not a day goes by that I don't see someone wow bashing or comparing the games in some way in chat. The wow community is definitely present in tor, but yes, there are also plenty of new mmo players and player from other games.
Tenko Jan 21st 2012 7:35AM
As someone with more than a fistful of wow years experience who's playing SW:ToR and liking it I've been trying to come up with a single sentence review of ToR for awhile. I've got a one which I think best suits.
"SW:ToR is Knights of the old Republic 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,9 and 10."
You see ToR is a single player game, and a single player Bioware game at heart.
if you like Mass Effect or the the old kotor's you have to play out at least a couple of the 8 stories (one for each basic class) as they are all either pretty good or very good. Like all Bioware games there's fun moral choice paths in every quest some of which will have significant permanent effects on your character.
It then has the starting of some good MMO staples. Raids, pvp, crafting etc and some new ideas which I'm sure Blizzard will copy like it always does.
But it doesn't FEEL like an mmo.
My biggest gripe is one i've had with every Bioware game since Baldur's gate.
The environments are small parts of a whole and you feel boxed in. If you sit back and realise it Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdoms or Northrend are all single giant, vast instances. You explore by travelling from one part, one zone to another in a continuous and natural manner and the game world opens up in front of you in a seemingly never ending vista.
Games like WoW or Lord of the Rings do this beautifully.
But Bioware's single player games and SW:ToR don't do that. They get one part of a location, a docking bay on Coruscant, some valley on Korriban and that's it. You are very walled in and I've never liked that in any game and in an MMO it's a sin in my eyes.
tl:dr. SW:ToR is a great game but WoW is a great Virtual World. Score: 8/10
ps: Now if Bethesda made an Elderscrols MMO... oO
Kaphik Jan 21st 2012 8:45AM
I have to completely disagree with you, and I have or had six years of WoW playing. Just Tatooine alone feels much bigger than any continent in WoW. What makes Azeroth seem bigger is that the zones are completely different from each other on the continents. Starting at the third planet you travel to you start to see how much bigger the zones are in SWTOR. The trap is that due to the way they are designed, they actually look endless, so when you hit that invisible wall (which WoW has PLENTY of) some people feel let down.
Now, I don't have any idea why people keep saying that the game doesn't "feel" like an MMO. Why, because I don't have 50 people all fighting for the same quest mob or item? There's plenty of people around, grouping via General chat is easy, lots of fun and provides a real bonus where WoW seems to discourage grouping by the xp reduction. I see a lot of people out in the world, and if I join a player or group that's in another instance I can transfer to that and see them.
"You explore by travelling from one part, one zone to another in a continuous and natural manner and the game world opens up in front of you in a seemingly never ending vista." That's exactly how the game plays. The real difference between WoW and SWTOR right now is that in WoW you could take different paths to level up, because there were multiple zones for each level range. SWTOR doesn't have that yet. However, Cataclysm leveling is even more linear than WoW used to be, if you only stick to one path. You can jump to the other path, but you lose out on the storylines you have been following that way.
Oteo Jan 21st 2012 5:10PM
I actually like that feature about SWTOR zones, though. In WoW, it WAS nice that I could start out on one end of the world and walk to the other, but at the same time it made the world of Azeroth feel very small: you can't walk from one end of the Earth to the other in a few hours (or 15 minutes flying).
"Mountains" in WoW are hilariously small and hilariously shaped. In TOR the terrain looks a lot more real, even in the KOTOR_style cartoonish graphics, and being able to look off into the distance and see huge mountains (like in Alderaan) makes my character feel appropriately tiny, even if I can't decide to travel to the mountain. It would be nice if TOR could be more like Skyrim, sure, with both great-looking environments AND a completely-open world, but so far I've enjoyed the environments in TOR even though I thought I wouldn't.
Tenko Jan 22nd 2012 6:29AM
Ah well I'm glad that you disagree to be honest because it means it's just my opinion and not necessarily the games fault.
I do like SW:ToR alot and I love WoW, so maybe it's just because it's different and a pet hate of mine.
Have to say, for this year at least i will be playing (and paying, arrgh!) for both. 12 months of upgrades will improve SW:ToR in some ways but some things have to be got right at the start.
I'd recommend everyone give it a try but don't get precious about it. If you prefer it to WoW or WoW to it then celebrate that fact...
...Just don't be a douche and rage all over the forums. SW:TOR's official forums make ours look like a mutual love-in :D
brain314 Jan 22nd 2012 3:01PM
I agree with Tenko. The world of TOR is very limited and breaks reality too much for me. I've played for a few weeks and it's beginning to gnaw at me at how dislocated almost everything it. You don't take an elevator to the 2nd floor. You click on an elevator button that teleports you to a new 2nd floor instance. You can't ever decide to jump out of a window to land on the ground floor because they are not connected in any physical way. Every single time the screen blanks out, it's because you're being teleported to a new instance. It's especially annoying when ships are involved, because instead of walking from your ship to some base for example, you're really getting teleported from your ship instance to the class hangar instance to the general hangar instance and finally to the base instance.
Tatooine also blew my mind. In WoW, inaccessible areas are defined by understandable things, like the sea, or deep rifts, or huge mountain ranges (That changed in Cataclysm when they enabled old world flying and had to define almost everything). On Tatooine, you cannot walk from Anchorhead to the next settlement despite the fact that it's just an open desert and you can literally see the town in the distance. Try to walk in that direction and you get hit by exhaustion. That's ridiculous. The world is obviously defined as you zoom through it past random womprats when taking the speeder taxis. You are just forbidden from exploring it on foot.
Anyway, TOR has some good points, but it is far far from polished. The terrain aspect and nature of zones and instances in TOR was just something that's been getting to me lately. You can't ever just walk in one direction and go. You have to go somewhere and click a teleporter to drop you into the next zone.
Jorges Jan 23rd 2012 10:42AM
This is what I've been telling to everybody that asked me how was the beta. And it's exactly the experience I've had with SWTOR: KOTOR with MMO systems and a chat box.
In fact, I dare all the TOR players to hide the chat box and hide player nameplates for a few hours, and then don't feel like you were just playing a bigger SW:KOTOR.
Literaltruth Jan 21st 2012 7:56AM
I'm currently playing SWTOR...and sadly still paying for WoW since I got the yearly pass.
I'm really loving it at the moment and would at least temporarily stop my subscription if I could (well played on that deal there, Blizzard - you definately got me. >_
Dawts Jan 21st 2012 8:17AM
Not sure how they "got you" if you agreed to pay for WoW for a year and then decide to go play another MMO. There wasn't any clever trickery involved at all, if you didn't want to play or pay for it, you shouldn't have agreed to it.
Jorges Jan 23rd 2012 10:49AM
If you paid for 12 months of WoW and are complaining about it because you want to play TOR is because what you really wanted to begin with was Diablo III.
So there, you paid for D3. Now go play TOR, Blizzard is not stopping you.
Arothand Jan 21st 2012 8:48AM
Even though I'm a huge Star Wars fan, I don't really like TOR. It doesn't feel like an MMO. The quests are the same kind of grindy, boring stuff but with voices. Some of the Light/Dark choices are rubbish. Everything else is basic. It's a fun single player game but IMO not worth a monthly sub.
Rolly Jan 21st 2012 11:43AM
I bought SWTOR, but it just didn't do the trick for me.
The constant companion aspect really turned me off.
Motionless mobs out in the world were good for a laugh as well.
Sorry Bioware, I won't be paying a sub but nice try.
burlingtonarea Jan 21st 2012 12:42PM
I bought the game and I was completely disappointed I was so angry when the digi standard edt "sold out" way to get more money from the gamers.
I do agree it is not a true mmo it feels like a sw rpg with other people around single player based.
I don't want to go back to the vanilla days and if no guildies or friends online beg to run for two days in city chat.
Also love how you cant go everywhere you want in the game linear
and the recent blog from developers where blaming the gamers for crying foul about the pvp issues yes i understand new game but how long did it take blizz to polish and I for one am not going to pay andwait for fixes because they released a buggy unfinished game to try and milk wow sub base.
The voice acting to me is good but not enough to make me leave a game i still love after 5 plus years I will have diablo 3 keeping me busy then mop beta and have no room for sw I am a lifelong star wars fan but the game did nto capture me.
2014 T.I.T.A.N is when the formula will change
Blizzard makes games for gamers they are gamers EA is well I am not going there and lucas is just what he is lucas money hungry guy and I only repect bioware but the game is nothing for me to scream about and cancel my wow sub good try guys but im sure you will find you community I have no interest.
Dude Jan 21st 2012 5:55PM
Thanks but I'm sticking with WoW indefinitely.