Let The Good Times Roll : SW:tOR

After yesterday's post, in which I wondered aloud whether my increasing lack of patience with labored, time-consuming mechanics was a sign of learning through experience or a lack of inspiration, I had a thought. Maybe I don't have to wait for Ashes of Creation or Pantheon to reach a playable build before I test those hypotheses. Maybe I could just try a new MMORPG right now.

There are still one or two genuine, Western AAA MMORPGs out there that I haven't tried. Hard to believe, I know. I've made a concerted effort over the years to run through them all, at least far enough to form an opinion. For some reason, though, there have always been one or two that have eluded me.

In part, I think it's because I've been holding them in reserve, just to know there's something in the tank should I ever need it. Mostly, though, it's because for one reason or another they were games whose setting or premise or I.P. never appealed to me.

There's Trion's Defiance and Defiance 2050, about which I know almost nothing, not even what control scheme they use. There's Pirates of the Burning Sea, which for some reason I never played even when it came under SOE's umbrella. There's Age of Conan, for which I actually own a sealed, boxed copy that I once picked up for a pound in a Manager's Special dumpbin at PCWorld, and there's Star Wars: the Old Republic.

Were I to find myself  looking for a new MMORPG to play, SW:tOR, the MMORPG with the most irritating acronym ever, and which I shall henceforth refer to as TOR, would appear to have a good deal to recommend it. It's World of Warcraft in space, after all, which means it's yet another reskin of the DikuMUD model that's served the genre so well for decades.

I like that model. I prefer it to all the other flavors of MMO I've tried. It feels like a classic to me, a sound and solid structure, capable of supporting an almost infinite number of variations. In the case of TOR it means tab targetting and hotbars, levels, xp, linear progression and gear ladders. All the good stuff.

It also means Star Wars, which is why I've never played it. I am not a Star Wars fan.

Sometimes, when someone says "I'm not a Star Wars fan", what they want you to understand is that they're somehow above such trivia; that it's too juvenile or too lowbrow to deserve their attention. That is decidedly not what I mean.

Such pretension wouldn't wash, really, not when you consider the way I devote almost all of my free time to playing and writing about video games. Nor how I was such a major comics fan in my twenties and thirties that I published fanzines and interviewed creators. And anyway, claiming not to be a Star Wars fan wouldn't really cut much slack among the intellectual elite whileI also find myself inexorably compelled to take any and every opportunity to out myself as a Buffy fan, a Scooby Doo fan, a Supergirl fan...

No, it's a lot less convoluted than that. The thing is this; I never really thought Star Wars was all that good.

As I've mentioned before, I kind of took against the whole project in the months when the original movie was breaking all records in America but hadn't yet been released over here. I even wrote a song about it, the first lines of which went "Star Wars' a bore and I haven't even seen it/Critics say it's good but I know they don't mean it".

Of course, the moment it released in the U.K. I did go to see it and I thought it was great. Who wouldn't? That first movie is great. The second one was great, too. After that... not so much.

Despite my lack of personal interest, I remained well in the loop about Star Wars for a very long time. My college-era girlfriend (now, and for a very long time, my ex-wife) was a member of the Official Star Wars Fan Club. I remember their magazine, Bantha Tracks. I think she had some spot illos published in it at one time.

Much later, when George Lucas decided to trash his own legacy for the new millennium, even though I hadn't much thought about Star Wars for years, I went to see all three movies on release because my movie buddy was crazy for Star Wars at the time.

And yet, despite all this exposure over the years, Star Wars and I never quite connected. I can remember quite clearly back when Raph Koster's Star Wars Galaxies MMORPG was anounced. I was hip-deep in the hobby and desperate for any new MMO that might come along. It's not like there were so many you could afford to ignore a big one.

But ignore it I did. My interest in SWG never sparked, despite the fact it was being produced by Sony Online Entertainment, my favorite developer, makers of my beloved EverQuest. I didn't apply for the beta, even though I pretty much applied for every beta in those days. I didn't buy it when it launched. It would not be unreasonable to say I barely noticed it existed.

Looking back, I'm not sure exactly why that was. Mrs Bhagpuss isn't much for Science Fiction and wasn't at all interested but I've always played a lot of MMOs that she wasn't interested in so it can't have been that. It was before SOE invented the All Access Pass so I'd have had to pay a full subscription, which probably would have been enough to put me off dabbling.

Whatever the reason, I didn't get around to trying SWG for myself until it eventually did become part of the All Access subscription. I downloaded the game and made my first character about a week after the NGE hit. Timing is everything.

I didn't dislike SWG but it was a bit dull. The colors were dull, the costumes were dull, the quests were dull... I pottered around for a few sessions and then forgot about it. And when the hype train began to pick up speed for TOR I was very much not on board.

All of which brings us to now. Last night I downloaded TOR. I already had an account, never used, which, of course, didn't work so I made a new one. I logged in, made a character, played for a couple of hours, logged out. I was Level 11. This morning I logged in, played for about three hours and logged out. I was Level 17.

I will be doing a First Impressions post soon, although xp comes so fast I may have forgotten half the things I was planning on mentioning by the time I get around to writing it. So far I will say that, while the game is not without its flaws, I am having a good time.

But then, I almost always do have a good time at the start of a new MMORPG. How long the good times last is another question altogether. Let's find out!