Saturday, March 24, 2012

Sights from SWTOR

Aesthetically, I believe that Star Wars the Old Republic offers some of the most astounding virtual spaces available among modern MMOs. There are certainly MMOs that equal it. For example the utterly free to play [$0 for the client, $0 to play, and no cash shop...really it's free] puzzle based MMO Myst Online. You can get the client and start playing here if you are curious.

That said, my main intent in this post is to offer a shallow justification for a slide show. When it comes to breathtaking sights and making your character look like a badass through found gear, in my personal opinion SWTOR trumps most MMOs on the market. In no particular order, these are the sorts of things you should expect to see while playing it:


Space combat. It's on rails like Starfox but still fun, and quite pretty.


My Bounty Hunter and a companion talking to a random quest giver.


This is a character I started on a new server, to hang out with a guildie from LoTRO, at around level 4.


This is what she looks like now at level 26.

Taken from a space station orbiting a random planet.

I have no idea where I took this screenshot, but I wouldn't mind having a poster of it.

SWTOR is a very pretty game if you can run it at a decent frame rate. Say what you will of whether it's innovative or not, there is no denying that it provides some gorgeous virtual spaces to explore.

7 comments:

  1. Your "poster" shot at the bottom looks like Quesh to me.

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  2. Good spot, I'll have to pay attention the next time I'm there :-)

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  3. I maybe, kinda get why people complain about cartoony graphics. But I think that games like WoW and SWTOR hold up for much longer because they rely on art direction instead of graphical horsepower. Games like EQ2 and Vanguard looked out of date when they were launched.

    Heck, I still think Guild Wars looks beautiful and it didn't have to go down the cartoonish route, but is still heavily artistic.

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  4. I absolutely agree. EQ II looks a bit fugly in places (the art direction is really uneven) and still only runs OK on my modern PC that would have been an alien super computer came out. Forgiving engines and good art direction trumps realistic, soon to be dated, graphics any day in my book.

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  5. Beautiful screenshots, reminds me I need to get back and finish my class quest line. My Jedi Guardian hit 50 but he still has a galaxy to save.

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  6. I have yet to play up any Republic guys. Did you enjoy the Jedi Guardian quests? I've heard that it's one of the more generic storylines.

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  7. I liked it quite a bit actually, although I've not played any of the other classes so I don't have much to compare it too. It has some references back to the characters from KotOR which I loved, plus how can you go wrong with Jedi?

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