Hey, I was just about to necro this thread but someone already did. Not about 6.0, which as far as I can tell has only been briefly mentioned, months ago. No, it's because I've just wrapped up my SWTOR journey and wanted to share my thoughts on it.
Before SWTOR's release I was super hyped for it. Then the game came out and...I played it for less than two months. I guess it was just too boring. A few months ago I watched the above video, and it made me want to try the game one more time before it was too late.
So now, I've finished six of the class stories and all of the expansions. I think this is close enough to finishing it seven times that I can criticize it.
One of the big problems after release was how long it took to do anything, and that's been changed. You gain experience much more quickly now, such that you only have to do your class story quests and maybe a few of the planet questlines. This is a boon to storyfags like myself, who don't really care for the usual MMO grind. There's also a lot more fast travel options so you spend more time actually playing the game instead of walking from place to place. You can probably finish a class story in a couple weeks without nolifeing it. Another good change is that any companion can be set to heal, dps or tank, meaning that regardless of your own role you can take your waifu all the time instead of being forced to go with the guy you hate.
Unfortunately though, they've made another change to casualize the game, and this isn't a good one. The game is easy now. Really, really easy. At least in the single-player story content, I haven't played and don't care about endgame raids and shit. My greatest cause of death was getting careless and driving off cliffs, and I could probably count my number of deaths to actual enemies, across all classes, one one hand. It's a huge disappointment when the game hypes up an antagonist to be some huge badass, only for him to go down in seconds and with hardly a scratch on you once the combat music starts.
So anyway, here's my ranking of the class stories I played.
6. Sith Inquisitor. What I expected: manipulating people, playing politics and exploring the mysteries of the dark side. What I got: collecting mcguffins for a master who's obviously going to betray you, then collecting ghost-type pokemon in preparation to fight a lame villain who wants you dead for no real reason. Some of the companions are cool though.
5. Jedi Knight. The generic hero story, you blow up a bunch of superweapons then go stab the bad guy. The companions aren't great either, Doc in particular I really wanted to force out the airlock.
4. Sith Warrior. This one is significantly better than the previous two, and in many ways is a better version of the Inquisitor's story. You become the apprentice of a powerful Sith lord, he betrays you (I don't even think of this as a spoiler since, come on, it's the Sith), then you take him down. But it's handled better and at least your character isn't forced into being a complete retard, and at least you can shit talk the guy. I didn't care for most of the companions but Vette is super cute.
3. Bounty hunter. I wasn't expecting much from this one - you just go from planet to planet and kill/capture your target, right? But the individual stories are not bad, and there is an overarching storyline - you piss off a Jedi who will do anything to take you down, and is a good example of a darkside Jedi who's still loyal to the Republic. The lightside ending to this story is really great. I also liked the companions, except for the universally despised Skadge. Mako a cute!
2. Jedi Consular. A lot of people hate this one but I liked it a lot. This focuses more on the diplomatic and scholarly side of being a Jedi than the stabbing a cartoon villain with a laser sword side, though of course you do plenty of the latter. You travel around with some ambassadors on your ship, forging alliances and solving mysteries. It's almost more of a Star Trek story than a Star Wars one, And That's A Good Thing. The companions were mostly boring and lame though, aside from the supercute Nadia.
1. Imperial Agent. Almost everyone's favorite story, and for good reason. Great writing, cool twists and choices with actual consequences, it almost seems too good to be a Star Wars story. You get the most interesting cast of companions too.
As for the expansions - the first two, Rise of the Hutt Cartel and Shadow of Revan, aren't great. The former is based on that episode of Futurama where a world is collapsing because they mined all the fuel from it. Seriously. The latter is that Revan came back after being captured by the Emperor for 300 years, he wants to wake up the Sith Emperor who's apparently taking a nap or something so that he can kill him, both sides team up to stop him because it's become clear that the Emperor waking up would be bad for everyone and no one thinks Revan can actually kill him...then you kill Revan and the Emperor wakes up anyway. Whoops.
The other two expansions, Knights of the Fallen Empire and Knights of the Eternal Throne, actually have a pretty great story. I'm not going to spoil it in the off chance that anyone here ever gets around to playing it. You visit some cool locations too, like a dyson sphere left by a long-dead civilization. Unfortunately the gameplay is worse than ever - while the base game had a lot of trash mobs to fight, at least there was some variety. Here almost all fights are with the Eternal Empire's droids and soldiers, and it gets old fast. These expansions also introduce selectable difficulties for single player, which are chosen before starting a chapter (each of which is ~1 hour long) and can't be changed without restarting it. You'd think that selectable difficulties would be a good thing, and you'd be wrong. The easiest one is even more piss easy than the base game, while the intermediate one seems reasonable until you reach a boss that practically instakills you no matter how skilled and geared you are. It's like this hasn't been playtested at all, since I don't see how some of these fights would be winnable by anyone.
As for the game's future, it's hard to say. The game's lost a lot of servers but there seems to be a healthy population on the few that are left. The Knights of * expansions seem to have had a decent budget but they wrap up the game's storyline so well that it kind of seems like they weren't expecting to make any more. There are plenty of raids and hardmode dungeons for the endgame grinders, but the game wasn't made for them initially - it was made for storyfags first and foremost, but storyfags want to move on to new stories once they're done with one instead of repeating the same content forever. This, I think, is the main reason why the game wasn't as successful as anticipated - they spent a huge amount of money making the game appealing for people who wouldn't stick around in the long run.
So, do I recommend the game? Only to extreme storyfags like myself. And only if you don't mind paying a sub while you play - the game's "free to play" model is so restrictive that it should really just be considered a demo. I don't regret the $60 I payed to play for four months, and I've certainly gotten more of my money's worth from it than most other games, but I also don't intend on resubbing. Next up on my MMO journey is The Elder Scrolls Online, so make sure you hit those Like and Subscribe buttons. Night Goat out!
