Wasting Away At A Cantina
So I’ve reached a point in The Old Republic where there really isn’t much else for me to do other than wait for weekly scheduled raid events.
Rather than grinding my way up to Valor 60, leveling an alt character, gearing up my companions or hunting them datacrons that have been so annoyingly hidden and scattered across the galaxy, I’ve resolved myself to simply camping out at the Imperial Fleet’s cantinas and Galactic Trade Market kiosks. As painfully boring as that sounds, I don’t find myself motivated to do much of anything else in the game.
I’ve been an MMO player for over seven years now and I don’t think I’ve ever come across a situation where I literally run out of interesting things to do in such a short span of time. This situation that I face right now, I think, speaks of something – or many things – that The Old Republic lacks.
Once you’ve amassed a respectable amount of gear in PvE (which isn’t very hard at all in itself), any pre-raid content the game dishes out seems to lose all appeal and despite the massive worlds Bioware has designed, there just doesn’t seem to be much out in the galactic wilderness worth exploring (especially when compared to games such as WAR). The Old Republic’s PvP scene is also far from polished and is riddled with bugs, exploits and on the whole, sorely lacks in variation. The game’s warzones really aren’t half bad (Hutt-ball is especially fun for me) but Bioware’s sordid half-assed attempt at open-world PvP on Ilum is truly nothing short of a disaster.
Understandably, the game is still in its infancy so I will give it the benefit of a doubt and hope for a brighter future ahead. It does seem very lazily built and doesn’t offer much in the way of innovation but it works just as well as any other MMO would in its first couple months. There are, of course, many areas of the game that deserve some attention, some of which may even sorely require a complete do-over (*cough* Ilum *cough*).
Regardless, I foresee myself sticking with this game for a good while longer, especially with the opening of its Asia Pacific servers in March. Things may be a little slow right now but hopefully, with the regional change in servers, my current guild finally see some significant progress and possibly swelled in its pool of competent players.
Themocracy