The stress test that's been going on every weekend for a little while now has actually been pretty successful for EA and BioWare, it seems, as the game has generated quite a bit of buzz and some good words for being generally polished and mostly bug-free. Of course, that was also said about games like Warhammer Online and Age of Conan, and if there's one thing that MMORPG developers always seem to underestimate, it's the speed at which many of their players mow through the content presented to them. Usually developers are left in an awkward state where the next content patch is weeks or months away and a growing section of the playerbase is sitting around bored, waiting for something new to do. (And yes, Blizzard has been caught doing this, as well.) Time will only tell whether this will happen to The Old Republic, but at this point only a few weeks from the game's well-publicized December 20th release date, much of this is already set in stone and it'll be up to the players to find out just how ready BioWare Austin is for the horde of powergamers to chew through everything they've made.
From a technical perspective, the game seems to be doing things mostly right. A full set of interface and configuration options allows you to get the game running on pretty much anything that runs Skyrim comfortably, although I did find that my first-gen Alienware M11x laptop (1.6GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GT335M, 4GB DDR3 RAM) struggled to deliver frame rates beyond the low-20s. Still, that leaves a huge range of mid- and high-end gaming PCs playing TOR pretty well, and while the visuals are delivered in a slightly cartoony art style that we never saw in Knights of the Old Republic, they still feel well-suited for the subject matter.
The Old Republic looks like it will probably be the best MMORPG to be released since World of Warcraft, but the problem is that we've heard that same phrase attached to other games over the years. Even games that wound up living up to that kind of hype in the first couple of weeks fizzled out when players found out that there was no endgame or that spotty PvP systems were the only things intended to keep players coming back until the developers had new PvE content ready.
Worse still, guilds of players were split up as some people insisted on staying in the old game and the rest moved on to the new one. It is my opinion that The Old Republic is not revolutionary enough to be very different in that regard, so I find it unlikely that too many whole guilds will jump ship from other successful subscription-based games to play this. In the case of The Old Republic, the Star Wars license and solid story-based foundation this game is built on will help carry them a pretty good distance, but even that won't be enough if people find an unfinished and empty endgame.
While my short time spent with the beta can't possibly answer the question of lasting appeal beyond hitting max level, my initial impression is certainly a positive one. I still can't help but advise caution on mashing that pre-order button - especially if you've been burned by "WoW killer-type games before, or if you're looking for an MMO that truly revolutionizes how this genre looks, feels,(Swtor Credits) and plays. For the rest of the gamers who just want to try something new and have sixty bucks lying around, well, it's hard to deny the allure of exploring a whole new galaxy full of loot, lightsabers, and light-side dialogue options, isn't it?
