Having recently celebrated Star Wars Day, and getting caught up in the recent barrage of updates and rumors on Star Wars Episode 7, we’re bringing you a new column focused on one of the biggest sci-fi franchise. We all had to start somewhere, and our resident Star Wars fan-boy Wedgeantilles began his MMOG experience with Star Wars: The Old Republic. He’ll be giving an outsider’s look on what it’s like to play your first MMOG, along with providing game play insight and helping those of you not as familiar with the platform to not feel so intimidated or alone in vastness of the galaxy that makes up SWTOR. Enjoy. Let it be known that I’m a total noob to the MMO world, so I’m sure that to most of you this article will seem trivial and void of any real point. But to those who are just creating a character and joining the fight for the first time, I believe you’ll get something out of this, or at the very least, be able to laugh along while I get my ass kicked all over the galaxy far away in Star Wars: The Old Republic.
I grew up playing consoles. Even when I was hearing about how much better PC games were, it didn’t matter to me – not that I wasn’t interested, but my family never had a computer that could handle the software. My parents had dial up internet right up until it was time for me to head off to college, so PC games and online play were never a viable option for me. By the time everyone around me had been chewed up and spit out by the WoW monster I thought for sure I’d totally missed the boat. I assumed I’d never touch an MMO.
I’ve always been a fan of RPGs though. Thanks to the Ocarina of Time, the vast open world “choose your own adventure” games always kept me interested; the Fallout series, Skyrim, the usual suspects.
I’m also a total Star Wars fanatic, enough said. Take these two interests, and you have one curious guy right around the time that SWTOR dropped. However, it was still an MMO, that untouched megalodon of online wonder, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready to wrangle the beast.
My wife, on the other hand, was born into a gamer house and has been dealing damage online since childhood. Recently, in order to keep up with her online gaming, she invested in a new PC, tricked out giant monitor, sick speakers, and the best graphics card on the market. She wasted no time jumping into the world of Neverwinter and suggested that I download SWTOR and make my first attempt at online gaming. “Happy wife, happy life” goes the saying so I did just that.
I chose the smuggler character path, and was off to the races. The opening intro sequence was visually stunning, and got me super hyped to play. But once I was dropped into the war torn battle front that is the planet of Ord Mantell I was overwhelmed. The keyboard controls and mouse clicks were a completely new thing for me, so maneuvering was tough, and fighting was worse. I ran around for quite a while, got comfortable, leveled up a few times and I was totally sucked in. I starting doing every side mission, talking to every useless character and trying to kill every enemy in sight. I thought that the whole game was to take place on this one world. Boy was I wrong.
Stay tuned for the next installment in the on-going column from Wedgeantilles.