This is cross-posted from my guild’s blog, snarkside.com
Back when Cataclysm was relatively new and people were leveling to 85, WoW started to draw a lot of criticism from the blogging community for being too linear. Between the heavy use of phasing and the lack of multiple options for zones that were level appropriate, many players began to complain that they felt as though they had been put on a very rigid pathway and that there was no room for organic discovery or leveling.
I was one of those people. I’ve always been the sort of person who likes to take a break from the main by leveling an alt. But when it came to Cataclysm, I was only partway through leveling my second character to 85 when ennui set in. And while I did eventually get a few more characters to level cap, I was looking for ways to do so that didn’t involve questing.
Cut to today and I’m happily leveling a handful of characters in SWTOR. I don’t have a single one to the level cap as of yet, but I do have enough characters leveled far enough that I am already starting to become very familiar with many of the earlier quest lines. While they have in no way become tedious as of yet, I couldn’t help but note that SWTOR has a pretty rigid progression path. If you’re Republic, you can count on being sent to Coruscant somewhere around level 10. Once you’re there, you can count on fighting the same gangs, getting entangled in the same political wrangles and saving the same damsels in distress.
The good news is that you’ll still have the major thread of your class story line and, assuming you’re trying out a different class, it will be completely different from the last class story line you experienced. And thanks to having multiple options on how to talk to the NPCs you interact with, you can effect some change in how even the same old quest lines might end.
But if you’re like me and plan on trying out the Advanced Classes for every class, well, then you’re going to start to see some more redundancy. My own plan to combat the “been there, done that” sensation is to play one character towards the light side and the other character of the same class to the dark side. Since I am in absolutely no rush whatsoever to have eight level capped characters, I’ll undoubtedly be waiting for quite some time to make progress on the second set.
Will trying to make different choices on each character for the non-class quests be enough to defeat the overall problems of a linear path to level 50? I don’t know. I do wonder at there not being much in the way of overlap or parallel paths, but I suppose one could always break from questing by running flashpoints or taking on space combat missions.
In the meantime, I’m hoping class quests and the choices we do have will continue to be enough to keep the leveling game from growing too stale over time.
It’s a very small thing, but one thing I noticed is that even in the non-class story quests there are some little touches that will have to vary with the different classes. For instance, while leveling my consular, I’ve run several quests where the quest giver talked about me being a jedi and what that meant to them (or even the fact that I was a jedi was the reason they “called me over” to give me the quest). While I haven’t run these yet as a trooper or smuggler, it’s clearly something that will have to be different for those two classes. It’s a very small thing, but it shows that there will still be differences when you come back to these more general quests on an alt character.
Also, and this is going to sound crazy, as I approach the end of my consular story quests having played a pure light side Sage, I’m seriously considering that my first alt character will be another consular who I play as dark side Shadow. As many have pointed out, it might be a mistake to play the same class story over again back-to-back, but I have already identified a ton of class story points that would have to go very differently were I to be playing pure dark side and/or running with a different primary companion. I could be wrong, but at least for now I have some very hopeful expectations.
If you do go Shadow straight off, you’ll have to let me know how it goes. My plan for my second Consular is to go Shadow and dark side, so I’ll be following in your footsteps sooner or later.
Having played a Vanguard up to 25, I can say that there are some slight differences in how NPCs talk to me as Alexxa versus how they talk to me as Alexx, but the overall tone of respect is still there, so it feels more or less the same to me.
I think that the different class storylines and dialogue options are going to allow for sufficient variety while levelling alts, but I believe that there are also other important differences compared to Cataclysm:
1) In Cata, I felt that a lot of quest chains were required to unlock important gameplay features. Want to be able to move around Vashj’ir, even if it’s just to farm herbs? Gotta get that quest chain to get the sea horse done. Want shoulder enchants? Got to complete 100+ quests in Deepholm. That got tiring reeeally quickly once you started to level up alts. In SWTOR, the only thing you really can’t miss is your class quest, but that’s the one piece of content that’s different for everyone anyway.
2) While the stories are linear, it doesn’t seem to be an “all or nothing” deal from what I’ve seen so far. Again, in Cata it was quite annoying that you often had to complete every available side quest before you’d be allowed to progress in a zone. In SWTOR, there’s your class quest, each planet’s main quest line, and lots of little side quests that aren’t connected to anything from what I’ve seen so far, so you can take them or leave them. I imagine that this will make levelling alts a lot smoother, as the game’s not going to stop you dead in your tracks if you’re doing a bit of picking and choosing in terms of who to help out.
Shintar recently posted..Early Flashpoint Impressions
Good point on the side quests. I’m a bit of a freak about completing everything on my main, so I’m still going to do them. But as I level alts, I will more than likely say, “Oh, this was annoying. I’m not going to do that again.” Sort of how I never really touched certain zones while leveling in WoW after going through it once. That was enough!
I suppose the flexibility will be there as long as you can always follow the class quest line and use space combat or flashpoints to fill in the leveling gap.
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What I would suggest, if you want to try all the Advanced Classes, is to go Empire for one AC and Republic for the other AC. Like go Sith Sorceror and Jedi Shadow. That way you see all eight class stories, and end up with all eight Advanced Classes.
Rohan recently posted..[SWTOR] Through a Glass, Darkly
I have considered this because I do want to experience the Empire side of the story as well. However, a big part of what makes any MMO enjoyable for me is my guild. I tend to only run to the other faction when someone is getting under my skin or I have personally had a bad day and want to play but don’t want to be social. Neither of those scenarios happen all that often, so I’m not sure I want to commit myself to only getting to experience the other AC that way.
As with anything, time will tell. I might get four characters to the level cap and decide I would rather put my eye out than see those quests again. We’ll see.