A new planet and engaging romantic opportunities are among the features that make Rise of the Hutt Cartel so inviting.
The Old Republic's shaky transition from subscription-based powerhouse to free-to-play option had players new and old weighing whether or not continuing to play would be viable. After a celebrated beginning and a questionable semi-collapse, the game's community was now open to anyone with the desire to pick up a lightsaber, cash-powered or not. For many, that fact alone was worrisome. Happily, the change has done little to hamper the experience and may have even bolstered it, if the Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion is any indication. Though the last year might have proven rocky for BioWare, it's clear that this add-on is stalwart in its resolve to deliver multitiered narratives and trademark Star Wars action that time and time again prove more engaging than many of the alternatives on the market.
The designers behind Hutt Cartel have clearly been listening to feedback from the community, and that's apparent upon launching into the expansion. Still, despite the loving attention to detail and the valiant effort on BioWare's end to keep things grandiose and overarching, you can see some areas that have grown threadbare. For instance, each character class was previously assigned its own unique story, complete with fully voiced cutscenes and dialogue trees. Hutt Cartel offers only two stories: one for Empire loyalists who want nothing more than to acquire some of the precious isotope-5 after the Hutt Cartel rips through the planet Makeb to harvest it, and one for members of the Republic acting as nobly as they can in an attempt to keep the cartel from invading and stripping the planet of its resources.
The stories are certainly less of a spectacle than what you're used to, but they do the job nicely. The tale of isotope-5, whether you are Republic or Rebellion, is entertaining enough to hold your attention as heaping helpings of intergalactic melodrama unfold. If you've got higher-level characters on both sides of the fence as far as Star Wars politics go, the narratives make a fine reward for multiple playthroughs.
The Hutt Cartel missions become available via holocron for players at level 50, offering a broad selection of new powers, revamped ability trees, and changes to previously established classes. A previous game update brought with it noticeable changes to gameplay, depending on which class you play. The alacrity buff has been redesigned, reducing the activation time of all abilities, even instants, making it a powerful buff to have on your side. Passive and active abilities have been sprinkled in, whether you're a Sith marauder or a Jedi consular. Additionally, the level cap has been raised to 55, coaxing in players looking for additional glory, though it won't take long for a level 50 layer to reach the new cap.
Makeb is host to multiple missions that subscribe to all the traditional role-playing game tropes: rescuing villagers, falling in love, and eliminating the unsavory Hutts that dare usurp isotope-5 from its rightful owners. This new landscape is surprisingly meaty, and since it's the only new planet Hutt Cartel brings with it, it needed to be. Makeb is a massive, richly detailed world with gorgeous forests and sweeping mesas dotting the landscape. Countless mining facilities are connected by multiple flight paths that beckon to you with otherworldly beauty and mystique. It's like your first trip to Kashyyyk, only instead of Wookiees, slobbish Hutts are slithering around.
There are quite a few diversions to keep you busy between story-based quests. Gone are the nonlinear assignments you could complete on your way to the next story checkpoint, and in their place are daily challenges that may be completed several times over, as well as staged weekly challenges found at terminals scattered throughout the planet. These can be tackled only if you complete three missions from each stage and the bonus mission tacked on at the end. While some assignments are quick affairs, many can last from a half hour to a couple of hours, with all the might of a two- or three-man raid. Such daily and weekly challenges better prepare you for all the content geared toward level 55 characters, such as tougher Flashpoints and the Scum and Villainy Operation, which require top-tier toons. They're great for farming new achievements, some of which come packing a handful of cartel coins for your hard work.
I followed the game development for years (literally) and even bought a PC to run it. Played for 2 months but never became fully committed. IDK why, maybe I was bored, maybe my girlfriend was hogging the living room, but I got back on about a month ago and I'm enjoying it a lot more. I think the in-game community is better (probably due to sever consolidation). But yeah, agree with a lot of the negative comments.
@vadagar1 Yeah, it's been doing very well since it's switch to F2P. The game is thriving atm.
1 Like First, developers of SWTOR disregarded completely the singleplayer fan base created by KOTOR and KOTOR II. Second, they promised the world and beyond with the MMO. Third they failed and changed the pay to play to free to play. Fourth, developers are stuborn and launch extensions for this already faild game. Yes, meybe millions play the game, but because they decided it was free to play. And what happens to fans of KOTOR? well, they are still being kept under the dark... so much for marketing research
This game has become better and better consistently with every update. RotHC is fantastic for 8 euros. It's less than a pack of cigarettes. SWTOR was released a bit early and part of the h8 it got was understandable at the start, but they got up their arses, started to listen to the player base and have improved by a very great deal. You can actually meet ppl all around the planets not only in the main hub/city. PvE is fun. PvP is fun. crafting meh, so and so. quests that take days to complete and feel more like a game inside a game, than a collect 10 carrots. world puzzles etc. loads to do...
@chyrax wow mate 8euros is less than a cigar pack? Which country you live in?
I pay 4,50 euros for a pack.
6 Like @ SWTOR Developers
I'm sorry, but only a completely UN-imaginative, UN-Creative Greedy pack of morons could of ever produced such a over-hyped WoW Forumula'd Peice of Garbage like this really shows to us gamers that have some common sense, that you developers are completely out of touch with the gaming community as a whole, you also show us you don't give two-shits about Gamers, and the fans of Star Wars at all. Even though you feed us all your bullshit on a daily basis that you do. Well Actions speak louder then words. The only thing you care about is making a quick buck and running away as soon as it tanks and moving to the next project. A complete waste of Money and Valuable Resources! I even feel bad for the investors who invested hundreds if not thousands of dollers and millions into this project. Even SOE's SWG PRE NGE was better then this sorry game, and even that game was not the best, but it still was more of a real star wars game then this sorry Piece of crap. (Sorry this isn't direct at any of the players, just the developers so don't take it as an attack on you. If you love the game, Great I am happy for you.)
@midnight_trashh As much as I wished all the haters would shut up when the game finally came out and turned out to be great, I was the one that turned into a hater in the end. Crappy game, crappy support and like you said, they couldn't care less about the costumer...they even denied me access when I cancelled my subscription even though I still had 15 days left on it. Never got to say goodbye to any of my ingame friends...still pissed off about it.
Thought of going back just to say goodbye when it went F2P but I refuse to give them "an extra user", even if it's just for a day...especially with the mockery they made out of F2P...
2 Like @midnight_trashh I tend to agree. When Bioware said they are doing a Star Wars MMO based on KOTOR, I said if anyone can compete with Blizzard and WoW, it was Bioware and Star Wars.
For years they shoved the game in our face, claiming how innovative and engrossing it would be. That it would be the first true "story driven MMO". Come release we find out It's a carbon copy of WoW with fairly two-dimensional story lines that drop off the face of the earth once you hit the end game. Only to find the same repetitive raid/daily grinding staring us in the face.
I agree. It's shocking that they wasted all their time and money to make a grind-y shallow product instead of spending a lot less time and money on KOTOR 3 for the 360/PS3 generation.
Most people I've talked to inside the game who play it agree that they're only playing it because it's the closest they're going to get right now to KOTOR 3 and that they would have prefered actually getting KOTOR 3.
@arc_salvo @keech @midnight_trashh What's worse, is after the game was released Bioware had the never to say "TOR is KOTOR 3, and 4, and 5."
Claiming it has THAT much content and story was a slap in the face not only to everyone playing TOR, but everyone who wanted a true KOTOR sequel.
1 Like @midnight_trashh As harsh as this is, it's pretty damn accurate. I thought TOR was going to become one of the greatest games ever made, I was hoping so much to have a game that was so good and so intriguing. I was let down and it took me a while to accept it and get over it. There was a time when developers would go out of their way to show you the unexpected, and make you feel things you didn't think you could feel from a game. These feelings made you feel good to be alive in this era, but the only feelings I have now are regret and disappointment. This I think is common amongst fellow gamers, and yet the developers still make their money and still go on thinking and believing they are actually pleasing their player base continuing their inept work, disgracing the community as a whole. Let's not lower our standards to games ruined by greed. Bring back the love and passion that we once had.
pretty cool, but i'll be playing Rift come june 12th when it goes f2p.
join me on faeblight, woo!
Stop trying to polish this turd. The game is deeply flawed at a fundamental level. You really can't fix this lemon without starting over from scratch.
3 Like No.
I let my subscription lapse 2 months after launch for a reason.
We wanted KOTOR not WoW with lightsabers.
Make all the damn updates and additions you want. I'M NOT COMING BACK.
3 Like I bought this and levelled three characters to 55, I thought it was poor. I am not sure I will even bother to buy a future expansion. It was too short, they didn't develop the talent trees (always a major source of interest to me in WoW expansions), it showed a complete lack of labour on the part of the creators. The community in the game is non-existent, I found it hard to get going and impossible to make friends, I quickly remembered why I lost interest in the original. Really, it lacked vision, lacked a quality of execution, the game has always felt like something made-to-make money, it lacks craft and imagination (which usually comes down to labour and the quality of ideas), maybe it's because it was an attempt to use ideas derived from Star Wars to make a game, maybe that inhibits, rather than developing their own world, as they have done in WoW or GW. Maybe inventing new myths is a better idea, creatively, than using old ones whose images we've all seen. I never got as far as the new instances, another problem for me, in WoW, you always got the interest of new instances as you levelled, so you could try out your new talents, all that's missing here. It was a poor experience, more like dlc than an expansion.
@johnwck90 I kinda agree it wasnt large enough for an expansion. However, it didnt cost the average price of an expansion. Hell, if you preordered it was only 10 bucks. The price of any DLC. And with the amount of updates they been doing since they released it, i am content. The level of customization now on armors is bad ass. Something ive been waiting for since launch.
@CarlitosWay @johnwck90 Well, I suppose you are right. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I'd found people willing to play with, but nobody wants to group for quests in any mmos it seems, I wish someone would design one with servers for groupers who just want to log in and play cooperatively. I didn't enjoy it though, it was limited.
1 Like @johnwck90 @CarlitosWay LOL Shame. Well if you ever decide to swap over to a PvP server, come to PotF. Its very populated and you got a spot with us. We are Imperials btw.
@CarlitosWay @johnwck90 Well, I am on the RP server on Sith and on the alliance I am on a pve one. I have my own guild just for my characters so wouldn't want to leave since I like my guild names!
@johnwck90 @CarlitosWay What server are you on? If you are still playing, my guild is recruiting to make a few more raid groups for the week nights. We are on Prophecy of the Five.
@CarlitosWay @johnwck90 Yes, I used the group finder, it worked great. I had some nice groups in the game for instances but I never had a way to gear up for the elite stuff so I stopped playing.
@johnwck90 @CarlitosWay Well if you are into the endgame raiding content, there are always groups to be made. Since a few updates back, they have added the Group Finder system, which is essentially just like WoWs, except you get tokens for using it. And now that the game is supposedly over 2 million in pop, it shouldnt be too hard to find a group.
6 Like That was always going to be the hardest thing for Bioware to do, keep up with fully voiced story driven content, which is expensive and time consuming to make, shame as its supposed to be its main selling point.
They really set themselves up to fail, making it difficult for them to live up to the standard they wished to achieve, new content will always seem lack lustre and watered down in comparison (as they clearly aren't trying to maintain that standard) with what came before as a result.
So they turn to the old tricks such as dailies and other obvious grinding to pad it out to make it seem worth while.
1 Like @stev69 Yea, they gambled on that and it didn't pay off. It's really a shame too. I enjoyed this game and maxed 2 chars but the lack of endgame was kind of a bummer.
@CarlitosWay @made_u_look @Slade968 @stev69 Columni wasn't the lowest it was basically tier 1 and Rakata tier 1.5 wasn't a big leap in stats. And I did get certain pieces of Rakata but certain pieces of the crafting gear was better if you got the augment slots. Not sure why your getting all flustered the game is pretty much dead anyone that's a fan of Star Wars and ToR realize that. But like I said its fun to hop on once and while to get a little Star Wars fix till something better comes along. But the Nightmare modes weren't hard the hardest part in the first month release was dealing with the bugs, like the last boss in EV.
@CarlitosWay @Slade968 Ah, I see you are still confused. I figured it was a ridiculous enough statement that you wouldn't take it seriously and see it as the trolling it was. I guess you are too quick to be combative to notice you've been had. Have a pleasant day.
@Slade968 "nah, I did it all in about a couple hours. Weak end game. You must be confused."
Quoted from you.
@arc_salvo @CarlitosWay @stev69 @bonifassens The name itself implies playing with others, hence raid content. Ok, fine. Lets assume you dont wanna raid; then your next option is PvP. It aint amazing in this game, i admit. But its there.
The "story/character" based quests, if anything, are BRAND new, and something that never existed. Essentially, everything you supposedly do on WoW, you can do on TOR.
And as far as story goes, it is difficult to add very good story elements into end game content like raids. Because once you do it once, it loses its wow factor after the second time. Most people in WoW never cared for anything in the story.
@CarlitosWay @stev69 @bonifassens lol, that was fun. You seemed pretty worked up now. Obviously I didn't beat it in a couple of hours. Clearly, you are still confused.
@CarlitosWay @stev69 @bonifassens
Actually, I would disagree. The purpose of an MMO is to give people a reason to play day after day in a way they enjoy.
In WoW, I spend all my time farming and running story/character based daily quests, then I hop into random dungeons/scenarios and a few random battlegrounds.
I do some raids (and only because the raid finder has all the content now) but not much.
Also, SWTOR of all MMO's is THE one that emphasizes its story content as its main draw. It shouldn't be surprising that so many people only signed up for it and left when it was done with. Not everyone likes or should like raiding.
Especially in a Bioware game where story/choice was touted as king.
2 Like @stev69 @bonifassens What else do you expect end game is? You expect an epic, single player encounter that you can finish all by yourself? Something that you need to do every single day over again? Thats not endgame. The purpose of an MMO is to bring people together to overcome difficult challenges.
2 Like @bonifassens Believe it or not some people don't actually like raiding, so they aren't likely to want to spend their end game days doing that.
1 Like @Slade968 @CarlitosWay @stev69 It takes ONE raid at least 2 hours to complete. And thats a clear with NO deaths, no breaks.
As i said, if you arent doing 16m and Nightmare modes, you havent done "end game". Not only that, there are bad ass bosses to unlock that are not only difficult to unlock, but difficult to beat.
Im still playing the game to this day. You are the one who is confused.
@made_u_look @CarlitosWay @Slade968 @stev69 So you got Columi gear, which is the lowest level gear possible, in two weeks. What about Rakata? If you were doing Nightmare modes, like you said, you would have been decked out in Rakata.
1 Like @CarlitosWay @Slade968 @stev69 Endgame lasted a month, and that's with Nightmare modes. I was fully geared with Columni in 2 weeks. I still hop on once and awhile because I do enjoy the combat and immersion just doesn't last long. And the crafting system was pretty one sided felt the only money maker was biochem.
@Slade968 please do tell how you did all the raids in a couple of hours! do you even know what raids are?
1 Like @CarlitosWay @Slade968 @stev69 nah, I did it all in about a couple hours. Weak end game. You must be confused.
@edubuccaneer The game is still fun. And now with the new dye kits and collections system, its easy to make your character look bad ass.
