Let's get this out of our systems right now. For all of its focus on a well-written story, its player ships, and a fortune's worth of excellent voice acting, BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic still feels very much like that hulking leviathan created by the boys at Blizzard, especially in its earlier expansions. It's true. Indeed, if you're looking for an MMO that challenges conventions of how you level, how you fight, and even how you interact with other players, you'll be better off looking elsewhere (maybe even at Guild Wars 2). Rather than bash it for unoriginality, however, I'm here to argue that's not such a bad thing.
Now hold on, Leif, you might say (or something slightly more nasty), World of Warcraft borrowed all of its ideas from other MMORPGs, so it's more accurate to say that SWTOR borrowed from EverQuest or Warhammer! Well, not quite. World of Warcraft has been the big boy on the market for quite some time now, and its streamlined gameplay successfully tossed much of the bulk that weighed down its source material. It's the model that most competitors look at. Even if you still insist on contesting that point, it's hard to escape the impression that the game looks and feels much like World of Warcraft specifically in general, even more so than Rift. Still not convinced? Just ask BioWare's own Greg Zeschuk, who said that "every MMO that comes out, I play and look at it. And if they break any of the WoW rules, in my book that's pretty dumb."
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