Well, I caught up to my F2P Jedi as a full subscribing Jedi (completing chapter one of the Knight story line)Â and I shaved 3 hours off of it. That is a decrease of time of 24.9%. This was completely non scientific but most of that time was saved by being able to use quick travel, and having a better land mount to zip past mobs to quest completions. That number is too close to 25% to not assume that the masters of the galaxy decided that a subscriber should have a 25% more efficient time of playing. I know it is anecdotal and such but still, so close to what would seem like a logical conclusion that it is hard not to draw.
Screenshot of my riding my speeder (on my old Jedi, with the non-toggle-able hat unless you pay $10 option).
SWTOR does a good job of immersing you in the Star Wars Universe and the single player campaign is fun. I typically don’t play many games with sound but hard not to do it in SWTOR for the light-saber sounds alone, not to mention familiar riffs in the background as they set the mood as you transition to different story arcs. I am a big fan.
The sudden drop of World of Warcraft was “just because”. I still praise it as the best WoW expansion since Wrath of the Lich King but I was in that rut of nothing really to do but grind out the daily quests in hopes of yet another legendary. My sub dropped at the same time I dipped my toe in SWTOR  and the amazing XP gains are too hard to ignore. I have long waited for the opportunity to zip through the single player stories there.  I will most likely go back to WoW in a future patch (or two) as I want to play out the story campaign there as well as getting that cool new druid form. It looks as though the Token is settling in around the 80k mark for the next little while and I am remiss that I didn’t buy the tokens at 25k (or 60k). I don’t see what sort of other announcement can make the token price jump further (free pizza with a WoW token?) and I am curious if it will drop if/when subscriptions start dropping. With the rate of content being pumped out and planned I know there is plenty to keep most WoW players subscribed.
I’ll be back when the whim hits me. I have the next 60 days to play in a galaxy far, far away
Every time I read that someone plays MMOs )or any video game really) “without sound” my mind boggles. Leaving aside the question of why anyone would want to do that (do you watch tv or movies without the sound?) I struggle to understand how it works. In almost every MMO I’ve played I rely as much, if not more, on the sound to know what I’m fighting, where what I’m fighting is in relation to me, what abilities I’m using, which area I’m in, what NPCs I’m near etc etc etc.
The soundscape of most MMOs dictates play as much as the visuals. Even the score has a huge impact, not only on the immersive and emotive qualities but on timing and pacing. Without the sound on I can’t do anything much more than harvest nodes or browse the auction house, which is about all I do when I have to turn the sound off for some practical reason once in a while.
It’s done out of necessity, I get to game only when in the same room as my wife, who appreciates that I can still talk to her while playing without having to yell at me to remove the head phones, and she watches TV. My gaming available time would shrink if I could only play when sound allows. When she is out of town at work, etc, I do crank it up and it is nice, but after years of playing games without sound I really don’t miss it that much or mind it at all. The times i do get to play with sound I start noticing how phony a lot of it is (footsteps, etc.) how repetitive it all gets (mobs of the same type typically have the same grunts, or one or two lines they repeat over and over) and that actually pulls me out of the immersion, instead of putting me into it. SWTOR is all voice acted as well which DOES have a big impact with tone of voice (angry sounding angry is better than angry reading angry, for example) but with the text there to read it still works.
I still think you should go play SWTOR, I tried without the XP boost and it was near impossible to play in comparison now. It is definitely the time (if there ever was/is one) to jump right in!