TrojanGuy

While I enjoyed your write-up, I do have a few points of contention:

1) You say "When I sit down with an MMO, I want to play someone unique who can affect the world and the other characters around him, and in this respect, SWTOR simply isn't an MMO". I'm not really sure what you're expecting here. I'm not aware of ANY MMO that allows you personally to shape the world and story. In a game world where there are thousands (or millions) of people going through the same storylines, how do you think an MMO is supposed to ACTUALLY let you, personally, shape the world?
2) You called Clone Wars crud. Maybe you think your tastes are too refined for a cartoon, or automatically think cartoon = kid stuff, but Clone Wars has actually grown to be an excellent show (it started off rough with the movie in 2008, but it's gotten better and better. Not to mention violent to the point where I wouldn't let my kids watch it...).
3) "For those of us who realize that MMOs were meant to be more than casual combat games". Do you realize how pompous you come across with a statement like that? You may be a game journalist, but surely you realize you're one in a sea of millions of gamers, and your opinion (even if it matches up with the opinions of a sub-group of gamers) is not the only one. You are just as qualified to say what an MMO is "meant to be" as I or any other gamer is.

@BillyBongThornton I'm not excusing it, but don't a lot of people in the game industry do this? People act like Shiggy alone invented and developed all of the Mario games. Or Itagaki alone invented and developed Ninja Gaiden. Did Sakaguchi alone create and develop Final Fantasy? In reality, none of these people is single-handedly responsible for these series. But the press (and gamers) like to put a face to a series, so it's not entirely her fault.

Now give us some good preorder deals (and I'm not talking in-game items, I'm talking discounts) and that number will grow even more!

Am I the only one that wishes joystiq's little summary section included what platform the game is on? If it weren't for the tag at the bottom, I wouldn't have any idea if this was a DS game, a 3DS game, an XBLA/PSN game, or what.

Sounds wsm. Sign me up!

@arkweld Yeah I was also confused by this story. This has been a preorder bonus on amazon for as long as I can remember.

I have a feeling your impressions about SWTOR would've changed if you'd had more time to play and get into the story. 10 minutes just isn't enough time to really appreciate the amount of immersion all of the dialog and story provides over the course of the game.

I'd rather they kept an eye on Rift and tried to copy a lot of what they're doing. Class flexibility, lots of new content drops, etc. are all great aspects of Rift that I'd love to see come over to SWTOR.

YES PLEASE!

Razer: We're gonna revolutionize PC gaming!
Us: Really? Wow, I hope it's something really unheard of!
Razer: Surprise! It's a really expensive gaming laptop! Betcha never seen that before! See? PC gaming isn't dead! It's just reeaaaalllly expensive!