I can tell you one thing about this game, it's terrible. Just trying to play the game I am constantly unable to defeat enemies, a new boss every 5 minutes. While I understand it is aimed for teams, it's obviously not catering for the single player who doesn't have the luxilary of a team of players.
Also the controls are awkward, graphics pretty poor and the camera controls are pretty substandard. Took me like close to 20 Gig of downloading to get the game updates and was really a major disappointment.
I never thought I would find a game worse than STO, but I guess I have found it.
I have a machine that by today's standards, is pretty much lower mid- end. Good but, not great. I figured the graphics I was viewing was due to my machine's limitations. I did have to adjust the graphics as it was set to low by default. Once I did that it was better. 20 gigs is a lot but I believe most of that is due to ALL mission givers are cinimatic with voice-overs. As for the controls, I personally found them easier. If you use the first person controls on STO, I can see how it would be troubling to learn. I never could get a hang of that feature so the transition was not bad for me. Took me a little while to pick up on how the combat works. Once I did, the game did get a little easier. From what I have experienced, the main story of it can be done solo. Some of the side quests you can do does encourage grouping. I have had to group a couple of times to complete missions. As for the enemies, that has gotten a couple of times. I killed a group of enemies and had to step away for a moment. Came back and Inwas dead. Now I dont leave til I am in a known safe zone.
Here are some ofthe things I like about it.
1) Open world environment. There are not any mission gates as there are in STO. You can go to any place at any time (provided your class has authorization).
2) Each class on each faction has its own unique progression story. Also, when you reach level 10, you can pick a sub class. The sub class determins what role your chacter will play. The variety is amazing.
3) I like that you can choose the direction your dialog can take. The choices you make has a real impact on how the story plays out. The choices you make can give you light or dark side points on your force meter. They can also give or take affection points with your companions.
4) Playstyle servers. They have servers designed for different playstyles. They are as follows:
PvE: players (such as myself) that focus on the standard story missions. PvP can only be done via the PvP queue or to challange another play that must be accepted.
PvP: players that like to play against other players. These servers puts you in an open PvP world where you can attack or be attacked at any time.
RP-PvP and RP-PvE: same as above but designed for those that like to role play as their characters.
A few things I don't like.
1) Customization is EXTREMELY limited. The creation tools are not very good at all. Where on STO you can fully customize the look of your character, on TOR you pretty much select from a bunch of predefined looks. Your wardrobe changes with what you equip. You do have the ability to color match your items but that is the best you can do as far as costumes go.
2) Though Inhave not gotten to any yet, i have read the space combate is very limiting. In STO, you are stuck in a box but, you get near 100% freedom of movement (flying "up side down" would be cool). In TOR, you follow a predefined path.
Overall, I find STO to be the superior product, even with all of its flaws. STO is my first MMO and TOR is my fourth. The other two are Champions Online and LOTRO. TOR is, at this point, my second favorite and a will grant me a nice break from STO when I need it.