7. Star Wars: The Old Republic
Another MMO for our list of overhyped and under-delivering games. The Old Republic looked phenomenal when it was announced, part of me hoped it wasn't an MMO when I first saw it as my old computer didn't have the specs to run it. Of course when I finally did pick up a PC which wouldn't die while running minesweeper 60x60 I installed the newly free-to-play Old Republic. I hoped that Bioware could bring the epicness of KoToR and Mass Effect together into the greatest Star Wars game of this generations and...it fell a little short of reaching hyper speed. OK, so to cross off the praises, it's a big expansive universe and to quote a famous critic "Blah blah, Bioware, blah". Aside from the typical Bioware charm though, Star Wars just doesn't feel as expanded as other media have made it seem over the past few years. A dual faction system works well, WoW proved that, and it makes sense that every MMO since would pretty much follow that rule. However the lack of freedom with alignment just feels poor, you're pretty much forced to be good or evil to get the best stuff which can alienate players who want to be neutral as a bounty hunter for the sake of role playing. It also feels like giving you the option to be good or evil when you're playing as a Jedi or Sith is a little like the game is taunting you. Being a good Sith would probably get you killed and being a dark Jedi would get you expelled from the Jedi Council. The only classes it makes sense to have alignment on are the ones who have loyalty to themselves, mostly. So classes like the Bounty Hunter or Smuggler or even the Clone Trooper can get away with being a b*****d from time to time. Enough whining about the alignment though. The presence of a clear and present story is good and it's nice to have a story tailored to each individual class but the story takes far too long to advance through and ends far too quickly I found. For what it promised and Bioware's track record with Sci-Fi stories, I was expecting much more. Like all other MMOs it inevitably was crushed by WoW, once again, going free-to-play ultimately proved that.