Star Wars: The Old Republic

I’ve been following this game for over 18 months now, and it’s not even out yet! Am I over hyping it and setting myself up for a fall?

SW:TOR, a new MMORPG from Bioware due to be released in in late 2011

For those of you who don’t know, Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) is a new Online Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG) from Bioware. It has been in development for several years now and is due to be released by the end of 2011. 

It has been in development for several years now and I have been watching it’s development since early 2010. It is the kind of game a star wars fan has always wanted, and didn’t get with Star Wars Galaxies (SWG). That game has a very dedicated fan base but the game is now showing it’s age and is finally coming to a close at the end of this year.

I never really played SWG myself, but I do know that SWTOR will be a very different type of game. After following the development of this game for so long, I am getting more excited by each new update and piece of news that gets released. Am I and countless others building this game up in our minds to be something greater than it can ever possibly be, or can it really match our expectations?

To understand where I am coming from, I need to explain how I found out about this game in the first place. Early in 2010 I decided to play that fantastic game ‘Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic’ (KOTOR). This game came out back in 2003, and was a fantastic RPG. It is set about 3000 years before the movies and is just an awesome game. My only problem with it was that it was so good at the time that my PC could barley handle it. So even though I had completed it, I didn’t replay it for that reason. 

KOTOR is a great game and was well ahead of it's time in my opinion, it also 
created one of the greatest video game characters ever...HK-47!!!

That is until early last year, but now the problem is that my PC is too good for it, so I still get the odd crashes (a game built for Windows XP isn’t completely compatible with Windows 7). I never owned an Xbox and therefore never played KOTOR 2 because I thought it would crash like KOTOR 1. I therefore started looking around for KOTOR 3 and that is where I first discovered SWTOR.

More to the point, it is when I first discovered Bioware. Bioware created KOTOR, but I am not the type of person who really pays attention to game developers (at least up to that point).  I find out about this company making a game called SWOTR, a game that is as big as KOTOR 3 – 10 combined!

Sounds awesome right?

They then said that it is an MMO. The only MMO I had ever heard of was World of Warcraft (you new it would be J). The only things I really new about that game was that millions of players play it together, you had to pay monthly in order to play it, people get addicted to it and play it all the time. That put me off, as I have always hesitated over joining the world of online gaming.

Even though I never really intended to play an MMO I kept visiting the SWTOR website just to see where they were going with it. I kept getting more and more interested in this game. At the time it basically seemed to me like a game where I could play as one of 8 different classes and travelling to more than a dozen Star Wars planets whenever I wanted, how I wanted, and do whatever I want when I get there. 

 You get to travel all over Coruscant and many other planets from the Star Wars Universe

It sounds like the perfect game (like SWG only better). The major difference between SWG & SWTOR is that the latter has more structure to it (theme park vs. sandbox), and for those of you who don’t know, Bioware are adding story to this game. Imagine That!

As I said, I never really intended to play it as I was very hesitant when it came to taking the jump into online gaming, but then I saw the free 14 day trial of WOW, so I thought to myself, why not? What’s the worst that can happen? Well I got addicted and couldn’t stop playing once I started.... at least for a couple of months. My character was at about level 65, and by that point I was absolutely sick of the grind and stopped playing. I never even got to end game, which is where a lot of players say gaming in MMOs really begins.

I have since tried playing Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), but that was the same. I am now playing Eve Online, which is a sandbox game and therefore completely different to the others including SWTOR, I prefer having to create my own content rather than be forced to grind. Bioware say that they are trying to eliminate the grind from SWTOR, and it does sound like Bioware are closer to doing so than any other game out there. Not because they are necessarily eliminating it completely, but because they are hiding it. 

For example Bioware are adding story to the quest lines so it doesn’t feel like your grinding, the kill/collect x number of y quests are still there but you collect and complete them in a different way which again may mean it no longer feels like your grinding.

No grinding in this game, just awesome combat....and story, did I mention that?

Is this really going to make that much of a difference? Or have I followed this game for 2 years just to play it for a couple of months and then quit out of boredom? Personally I think it will make a difference (I am partly hoping because I really want to love this game). Having played both Mass Effect and Dragon Age recently (not forgetting KOTOR), I know Bioware can create games with great story. If the story is good enough I really do believe that players like myself, will forget about the grind and enjoy the game.

Oh well, only a few more months at most until release. I will then travel to a galaxy far far away, and hopefully stay there for quite a while.....