Star Wars: The Old Republic

So there’s good news and there’s bad news: the bad news is that The Old Republic isn’t drastically different than the other MMORPGs you’ve played in the past ten years. You still talk to NPCs that wander around a small area, you’re still assigned arbitrary assignments that involve traveling to nearby locations, and you’re still going to be killing ten of these and collecting four of these. Sorry. That’s just the impression we got when playing through the first few hours of the game. If you think The Old Republic is going to change any of the genre staples you’re going to be extremely disappointed.

It’s still an MMO, just dressed up differently. The basic agro mechanics are the same (sadly), and instead of tapping the number two and hitting an enemy with an axe, you’re hitting the number two and hitting an enemy with a lightsaber. The animations are a little better, but it’s still typical whack-a-mole combat in the end.

But before you go leaping into a sarlacc pit, you should know that there’s good news...

When we walked in for our second demo of Star Wars: The Old Republic, we were repeatedly told that the game was a genre changing MMO unlike anything that had been done before. However, when we sat down to actually play the game we discovered that it’s actually not that different at all. Old Republic feels a whole lot like World of Warcraft, and we actually think that’s a good thing – especially when you add in Star Wars’ skin and a greater emphasis on storytelling...

So far we have been nothing but wowed by BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic. Kicking off our E3 demo, we were first treated to the “Return” intro cinematic which sets up the early premise for the game. The Sith Empire is determined to retake their home world, Korriban, from the Galactic Republic and from there, retake the galaxy. After the Sith launch a surprise attack on the ship guarding the planet, a group of survivors escapes in order to deliver word of what has happened to the Galactic Republic. 

Above: We played The Old Republic for eight hours! Find out how a Star Wars MMO with the BioWare treatment plays inside

When Star Wars: The Old Republic was first announced, we had nightmarish visions of roughly textured Jedi hopping down long roads and naked dancing on top of the town's holocon email box. It was then, that we decided we needed to roll a character to combat the masses, someone with the mettle and might to stop the horde of blue saber-wielding do-gooders out to make the galaxy a better place. We needed a bounty hunter – and last week we got one for eight hours. Find out what it's like to level up a bounty hunter from level 1 to 9 inside...

We’ve all heard about the very BioWare touches that will make The Old Republic the most story-focused MMO ever, but no one has known how the game actually plays. Until now. We recently sat down and played one of the starting areas and proceeded to play for about six hours – enough to get through most of the first planet and to try out a party-based raid mission. We also learned about some of the higher-level content, including how recruited companions will allow you to delegate the less-heroic tasks like gathering and crafting so you can spend your time doing what Star Wars characters are supposed to be doing – going on adventures...

There are few games that have tested the gamer’s patience as much as The Old Republic. Since 2008, we’ve gotten an excruciating drip-feed of classes, features, and a slowly inflated idea of what the game is going to be. Last year’s E3 saw an entire presentation made out of a hands-off demo of one class making a single decision: do you, a Sith Warrior, kill the ship’s captain...

Strange to say it, but when you first start playing The Old Republic you forget it’s going to be built like an MMO. Missions, such as the one we played recently, are doled out in such dramatic and wordy ways that you’re temporarily blinded to the fact that the bomb-pursuit you’re on is essentially a World of Warcraft quest in space boots.

Welcome to The Old Republic: a massively multiplayer BioWare RPG set in the Star Wars universe. That means space opera plot, tough choices, and in all probability a lot of arguing with your asshole friends.

Lok’tar ogar, and welcome fellow MMO fans. We know that it’s tough to keep up with all the news about Star Wars: The Old Republic when you’re busy with daily quests and guild raids. But even if you have no plans to relocate from Azeroth to greener pastures in a galaxy far far away, BioWare’s first MMO deserves your attention. That’s why we put together this WoW-friendly field guide to help you make sense of the

What you've got here is basically Mass Effect, set in a Star Wars universe and massively multiplayer-enabled. So when you're not talking to a human-controlled player, you get fully-voiced cutscenes and interactions, with the same conversation system that Mass Effect uses so convincingly. This applies to every non-player character, making this the first fully-voiced MMO. Fact.