Star Wars: The Old Republic

Available on: PC

Star Wars: The Old Republic review

BioWare's MMO is a triumph, but there's still work to be done

Words: Hollander Cooper on January 9, 2012

Stay on target

Above: We got to check "walking away from an explosion" off on our bucket list for 2012

BioWare did a fantastic job of bringing the Star Wars universe to gaming in a bigger, better way than ever before. Many of the mechanics that are in place need work, but the emphasis on story is absolutely unparalleled in the genre, and the game is paced in such a way that it should be a treat for those new to MMOs. Where it falters is in properly combining the game’s innovations with the genre’s oftentimes archaic mechanics, and that’s something that will hopefully be phased out over time as BioWare enhances the end-game content and expands on the Legacy system to further incentivize players to come back for more.

Is it better than…

World of Warcraft? No. It couldn’t be. Not at launch. Right now there are too many problems, and World of Warcraft had a really, really, really long head start. It’s certainly better than WoW was within the first few years, and it definitely has the capability of being better in the long run, but at launch it’s just not there.

Knights of the Old Republic? Depends. If you’re looking for a single stand-alone Star Wars story, Knights does a better job. If you truly want to be immersed in the world of Star Wars, and you’re interested in not one, but eight different epic Knights of the Old Republic-style tales, than SWTOR is the one to go with.

Star Trek: Online? Yes. Star Trek: Online’s space combat was fun, but the ground game was a mess, and the updates never fully pulled together the elements of the game to make it feel like a cohesive experience. Even after a few years of patches, Star Trek: Online is a weaker game than The Old Republic, and that's something that likely won't be fixed with an update.

For those who skipped straight to the end

Massively-multiplayer online games are always a work-in-progress, so it’s not surprising that Star Wars: The Old Republic’s launch wasn’t flawless. What matters is that it’s an extremely satisfying experience that sets the stage for a bright future, so long as BioWare continues to support the game for the coming years with constant updates.

Note: This review is a living document. MMOs are constantly evolving, and if we see big changes we’ll update the text with links to articles detailing those updates.

Platforms:

Topics:

Bioware, EA, MMO, mmorpg, Star Wars , SWTOR, TOR

50 comments

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JokerJ0613 - March 2, 2012 6:26 p.m.

Blood and Gore? I can barely see red, let alone Gore. Maybe it's in some cutscenes. I know it can't be much, it's only rated T.
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n00b - January 18, 2012 8:31 a.m.

im sorry, but no matter how good this game is, the words star wars and mmo are a giant turn off.
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Soxknight1127 - January 18, 2012 3:16 p.m.

so far it plays great like a single player, i havent played it like an mmo very much at all and it still feels like kotor 3 to me
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Soxknight1127 - January 17, 2012 4:40 p.m.

this is the first MMO im playing seriously and so far im loving it. really into my jedi knight but def want to play one of the sith at some point too, the stories seem better
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Cik - January 17, 2012 8:20 a.m.

MMORPG Score: 3 Single-Player RPG / CORPG Score: 8 Overall Score: 5 TOR is a well produced Single-Player / CORPG in a multi-user lobby-system environment, though doesn’t hold an entertaining or remarkable continuous play value for $15/month for a prolonged period of time. It's definitely not a mmorpg, but a single-player rpg by a cinematic single-player rpg studio that delivers what feels & plays like having the least Massively-Multiplayer features & content of any mainstream labeled mmo aside from Star Trek Online. Should have been buy-to-play because it certainly isn't worth $15/month.
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larkan - January 15, 2012 8:15 a.m.

I don't understand why so many people complain about UI. When I played WoW, I was able to heal or tank with no mods and UI changes just as well as someone who had 4,000 mods to map every ability to 2 keys. The same applies here...UI and Class mods are another way of making people play the game on cruise control, and it's just plain lazy.
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Hollander_Cooper - January 15, 2012 1:22 p.m.

No, I was talking more about being able to like, move the UI around or scale it. You can't even move your inventory when it's open, it just makes it unnecessarily hard to play sometimes.
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SunniDee - January 12, 2012 3:13 p.m.

"Insert fanboy rage here" great read and i hope the trolls roaming are low
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Crabhand - January 11, 2012 12:50 a.m.

Great review, you've really hit the nail on the head with the issues and praised appropriately. Not much else to say on that front. And I agree with you on Huttball. I was a little tired of it after the first few days of early access, but it has since grown on me. I'm a little disappointed when it's Alderaan and I'm completely disappointed with Voidstar. It seems like one team always steamrolls the other in Voidstar, while Alderaan is only irritating against premades. Empire gets a lot of practice at Huttball, so on the off chance we play against Republic players we tend to roll right through them =P
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RebornKusabi - January 10, 2012 5:26 p.m.

Damn the haters Coop, your 8/10 review has sold me on the purchase of this game far more than any review I have read of it so far. Specifically, the fact that it is a 4 page review and it's in-depth analysis of every facet of the game along with your video diaries which punctuated what new things would arise at certain milestones within the games progression from level to level. Great stuff!
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Sebastian16 - January 10, 2012 5:18 p.m.

I love the KOTOR games more than anything else I've ever played, but am unwilling to get into another MMO. I'l have to pass on this one - 1200 hours to get through the stories of each unique class? No thanks.
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Pooka - January 10, 2012 2:58 p.m.

Rofl @ GW2
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lemur - January 10, 2012 11:45 a.m.

"Note: This review is a living document." IT'S ALIVE! Great review I'm loving the game right now. Troopers FTW!
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MrUnReAL136 - January 10, 2012 9:50 a.m.

I enjoyed the review but I cant help but thinking that this would be a much better game if it wasn't a MMORPG and was just an RPG the story driven features you liked would remain but all the generic 'MMO' quest would be gone. I guess its just to do something different. I would love to see a Single player RPG version of this.
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Darkhawk - January 10, 2012 9:25 a.m.

Story: 150 hours per character. Hard to complain about endgame content after that.
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JohnDagger - January 10, 2012 1:54 a.m.

Great review Coop except for one thing. I'm sure you've already heard it a tonne of times, but in you synopsis of each class, you said jedi sentinel and sith marauder were stealth classes, they are not. That would be the jedi shadow and sith assassin. Aside from that great review. I'm loving the game and 8 is a great score. I hope to love the game more as I keep playing.
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Hollander_Cooper - January 10, 2012 1 p.m.

Made the change. They both get stealth skills, but, yeah, I suppose people shouldn't pick them if they're looking for a stealth character.
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thatgurl - January 10, 2012 1:30 a.m.

I enjoy the review. This is coming from someone who has played WoW (since Vanilla Wow), Guild Wars, Eve, Lotro, Runes, basically every MMO out there. SWTOR is actually the only MMO to keep my interest besides Wow. Unfortunately I have grow bored of Wow so maybe that's a big part of it too. Although i like to say that is always unfair to compare a brand spanking new MMO to Wow. It's been around for years so of course Wow has a lot more content and less bugs. But how many of the SWTOR complainers played Wow when it was initially released? How many of you had to deal with the hour long queues, the glitches, the 40 man raids where you spent hours cleaning trash to get to one boss, the painful grind of getting gold so you can buy your epic mount at 60 at 800gold ( yes at that time, that was fucking expensive) and so forth? To me, WoW and Tor are like apples and oranges. But had ToR came out when during the time I was in love with Wow, around early BC, I don't think it would have gained much of my attention. But there is no such thing as a perfect MMO.
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435 - January 10, 2012 12:30 a.m.

Given that Coop put over 150 hours into this game to give us all a solid review, I hereby declare this the definitive document on SWTOR. And it's worth your money. For sixty bucks and fifteen a month, you get eight... EIGHT... ~150 hour games in the Star Wars universe. Approximately 1200 hours of entertainment. Now to get my bounty hunter to 30 so I can unlock my useless Legacy.
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Thequestion 121 - January 9, 2012 10:12 p.m.

I'm totally enjoying The Old Republic right now and reading this review was great. Being a new MMO player, it's interesting the consensus of the launch of this game compared to the other MMOs on the market. Great review.
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More Info

Release date:	US Dec 20 2012 (PC)
Expected release date:	UK TBA (PC)
Available Platforms:	PC
Genre:	Role Playing
Published by:	LucasArts and BioWare
Developed by:	LucasArts and BioWare
Franchise:	Star Wars

ESRB Rating:	Teen: Blood and Gore, Sexual Themes, Violence, Mild Language
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