The Old Republic: Six Weeks Later

I should make it clear from the outset that, yes, I still play Star Wars: The Old Republic. Now that the honeymoon period of the free month of play is over, almost every aspect of the experience has been dissected; good and bad. As an active guild-member with a character dozens of hours in, I’m pretty much invested at this point, but why might other gamers join in? What can it offer that other MMORPGs can’t?

With more and more online games adopting the Free-to-Play model, some have been critical over the monthly fee associated with The Old Republic. In its defence, it’s hard to argue you’re not getting your money’s worth. Having spent more than forty hours on the first character arc for a single class, I’m excited about the unique story-lines other classes can offer. Perhaps the biggest problem with the leveling progression is the repetition of the early areas in Act 1, once you’ve left your class tutorial planet. Unlike the later planets of Taris, Tatooine and Alderaan, where your path to better gear can vary quite a bit due to the sheer number of optional side-quest-lines, Corruscant (on the Republic Side) and Kaas City (Empire) are almost the same every time you take a character through them. After leveling both a Jedi Knight and a Smuggler there, I’m not sure I want to diffuse bombs in the Justicar territory a third time, even after hearing that the Trooper lore shares story-beats with Bioware’s other monster franchise, Mass Effect.

That’s a shame, because the side-quests on those later planets contain some of the best moments in the game outside of your dedicated class-arc. In one long-running quest-line, my Smuggler ended up in the employ of the Republics SIS (think secret service) on desolate Tatooine. I was tasked with uncovering what the multi-space Czerka Corporation were digging up in the desert. By the end of that story, I’d escaped an orbital bombing run, discovered and destroyed a mind-controlling super-weapon, and taken out the head mercanary working for Czerka, though I was given the option to betray my initial employers in the name of profit.

As I mentioned in my preview, if you are pulling a character through Corruscant a third time and want to only tackle story quests, you can at least make up the gap with PvP. Despite some controversies over high-level open-world PvP, where the balance is perhaps a little too generous to the Empire, I’ve had a lot of fun in my encounters in the Alderaan Warzone, a classic three-lane King of the Hill setup. As a healing-focused and potentially very squishy Scoundral, I expected to be nearly useless. Not so, thanks to a stealth-field generator which makes me a useful spotter and about as annoying as your typical World of Warcraft Rogue. I’ve never been placed in a game of Huttball – The Old Republic’s unique fusion of Rugby and CTF – so I can’t comment on it, though amusingly, I’ve heard it’s all you ever get on less-popular servers.

Speaking of my class mechanics, the core-gameplay has remained interesting right up to level 30, which is surprising for an MMORPG. Sure, the grind of “Fetch five bug-legs” quests does occassionally grate, but I can let most of those slide as long as the combat is enjoyable. While it’s not as visceral as Mass Effect 2 or as complex as Dragon Age: Origins, the extensions to the standard World of Warcraft mold are fun. My Scoundral can not only tranquilise enemies to put them out of action before combat, but blast their backs with her shotgun or kick them in their crotch to stun them!

With that, there’s not much else to say about the game other that I’m excited to see where my class story continues, and yep, I’ll probably do it all over again with an Empire class to see where that goes, too. For me, that’s worth the monthly fee. For everyone else? I hope EA and Bioware continue to refine and expand content so that those who wanted Knights of the Old Republic III find enough here to subscribe, while appeasing those who want real end-game progression.