A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a game that I seem to keep returning to these days, and because of this, I want to shed some light on it, as it seems to have changed a lot since the last time I played it and most of all for the better.

Among all of the types of games I play, MMORPG is one of my favourite genres, and I have played a lot of these games, from World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2 to Final Fantasy 14 and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Which should provide a picture of what I am to talk about.

Star Wars The Old Republic, or SWTOR for short, is an MMORPG created by Bioware in 2011 set in the Star Wars universe and said to be the World of Warcraft killer as many other MMORPGs, it failed to live up to that prediction.

SWTOR takes place during the Old Republic era, which happened long before the established movies and TV shows era. With the game reaching 12 years, it has many stories to pick from in the form of expansions, and every story is unique and something not seen before.

For me, however, it's easy to be sold when it comes to Star Wars as I am a massive Star Wars fan, but I must say that when I first tried out SWTOR, it did not really catch me as I felt that a lot of the systems were clunky and could do with a rework but boi have they delivered on that in the past few years for the game system wise feels renewed and completely changed from how I remember it which is both for the better and for the worse as there were somethings I miss about the old class designs but everything changes over time.

I have taken the time to get back into the story with a fresh character, and fresh off the bat, I am faced with a completely new overhaul of the character design system from what I was used to back in the day. I must say having the storyline detached from the preferred combat style is a refreshing sight. The same goes for the actual gameplay. However, I feel that the levelling is a little bit unbalanced as I am already in level 45 and still in the level 25 story part, which might be due to being a subscriber., which will be my next point on the list.

Playing with friends for sure makes the experience more interesting. Especially when the friends you play with are playing the game for free or in the Free To Play mode. SWTOR has several tiers of players split into three categories. Free To Play, Preferred and Subscriber. Where Preferred and Subscriber have some bonuses, the Free To Play version can feel rather restrictive regarding some free services, including backspace, trading, banking, and so much more. I get that it's a game that has to earn money somehow to keep operational, but I also feel that it can become too limiting and maybe even turn a lot of players away as it comes down to trust and faith before people decide to spend money on something. I, however, decided to rejoin during a bundle promotion, so I got a 2-month subscription and a speeder mount for it, so I am not complaining.

The UI of the game has also changed a lot, at least from the point of view of a subscriber. I like how they have changed the minimap into this overlay map, but I do wish there was a hotkey option to switch between that and a simple minimap like you can in most hack-and-slash games like Diablo.

The story is as I remember it, which, when you have played through it a couple of times, is nothing new, really. But there are eight storylines from 4 on the Galactic Republic side and 4 on the Sith Empire side. With the new character creation system, you can even pick between all class options matching the storyline, which had me pleasantly surprised when I was making a new character and having to first pick the storyline before picking my class and then the combat style from the get-go, where I remember the combat-style being selected at level 10 when I first started playing.

I haven't reached the new storylines yet, and the last time I played, I only got to the middle of the eternal empire expansion, so I am looking forward to what has happened in the meantime and to exploring this galaxy far, far away with my friends.

If people gave it a chance again, it could become the wow killer it never was, as I have had a much better experience with SWTOR lately than I have had on WoW in Dragonflight so far. And people are much nicer when you chat with them than they are in wow, so I can't wait to explore the endgame when I get to it.