Star Wars: The Old Republic Review

              

Star Wars: The Old Republic, (SWTOR), is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, (MMORPG for short), Developed by BioWare, and Published by Electronic Arts, and LucasArts, for the PC. It was released in America and part of Europe on December 20^th 2011. The story takes place in the Star Wars fictional Universe shortly after the establishment of peace between the re-emergent Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic, 300 years after the event of the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games, that were released on the original Xbox in 2003, and the sequel was released in 2004, it is noted that a series of books were also released in conjunction with the games. The time frame is also more than 3,500 years before the events of the Star Wars film series, so no Darth Vader. =(

               Let me begin by saying that I am a biased fan that spends WAY too much time playing this game. So that being said, I’m beginning this review with a rating, right off the bat. I’m giving it a solid 7. Now I could go by saying that I’m a huge fan of the Star Wars movies, books, and previous games, and that it doesn’t live up to the incredible cult following that is the Star Wars universe, but that is not why I can only rate this as a 7 out of 10. I gave it a 7 because it takes such a powerful computer to play this game that most people can’t play it. I have a fairly powerful laptop and I can barely play it, without having to stop after about 10-20 minutes due to lag, in which my character starts running in place and my companion starts twitching out. Now that is only one point I have taken from the ultimate score of a 10.

               Point two is taken from the fact that Player vs. Player, (PVP), is incredibly hard, due to the fact that they have no level filters. What I mean by this is, while playing PVP, a level 55, (max level character), can walk up to a level 1, and kill them with one shot. I know it might sound like I’m whining, and well, I am. All of the best armors and weapons are gained by playing PVP, and the people that are max level are usually subscribers who spend even more time playing the game than I do, and that is saying something. The game is free-to-play, but they do a lot of things to make it really hard to play for free. Such as follows, while trying to log into the game, the launcher, if you do not subscribe to the game, tells you that your password is wrong, and therefore have to go to your email and wait another 15 minutes in order to receive what they call a “one time password” in order to log into the game, could of fooled me seeing how I have to get this one time password every single time I log in. That is not the only reason it is hard to play the game for free, another one is you level up very slowly as a free to play character, and they warn you about this when you start a free character. So while subscribers are quickly maxing their level, you’re still running around as a level 25 when you’re more than 60% done with the main storyline. I digress, you can buy EXP boosts from the Cartel Market, using real cash, but if you’re going to do that you might as well subscribe.

               Point three is taken from the Game Launcher as a whole. It’s not just the password issue for me, albeit that really does tick me off. God forbid if your someone like me who can’t get high speed internet where I live, and BioWare decides to do random a maintenance, in which you never actually see any real change when you play, and I have to wait an entire day for the update to download, then practically another whole day for the Launcher to do something that it calls “re-organizing data” and when you call to find out what that is all about, they give you a nothing answer and tell you that it will be fixed during the next update, and it never does. After you finally get past all of those issues, you finally get to load the game, and it takes FOREVER! All for someone like me to be able to play the game, and if the server is overloaded, I get kicked out because I don’t have strong internet and have to go through the whole launcher process over again! =(

               Now, after all of that being said, this is one of my favorite games of all time. In the game you get to create your own character, and based on a serious of choices and conversations become either light or dark. What is really great about the character creation is that you don’t have to be a Jedi or a Sith. You can also choose to be a smuggler, like Han Solo, a Bounty Hunter, like Bobba Fett, or an imperial agent. The beauty is that there is no wrong way to play this game, you can be an evil Jedi if you ever wanted to see that, or a Sith with really great morals even. It has a great story line for all classes and is all around fun to live like a true Jedi Master. I have found myself losing track of time while playing as my Sith Lord, Darth Laraniss, yeah I named him after the character I write in my short stories, sue me. Another cool factor is the fact that you get your own ship, and you get to build and design your own stronghold with the latest expansion release. To top everything off, the graphics and world design are immaculate. It is truly amazing to be able to wreak havoc on a planet like Hoth or Coroscant and feel like you’re actually there. I for one am extremely excited for the next expansion coming out in December based around the story of Darth Revan, my favorite Star Wars character, who was your character in the original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games.

               All in all, if you’re a fan of video games, and have always wanted to live like a Star Wars character, then this is the perfect game for you. If you don’t mind all of my previous ranting on the issues surrounding the game. Now please excuse me while I fly my space ship around the Death Star in search of that tiny little hole that can blow the whole thing into smithereens.