If there’s one message that BioWare has communicated time and time again throughout The Old Republic’s pre-release campaign it’s that story is king. Every element of the developer’s debut MMORPG is geared towards players identifying with their character in a universe which seems ripped right out of classic Star Wars lore. There’s very little of George Lucas’ dire Clone Wars trilogy in here, instead all the tropes – be it smooth-talking smugglers, ambivalent Jedi and the always treacherous Sith – have been ported wholesale from nights of the Old Republic, so Star Wars fans will find it both refreshing yet comfortably familiar.
Long-time MMO players on the other hand may not find this alleged billion dollar venture to be quite so appealing, as despite boasting some of the best fiction we’ve ever seen in any online-only game, there’s still some fundamental issues which prevent The Old Republic from being our genre’s second coming.
Let’s begin with TOR’s greatest strength, its class-specific stories. Rather than having a large over-arching questline which is delivered regardless of the combat archetype you choose, BioWare has chosen to give each skillset its own independent class story. Each of which boasts different starter planets, characters, set pieces and lore. The end result being that the dark and brooding Sith Lord storyline filled with callous murder, slavery and self-righteous Jedi has an entirely different feel to the cheeky and comedic Smuggler plot.
Star Wars the Old Republic
As you’d expect these storylines take hundreds of hours to play through and when buckled together with fully voiced dialogue, that’s a lot of content for any game to offer, even an MMO. The core class quests which are spread liberally throughout the level 50 cap are consistently brilliantly designed with surprising turns, interesting objectives and sufficient pay-off at the end of each of the four acts. The problem is simply there isn’t enough of them to support the experience alone, that’s when the more general supplementary quests come in and unfortunately they aren’t quite as stimulating with objectives which usually involve walking large sways of any given planet’s map in order to retrieve an item before traipsing back to collect the XP reward.
This was fine back in WoW’s day as Blizzard could use the low-tech fantasy standpoint as an excuse for common commuting. There weren’t holo- communicators to remotely communicate with NPCs, or androids to deliver goods, but in The Old Republic this technology is abundant, so there’s no excuse for making players trudge back and forth repeatedly.
With the smaller early planets, like Dromund Kaas and Taris, this factor is essentially eliminated by the ability to bind to settlements, and automated speeders which ferry you to specific points via an enjoyable sightseeing tour, but when you hit the grander environments like Tatooine and Hoth those distances became inexcusably arduous, even with the addition of hover-mounts. Unfortunately BioWare are limited to toe the Star War’s line, after all they can’t suddenly add the ability of flight or teleportation to any given character, but they need to do something to speed up the pace of the game, as it is The Old Republic feels too slow once you pass the opening act.
Speaking of which, the first 20 levels playing as the Smuggler were brilliant. We had a clear enemy to hunt down, a double-crossing snake who stole our ship and dropped us in it with a particularly dangerous crime-lord, and we had to travel the length and breadth of the Galactic capital Coruscant where we came across right-wing hard-liners, corrupt senators and android worshippers. However, once you get your ship after the opening act, that tightly knit content spreads out too thinly, as you need to perform more generic quest content to pad out your character advancement, and as you do so, you begin to notice each planet’s shortcomings such as the wide open spaces and the surprisingly light player load for each instance. There were times when we’re sharing the entire planet of Taris with only 30 other players – for multiplayer-centric game that sort of segregation is overkill. BioWare has explained that their future event plans excuse this element of worlds feeling sparse, but it’s a factor which increasingly bothered us.
With the addition of AI companions, who can either fight by your side or perform tasks such as crafting while you’re adventuring, there isn’t really a need to team up with other players unless you want to tackle either the heroic areas, dedicated story-based PvE dungeons (dubbed Flashpoints) and obviously PvP. Flashpoints in particular offer up meaty slices of Empire versus Republic story content with the odd group-determined moral decision chucked in. Electing which conversation choices are uttered during these sections proved particularly memorable. Whether you talk it out in group chat or allow a random dice roll to determine who’s light or dark side retort is chosen, you’ll remember the story beats associated with your actions taken and in the MMO field that’s something few titles can boast.
Despite a few puzzling design decisions The Old Republic has undoubtedly had a very smooth launch. The niggles associated with anti-aliasing and that memorable dancing bug are small fry in the grand scheme and there’s a great basis of content here to build upon. We just wish BioWare’s innovative talents were leant to more areas than just story. For instance, deviating the class archetypes further from the traditional MMO form and a space combat mechanic which is more X-Wing and less Rebel Alliance.
No release in 2011 was more highly anticipated than The Old Republic, and for the most part BioWare have met fan expectations, which is frankly very impressive. They’ve produced one of the most polished subscription-only MMOs to emerge in years, and as a base it’s a fantastic jumping off point to build more thrilling content. It’s only missing a few attributes to realise its potential as a worthy adversary to WoW, which is why we haven’t pulled any punches with our criticisms.
We believe in The Old Republic, and BioWare Austin has done fantastic work, but they just need to put in a little extra effort in order to rectify a few issue to give World of Warcraft’s unquestionable dominance in the MMO world a run for its money. Going free to play made the game more appealing to users as well. Given the F2P model, there's no reason not to give the game a try!