Seven years ago, a little game came out and took the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG) world by storm, you may have heard of it: World of Warcraft. Love it or hate it (and I’m sure theres plenty of support out there for both sides) it is undeniable that WoW has utterly dominated the MMO market in its seven year life-span. Many contenders to the throne have risen and fallen and most have ended up being mere flash-in-the-pan experiences that are over before they’ve even really begun.

Now Bioware steps up to the plate, armed with their own version of the Star Wars IP and a string of hugely successfully singleplayer RPGs under their belt, ready to take a shot at carving a lasting piece of the MMO market for themselves and they might even just pull it off. After all, the force is strong with this one.

Eight years ago BioWare crafted the world of Knights of the Old Republic, their own original take on the Star Wars mythology which blended all the elements everyone knows and loves but gave them free reign to do almost whatever they wanted story-wise, since it was set 4,000 odd years before the galaxy portrayed in the Star Wars films. It’s this same take on the Star Wars universe that the player will be thrust into when jumping into the Old Republic, with this new tale being set approximately 300 years or so after the end of Knights of the Old Republic.



There’s plenty of story hooks here that carry over from the old KotOR games, whether it’s familiar characters being referenced, or the continuing story of Darth Revan, fans of the original game should find enough here to satisfy their cravings. At the same time though, if you’re new to the franchise, don’t worry, you wont feel alienated in any way or feel like you need to have played the previous games to understand what is going on -- any back story you might need to know is wholly explained and the main story of the game is largely self-contained and unrelated to previous entries in the series.

First, lets all address the elephant in the room: this game is not launching in Australia until next year. Now for those with very strong opinions about these sort of business practices, this might be enough to turn you off. There really is no obvious reason we can see for delaying an Australian release and explanations have not been forthcoming from the creators or publishers.

Network performance from Australia has not been an issue at all; the latency you will get on Old Republic’s US-based servers is likely better than you will find in other MMOs on the market here -- the experience I’ve had while playing it so far is absolutely perfect. While I don’t agree with arbitrary region restrictions, we're not going to fault The Old Republic for it, because it really is something above and beyond the quality of the game itself and more than likely even out of developer BioWare’s hands.

Now this is an massively multiplayer online game, and as any experienced player can tell you, the launch of a new MMO is usually quite a painful affair -- bugs abound, servers crash, and the whole experience is usually quite substandard until several post-launch patches rollout and things are shored up. I’m happy to say however, it seems that BioWare is most definitely bucking the trend.

In all my time with the game, throughout months of beta testing and a week of playing in the retail game’s early start period, I can’t even recall a single time the game has crashed on me. Yes I’ve encountered the occasional small bug or graphical glitch, but they’ve all been so minor that I’ve barely even acknowledged them. This is quite honestly one of the most -- if not the most -- polished, refined and hands-down well-made MMOs I’ve ever played.



Even three months ago when I was playing the game in its beta form, it already felt more finished and more polished than a lot of games do at launch. Its a very impressive feat by BioWare and my hat is off to them. For most players, probably the worst thing you will have to contend with in these early days are the queues for some of the servers. If you want to play on one of the more popular servers, be prepared to wait in line for anywhere from two up to four hours at peak times to get into your game. The curse of making a wide-appealing multiplayer game I guess: everyone wants to play it.

Rather than go for realism, the game has gone for a slightly more stylised direction that still looks and sounds great. Some have likened it to the look of the animated Clone Wars TV series, but while I personally don’t think it goes that far down the cartoon path, it does present a animated sheen. With the graphics settings cranked to full the game is arguably the best looking MMO to date. From the fine details like the equipment players can wear and the expressions on the faces of NPCs during conversations, right up to the brilliant looking environments.

The environments are where The Old Republic really shines: some of the worlds you visit are simply mind-blowing in scope and design, and even the interiors of things like Sith temples just look incredible. The only gripe here is that out of the box, the game has no support for anti-aliasing. Its not a deal-breaker if you know how to force AA through the control panel of your video card drivers, or if you’re comfortable manually editing the game’s configuration files, but not everyone who will be playing this game will necessarily be savvy enough to do these things, and they’ll unwittingly not be getting the full experience as a result of this puzzling trivial omission.

Audio is another home-run for the game all around. As we’ve come to expect from Bioware, the voice acting is top notch and the game is scored by a full orchestra -- complete with ominous chanting choirs to create that tension filled Star Wars style music that does so well with lightsaber fights. The generally effects are great and go a long way to really making the game feel an authentic Star Wars experience; from the buzz and crackle of a lightsaber, to the whine of a speeder bike, everything sounds just like it should.

Mechanically the game is a pretty traditional and familiar MMO fare. You have your action bars; you drop abilities on them, then you activate them with mouse-clicks or hotkeys during combat to use your skills and abilities and attack. There’s no auto-attack in the game, so every attack you do actually comes from your direct inputs, but by and large it is the same style of combat that has become standardised in the genre.



All of the fundamentals you’d expect in a traditional RPG make a showing: you have numerical character stats, you have gear, you have levels, you have an inventory that seems to be constantly running out of space. That's not to say Old Republic doesn’t do anything new or different though; it most certainly does. As an example, if you play a Smuggler or an Imperial Agent you will find a cover mechanic akin to what we’ve seen in Mass Effect. It even puts a fresh coat of paint on some of those old mechanics to make things feel more fresh, but at the end of the day if MMORPG gameplay hasn’t been something you’ve enjoyed in the past, don’t expect any truly significant differences here.

The place where Old Republic has chosen to really distinguish itself and distance itself with its competitors is with story. Each class has their own unique, distinct and intricately-crafted story which leads them through the game. As you work your way through the class quests, you will gain companions who can accompany you into combat, or chill out back on your ship crafting equipment or going on missions to acquire money and resources for you. Your companions will then also have their own personal storylines that you can delve into once you have gained enough affection or reputation with them. On top of that, all the side-quests you do outside of your base narrative have their own crafted tales.

At its heart, your quest might still just be “Go kill ten republic soldiers”, but there’s always a detailed setup attached, with so much story and context that it actually feels much more meaningful than the basic kill or fetch quest that it is. Even the game’s dungeons (called Flashpoints) are very story driven. They aren’t merely a series of: kill minions; kill boss; get loot; rinse and repeat; they have group conversations, moral dilemmas, cut-scenes, and a strong narrative.

May of the outcomes of these flashpoints are driven by story and the player’s interaction with it, so, they can go in different directions and wind up differently depending on what the players choose to do, which makes them a lot more replayable.

Helping this heavy story focus is one of the game’s biggest selling points: every single character in the world is fully voiced with several options -- male and female -- for the player character. Every single quest you do -- even if its a lowly fetch quest -- comes complete with a fully-voiced conversation with an non-player character (NPC), that sets up the story and context.



The conversation system works a lot like Mass Effect, with a conversation “wheel” that lets you choose a number of different summarised responses that will initiate a more verbose string of dialogue. If you are in a group, you can even take part in a multiplayer conversation, where everybody chooses a response and one result is randomly selected to be presented as part of the ongoing conversation. It makes for some pretty cool and dynamic looking scenes when your whole group is taking part and different people are speaking at different points through the conversation.

Another nice touch is that if your group initiates a conversation while you are not within range of the NPC, you can make a holo-call using your communicator and appear with your group in holographic form to still take part in the conversation; very handy indeed!

A downside to the game being so story-driven however, is that it becomes a very linear experience. This isn’t much of an issue on your first play through, but once you have played a character to max level and decided to try a second, you will be visiting exactly the same planets, and most of the same quests (with the exception of class-specific quests -- in pretty much the same order as you last did them. There are some Empire only planets and some Republic only planets, so if you make a new character on the opposing side you will get to see a whole new side of the game, but it still feels a little limited to me.

To help combat this somewhat, BioWare have introduced a system called the Legacy system, the purpose of which is to give leveling up new characters more interesting. With the legacy system, all the new characters you make become part of the same family -- or legacy if you will -- as your main character. This means that they all share the same last name, and your subsequent characters will earn “legacy points” for the legacy as they level up. You can then spend the these points to buy items and cool stuff on your characters.

If you’ve had you’re fill of questing and you’re looking for a change of pace, The Old Republic offers a few options, primarily via its Player vs Player (PvP) Warzones and its space missions. There are three PvP Warzones, which are dedicated areas built to PvP in. You can queue up to participate in a Warzone from anywhere in the galaxy by clicking a button on your interface, and once the system has enough competitors, it builds the teams and randomly drops you in one of the three maps. Everyone in the game is then temporarily boosted to the level of the highest person in the match so that it makes for fair contest.



The three maps on offer are Huttball, Alderaan and Void Star. Huttball is essentially a very violent game of football, where both teams try and get the ball into the opposing team’s endzone. The ball can be passed to your team-mates (and intercepted by opposition) and the map is dotted with deathtraps such as acid pits and vents that spew fire. The second map, Alderaan, takes place during the Alderaan civil war and is a basic capture and hold type map, where both sides fight over three different control points to activate giant guns and blow up the other team’s base. The last of the three, Void Star, sees one team defending a ship while the opposing team attacks with explosive charges.

Dishing up a bit of fan-service, the space missions are short, little action-packed scenarios you can undertake in your starship. They range from escorting a shuttle to safety, to attacking a space station or fighting off an enemy fleet in an asteroid field. You don’t have full control over your ship -- it’s an on-rails experience -- but that doesn’t stop it being a lot of fun. While Star Destroyers and Republic cruisers go at each other and you dodge and weave your way through turbo laser fire to take out fighters, turrets, shield generators and other such targets of opportunity, there’s some good old fashioned arcade fun to be had.

As you complete space missions you earn tokens which can then be used to buy new equipment upgrades for your ship, allowing you to undertake more difficult missions. It’s not a major focus and essentially doesn’t amount to much more than a cool little mini game (its by no means necessary or mandatory for your character’s advancement), but since the missions themselves are generally no longer than about five minutes each, it makes for a nice change of pace and a fun little distraction from the core game.

BioWare have remarkably pulled a rabbit out of the hat with Star Wars: The Old Republic. While they haven’t revolutionised MMO gameplay as we know it, they have delivered one of the best looking, most playable and most polished MMOs in history -- in fact, a level of polish you just don’t expect from the genre.

Will it have lastability to rival World of Warcraft? At this point it’s far too early to tell if a long-term subscription will be worthwhile. But if you enjoy RPGs, if you enjoy Star Wars, or like BioWare’s well-crafted epics, then Star Wars: The Old Republic is certainly worth the initial price of admission (well, assuming you can get your hands on a copy).