Almost a decade on,Star Wars: The Old Republichasn’t enjoyed the same long-lasting respect as the originalKnights of the Old Republicgames. The game had problems, and ultimately struggled to survive in its subscription model in the highly monopolized market of the time. However, there are still some great reasons thatStar Wars: The Old Republicis worth revisiting 10 years later.
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The Fate of The Old Republic
Star Wars: The Old Republicperformed a high-wire balancing act thatBioWareand fans alike hoped would launch the MMORPG to instant success. The game had 8 classes, 4 for the Republic and 4 for the Sith. Each one had a huge KOTOR-sized campaign with fully voiced NPCs and separate voices for the player characters, as well as an immense amount of dialog options throughout its world.
Ultimately,The Old Republicended up feeling like 8 single-player games strung together by a sharedMMORPG world. There were few ways for players to engage with each other in roleplay – after all, it would only take two players of the same class to suddenly realize they’d been living identical lives with identical companions for that to fall apart. Even in group encounters, two players speaking with identical voices made roleplaying as a group hard.
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Returning to The Old Republic
As a resultThe Old Republicalways felt like it had two main components which didn’t quite gel. Fans hoping for a BioWare RPG experience were satisfied at first, but just playing through the game like a single player story would eventually leave the player too far behind in levels to keep up with their main quests, forcing them to engage in the less narratively-driven MMO aspects of the game.
MMO fans on the other hand found themselves isolated in story instances where they couldn’t even see their fellow players, let alone interact with them. The promise of an MMO with aKOTOR-level story was realized, but never truly synthesized. However, there is still one big reason to go back toThe Old Republic.
At the end of the day,Star Wars: The Old Republichas moreBioWareStar Warscontent thanKnights of the Old Republicand its sequel combined. MMO fans may find servers emptier, but fans of single player BioWare RPGs will still find the game a treasure trove of some of BioWare’s best and most frequently forgotten stories.
Not only that, but since its initial releaseThe Old Republichas moved to a free-to-playmodel which means players can explore eight fully-fleshed out campaigns across a huge variety of worlds and some of BioWare’s best companion characters without paying a dime.Star Wars: The Old Republicmay never have quite been able to realize the experience of a truly synthesizedKOTORMMO, but it remains an enjoyable broadly single-player experience in a huge world with writing to match the best BioWare games on a far larger scale.
Star Wars: The Old Republicis available now on PC.
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