And, in true Old Republic fashion, it builds on the game's fantastic cinematic storytelling.īut what's especially notable for folks who have been away from the game, like myself, is the huge Game Update 4.0 that hit when Knights of the Fallen Empire launched in October of last year. It adds a bunch of new locations and quests. It raises the level cap five more levels to 65.
Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first: Yes, Knights of the Fallen Empire does everything you'd expect from an MMO expansion. The biggest changes have come as of last October, with the game's fifth expansion-sized update, Knights of the Fallen Empire. While The Old Republic's initial brush with free-to-play pushed many players away, it has remained successful, and BioWare has continued tweaking things.
Once again, the game felt like it was juggling the worst of two worlds. While this opened the game to a wider audience, it also opened it to criticism of the often restrictive free-to-play system, where even new ability bars had to be unlocked with real-money microtransactions. The Old Republic had shifted from a traditional purchase-and-play, subscription-based MMO model to a limited free-to-play version less than a year after its release. Many of these changes have come as a result of evidence that the game wasn't doing as well as publisher Electronic Arts had hoped. This is old news if you've kept up with the game, but if you're like me you'll find a very pleasant surprise: The Old Republic has changed drastically, and it's really, really good right now. I stopped playing after a couple of months, leaving my Imperial Agent stranded on Alderaan at level 30, and until this week I had only been back once to check in. The result was that neither aspect of the game was satisfying. It couldn't decide whether it was more important to be an MMO, with all the grouping and grinding that implied, or a narrative-heavy RPG where getting to the next cutscene was your main goal. The Old Republic was a solid game at launch, but one whose multiple goals clashed with each other. What could go wrong?Īs it turns out, plenty. On top of it all was the Star Wars universe, a huge draw. The Old Republic had the social gameplay and challenging, puzzle-like combat I'd come to love from MMOs, mixed with the strong, player choice-driven writing of BioWare. When it launched in late 2011, I thought this was it: the replacement for World of Warcraft that I'd been waiting for. My love affair with Star Wars: The Old Republic was strong but short-lived.
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