Star Wars: The Old Republic is an MMORPG set in the Star Wars universe, in a time called the Old Republic when a cold war has split the galaxy between the Republic and the Sith Empire. The player character is one of several classes and will follow a specific storyline for that class. Gameplay consists of open environments with enemies that need to be fought, special instances for groups of characters called flash points, and arenas for fighting the other faction of the game, called war zones. During the game the player is led from one scene to another. Each scene is called a planet and consist of a series of locations closely linked and gives some hours or days of gameplay.
The character evolves with time and gets better and ready to meet harder enemies, even on one planet the content becomes incrementally harder, but is kept on the level that it is matched against the character’s supposed evolution. After the first two planets the freedom of choice is much more expanded and the game world, the galaxy, gets more accessible. The gameplay gets more sophisticated as you can make choices to send your characters on exploration in locations that are meant for more evolved characters.
From the start and following the character through her progression, different types of missions are available. The missions gives the character’s presence in the locations a meaning and a goal. They usually involve a lot of killing and some conversations where guile can come in handy. Most of the missions are voluntary and at least early on is it possible to progress without getting involved. There are some special missions that character is supposed to follow, called the class story line. It is possible to play the game even if one chooses not to do the class story line but it will limit the available choices a lot. At the start of every mission and at some key moments of the mission there are dialogues where the gameplay is stopped and a cut-scene is played followed by a series of multi choice questions. The choices are limited but the outcome could be affected by them. The characters’ answers are delivered “in character”, with some fitting attitude. It is in several cases possible to choose a non-violent before a violent solution. Also all NPCs in the game are voiced. Missions give rewards in the form of items that are connected with the reward giver and sometimes special reputation tokens. Credits and experience is routinely given as a reward.
In addition to the general gameplay with the storyline there are more general arenas, as usual in MMORPGs. These include Heroic Missions that are repeatable missions intended to be manageable only when grouped with more players; Flash Points that are heroic missions taking place in a special location separated from the normal game play world; War Zones that are player-versus-player arenas for group fights. The latter also are special locations separated from the normal game play world. Finally there are Space battles, that are single player arcade games where the player navigates his space ship through a space battle scenario.
At the start of the game is the player able to choose a side, Republic or Empire, and then one of the four classes available for each side. The player can then customize the looks by choosing race, body type and some other features. There are no other choices of proficiency or alignment in the character setup. During the game the character evolves and can make choices on what to be good at and by choices in the missions choose a light or a dark side. Through the missions the character will get to know some non-player-characters and some of them will be companions of the character if the player follows the class story line. The companions do evolve they too, at the choice of the player. Through the class story line each character is eventually awarded a space ship that is somewhat customizable.
As with many large-scale MMORPGs the players are divided over different servers. The servers are grouped into timezones and per language. Each server is given a designation as PVE, PVP or RP-PVP. On each server players can communicate with each other and form guilds.
