Star Wars: The Old Republic Is Getting a New Expansion

How is the game doing these days?...

This game got really boring. They should have kept Star Wars Galaxies online. While they're at it they should have not changed Star Wars Galaxies.

Old anger! rawr!

Even though this game never turned out to be a "WOW killer" and was expensive as hell to make, it still seems to have been a pretty good investment for EA.

I've been playing it off and on this whole time and it's still a great game. Not sure about the focus on housing since one of the big points of the series is that your ship is your home, why not just make ship interiors more customizable.

Is that Supposed to be Jabba?

Amen to that! The very open sandbox feel was great, but did get a little "what do i do now?" after I got my Master Rifleman.

Is that a Jabba with a hat?! GAME OF THE YEAR!!!

My friend still loves it and he's been playing since launch, he only plays MMOs though so idk what that means for normal people.

That's Karagga the Hutt, a raid boss, you see his giant mech in the trailer too

His hat is a pretty sweet drop too

The game is doing good. I enjoy the pvp and I still have to get through a couple class stories.

So, kind of like SWG. Only, instanced, bland, cookie cutter designs, and there's no way to put out vendors. SOUNDS AWESOME!

I still love it and i am not even a MMO person, not in the sense that i like to spend hours raiding etc. What i find amusing is it's F2P yet it gets way more deep expansions and better updates than WoW has in it's 10+ years of being around.

@babychoochoo: I read somewhere that they apparently made $130 million on micro transactions alone last year. So i think it's probably turning a steady profit now, Just nowhere close to what they needed to justify the $300 million development cost (allegedly).

I might just pick this up if they opt to put in plenty of more content for the story proper. Pretending this game was in fact another KOTOR actually made it pretty enjoyable. And then there was lightsaber rugby.

This game ran into the same problem as Warhammer Online did; no reason to keep coming back once you'd done what there was to do.

Never understood how anyone could be excited by the notion of housing, mind. It was an an interesting idea when it was first conceptualized, but at this point, it basically feels like something folks paste onto MMOs when they've run out of better ideas.

@do_the_manta_ray: If you ever want to start playing message me. Would love to level and experience another class story with someone.

I'm recently started playing this and so far I'm been enjoying it. That said, I'm also enjoy MMOs in general and I don't think this game will persuade anyone who doesn't like MMOs, similar to how Titanfall won't persuade anyone who doesn't like FPS.

Disregarding the F2P vs Subscriber aspect, there aren't many game design choices I disagree with. There are a lot of Quality of Life things I think they could add/fix but after playing WoW for years I might be spoiled in that aspect.

Are there any Giant Bomb users on The Red Eclipse?

I still think SWTOR is a decently solid game for the casual player like myself and my girlfriend; we were enjoying playing through the storylines of our characters together. Unfortunately we got a little burned out on the grind once we got toward the late game, especially when the visual design of the planets started getting really monotonous and uninspired, which only made it feel more like a boring treadmill. Also, the game's free-to-play limitations are absolutely terrible, so we only play in spurts of a month here or there, when we have the money for a subscription.

I've been a sub since day one, and still enjoy the game a lot. It's not for everyone, obviously, but there's no need to act all surprised that it's still "chugging along".

Sorry lacke, I've got chars on 3 servers, but Red Eclipse isn't one of them. D:

@lacke: Sorry man I''ve got my legacy on Jedi Covenant.

Man they sure are fixing up "This Old Republic".

Maybe it's just me, but, that doesn't look like what I think of when I think Star Wars. To me, it looks like Mass Effect world with Star Wars Characters. But then again, to me Star Wars is the look and feel of the original three movies, and it's been years since I watched those.

i always felt strangely guilty for not playing enough of this...

@trelution: Not to get all Star Wars Pedantic on you, but the Old Republic era takes place about 4000 years before the movies, and the average Hutt lifespan is about 1000 years. So there's no way it can be Jabba. It's most likely Karagga, as Karagga's Palace was one of the end-game raid dungeons.

But I haven't played the game in a looooong time, so I don't know who it could be, except that it can't be Jabba.

I still sub to this. I kinda have to, being an officer in my guild and all. I play mostly for the RP, so having a new outlet/area for RP is right up my alley. I'll get more use out of this than I did Starfighter.

How much better would Return of the Jedi have been if there was Mecha Jabba.

One of the most disappointing games i've ever played still exists. good stuff.

I still play every day, however everything has become a cash grab/daily grind. Since 1.3 this game has taken a downward spiral, rampant game breaking bugs keep getting added with every patch, beyond stupid nerfing of classes/skills (there is only 1 person in charge of ALL class balance, who only plays 2 classes) the most toxic MMO forums I've ever seen. Honestly just playing the game feels depressing. The only reason I still subscribe is due to time put in, and well, it's Star Wars.

If you want to give it a go, and try a free to play account, by all means have at it, however I'd make sure you read up on what you're getting into, restrictions wise, and the gaming environment. If you feel you no longer have fun, get out while you can.

Read up on the forums, ignore the obvious trolling hate speeches, look for the few critical posts. The PTS subforum is a wealth of knowledge for future content. However, the PTS feedback tends to be ignored on a regular basis.

Neat. I look forward to checking this out when it drops. I've had some fun with the Star Fighter stuff and new flashpoints recently.

Hey guys remember that E3 trailer?

...guys?

Yeah, I have my legacy on The Shadowlands (around 6 or 7 characters).

I was so pumped when this launched....jammed out the first day and played a ton in the beginning.... moderately after the first few months, then occasionally, then once and a while, etc. Once it went free to play, it was enough of a negative shift that i stopped altogether. Havent even logged in since about a week after that change. Was never into the end game stuff so i had begun to repeat content anyway.

The main story line campaigns are great. A standard MMO grind at times, but its Star Wars so it was never without its charm. It is just impossible to keep pumping out content at the standard they created, with voice over work, and such.

Also, I feel like once the game was running for a while, the leadership changed and priorities were adjusted....to a negative end. Like the creators were hardcore fans and loved their work. It was almost as if the artists were done and the middle managers took over to make the game financially viable. The soul was wafted away.....Then F2P pooped on the final fresh daisy and i left for a galaxy far, far away....Giant Bomb.

As much as I hated ToR, and still do now that it's F2P, I wish these kinds of articles didn't always start with "Oh hey, this MMO you don't hear anything about still exists!" You would have heard something if it shuttered.

Too little, too late, too many new MMOs to try out. Sorry Old Republic.

@babychoochoo: believe it or not it's doing really well..thanks to the crazy people spending loads on it.

I enjoyed playing this a whole lot. It was the first MMO that I really took to, having tried a lot of them. Didn't hold me into endgame content (which I heard was where it was initially a little lacking) but playing the core story with friends really did a pretty decent job of fulfilling the promise of "multi-player KOTOR" for us. They even have dialogue choices (implemented with a neat initiative system when you're in a party).

SWTOR was an ok game. Had a guild that was regularly clearing up all of the 25 man content it had to offer. There were some pretty decent raid fights in the game and some difficult coordination. would never go back though. When they made marauders basically 1 shot anyone in pvp they broke the balance and i didn't want to go back. also, huttball was f***ing great.

Huttball was the only unique thing that this game had going for it and they screwed up the balance of pvp. I would like to see some other MMORPG's clone a pvp arena similar to huttball. miss you huttball...

As someone who has never played an MMO and does not enjoy multiplayer, I really enjoyed TOR. I didn't group up a lot but when I did everyone was very friendly and helpful. I was thoroughly obsessed with the game for 9 months.

@hanktherapper: As someone who has the same attitude towards MMOs it was great for me too. I had lots of fun going through my story and just being a Star Wars man. I enjoyed being on my own and then just occasionally running into other people because I didn't really have any friends playing it either. I'd go back to playing it if I had the time.

As much as this should of been KOTOR 3, it was still pretty good, mind you I don't even care about MMO's.

I kind of want to revisit this game. It was honestly pretty good but couldn't keep me playing once I hit the level cap.

Yup the same thing happened to me. I was really into it, loving it in fact. Then i finished my classes story and lost ALL interest in continueing to play that character even though i loved the class (sith assassin) So i played for like a month more making various other characters and messing with other classes, but just quit after that. I might have stuck around if i had any real life friends playing, but it was just a friendly guild of strangers.

Honestly the game was pretty good, and i enjoyed all the story stuff i saw, so yeah...I think the game got alot more shit then it deserved.

@babychoochoo: It's okay. Still a lot more content I haven't hit yet, play an hour or two a week with some friends, not a ton since some of them have newborn kids now, but it's still fun.

@do_the_manta_ray said:

On the official TOR forums one of the longest running threads is about housing, so it's obviously something a numberlot of people wanted, and given that the game is F2P it's easy way to make money through micro transactions, ie furniture, decorations, etc.

It must be a feature that has a lot of demand given the number of MMOs new and old that are doing it. You have both WoW and TOR adding it in. Guild Wars 2 launched with it, and it will be a major component in Wildstar.

Wildstar is at least doing some interesting stuff with their housing system(s) by giving players active buffs depending what they have in their house/on their property, vendors, fast travel options, crafting areas, mini games, etc.

It's more that they are trying to keep the subscribers/audience that they have, not bring in new players.

No existing MMO at this point is going to do anything that's going to bring in a million new subscribers. That's not how MMOs work. Each MMO basically finds their own stable audience and it ends up being enough. That's why stuff like TOR, Age of Conan, LOTRO, Everquest, TERA, Star Trek, Champions, etc, have stayed around, because the audience that they have is enough to keep them afloat.

The majority of people tend to make up their mind(s) about an MMO when it first launches. As in whether they're going to stay with it or not, but even with that there are so many different things vying for people's attention now days that it's amazing that anyone sticks with any one thing anymore.

And by too many MMOs do you mean "two"? IE Wildstar and Elder Scrolls? Because those are the only ones coming out that anyone is paying attention to and/or are launching soon.

Does that Hutt have a fucking fedora?

Everyone plays Sith right? Why would you not?

I played this at launch, used my free month. It has a really good single player progression story type thing. Not like WoW where you just run up to a guy that has an Exclamation mark and click accept without reading the stupid wall of text. This game has lots of little cut scenes during main progression missions. Good stuff. But, it's just another MMO. :( WILDSTAR!!!