Meanwhile, In A Galaxy Far Far Away

So, Star Wars. It’s a big thing, right? It had three brilliant films and three completely guff films, all massively successful, as well as a huge expanded universe in books, comics, cartoons and of course, video games. Many a night was spent with my Jedi saving the galaxy in Knights of the Old Republic, defending or attacking the Death Star in Battlefront or joining Kyle Katarn in his adventures in the Jedi Knight series. Knights of the Old Republic is often hailed not only as the best Star Wars game ever made, but even more impressively, one of the best RPG’s ever made with which I’ll fully agree, placing it behind only Deus Ex and Dragon Age: Origins in my list of favourites.

It’s Knights of the Old Republic that the focus of this really comes from, or rather, its so called successor, shiny new-ish MMO, The Old Republic. Beta tested in both closed and open states, then released to us mortals in December last year, The Old Republic is BioWare’s first attempt at an MMO, and while I’m no expert on the genre, it was easy to see this was the case with flaws and some plain odd design decisions in place. I’ve been playing since release on and off, and after a massive update recently touted the ‘Legacy Update,’ and the forthcoming ‘Allies Update,’ I’m here to give you my completely one-sided, biased opinion on its current state.

First thing’s first, starting a new character - something I’m all too familiar with. As always you choose your faction first, Republic or Empire, my choice usually being Republic so I can be mean or nice, instead of being horrible or slightly nice on the Empire side. Next up is species selection where you can choose from.. well, differently coloured humans. Unlike the early months however, where your race selection was restricted, you’ll now have access to every race for every class, assuming you have the credits (2,500,000) to unlock them, or if you have reached level 50 with that class they are unlocked automatically. This is one of the changes the Legacy system brings. The early levelling process is largely the same as before (with one major difference, which I’ll get to later on), except a small bonus, which is being able to sprint from the start, whereas before you unlocked the sprint ability at level 14 - this massively increases run speed for early levels and makes things much better from the off.

The rest of the game is unchanged for the most part in general, but tucked away, accessed by a tab at the top of the screen is your Legacy. This unlocks when you complete chapter one with any character and used to just let you choose a surname for your characters on that particular server, your Legacy, I guess. After the update however, it serves more purpose than simply a name. While parts of it are utterly useless (I’m looking at you, family tree), you can now unlock certain perks which will make the overall experience more enjoyable and give you rewards for certain things. While no story spoilers will be here I’ll be briefly mentioning those I remember, so if you want to see them yourself skip the next paragraph.

Firstly, your companions now have a purpose beyond helping out and letting you talk to someone on your ship. As you level up and gain affection with them, the companions will open up to you and reveal their backstory and give you personal quests - this was all in place before, but now, if you complete a companions quest line you are given a nice buff through the Legacy system as a reward. Next up is class specific buffs. Each character gets their own buff to cast on themselves and others, for example my Smuggler has a buff called ‘Lucky Shots’ which increases my critical hit rating by 5% while it’s active. Since I finished a certain chapter in my character’s story, I have now unlocked that buff for everyone, meaning if I were to make, say, a Jedi Knight, I would now have access to the JK buff (Force Might), as well as my Smugglers buff, effectively meaning you can have up to four buffs you can cast if you put in the time. Another nice little reward there. There are of course useless little things too, for example, as you increase your social points for playing with others you’ll unlock new social emotes for use in-game. Other perks (these ones are also purchasable) add more uses to your ship, such as a Galactic Trade Terminal, or a sparring dummy to practice your combat rotations, or a mailbox. Each thing is largely unnecessary as these things exist on planets and your factions Fleet, but they are useful to quickly put something up for sale or retrieve/send mail without travelling.

That’s all I can really remember, but according to the Legacy tab there are more on the way in the Allies patch, including faster ways to gain experience in different ways, such as PVP, space combat or defeating tough bosses, meaning players rolling new characters won’t actually have to play the same side quests over and over for experience. All in all a nice update, and one that was sorely needed, these small additions are the kind of things that separate an MMO from a standard RPG. The game is much better for it and despite complaints that these items on your ship would decrease socialising in-game, it’s made it a better atmosphere as players are rarely grumpy just because they had to travel to the fleet to look at the Trade Market, they’re there because they want to be, not because they have to. Along with all of this we also have access to an Interface Editor, letting us move every frame of the UI to wherever we like, letting you create the perfect interface for your personal needs, hiding and showing whatever you like, placing it wherever you like.

Now, onto the games biggest saving grace lately, and the one I mentioned earlier - transfers. This month BioWare allowed free transfers from quiet servers to more lively ones. During testing, with so many players around, the servers were struggling with the load and thanks to player whinging BioWare opened up too many servers, so when the inevitable exodus occurred when the games shiny-ness had worn off we were left with too many empty servers, meaning no players to quest with in a game where questing with other players is the point. This is largely a non-issue now, as there are more players in more servers instead of few players in each server. Questing together is easy, fun and rewarded with extra group experience and social points which let you buy social gear, something not possible before unless you were on with a friend. Now it’s possible to find random players to quest with should the need arise, again, a massive improvement to the overall experience.

With all of these changes, some small, some big and some pointless, the game is frankly a much more fun place to be in nowadays. There’s also a new PVP Warzone but honestly I suck so bad at PVP I couldn’t give a fair assessment of it so I’ve mentioned it and that can be the end of it.  Anyway, to bring my rambling to an end, if you played at the beginning and didn’t enjoy it, I’d advise even a months re-subscription to see if the changes make the game any more welcoming to you. If nothing else you’ll at least be able to quest with others instead of having entire planets to yourself like you would before. There will be a free to play option (up to level 15) in July, I believe, but with no concrete details on limitations it’s better to go for the full thing with a re-subscription, if you can.