My relationship with MMORPGs is a tentative one. World of Warcraft was a love affair that had high points and indeed some very low ones. Questing around the Alliance world with my guild at the time for months on end was enjoyable, whilst the launch of the Burning Crusade got me back into the game with the draw of a new race. But the one thing that always put me off was the amount of “Kill X things” or “Collect X knick-knacks” quests. By the end of our relationship I had grown tired with the entire genre, vowing not to play another MMORPG until they up the flow of gameplay to a more story orientated experience. Who better to try to appease this desire than BioWare with Star Wars: The Old Republic, the long awaited MMORPG collaboration with LucasArts . After an hour with the game, which albeit is a fraction of a MMORPG’s playtime, I have a fairly good idea of what to expect and, I’m actually slightly excited. It’s unheard of for me to say this about a MMORPG, but the quality shown here is astounding.

While I was in the small press queue at the Eurogamer Expo, I watched as several other players went around with their chosen classes and realised that this is a remarkably well designed game, despite it looking like my dying PC could run it with no problems. While playing, I also noticed the interface for skills and equipment is very similar to World of Warcraft, as is the case for most MMORPGs at the time of writing. This makes it surprisingly easy to pick up and play, so I didn’t even require a tutorial of how things worked because the game told me anything obscure whenever it came up. Character models and landscapes were more than serviceable, though pushing no barriers whatsoever. Sound direction is also of great merit because each story began with an in-game cut-scene pointing out my objectives and even some witty banter. All conversations that have voice acting also have branching dialogue trees, though their significance other than to provide extra flavour are currently unknown, whilst in one of the menus there was a morality swing-o-meter which may provide some insight to character development.

I got to try out three different characters from amongst the two different factions. My first class was a Sith Warrior who is essentially the melee based tank class for the Sith. As a Sith Acolyte, his trial was to find a new Sith Warblade to replace his practice sword and then defeat his assigned opponent. Wandering through the desert outlands and into the ancient temple of the Sith, I received further side quests to activate a bomb in order to slay some critters and recover artefacts from Temple Looters, which seemed more the standard fare. I did find that the demo was prone to some weird bugs though. At one point here during the side quest to activate some bombs on some worm eggs, a few of them followed me back to the garrison. The AI soldiers turned on these pests and eliminated them with ease, but one lone gunman repeatedly shot one of the worms for at least five minutes. After laughing at this for a good few minutes via emotion commands in game and real life giggling, I proceeded to exit the temple and go on a killing spree before my time slot ended.

“It’s unheard of for me to say this about a MMORPG, but the quality shown here is astounding.”

Next I opted for the male Smuggler on the Alliance side. Here I arrived at a small colony on a distant planet that was under siege by separatists wanting to destroy the town. Playing as the Smuggler couldn’t be more different as not only was he more blaster orientated, but he could use cover based physics. I’m not entirely sure if it worked as I was still being damaged, but it might have just increased his evasion chances to blasters or ranged weapons in general. Blowing up some disruptor towers, I needed to find a targeting computer to proceed with the story mission, though I actually had other ideas. I wanted to see the entire area if I could, blasting separatists who felt my exploration progress needed to be impeded. At one point during my travels, one of the staff covering the game stall began to watch my footage on the bigger screen. He beckoned over some of the other people covering the Star Wars: The Old Republic stall and some journalists who were queuing at the time. He then walked up to me, tapped me on the shoulder and said; “I’ve never seen a female Greedo before!” This statement was probably not true given that there was one in Jabba’s house band in Star Wars Episode 6 – Return of the Jedi, but this is fairly testament to the amount of detail that LucasArts and BioWare have gone into expanding on the Star Wars universe. Once a sub-character in the original theatrical release; Greedo’s race had suddenly been rendered in visible form for us to interact with the first time. She was speaking in my earpiece in foreign tongue, which is also a particularly nice touch. She was thankfully translated by subtitles and assigned me a mission to shoot up more separatists, before my time with the Smuggler was up.

Finally, I embarked on a short journey as a Sith Inquisitor, or more specifically a female Darth Maul, to see “how else I could break the game”. Hard luck is all I can really say as while she learned Force Lightning or perhaps one of the fun powers you could obtain, there wasn’t a point where the game featured a game breaking error occurring. This felt like a tiny bit of a false blessing, despite the costumes. Apart from wielding a Lightsaber, which was active, the bulk of her move set, such as Force Lightning and Shock tactics, hinted at her being the “mage class” of the game. All three classes point to some differing gameplay elements and while the layout feels remarkably similar to World of Warcraft it is certainly more interesting.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is certainly still a little unrefined, but there is an element of charm that I’ve not seen in an MMO for years. The road to conversion for me has already begun and while I haven’t even explored three of the other classes which include Jedi Knights and Bounty Hunters, I was hooked by the gameplay and potential for each of the classes’ origin stories. While World of Warcraft has seen off many pretenders to the Frozen Throne, Star Wars: The Old Republic is shaping up to the usurper to watch out for.