Star Wars: The Old Republic

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by BioWare Austin and published by Electronic Arts. It launched for Microsoft Windows in December 2011, placing its original conflict more than three millennia before the Star Wars films. Its central setting is a Cold War between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire after the Treaty of Coruscant. Players begin on one of two factions, but the game’s early identity rests on eight fully voiced class stories rather than a single shared campaign. Dialogue choices, companion relationships, and light-side or dark-side decisions give those stories outcomes. The Republic offers Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular, Smuggler, and Trooper narratives; the Empire offers Sith Warrior, Sith Inquisitor, Imperial Agent, and Bounty Hunter narratives. Each class originally had its own starting world and planet-by-planet arc. The Imperial Agent storyline, for example, begins with Cipher Nine investigating a Republic superweapon on Hutta, while the Jedi Knight story confronts the Emperor’s plans. Flashpoints are group-based instances with cinematic conversations, and operations are endgame encounters. The game also established companions as major story participants: companions could be recruited, spoken to aboard a player’s ship, equipped, and sent on optional specialized crew-skill missions. BioWare used voice acting and the conversation-wheel presentation associated with its role-playing games. The game’s level cap was 50, and later expansions raised it while continuing the protagonist’s story. Rise of the Hutt Cartel added Makeb in 2013. Shadow of Revan took characters to Rishi and Yavin 4 and returned Revan, a figure from Knights of the Old Republic. Knights of the Fallen Empire, released in 2015, introduced the Eternal Empire, the Outlander premise, and Arcann. Its follow-up, Knights of the Eternal Throne, continued the war against Emperor Valkorion and his family. Updates include Onslaught, which renewed the Republic–Empire conflict. In November 2012, the game adopted a free-to-play option while retaining optional subscription access. Its post-launch history has included story chapters, daily areas, flashpoints, operations, player-versus-player modes, and collections. The Legacy system connects characters on the same server, reflecting the game’s encouragement to play both factions and multiple classes. Star Wars: The Old Republic has remained a live service set in the franchise’s Old Republic era, with story content featuring places such as Onderon, Mek-Sha, Elom, Ruhnuk, and Voss. Rather than retelling the films, it builds around the Republic, Sith, Mandalorians, smugglers, and Force users of an earlier galactic age.