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The Old Republic takes place more than 3,500 years before the rise of Darth Vader.

The Old Republic takes place approximately three hundred years after the events of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR). At the conclusion of the Jedi Civil War in KOTOR, Revan disappeared into unknown space in search of a great threat to the Republic, an expanding Sith Empire led by a mysterious Emperor who planned vengeance for his ancient Jedi enemies. Revan never returned from unknown space, but the Sith Empire did, kicking off a war with the Republic that lasted for decades. Now, despite the uneasy truce created by the Treaty of Coruscant, the tension among the divided star systems is threatening to once again tear the galaxy apart.

The Galactic Republic stood for generations as a bastion of peace in a galaxy of warring star systems. Protected by its stalwart Jedi guardians, the Republic held the greatest hope for the progress of civilization and galactic unity.

Deep in unknown space, however, a mighty Sith Empire was forged, led by dark Sith Lords who dreamt of galactic domination and vengeance against their ancient Jedi enemies. After centuries of preparation, the time came for the Sith to make their return.

With a massive fleet and an awe-inspiring army of fearless troops, the Sith Emperor launched a surprise assault, quickly capturing dozens of worlds in the Outer Rim, and sparking a war unlike any other in the galaxy’s history.

From the frozen wastes of Ilum to the desert plains of Dathomir, violent battles killed untold millions. Despite its avowed neutrality, surface structures on the water-covered world of Manaan were completely destroyed, forcing the Selkath to retreat to their ocean underworld. Other star systems fared worse—some destroyed, others left uninhabitable. The carnage concluded with the Sith Empire sacking the Republic's capital planet of Coruscant and forcing the Republic Senate into the controversial Treaty of Coruscant.

In the years since the treaty, fear and uncertainty have gripped the galaxy, enabling the Sith Emperor to pursue his own mysterious purposes while the Republic has made efforts to rebuild its infrastructure and adjust military priorities to the new galactic landscape.

Now, tensions between the Republic and the Empire are running high, and a series of border skirmishes and proxy wars have broken out, even on planets as historically peaceful as Alderaan. The uneasy truce established by the Treaty of Coruscant is quickly tearing apart at the seams, and a return to all-out war has begun in all but official terms.

A new generation of heroes, both light and dark, emerges to face the difficulties of these chaotic times, and fight for the fate of the galaxy in this most desperate age.

June 2, 2009 - Day one, hour one of the show there's one place that I wanted to be: front row at the Star Wars: The Old Republic demo. The team at BioWare made some ambitious promises when we originally debuted the game, and we were excited to see whether or not they'd live up to their pledge to bring story to the forefront of the MMO experience. After seeing the first ever live demo of the game at E3 today, we're happy to say that BioWare is delivering the Star Wars MMO experience that we hoped The Old Republic would be.

First, the team walked us through the trailer that was shown at yesterday's press conference. The trailer shows the Sacking of Coruscant, an important event in the history leading up to The Old Republic. Apart from setting the stage for the Galactic Civil War, the trailer also showcases the cinematic combat and emotional weight that players will experience in the final game.


After months of waiting, we're finally seeing the game in action.After viewing the trailer, the teams from BioWare and LucasArts loaded up the game for our first ever live demo. We started by exploring the new Bounty Hunter class and the first of two new planets for the game. The bounty hunter, Ayrik, begins on Hutta at the start of The Great Hunt, a massive contest organized by the Mandalorians and designed to find the best new bounty hunters in the galaxy. Through his mentor, Braden, Ayrik starts the game as one of the more likely candidates.
The interactions with Braden gave the developers a chance to show off the massive amount of voiced dialogue in this game. The Old Republic will be the first fully-voiced MMOs; all the NPCs as well as all the PCs will have full dialogue. Moreover, the main interactions with the NPCs will play out in cinematic cutscenes that allow the player to input their own responses in a Mass Effect-style dialogue wheel. As Braden introduces Ayrik to his companions, a Nar Shaddan tech specialists and a Trandoshan security officer, Ayrik has the option to respond in ways that emphasize his moods. Whether he responds with humility or arrogance, cruelty or greed, will impact the way the rest of the story unfolds.

After playing through the cutscene, Ayrik heads outside to explore Hutta. This is the first time that Hutta is being displayed in video game form, so we were happy to see the ways that the art team has rendered the industrial wasteland of this Hutt stronghold. Through the sickly green mists in the air ahead of us we can see the palace of the Hutts protected by screens of Fa'athra gangsters.


The bounty hunter has some impressive attack powers.As Ayrik moved up to the palace, we had the chance to see the combat system in action. The bounty hunter is primarily a ranged attacker and makes use of special attacks like rockets and stun darts to maintain an advantage over his enemies. The requisite flamethrower attacks are thrown in as well for when the bounty hunter finds himself in need of some timely crowd control. All the abilities are triggered using a traditional MMO hotbar, but the actual action seems a bit more fluid and dynamic than the usual round-by-round combat in most MMOs.
The new Smuggler class also makes use of ranged attacks but doesn't have access to the same armor that the bounty hunters can use. To help even the odds in combat, the smuggler can use a new cover system. We saw this in action on another new planet, Ord Mantell, where the smuggler was running guns to the Rebels in their war against the Separatists. The opportunity for cover is displayed in the environment as a faint green crouching outline. When the smuggler takes cover, he gains access to new abilities and is protected from the attacks of his enemies. Of course, not all the smuggler's combats take place at far ranges. Should an enemy get too close, the smuggler can stun them with a quick kick to the crotch and then finish them off by shooting them in the head

Darksider wrote:ok, so the cinematic looked cool, but I don't like the track record with SW MMOs. I played Galaxies for all of ten minutes at a friends house, and nothing about it felt very Star Warsy to me. Bioware also doesn't have a good track record with capturing the SW "feel" in their games, they just transplant whatever D&D story they want into a SW setting. This'll probably just be WoW: the Star Wars reskin.

Also, the idea of a peace treaty between the Republic and the Sith is fucking stupid.

dragon wrote:As for the WoW carryover might be good business as WoW is pretty popular even though way to many kid and people that act like kids on it for my tastes.

Civil War Man wrote:

dragon wrote:As for the WoW carryover might be good business as WoW is pretty popular even though way to many kid and people that act like kids on it for my tastes.

The way I see it, no developer is going to succeed if they set out trying to beat Blizzard at their own game. WoW is just too massive at this point. Trying to grab a large portion of the MMO market share by releasing what is effectively a WoW clone won't work because WoW is a known entity while a new copycat MMO is not. An MMO really has to distinguish itself in order to survive, and releasing "WoW with a different setting and maybe a couple new features" isn't doing that. Just look at Age of Conan (WoW with dialogue trees) or Tabula Rasa (WoW with lasers pew pew).

It's tempting to try to make a big franchise killer, but it was a big deal when David killed Goliath because Goliath stomped every other challenger into the dirt without breaking a sweat.

Civil War Man wrote:An MMO really has to distinguish itself in order to survive, and releasing "WoW with a different setting and maybe a couple new features" isn't doing that. Just look at Age of Conan (WoW with dialogue trees)

Ted C wrote:What is it with the bad guys winning in the trailers lately? Same thing happens in the trailer for Warhammer Online.

dragon wrote:Bioware did a decent job with KOTOR 1 and 2, not super but not half bad.

Though one of the things in the trailer that made me roll my eyes is that the bad guys consisted of Darth Vader minus the top half of his helmet, Mrs. Boba Fett, a wispy female Twi'lek, and a container truck full of Darth Revans. If the Sith were smart, they'd stop fielding mutilated abominations, armored behemoths, and/or Dark Adonises. One of the things that made Palpatine so effective in the prequels is that before he accidentally melted his face, he looked like some ordinary elderly dude. If he wasn't a powerful politician, most people wouldn't have been able to pick him out of a crowd.

Civil War Man wrote:Granted, I'm someone who doesn't mind World of Warcraft's graphics, since it strikes me as being intentionally cartoony in order to avoid that very problem. The fact that you can run that game on a really old computer without too many problems helps.

Civil War Man wrote:Graphics can be a tricky thing to deal with in MMOs. The genre doesn't really seem to mix well with next-gen graphics. If you try to push the graphics too far, you end up with minimum system requirements that shut out a large segment of your potential consumer base, or cause anyone who isn't playing on a top-of-the-line machine to faceplant right at the bottom of the Uncanny Valley.