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This wont be a traditional review about Star Wars The old Republic for the simple fact that I have just started to play it. After all this time I was curious what this game is like and my experience on MMOs was limited to the few years that I have played Star Trek Online.
I think this is a good way to express my first opinions on the game and make updates to this review as soon I have more information and more experience with it.
My experience with the game didn't start well.
I created an account on the official website and downloaded the installer just to recognize that this installer ran for a few seconds and then automatically closed without doing the game installation.
Even disabling my Antivir and my Firewall didnt help to get the game installation started.
In the end I managed find a few extracted files in the Temp folder of my Windows user profile. One rar file did contain the game launcher which I manually extracted and run.
This at least allowed me to download the game files then.
After launching the game I was a bit shocked by the graphics, which were looking terrible. At this point I wasnt sure if this is normal since... well... its and older game meanwhile.
For gods sake I found the game settings and put the graphics on ultra.
My very first impression of the game was wrong. It looks very nice.
Gameplay wise it reminds me very much on Knights of the old Republic... which is good. I loved that game back then.
I noticed an extreme amount of similarities with stuff that I already know from Star Trek Online. But everything is in The Old Republic seems to be bigger, better and more polished.
The game runs fluid... with cut scenes, pretty good animations, very good voice overs (in mulitple languages) and story has a big focus in the beginning. I really like what I have seen so far.
But after just one day (I am level 21 now) it is hard to judge about it so maybe later in this review I will change my opinion (or not).
There is ground combat, there is space combat... singleplayer storyline... multiplayer PVE content (with up to 4? players) and PVP.
I have tested everything once but cant really give an objective insight yet.
What I can tell so far is that everything is bigger than STO. If thats good or bad... time will tell.
When comparing this game with Star Trek Online I also need to mention something that I would consider a very big difference.
The Subscription model.... and the Free to Play elements.
Star Trek Online is a Free to Play game... and most of the game really is free to play.
There is nearly nothing you cant get in the game as F2P member. The benefits of a subscription are minimal.
In Star Wars The old Republic you also can play for Free... but you are much more limited.
You earn less XP... you have less character slots, less races, even the user interface is limited in F2P. You can not write messages, you have no access to content above certain levels, you have no access to addons etc.
You can play the game for free... thats out of question. But if you can enjoy it is a different question.
I guess it depends on what you want to play.
If you want to play the character stories alone or with a friend that F2P is enough.
If you want the full scale experience then you should think about a subscription.
Between F2P and subscription is a 3rd mode called "prefered player".
Subscribers which cancel their subscription (or only have a timed subscription that ran out) become prefered players.
They keep access to many but not all subscription features.
e.g. they keep access to available expansions
UI support and less limits in the game.
In my eyes if you dont want to get a full subscription for the game (13€ per month) you should at least consider to subscribe for just one month and then cancel your subscription in order to become a "prefered player" and keep some of the subscrition benefits this way.
You can find a good overview between F2P, prefered player and subscription at the following reddit link.
f2p - swtor