I admit, I was a little worried. After all the hubbub surrounding Star Wars: The Old Republic's rocky transition to free-to-play and the departure of much of its creative team, I was half prepared to boot up the Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion and hear BioWare developers filling in for actor David...

Makeb is big and beautiful; Engaging stories; A well-designed operation

Tedious droid missions; Only 2 new stories

STAR WARS: The Old Republic (TOR) comes with a buffet of a story for an MMO, but you only get to fill your plate once. From decisions as significant as choosing your character's class specialization to events as trivial as responding to key dialog options, everything you do has a lasting and...

Wonderful single-player instancing; immersive scripting and voice-overs; strategic general combat

Feels incomplete; missing modern MMO features; tough transportation flow; overly simple group co-op

Since the MMO genre first emerged, I've always wanted to make the jump to hyperspace and explore the Star Wars universe. Star Wars Galaxies , a 2003 MMORPG starring the universe from the acclaimed sci-fi franchise, was a major disappointment that left me feeling as if one of my biggest gaming dreams...

Best storytelling in an MMO to date; Great voice acting; Star Wars universe brought splendidly to life; Fun and addictive PvP

Same old genre quest mechanics; Endgame world PvP a letdown; Rare but significant visual glitches

What do you get when you take a game development studio known for crafting fantastic single-player role playing games, add in their first attempt at an MMOG and set it in the most prolific science fiction universes ever created?

Good graphics; great sound; fully voiced missions; strong focus on character story allows single-player RPG experience in an MMO environment; relatively solid launch; Star Wars and MMOG fans should be pleased

Space missions could be better; crafting system needs more items for lower levels; galactic market interface needs some work; various bugs

3,600 years before Luke Skywalker was bulls-eyeing womp rats in his T-16, the galaxy was enveloped in an all-out war. After over 20 years of fighting, the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic met to forge Treaty of Coruscant, a document that ended The Great Galactic War in an extremely uneasy...

Voice acting and production value; Playing through the interesting stories; Load-free instanced areas are a game-changer

Glitches and missing features; End-game is lackluster; Lack of open-world content

At long last, BioWare and EA have flung wide the doors to the Galaxy Far, Far Away. Can this new take on the MMORPG make the jump to hyperspace?

BioWare-style storytelling flawlessly integrated into MMO gameplay; Huge game with hundreds of hours of content; Companion system ensures you can always progress; Fast-paced and rewarding PvP Warzones; Top notch music and voice acting

UI needs to be more customizable; Needs more explicit tutorials for non-MMO players

Galactic Starfighter shows a lot of promise and there's a great deal of potentially awesome additions outside of new maps and game mods (like dogfighting!). Treating the expansion as a proof of concept, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing this version of space combat eventually replace the on-rails...

Okay, right at the top, I need to run through a list of disclaimers. First and foremost, I'm not a fan of Massively Multiplayer Online games. The things that I value most in games, such as story, depth, characterization, streamlined interface…these are all concepts that fly in the face of your...

I finally started playing Star Wars: The Old Republic in an effort to review the new Legacies system that has been added to the RPG. The problem that I was having is that to access the Legacy system, you have to get at least one character all the way through their first chapter quest.

Like most gamers my age, I like a few predictable things. Energy drinks (though I'm trying to scale back -- honest), The Simpsons , and of course -- Star Wars . Hell, whenever anyone asks me about my political or religious affiliation, I always answer that I'm simply a Han Soloist.