Star Wars: The Old Republic
is a Star Wars MMORPG originally developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts, set three centuries after their Knights of the Old Republic RPGs. Centuries after the events of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, the Sith Empire has returned to the galaxy to attack the Republic and its Jedi protectors to avenge the Sith's defeat in the Great Hyperspace War over 1,300 years previously. A tenuous truce was established after decades of war but the peace is fragile, and it is only a matter of time before the two factions break out into warfare.
The game's most unique aspect is its presentation; unlike many MMOs, the game is very focused on story, featuring fully voice-acted cutscenes for almost every quest, as well as lots of player decisions, similar to the Mass Effect series. It was released on December 20, 2011 (December 22 for some of Europe).
When George Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney, due to the logistical issues of being an MMORPG running both before and after Disney's Continuity Reboot of the franchise, the game has existed in a weird canon limbo, protected under a Grandfather Clause as the final sanctioned source of story content for Star Wars Legends (in the form of DLC expansions), as opposed to the rebooted continuity made up of works made from 2014 onward. In the meantime, Lucasfilm has opted to not tell canon stories in this particular era until BioWare has completed this game's story, instead reintroducing bits of lore tied to the game and its two predecessors in stories set thousands of years later in canon equivalent of the Legends timeline. Meanwhile, the line of The High Republic works similarly explores what the Jedi were like before the Fall of the Republic, but unlike The Old Republic it was produced after Disney's continuity revamp and the narrative takes place much closer to the events of The Skywalker Saga.
On 6 June 2023, word leaked to IGN that publisher EA planned to transfer development duties on SWTOR to Broadsword Online Games (Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot) so that BioWare could refocus on its bread-and-butter single-player RPGs. BioWare confirmed the move on 27 June.
A series of three books serve as a prelude. Fatal Alliance (dealing with tensions in the truce), Deceived (Darth Malgus's story), and Revan (detailing just what happened to Revan and the Exile after the events of Knights of the Old Republic). Another novel, Annihilation, takes place circa the time of the game and focuses upon Jedi Grandmaster Satele Shan's son Theron, who subsequently became a recurring character in the lead-up to the Shadow of Revan expansion.
The game has received several full expansions, which extend the story and gameplay beyond the initial class quests:
- Rise of the Hutt Cartel was released on April 14, 2013 and deals with the eponymous Hutt Cartel's incursion on the planet Makeb and raises the level cap to 55.
- Galactic Starfighter was released on February 4, 2014, emphasizing introducing space combat to the game as opposed to adding new story content.
- Galactic Strongholds was released on October 14, 2014, and also does not feature story content like its immediate predecessor, though it does introduce player housing and flagships for guilds, alongside access to the Sky Palace on Nar Shaddaa.
- Shadow of Revan was released on December 9, 2014, and deals with Darth Revan's return while introducing the planets Rishi and Yavin 4, raising the level cap to 60.
- Knights of the Fallen Empire was released on October 27, 2015, and features a new plot set after the war, focuses on solo content, revamps the companion system by allowing companions to take any role necessary, raises the level cap from 60 to 65, and is available free to all subscribers. Set five years after the current timeline, the players are released from carbonite freezing to find both the Republic and Empire conquered by the Eternal Empire, which, as the Outlander, they must stop. The storyline was given an initial release of nine chapters. Additional chapters were released about once a month starting in February 2016, completing in August 2016.
- Knights of the Eternal Throne was released on December 2, 2016. It continued the Fallen Empire storyline and raised the level cap to 70.
- Onslaught was released on October 22, 2019, focusing on the return to the Empire-Republic war; said update also made Rise of the Hutt Cartel and Shadow of Revan available to Free-to-Play players.
- Legacy of the Sith was released on February 15, 2022, seeing the Empire and Republic faced with dangerous fringe groups as the war continues and introducing "Combat Styles," allowing players to choose any Advanced Class's playstyle while sticking to a specific class's storyline.
