Is Star Wars the Old Republic worth playing in 2020?

Star Wars the Old Republic has unwarranted bad reputation from the early days and is worth playing in 2020.

Star Wars the Old Republic is a game that has been around for eight years now, but it was never able to shake that bad reputation from its early days. Even as of now, people are asking if the game is dead.

But the truth is far different. Whether you’re new to Star Wars: Legends or new to MMOs in general, the game is most definitely worth playing in 2020.

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The biggest complaint about the game at the time of launch was that there was no end. But that problem was only for players who rushed to end game for the purpose of PVP and group content. They never took the time to play the game as the developers intended, experiencing the story first.

However, the fault was not completely with the SWTOR Developers. Lucasarts closed Star Wars: Galaxies five days before the game’s launch, so Galaxies fans who wanted to continue as they had were vastly disappointed. And for several years, there were still people playing SWTOR who complained that the game just wasn’t Galaxies.

However, in 2020, there’s a LOT of end game. There are currently 30 Flashpoints, which are four-person quests for players to run through together. There are also currently 12 Operations, which are 8-16 player quests with lots of difficult bosses. And both Flashpoints and Operations have multiple difficulty settings.

And if you’re into PVP, there are five maps for team-based PVP, and doing well in these allows players to go into Ranked PVP. Doing well in Ranked PVP allows players to get onto the SWTOR.COM leaderboard, which gets updated every two hours. And if you keep the top spots until the end of the season, you get in-game rewards.

But what’s important to remember is that Star Wars the Old Republic is and always will be a story-focused game. Beginning in 3641 BBY, you take on the role of eight class stories across two factions, with four stories per faction. And these are widely considered the best stories in the game.

After the class stories are done, players head into the faction stories that are Rise of the Hutt Cartel and Shadow of Revan before heading into Knight of the Fallen Empire and Knights of the Eternal Throne, which sets up the storyline going forward. In Knights of the Fallen Empire, your character becomes the leader of an Alliance of specialists and Force users in their attempt to bring down the Eternal Empire.

The current ongoing story comes out of that and returns to the faction specific story, but now with the ability to sabotage your original faction. This means that there are four possible stories instead of just the two faction stories now; loyalist Republic, saboteur Republic, loyalist Empire, and saboteur Empire.

If you’re interested in crafting, there’s a wide assortment of armors and weapons to craft. And thanks to the Outfit Designer, you can keep multiple specific looks available to you and still keep your up to date armors with your highest stats possible. And even though it’s not part of the game right now, the developers plan to eventually add weapons to the outfit designer.

And this game is ripe with roleplay opportunities. Not only can you roleplay with your friends or guildmates, but the game also offers many opportunities to shape the stories as you see fit. In addition to the previously mentioned loyalist/saboteur storylines that came from Onslaught, players can play a Light Side or Dark Side characters, kill or let certain NPCs live, and depending on the class, have multiple endings. For example, the Sith Inquisitor can have one of 3 Sith titles given to them based on their alignment; Light Side, Dark Side and Neutral. And given the current “commit yourself to one side fo the Force” system, the Neutral title, once a pain, is easy to get.

There’s a lot to do in Star Wars the Old Republic in 2020, and the best part is that you don’t need to spend any money to experience most of it. In 2012, the game went to a free to play model, and with the release of Onslaught, that gave free players access to more of the game. Free players now have access to 60 levels, up from 50, up to the Shadow of Revan expansion, up from the vanilla game, and can now have access to 1 million credits, up from 200,000 for completely free players and 350,000 for preferred players. And if new players want to see what comes after that, they only need to subscribe for 1 month to permanently unlock everything up to the current expansion, as well as all content to come with that expansion.

So is Star Wars the Old Republic worth playing in 2020? Absolutely. An with it being a free game, you’ve got nothing to lose but time for checking out.