Star Wars: The Old Republic

Star Wars: The Old Republic is among the most ambitious MMO projects ever made - BioWare put a budget comparable to big film productions into it and built the game on fully voiced dialogues with branching story paths, which was practically unheard of in the MMORPG genre up to that point. Each of the base classes, whether a Jedi Knight, a Sith Warrior or a Smuggler, has its own long campaign with its own companions, moral decisions and a different tone of storytelling, so the game feels more like a collection of connected single-player RPGs than a classic MMO with a shared open world.

The combat system combines traditional class ability rotations with cover and tactical movement around the arena, joined by an extensive companion system: companions can be sent on side missions or taken into your party, and you can build a relationship with them, including romances. The visual style and music draw on the aesthetic of the film saga, the orchestral soundtrack managed to evoke the atmosphere of the Old Republic even in an online environment, and planets like Tython or Korriban became iconic destinations for millions of players.

After release, the game struggled with the high operating costs of the subscription model and gradually switched to free-to-play with microtransactions, which allowed it to stay on the market to this day and regularly release new story chapters. For Star Wars fans, SWTOR remains unique in that it expands the game canon with events between the old and the new trilogy, and even after more than ten years of operation it keeps a steady community that appreciates above all the character writing and the quality voice acting.