Update: After another 300 some-odd hours of game play, I'm changing my review to a recommend-against. The customer support in this game, even as an active subscriber, is nothing short of insulting. While the game is fantastic for a Free-to-Play, I cannot recommend you spend any money on it because any MMORPG with such a level of apathy towards its consumer should not be rewarded.

If you're a Star Wars fanatic - play through the story; give them $15 for a one-month subscription, and be on your way. Otherwise, there are better games to fill this niche.

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After 728 hours of game play prior to its Free-to-Play (F2P) conversion, and 98 hours post-Steam launch, it's safe to say: I recommend this game. There are two major downfalls to this game: The destruction of guild cohesion, and hyperinflation; but otherwise, the game is still an amazing pick-up for MMO and Star Wars fans alike.

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The Cartel Market is not pay-to-win, but the quality of life improvements it offers are extreme. In particular, the rocket boots which allow you to essentially mount indoors periodically, are a huge time saver. The credit cap ($1,000,000) is extreme poverty levels due to hyper inflation, and there aren't many ways to get around that beyond subscribing or selling cartel market items. You get 550 Cartel Coins per month that you're a subscriber, and 100 Cartel Coins per month that you have two factor authentication enabled -- this is retroactive for the entire 8 years of the game, if you were a prior subscriber!

You can download the game, play for a few days, and decide to subscribe. If you do, you might find people in your capitol planet or fleet offering $13,000,000 - $20,000,000 for the use of their referral links. This is a pretty standard practice, and while I can't vouch for every individual, they are widely not scams and a good way to get some credits to jumpstart your gameplay. The individual who refers you get a few perks, including cartel coins, and the links look like this:

http://www.swtor.com/r/6p2WVg

(that's my link - you can use it if this review helped you, or you can sell your referral to someone else for credits)

As I mentioned, some of the cartel perks are pretty substantial quality of life improvements, so if you're a returning player with some Cartel Coins to spend, wait a day or two before spending any Coins. Make sure you know which items you really want, and pay for things in credits (vice Coins) whenever possible.

There are some guides on determining which type of status you would be if you downloaded this game and I suggest you read them (F2P, Preferred, or Subscriber), but I can very quickly capture them here. F2P players can play the story up to the first expansion pack; preferred players (people who subbed at least one time, including pre-F2P players) can play the story up to the second-to-last expansion pack; and subscribers can play the entire game, including end game content like raids.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2177478766

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The story is still top notch. Indisputably amazing. The number of expansion packs since it went F2P is pretty staggering, and the amount of content is mindblowing. If you're a returning player who only wants to do F2P for the story, or you just beat Knights of the Old Republic II and want to continue the adventure, then I highly encourage you to download the game as a F2P or preferred player. You will not be disappointed. You can do everything required for the story, including dungeons, solo.

The new expansions offer a wide variety of game play, and the stories for each type of class (8 total) are also extremely varied. If you played every class story, and every expansion pack, you will find a lot of content you enjoyed, some you loved, and some you skimmed/disliked. The Sith Warrior a bastion of hate and wrath, murders people while the Imperial Agent is a member of the Imperial Intelligence community and has a story more James Bond. Those are two very different play styles, and it's not uncommon to have strong opinions on which story was "better."

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The Republic (Pubs) is a wasteland, and the Imperials (Imps) are pretty popular. People don't really talk to strangers, however, so even when you utilize the Group Finder to do group content (which is not required), it is not uncommon to run the entire dungeon without saying a single word. It's also not uncommon to stealth past dozens of trash pulls and blitz a dungeon in half the time it would have taken in 2012. Take that how you will - some people like that; others don't.

There is some level of toxicity, but no where near that of other communities like Overwatch, and if you turn off the "General" chat upon entering the game, you'll avoid 99% of the toxic players in the community. For the most part, I interact with very few players in any meaningful way and while that's not an uncommon occurrence in games like World of Warcraft, it hits slightly different in SW:TOR.

Similarly, Guilds still exist, but they've morphed into something that's nigh unrecognizable from traditional guild constructs. Because of the guild perk structure, and the weekly conquests (within which you earn points for doing things, like 5 quests on each planet), guilds are strongly incentivized to become massive. It's not uncommon to see guilds with 400 members and 50 online during active times, and - quite frankly - I don't like that change. I don't really know or care what guild my random characters are in most of the time, and that seems like an obvious failure of the game.

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The end game content is a loot treadmill, which is generally to be expected of MMORPGs, but it is substantially more tedious than other MMORPGs in my experience. Reaching the end of that treadmill is done solely based on hours played (loot is random, not-dungeon specific, and based on small incremental upgrades to your current gear) and once you reach the top of the treadmill, the game becomes so easy as to require no thought towards mechanics (Story and Veteran Modes) or has such punishing mechanics (Nightmare mode) that no one in the community really partakes. Because, again, there's no better loot based on location or mode, there's just the occasional cosmetic upgrade for doing more punishing content, and the balancing act of "enjoying a challenge" and "masochism" is not well tuned in this game.

Furthermore, similar to the supports apathetic view of its consumers, the backend of this game has not been upgraded along with the content. Why is this important? If you're doing a raid with 16 people then it doesn't matter how much of a beast your computer is: It's going to lag and grind to a halt if you're not using low settings; it does it in 8-man content about half the time. It's poorly optimized and clearly a source of passive income for Electronic Arts