ZAM Editor-in-Chief Chris Tom has sunk more hours than he'd like to say into Star Wars: The Old Republic to bring you this in-depth preview of BioWare's ambitious new MMORPG.

Gameplay and the MMO World

Once you get past The Old Republic's voice acting and writing to look at its gameplay, a lot of players are quick to point to the similarities to World of Warcraft. I'll admit that I've often found myself describing SWTOR as "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic meets World of Warcraft," although this strikes me as being a good thing. From an objective standpoint, Star Wars: The Old Republic does control a lot like traditional hotkey-based MMORPGs like EverQuest II, Rift and, yes, World of Warcraft. Regardless of what comparisons you want to make, SWTOR has a smooth combat system, and while it may not be a totally unique experience, it's still fun.

I also got lucky in choosing the Bounty Hunter, as Bounty Hunters operate on a rarer resource than, say, the Sith Sorcerer / Jedi Sage's "force" (mana) pool. Most of the Bounty Hunter's abilities generate heat and, if the Bounty Hunter is near his/her heat cap (100), then he/she can no longer use heat-generating abilities. Heat also dissipates over time, but the speed at which it dissipates depends on how much heat the Bounty Hunter has generated. Thus, good Bounty Hunters keep their heat at around the 25-30% mark so that their heat dissipates the fastest. The first sign of a bad Bounty Hunter is one that constantly keeps his/her heat near the 90% levels, because this means heat will be dissipating at the slowest rate possible. Sadly, I don't think this resource was very well explained in the game's tutorials, so the ingenuity of the system feels lost on many players.

Where I was also impressed with SWTOR was in the little things it does. Something as simple as offering a "commendation" reward option in lieu of equipment for quests means that if I've found, bought or crafted something better than the mission reward, I can easily choose to take a commendation instead. Once you get enough commendations, you can trade them in for some very nice rewards. Since I love keeping up with the best gear for my level, I found myself defaulting to collecting commendations on every planet after Hutta (my starter planet).

The Old Republic also has the most leveling content I've seen in an MMORPG to date. While I admittedly gained quite a few levels from PvPing, I still had to blaze along my story mission, skipping all of the side quests on two entire planets because I had progressed too far in levels doing earlier quests and running flashpoints. Every planet in the game has a "main" storyline that adheres to the lore of the planet, in addition to a character storyline that explains your personal reasons for going there. There are also a handful of one-off side quests that tend to be of the "fetch-n-kill" variety, but they all gave nice rewards, so I wasn't complaining.

Flashpoints were also fun, although as I previously mentioned, I'm a little baffled as to why BioWare included a light side / dark side choice in every flashpoint I had run (up to the Colocoid War Games). In the first flashpoint of the game, the Black Talon, your choice has a large effect on how events unfold, but in every flashpoint thereafter, I felt the choice was merely for aesthetics; to help players boost their Dark Side / Light Side meters without repercussion.

The End of Part I

I said before that this was a lot to cover, and there are still a few key highlights that I want to talk about tomorrow, namely crafting, PvP, companions, and some final thoughts. As a reminder, this is a preview, and there are hundreds of little features that I haven't touched because I either didn't get to experience them much (space combat is one that I deliberately avoided) or because I just don't have the space to talk about them. If you have any questions about the game that you would like to be honestly answered, feel free to post a comment and I can either confirm or deny your fears. Tune in tomorrow for Part II of my in-depth preview of Star Wars: The Old Republic!

Read Part II of our in-depth preview here!

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom, Editor-in-Chief.