I’ve spent the majority of my many hours in Star Wars: The Old Republic playing alongside a spunky Jedi Shadow named Kira, whose stealth and damage-based talent specialization neatly complemented my Jedi Guardian’s tanking. When she wasn’t backing me up in a fight, she’d often drag me along on missions of her choosing, badmouth me for some silly decisions I’d made, and helpfully run off to gather raw materials I needed to craft new lightsaber hilts. I’ve met few friends in MMORPGs who’ve been so reliable.

The thing is, Kira isn’t human — she’s an AI companion character, and the way that she and her ilk are integrated into both my character’s combat and storyline is just one of several aspects that set this ambitious MMO apart from its competition. It’s not without its shortcomings, to be fair, but I’ve had more fun in The Old Republic than in most other MMOs over the last decade — and I’m not even a diehard fan of the Star Wars universe.

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The two level 24 Jedi Knights waiting outside the instance portal told me I wasn’t ready for this. The class quest, one said, was terribly overpowered and not worth trying for several more levels. One had obviously just taken a beating himself, and for a moment I contemplated jumping back into my starship and contenting myself with making sand castles on Tatooine. But Astyrian the Jedi Knight isn’t one to back down. After all, I’d traveled untold light years to visit this forgotten husk of a mining facility on in asteroid in the middle of nowhere, supposedly to meet with an Imperial admiral wanting to defect to the Republic, and I bristled at sitting through another loading screen. What could go wrong?

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Many years from now, perhaps in some footnote (if such things manage to survive), one of the things we’ll be remembered for is our love of using the oddest things to kill zombies for entertainment. Sometimes we use plants, sometimes we slap them with a shovel, and sometimes we resort to boring them with weighty monologues on AMC. And now, thanks to Paprika Lab, we’re reduced to overcoming the zombie apocalypse with toys. But as we see in the endearing Toyz & Zombies, that doesn’t mean that the concept is any less rewarding.

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Just what do scientists and engineers do in the Star Wars galaxy? In the 3,500 or so years that have passed between the events of The Old Republic and Anakin Skywalker’s extended angsty teenager phase, droids mostly remain clunky automatons and starships still resemble Texas-sized paper airplanes. If our humble universe followed the same progression, the Titanic would have been a slave-powered barge with a pharaoh barking orders from a blocky throne. Thankfully, my wannabe Millennium Falcon is a good deal more advanced than that.

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Companions in Star Wars: The Old Republic? The idea originally struck me as ludicrous as developing deep relationships with a Warlock’s Voidwalker in World of Warcraft or a Lore-master’s raven in Lord of the Rings Online. But now, 24 levels in, it’s clear that the companion system is one of the game’s strongest points, particularly since the difficulty increases enough around level 18 that it’s extremely challenging to advance without it. This, I believe, is one of the aspects of SW:TOR that may fend off accusations that the game is a little too much like WoW, particularly when you factor in your companions’ non-combat abilities.

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Today my Jedi Guardian learned the “Taunt” ability and the “Soresu Form” defensive stance, which means he’s now officially a pain-sponging tank and not just some dude who wears heavy armor and dishes out slightly less damage than his companions. That also means he’s already in high demand. During my first day as a “real” tank, I’ve already tanked a world boss, kept my teammates safe in around four heroics, and cleared a flashpoint (or instanced dungeon) that I’d already outleveled.

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Forrest Gump would love Coruscant. Despite my best efforts, I was only able to level from 11 to 15 last night largely because of the lengthy marathons required to get anywhere in the sprawling capital city of the Republic. I won’t deny that the monumental scale of the red carpet leading up to the Senate House impressed me at first, but by the time I’d run the same thoroughfare around 16 times, I was half ready to sack the city myself — and from a vehicle, at that. Picking up the “Sprint” ability at level 14 (which allows my character to run 35% faster when out of combat) did much to relieve the tedium, but I eventually logged just because I didn’t feel like running back through a mile-long stretch I’d visited not long before.

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Another MMO, another gut-wrenching decision as to what server to play on. After frowning at the hordes flocking to the Empire’s Sith Inquisitor class and shrugging off the dog-kicking attitude of the Empire in general, I followed my heart to play on for the Republic side — and I knew I wanted to play as some kind of Jedi.

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It’s finally time — for some of us, at least. Five years and nine months after BioWare first announced it was working on an unnamed MMORPG project at its new Austin studio, Star Wars: The Old Republic today began the process of letting millions of players into its universe. We took the opportunity to ask Lead Designer James Ohlen our many still-burning questions. How quickly will new content come out? Will we have guild-owned capital ships? Playable Wookiees? UI mods? A deeper space-combat game? Read on to find out.

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