Is SWTOR worth playing in 2026?

Star Wars: The Old Republic is my favorite game – I’ve been playing it for over a decade since its launch, and really, really like it. If you’ve never tried it out before, and are wondering if it’s worth playing, in this video I’m going to go over some of the things I like the most about it, so you can see if it might be something you’d like to try. If you’re a player who used to play SWTOR in the past, or a hardcore MMO player, you might actually want to check out my super in-depth detailed guide called “Is SWTOR worth returning to?” instead – it’s got all the stats, charts and details about the current state of the game compared to when it originally launched. In this short guide, I’m just going to yak about what I love about the game to give you a feel for it!

The Story

The biggest thing that makes Star Wars: The Old Republic stand out is its story. When the game was first being created, the developers focused on “four pillars” – combat, exploration, progression and story, and it was really that fourth pillar of story that made it really stand out. In this game, you create your character, and immediately start getting to “be” them in interactive fully-voiced cutscenes where you get to make choices for your character. Unlike most games at the time that required you to read the story as you quested, Star Wars: The Old Republic allows you to watch the story as if you were in your own movie. Being able to see and hear my character is something I absolutely love – it helps me connect with my character, the story and the world around me in a really immersive way. While more online games have embraced voice acting like Guild Wars 2, or having animated cutscenes, like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV Online, but no other game brings them both together like SWTOR does in their cinematic cutscenes.

I love making new characters – deciding how they look, giving them a cool outfit, and then jumping into their stories and deciding if they want to be dark side, light side, or somewhere in between during their conversations. Each of the eight classes has their own story – many players make it a goal of checking out all eight, and there’s even a legendary achievement for playing through them all. There’s the Jedi Knight, and Jedi Consular, paragons of the Jedi Order who are a symbol of hope in dark times, the Sith Warrior and Sith Inquisitor, who are sinister champions of the dark side, the wise-cracking Smuggler, the Trooper, the Bounty Hunter for hire, and the enigmatic Imperial Agent. I’ve got about 60 characters right now, and while I don’t recommend making that many, I did have a lot of fun playing through the different stories multiple times, making different choices in the story, or listening to the different male and female voice actors, or romancing different companions.

Free-to-Play

Another thing I really like about this game is that it has a really generous free-to-play model. The game allows you to play completely for free up to level 60, and you get the first two expansions for free. Even once you hit level 60, you can keep playing and exploring, you just can’t level up more until you subscribe. I’ve played about 60 hours on my free-to-play account to test it out, and had no problems enjoying the main story with my character. The game actually used to have even more restrictions on free-to-play players, but since then, they’ve actually removed a ton of them, making it even easier to play for free. Even better, once you are ready to unlock the later expansions, you unlock all current and past expansions for just $15 – and even if you unsubscribe the next month, you keep access to those expansions and keep the ability to get to max-level on all your current and future characters.

Other games, like World of Warcraft, and Final Fantasy XIV Online, have a much stricter subscription requirement – in WoW you get until about level 20 before it free demo runs out, and FFXIV requires that you stay subscribed just to play if you’ve ever subscribed in the past. In comparison, you can usually jump back in to SWTOR after being gone for a few years without even having to re-subscribe, which is really nice if you’re the kind of player who just hops in and out of games as you have time.

Exploring

Apart from playing the story, I really love exploring and just kind of… existing in this game. Star Wars has an incredibly deep set of lore that the writers and artist could pull from when they created this game, but they also had a lot of freedom to create new characters, cultures, creatures, civilizations, aliens, and environments. since the game is set 3,000 years before the Star Wars movies ever take place. For example, in the movies, there’s only a handful of Jedi or Sith at any given time… but in the Old Republic era, there’s thousands and thousands of light-side and dark-side force users running around the galaxy. You can explore well-known planets like Tatooine, or Hoth, or Alderaan, but you also get to see more obscure locations like Korriban, and Dantooine, or even some that were created purely for the game like Ord Mantell and Ruhnuk. Between the story cutscenes, you’re usually out in the open world, travelling by foot, speeder or taxi, and there’s a lot of little secrets you can go out and find outside of the main story. There’s hidden datacrons, there’s achievements, there’s lore objects, there’s special enemies, there’s exploration quests, bonus quests, heroic quests, reputation factions, dynamic encounters, and all kinds of other little things you can do, but aren’t required.

Another thing I really like in this game is collecting – many of these side activities have special cosmetic rewards attached to them – whether it’s a cool new set of armor, a special mount or speeder, pretty decorations,  or even a unique little pet that will follow you around. I really like collecting in this game because the items can usually be used for something – whether its an armor piece you can use to make an outfit for your character, or a decoration you can put in your player housing. I may be a little obsessed with collecting pets and mounts and putting them all over my house in-game – don’t judge me.

Playing Alone or with Others

One thing a lot of players really like about this game is its ability to be played mostly alone – which is pretty interesting, since it’s an online multiplayer. The game plays pretty great if all you want to do is live out your virtual Star Wars life through the story and cutscenes – but I actually really, really enjoy the group content. The group content actually has quite a few forms – the first is actually playing the story with a friend. It’s not a perfect system, but I really enjoy playing the class stories and quests with another person – I actually played through most of the Imperial Agent story and Sith Inquisitor story with my husband, who I originally met through the game. We actually met through playing the bigger types of group content though – Operations. Operations are a co-operative group activity you can do with 8 or 16 people, working together to take down the big bad bosses at max-level. Some operations are very easy, while others require a lot of teamwork, practice and dedication for a team to complete them together.

I actually love both of these types of big group content – the easy ones can be fun, silly and chaotic, and the harder ones can be extremely satisfying once your team successfully competes them. If you’re looking for some more casual group content though, Flashpoints are 4-person scenarios where you run through together to save the day – but these can be easily done even with strangers, and be started as low as level 10. If you have either one friend, or up to a group of 4, playing the story together or playing flashpoints together is a blast. If you don’t have friends, but want to make some, players often join a guild, which is a type of group made by other players, and they usually hosts events that you can join, like operations, flashpoints, world boss fights, or even more casual things like social events or fashion shows.

Why I Love SWTOR

In the end though, the thing that really keeps me coming back to Star Wars: The Old Republic is the unique setting, and the extremely immersive way I can connect with my characters through the cinematic cutscenes and my character’s choices in the story. While a lot of other games, both solo and multi-player, offer similar or often better gameplay, SWTOR is a really one of a kind in both online games and even in Star Wars games in general. There’s no other ongoing Star Wars game that’s been officially continuously updated for well over a decade, and I love that I can keep jumping into this part of the Star Wars universe year after year – and that my friends can jump in and out of the game when they have free time or when new content comes out, without too much trouble.

The Nitty-Gritty Details

If all that wasn’t enough info for you, and you’d like to know more like how many players are playing, how often the game updates, how much story there is to play, what levelling is like, and how much group content there is, check out the more in-depth version of this article called Is SWTOR worth trying? Have fun out there, and may the force be with you!

Is SWTOR worth trying in 2026?