Many gamers have labeled Star Wars: The Old Republic a "singleplayer RPG", but is this truly a fair criticism? What's the larger issue here? We discuss it all in this week's SWTOR column!

Unfortunately, one sort of comment has been nagging at me for going on two years now and I really can’t ignore it (or the subject) any longer. It goes something like this:

“Star Wars: The Old Republic is a singleplayer RPG.”

There are a ton of variations on this comment, but it’s pretty much used both in context when responding to threads about grouping or just as a catch-all criticism about the game whenever someone feels it’s deemed appropriate.

Read more of Michael Bitton's Star Wars: The Old Republic: SWTOR - The "Singleplayer RPG".

Good article. I fully agree with you on all points. Some people just love to be nay sayers.

I only joined groups for flashpoints. if i came up to a 2+ 3+ or 5player or flashpoint i could just stand thier for like 5 min at launch and some random would invite me and we would beat it. I had no reason to lvl with somone else, it was actually less experience for me to go trew the questing areas as a team. At the end of reaching lvl 50 it was just about grinding gear. I gave up after i got my champion set. I had no intrest to grin fleet gear, since there was no real good explination of which I started at first or how to get good enough gear by grinding daileys solo to get the world medals to get the gear. Sorry but untill you can fleet or when if at all you want a flashpoint which is not necessary it is a single player mmo with multiplayer optional.

The problem with this game is not grouping though, it's the game itself.

I love playing solo and queueing up for group content when I want to do that type of content but even now with the dungeon finder I still don't feel the draw to play this game anymore. I've unsubbed now while too because of that reason. 

Nice article, good points, bad game. 

Moving around the world was a series of loading screens and corridors, this for me really took away any massively multiplayer feeling from it, everything was an instance and when you were in there you were on your own most of the time apart from on planet surface and on main fleet. Space should have been open to fly around in rather than another single player activity.

It's not a single player game but it's a co-op RPG its not an MMO just because it has hubs you can actually meet other players in.

Today's epic /popcorn thread brought to you by MMORPG.com's very own MikeB.

I agree, Mike. Just because the game doesn't force you to group doesn't mean its SP. Grouping is still fun, just like in other games. It still broadens the experience, just like the other games. It still builds friendships, just like the other games. And it still isn't required to get a "nearly full" experience of the game, just like the other games.

SWToR isn't a SP rpg but it would have been better of if it was, the MMO part does nothing but detract from the main point of the entire game IE the story.

I feel like this is a console game that just happens to work on PCs. Calling this a MMO is like calling a politician honest.

SWTOR to me is more SP-RPG than mmorpg.  I do not see a reason to pay a sub fee for a game that offers you an okay levelling experience and then an endgame that frankly wow/rift/eq2  does better.

The problem is not in which systems a game uses, but HOW it uses them. The problem with SW:TOR for me was that it had more single-player instanced content than any other MMO I've ever played. And that was mainly due to the need to deliver a coherent personal story.

And because story was a central pillar of the game, it HAD to take you out of the common game world to deliver that story to YOU. But the side-effect of this is that people remember the story parts of the game more than the general play.

They may have only spent 25% of their time ingame in story instances, but that experience is remembered far more clearly than the dozens of hours spent in open world play.

Originally posted by Wicoa

SWTOR to me is more SP-RPG than mmorpg.  I do not see a reason to pay a sub fee for a game that offers you an okay levelling experience and then an endgame that frankly wow/rift/eq2  does better.

I agree the game shouldn't have a sub, but a sub does not an MMO make.

The game CAN be an MMO, it just lends itself more to a single player RPG experience.  Seriously.  Imagine this:  take away the sub fee and other players, sell the game as a single player RPG on consoles and boom, it's the next Kotor.  It just "feels" like a single player RPG.  Now, it needs a ton of MMO aspects patched in to get away from this feeling, and they are slowly, oh so slowly doing that with LFG finder, legacy system, upcoming dual specs and hopefully at some point, better achievement system, housing, collections, and so forth.  Until then though, I feel like I'm loading up a single player RPG every time I play.

I recently subbed again and my friend and I really are enjoying grouping through all the content. The main issue i have is story missions dont meld well in a group environment, other than that, good fun.

Originally posted by mmoDAD

I feel like this is a console game that just happens to work on PCs. Calling this a MMO is like calling a politician honest.

I agree

Originally posted by SlickShoes

Moving around the world was a series of loading screens and corridors

In all fairness though, even if I enjoy both games, GW2 has loading screens and is plenty instanced as well from my experience in the latest Beta weekend. Yet no one seems to complain there. Granted, I guess the zones aren't as... corridored.. Which I agree with is a major problem in TOR.

Bravo Michael.  I completely agree with all your points.  This game gets way too much hate on these boards.  SWG was also my first MMORPG love.

Definitely good points raised in the article and I even agree with most of them. I wish I could put my finger on why SWTOR disappointed me so much -- I think it was only the lack of complexity of game play and the fact that only 2 of the 4 base classes were interesting to me. I wouldn't have minded seeing a bit more of the story but was too bored with the other two classes to persist.

I don't play SWTOR anymore but i agree with you on that, SWTOR has a lot more grouping and incentive to group leveling up than WoW does. Zone chat had requests for groups all the time which never happens in other MMOs anymore, most others have some automatic dungeon queue and that's it for grouping.