Whatever number of hours my Steam account says I have is incorrect. I must have a few thousand more before it was available here.

This game means an incredible amount to me. When it went free-to-play in 2013, I jumped at the chance to explore it's world and experience every avenue it's story provided. I've created characters to play different sides, alignments, romances - the whole nine yards when it comes to an RPG with this many base storylines. I've played it on crappy laptops at 3am hiding it from my parents in high school, to the system I currently play on, and it's never lost it's magic. Nearly 8 years later, and it's still my most treasured game of all time.

I've played it very much like an online RPG and less for it's MMO aspects, but that doesn't diminish how vital experiencing all this game has is to appreciating it for what it is. The gearing, customization, character specs and social aspects all allow for an astonishing amount of variety in how a character is played, but the story and head-canon possibilities for me make it even more engaging. Role-playing is something you might usually leave for a DnD session, but you play a role further than just what your character presents at a base level. Even now, with all these years of playing under my belt, I can still start a new character with a backstory, personality, vision in my head, and play through the vanilla story and the expansions that follow while sticking true to that ideal I started them with. It's not just "Republic = Light side goodie two-shoes" or "Empire = Dark side murderous rampage" - it extends beyond if you use a little imagination.

It's why this game has so much replayability. Combine the 8 class storylines with 3 combat proficiancies per subclass, factor in things like alignment and romance (or what the expansions allow you to do in the late-game), and suddenly the characters you create are more than just the cookie-cutter mold the game tries to hold you to. They're people, because *you* give them the unique spark for them to become so. And that's why I've been playing this game as long as I have.

My only true gripe would be the ways BioWare has tried to tell enticing stories in the later expansions, and how it just ends up feeling cheesy and like they wrote themselves into plot difficulties that don't make them as fun to play as the original vanilla storylines. Creating a unique character loses a lot of it's fun when you don't make anyone feel special by making every class play the expansions with very little references to the adventures they had or the role they occupy in galactic events - they suddenly just turn into a generic protagonist. I don't know if this can be alleviated in future writing, but KotFE and KotET simply don't carry the same weight as the original 8 stories. Your mileage may vary.

If you're on the fence, give this game a shot. If you end up falling in love with it like I did all those years ago, maybe you'll have a similar experience. All I know is my time spent in gaming would look a lot different if SWTOR hadn't been in it.

Thanks, BioWare. Love your creation to pieces. <3