Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO currently has more than one million monthly players, and has today received the Galactic Strongholds expansion.
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Galactic Strongholds opens today for those who qualify as subscribers (The Old Republic offers an optional subscription for benefits such as these), with early access coming on September 16 to those who have spent money on the game, but do not currently subscribe. The rest of the user base will gain access on October 14.
The expansion gives players the opportunity to customize their own titular strongholds across multiple planets. You can dress it up with trophies, and also gain access to a guild flagship, which offers orbital support to allies and helps capture planets. Though the release schedule for Galactic Strongholds favors the paying customers, the whole expansion will be free to everyone. The Old Republic itself is also free, with some game content locked away for subscribers. You can see the new expansion content on display in the trailer below, which was released during Gamescom.
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The one million monthly players, a number EA provided at a press event according to Polygon, represents a healthy community. It's not the heights the publisher was hoping to reach with its ambitious MMO meant to challenge World of Warcraft, but it represents a turnaround following a fall in the number of players to under one million. At its highest point the user base was 1.3 million players, and the change to a free-to-play model in 2012 has helped level out the number of monthly players.
