What is Star Wars The Old Republic. Star Wars: The Old Republic, commonly abbreviated as The Old Republic, SWTOR, or simply TOR, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that was produced and released by BioWare, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts. Developed over the course of more than five years by BioWare Austin and LucasArts at a cost of over $200 million, Star Wars: The Old Republic was first conceived in 2005 as a MMORPG follow-up to BioWare's previous video games, the popular Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords..