That Star Wars Insider Article

Back in October, I retweeted someone noting that Darth Malgus and Star Wars: The Old Republic were going to feature on the cover of Star Wars Insider #207:

#SWTOR gets the front cover of the upcoming issue of Star Wars Insider! Nice! pic.twitter.com/6v7A3eoLsg

— 🍋Jamie of Bestoon🍋 (@JamieD1138) October 16, 2021

Aside from being happy to see the game get some good publicity, I immediately knew that I wanted to see the actual article behind that cover as well. Physical magazines like Star Wars Insider may seem a bit quaint and old-fashioned nowadays, but personally I've retained some fondness for the format. During my teens I went through a phase where pretty much all my pocket money was spent on various magazines every month, which I then ended up reading in their entirety from front to back every time. Before I had internet, this was simply the best way to keep up with news when it came to certain niche interests such as Star Wars. Star Wars - The Official Magazine was the German equivalent of Star Wars Insider at the time and also on my reading list.

I will say though, as it turns out, even just buying a specific magazine can be quite a challenge nowadays. In Austria there were newsagents at every corner of my neighbourhood when I grew up, and even so it could be tricky to find one that carried everything I wanted to read. Here in England I've found them to be somewhat rarer, and I wouldn't even have known were to start looking for one with a sufficiently large selection. You'd think the answer would be to simply order online, but as it turns out nobody wants to sell single issues of physical magazines online either, only if you pony up for an annual subscription. I eventually found/settled on purchasing a digital copy from a site called Pocketmags, even if it felt very pricey for what it is.

I wish that as a result I had some super secret and exciting insider scoop to share with all of you, but alas. Unsurprisingly, the seven page article about SWTOR is mostly a fluff piece aimed at people who either haven't played the game at all or have only a passing familiarity with it (perhaps they played it at some point in the past and then stopped) - which makes sense for an audience of general Star Wars fans I guess.

The only quote hinting at future content beyond what we already know about Legacy of the Sith is Charles Boyd saying: "We're going to be doing some cool stuff with Malgus, and it's going to set off a new direction in the storyline that I think will be really intriguing. We never seem to run out of cool things we can do in this storyline. But always expect more, and there is more coming down the road." Which sounds cool, but is also very vague.

Still, I did enjoy the rest of the article too. It's basically a combo interview with Charles Boyd and someone called Orion Kellogg, whom I hadn't heard of before but who's apparently an executive producer at Lucasfilm Games and a sort of brand liaison for SWTOR. I liked that the general vibe seemed to be one of them being quite happy with what SWTOR represents, with it being the longest running Star Wars game to date, and Orion calling out the ever evolving and growing online community as something he's enjoyed watching. You'd hope that, financial incentives aside, knowing that the game has many loyal and deeply involved fans would also serve as a reason to keep it running for many years to come. Then again, they still can't even be bothered to give it a listing on the starwars.com games and apps page, which includes highly rated classics such as Angry Birds Star Wars and multiple version of Star Wars Pinball...