User:The Millionth One/Rise of the Hutt Cartel

Rise of the Hutt Cartel is an expansion pack to Star Wars: The Old Republic, a BioWare-developed massively multiplayer online role-playing game set in the Star Wars universe. The expansion concerns the planet Makeb, with two differing overarching plots depending on which of the two factions the player has chosen (either the Empire or the Republic).

Gameplay
A new feature introduced in Rise of the Hutt Cartel are "macrobinoculars", which allow players to scan objects in the distance and uncover hidden objects.

Plot
In the Empire storyline, the player character is contacted by Darth Marr, and asked to go to Makeb to help secure "isotope-5" -- without which, the Empire will surely fall soon due to the toll of Sith infighting and recent losses or costly victories.

Development and release
On February 20, 2013, the expansion entered public testing. Later, it was made free to subscribers of the game.

Reception
Rise of the Hutt Cartel received mixed to positive reviews. It holds a score of 71 on Metacritic, and a similar score of 71.33% on GameRankings. Leif Johnson of IGN gave a more positive review, giving it 7.6 out of 10 and praising the storylines themselves and the planet, but criticizing the droid missions and noting the impact of the game's tightened budget. A similarly positive review came from GameSpot, who gave the expansion 7.5 out of 10, liking the new romances, and ending with "it may not be a renaissance for The Old Republic, but there's a wealth of new content to freshen things up considerably." Both reviewers missed the companion dialogue from the main game.

A more mixed review came from PC Gamer's Chris Thursten who gave it 63 out of 100, also praising Makeb but calling it "too little too late for all but the most dedicated fans". Sophie Prell for The Penny Arcade Report believed the expansion to have some of the best voice-acting in the game, and felt the planet had a nice pace due to less irrelevant sidequests, but called it "like a map pack" and said the same-sex romances introduced were "shallow and limited".

The Old Republic's handling of same-sex romances fell under criticism. Ars Technica reported on the players' reactions, who often disagreed with same-gender romance or felt relegating them to a single planet did not go far enough. The Guardian's Mary Hamilton noted the controversy, and called Makeb "the sort of problem that comes about when a series of perfectly reasonable decisions takes a development team to a very weird place". Jim Sterling of Destructoid called the planet "a rather inelegant solution", and felt it may have been better to simply wait for further same-gender romance content than including it in the expansion only. Executive producer Jeff Hickman addressed the issue, and apologized for how long it was taking for same-sex romance to appear in the game.