SWTOR Celebrates Its Five-Year Anniversary Today

Star Trek might have made the phrase "five-year mission" famous, but today it's Star Wars: The Old Republic that celebrates its half-decade birthday. The game officially launched on Dec. 20, 2011 -- that's five days after Star Wars: Galaxies shut down, if you're keeping track -- ushering in a new golden age of AAA subscription-based MMOs that's still going strong today.

OK, maybe things didn't happen quite that way. Still, even with all its changes, SWTOR is quite popular with a lot of people today. Producer Ben Irving commemorated the occasion with a blog post thanking fans for their patronage while echoing many of the game's biggest storylines.

If hooplah alone isn't enough to excite you, there are plenty of rewards to share in the game today, including a Senya holostatue, discounted strongholds on Coruscant and Dromund Kaas, seven-piece poster art collection, Galactic Alliance statue, and "celebration Jawa."

You can also check out the Character Portrait Collage, an image of the game's initial box art made up of screenshots submitted by players over the past several years. The website also boasts that more than 87 million characters have been created since SWTOR's 2011 launch. Now that would require one heckuva LFG tool.