Last Minute Pre-Expansion Thoughts

Shadow of Revan launches today and I'm finally excited, even though it feels like I've been too busy in the past couple of weeks to have much time for happy anticipation.

I don't know how long exploring the new content will keep us busy (if Rise of the Hutt Cartel is any indication, two weeks or so seems like a good guess for me), but just getting to experience an expansion launch again is exciting.

I can't wait to see the new planets and play around with the discipline system and... and what?

The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that we actually know remarkably little about this expansion. Before Rise of the Hutt Cartel came out, Makeb was limited to closed testing as well, but pretty much everything else was available on the public test server. People could insta-level to 55 to play around with the updated talent trees. I ran a level 55 hardmode flashpoint with my guildies. Some of them even tried Scum and Villainy before it went live.

When you compare that to this time around, it feels like we know very little beyond which feature boxes will be ticked in the expansion. In the past week, questions started to pop up in my guild: What kind of gear will you be able to buy with Basic commendations? Will there still be repeatable missions for the level 50 operations, considering that they will go "grey" at 60? Which gear will disappear from vendors? We have no idea.

Even some pretty significant gameplay changes have only been discussed in the vaguest of terms. Dread Palace nightmare was rumoured to offer alternate progression to the new level 60 operations - will it or won't it? Is the new ability to solo certain flashpoints going to be a complete paradigm-changer? What about this supposed new way of being able to experience the end of the Revan story solo as an alternative to doing the operation? I don't know, maybe something has been datamined (that's one source of news that I've somewhat stayed away from for fear of spoilers), but on the whole it feels like we know remarkably little about the details of what's to come.

This could be a good thing - it offers us a chance to experience an increased sense of wonder as we find out about things for the first time - or it could hide some unpleasant surprises. We'll find out very soon.