Knights of the Eternal Throne - Hard to Have an Opinion

I feel I should really comment on the announcement of Knights of the Eternal Throne at Star Wars Celebration... but it's hard to have much to say about it at this point, considering that it was very much a non-announcement. Seriously, I've never seen an expansion announcement that was this thin on actual content. Literally all we've got is the name, a teaser image, a vague release window ("this fall") and promises that it's going to be great (one of the largest updates since launch). OK?

It's been suggested that Bioware may have mucked up their marketing schedule with the delays to chapters ten and sixteen - if those had been out on time, KotFE probably would have been wrapped up by now and they would have been able to give us more information about how it all ties into the next season. Still, that doesn't really explain why they were so shy about revealing any sort of technical details, such as whether there will be another level cap increase, how many new story chapters and so on and so forth. Anyway, let's try to work with what we've got.

The name: I have to admit, I'm kind of disappointed that they went with another "Knights of the Something Something" title. It's uncreative and pretty much asking for people to get the two expansions mixed up in casual conversation. Not to mention that I still don't know to this day why KotFE is even called KotFE. The only Empire that has fallen is the Sith one, but the only one that has knights is Zakuul, and the only one of those that really features prominently is Senya. I guess we theoretically still have a chapter to go that might answer the question of who the title "Knights of the Fallen Empire" is really referring to, but I'm not holding my breath. I can only guess that there is a directive from marketing that all expansions now need to have "Knights of the" in the title to make sure to draw in as many KOTOR lovers as possible... As an aside, for a German speaker like me, "KotET" is a really unfortunate acronym - in German, it literally means "(he/she/it) defecates".

The image: Pictured above, it shows Senya facing off against a slender figure, possibly Vaylin? If nothing else, it's good to see Senya, because this pretty much guarantees that she will survive whatever happens in chapter sixteen, which is not exactly a given with Bioware. Since she's a great character, I would have hated to see her die. If the slender figure is Vaylin, what's with the weird blue glow around her hands? Either way, people have been speculating for a while that KotFE might end with us finishing off Arcann but Vaylin somehow taking over or getting away, offering an opportunity for a tie-in with the next season, which this image seems to confirm. I have to admit I'm not super keen on dragging out the whole Zakuul story arc even longer, so I do hope it goes into a different direction eventually. I want to see what's happening with the Republic and the Empire, damn it!

Release window: I was actually surprised to hear that the expansion is already supposed to be out this fall, or autumn as we call it on this side of the pond. I was almost convinced that we wouldn't see the new season until the very end of the year or even the start of the next year, and I think we all kind of assumed that the Dark vs. Light event was meant to keep us occupied through a major content drought. I suppose autumn could still mean as late as November, but that would still "only" leave three months between the release of KotFE's last chapter and the start of KotET, which isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things.

Grand promises: Already I see people doing the same thing they do every time Bioware tells us that they've got something great in store - project all their hopes and dreams onto that vague promise, hoping against hope that this will finally bring whatever change or content they've been waiting for, whether it's a change to the business model, new operations or whatever. Hold your horses, people! We really don't know anything at this point, so let's not get too excited, OK?

All that said, I do look forward to hearing more about this. Call me weird, but I do actually kind of like the way you never quite know what you're going to get with a new SWTOR release. There are areas where I absolutely loathe change and surprises, such as when it comes to core class gameplay, but experimenting with adding different types of content in different ways is fine by me. Getting a predictable cookie cutter expansion every X months or years gets boring after a while anyway.