New Group Content Speculation

I think that most of us who have been following the game for a while are pretty used to Bioware being cagey about upcoming content. They weren't always like that... before launch they promised us the moon and then some! But we all know where that got us, so I can't blame them. I'm guessing they have very strict directives from above in regards to what they are and aren't allowed to talk about these days.

Still, the silence in regards to Knights of the Eternal Throne and what it's going to entail has been somewhat stranger than usual in my opinion. It's been over a month since it was officially announced and we still don't know anything more about it than we did back then. You can tell that we as fans are starved for information as people are even getting excited about leaked music. That isn't meant to be a disparaging remark about the music in any way - it's just that when an MMO announces a new expansion, the new music isn't exactly the first thing on my mind to get excited about. We just don't have anything else at the moment.

The continued silence about group content is particularly baffling. They know that people want it. James Ohlen has gone on record in an interview saying that "there will be "a lot of great co-op and multiplayer challenges" included in Eternal Throne. The story focus is there, similar to Fallen Empire, but they redoubled their efforts to make the expansion attractive for their loyal subscriber base as well." And in the latest producer livestream (Dulfy coverage here) they again confirmed that they are working on group content but refused to say anything about what type of group content it is.

While I can understand Bioware's fears about accidentally promising something that they then can't deliver for any reason, I would think that by this point in their development cycle a good chunk of this mysterious content must be close enough to being done that they know what's going to be ready by the time KotET launches. So why are they so afraid of committing to two new flashpoints and a new operation (or something to that effect)?

I can only imagine that the reason is that whatever it is they are working on doesn't strictly fit into any of the traditional formats and would require a more detailed explanation than they are willing to give (yet). There are actually several reasons why this would make sense. With KotFE, Bioware sent a very clear message that they were done with being like every other MMO out there in terms of the solo quest experience and that they wanted to do their own thing - whether you liked it or not, they did take a stand on that! Considering that, it wouldn't be a surprise if they also decided to approach the way they do group content from a new angle instead of relying on the classic formula of dungeons and raids.

More than a year ago I also wrote a post called Solo Flashpoints - Good or Bad Idea?, in which I explained why it seemed to me that Bioware didn't really know what they wanted flashpoints to be and why I thought that solo modes were an awkward band-aid solution for that problem. I'm not saying that anyone at Bioware actually read that post, but it's not hard to imagine someone over there asking themselves similar questions at some point.

I am, as usual, somewhat wary of changes like this. On sites like Massively OP you see a lot of people condemning the old raid model these days, but it does the job it's supposed to do! This is even truer for small group content, which I'm sure is the more popular format due to being more accessible. I don't really want Bioware to reinvent the wheel. Not to put too fine a point to it, but when they decided to change the way they delivered story in KotFE, they could at least point to a long history of doing the same thing successfully in single player games, but what sort of track record do they have of making their own type of group content? Mass Effect 3 multiplayer?

However, also as usual, I'm happy to wait and see what's to come. I'll appreciate the addition of more group content no matter what form it takes. But I do think it would be best if nobody hung all their hopes on it being a new op or flashpoint.