Legacy of the Sith Expansion Announcement

I didn't watch last night's livestream while it was happening (though I do want to say to Bioware's credit that they've got much better at scheduling their streams at times when it's actually reasonable for Europeans to tune in too), but I did watch the recording as soon as I was able to. And once again I have to say that I found it very engaging and enjoyable to watch. I feel they've really found their groove with these streams recently - they may not be very high budget, but Charles and Eric have a great dynamic and are fantastic ambassadors for the game with their unending and infectious enthusiasm.

The intro with various devs talking about what ten years of SWTOR meant to them and how much they love their jobs could be considered a bit cheesy I guess, but it all sounded very genuine and to be honest it's nice to see some of the same faces making repeat appearances (proving that they're still around). Plus who doesn't like the idea of a game's devs actually enjoying their jobs?

And then we jumped right in: new expansion at the end of the year, called Legacy of the Sith (cue lots of "LOTS" puns, and Musco promised many more) to celebrate ten years of SWTOR! You can find the official run-down here, but here are my own thoughts on each item:

Five new levels, new story and locations

Not that much to say about this one, because while it's nice to see, it's also par for the course for a new expansion. All we know about the story is that it'll continue to focus on Republic vs. Empire, which I'm happy about, and they wouldn't say any more in order not to spoil us and I think that's how we as players like it.

In terms of new locations it sounds a bit less ambitious than Onslaught was, as instead of two new open world planets and a flashpoint, we'll only get one new place to hang out plus a flashpoint. The latter will also take place on a new planet called Elom though instead of being set on an existing one like Objective Meridian was.

The main "new" planet will be a battle-ravaged Manaan. I have to say while the concept art looks cool, I'm not sure I like it being all messed up! Seeing beautiful and serene locations torn up by war is always a bit sad. And it's one thing if it's only in a flashpoint like it happened for Tython and Korriban, but to have the "permanent" open world version of the planet be a mess is less appealing I think. Who wants to hang out on a rainy battlefield all day?

New operation

I like to call this one out separately because while you could argue that a new operation should also simply be an "expected" part of a new expansion, SWTOR's fraught history with this type of content has taught me to be careful with my expectations - so I'm happy to see that they are planning to deliver another operation soon!

Story-wise it sounds like the new ops might have a tie-in with Nature of Progress - it's teased at the end of the Dxun story mission (if you can resist the subtle pressure to kill Trey) that something dangerous has gone missing from another Czerka facility. Though again based on the concept art for the new operation, the overall flavour of this one seems very different, with more of a horror vibe similar to what we saw from the Dread Masters. I'm looking forward to it either way!

Combat styles

This was the main expansion feature aside from new content and to be honest it fried my brain a bit. Basically, after re-doing gearing in Onslaught, it seems that Bioware has targeted basic class gameplay as the thing that needs an update next. I have to admit I froze for a second when they started talking about that, as I wondered whether they were going to do something silly like pivot the game more towards action combat, but fortunately Bioware knows their player base better than that. What they did announce sounded a bit confusing though, and depending on the exact details has the potential to be a huge game changer or to make no difference to many players at all.

In a nutshell, based on the slides they showed, they want to disconnect base class (what defines your story content) from advanced class (what defines your gameplay), except for the divide between Force and tech users, which remains intact. What this means is that you could for example create a trooper but instead of playing her as a Commando with a big assault cannon or a Vanguard with a blaster rifle, you could choose to use a Sniper rifle and have access to all the abilities that a Sniper would usually have... I think?!

On a surface level this seems fine, logic-wise, because why wouldn't a trooper be able to use a different weapon? And many of the abilities are generic enough that seeing them used by a different base class wouldn't feel "wrong" - e.g. my Commando heals with different medical probes, and I see no reason why a bounty hunter, agent or smuggler couldn't also use medical probes. But some abilities are a bit more... flavourful, and there I struggle to wrap my head around the idea of all of them simply being available to every class. Would an agent tanking things with a flamethrower like a Powertech really feel "right"? Or how about a trooper running around kicking people in the nuts Scoundrel-style? Assuming that this is indeed how it's supposed to work, I'd hope that they're at least planning to tweak the animations/flavour of some of the abilities for different base classes.

That said, even if I understood all of that correctly, there are lots of question marks in the air about other details and how this is going to affect players in group content. Considering how big of a deal they made about it, it seems safe to assume that this "choosing a different play style" thing won't just be for new characters, but then how easy will it be to switch? If you could do it on the fly it could lead to weird gameplay expectations ("Everybody switch to a stealth style so we can skip the trash!") but then what would the restrictions be? Based on the fact that they said they'd also be introducing loadouts to go along with this (an easy way to save different specs/styles/gear sets and switch between them) it sounded to me like they do want players to be able to swap with relative ease.

And what will all of this mean for alts? If you want to see all the different gameplay options on both factions, you currently have an incentive to have sixteen alts, eight for each advanced class on both factions (though I'm sure most long-time players have more, haha). With this announcement, it sounds like you'd only really need two going forward: one Force and one tech user, who would then potentially have access to the full toolkit of all advanced classes on both factions. Does this mean there's less of a reason to have alts? I don't think so, though it does make things easier for people who want to avoid them for some reason. If you like having lots of alts though, there'll be even more class story/gameplay permutations for you to try though, as you could have e.g. eight different troopers that all level with a different play style.

Anyway, based on how many unanswered questions there still are about this new feature, a lot of this is really speculation more than anything else. We'll all have to hear more details first before deciding what it means for the way we play going forward.

Any other business

The expansion's launch, which is supposed to happen around the end-of-year holiday season (though we don't have a fixed date) will also mark the start of the second Galactic Season - so from the sounds of it there'll be a couple of months break between the end of the first and the beginning of the second Season, which is something I'd welcome. Season two will be centred around a new Duros companion.

There was also talk about improving a lot of the user interface, and I have to admit that was the part of the livestream that filled me with the least happiness... not that I'm against the idea in principle, but to be honest a lot of their UI "improvements" of the last couple of years haven't really felt like such (new windows that can't be modified in the UI editor etc.) - so you'll excuse me if I feel some trepidation around this.

On a general level, I liked how much optimism was expressed about SWTOR's future, considering how much doomsaying SWTOR players have had to put up with over the years. Apparently it's the longest-running Star Wars game at this point (I wouldn't expect them to count Star Wars Galaxies rogue servers for obvious reasons), and they have plans for more content for years to come. Eric even went as far as to say that this is just the start of the game's next ten years. I mean, obviously you never know when the corporate overlords might end up having different ideas - but still, seeing the team be so happy and confident does bode well.

If you made it to the end of this post and haven't heard about this yet, they also gave out a code that you can redeem in your account for a free stronghold deco poster of rebellious Mandalorian Heta Kol. The code LOTSofSWTOR (easy to remember!) is valid until July 15th.

What are your thoughts about everything that's been announced?