Eleven Years of SWTOR

It's kind of wild to me that Star Wars: The Old Republic has entered its second decade now and that I've been along for the entire ride. The first year of this new decade has also been... something.

Last year around this time I was a little disappointed that Legacy of the Sith had been delayed on very short notice, especially as I was really looking forward to it. We eventually got that expansion two months later, but sadly it didn't turn out to be what everyone had hoped for. It's really weird actually, because there was so much hype around it; they even invested in a cinematic trailer for the first time in five years and it was awesome - Bioware must've known that what they were about to deliver wasn't anywhere near ready to live up to those expectations. I still wonder what went wrong behind the scenes there...

Anyway, while I thought that much of the negativity around the launch was blown way out of proportion, I think it's hard to deny that overall, people were let down. UI changes felt strange, the story content was short for something called an "expansion" even by Bioware's standards, and in general it felt like too much stuff had to be cut or delayed. It took until August's 7.1 patch to make it feel like we'd actually received an expansion launch worth of content, though that wasn't without its issues either... but I'll talk more about that in my general "my blogging year in review" post.

To Bioware's credit, they managed to push out 7.2 before Christmas, something I didn't really expect to happen. (And to me the fact that people kept asking about what was happening with Life Day and not getting any responses for a while indicates that there was at least some uncertainty internally as well.) 7.2 turned out to be a pretty meaty patch as well, with a new planet, a chunky story update, new dailies and a major PvP update.

If you look at all of that added together, we actually ended up getting significantly more content this year than last year: two large story updates plus one medium-sized one, two new planets/daily areas, a new flashpoint, a new operation, two Galactic Seasons, a PvP revamp and a bunch of UI updates. Not to mention combat styles, the expansion's big new feature. Technical updates like that are just always hard to judge because while I'm sure they take a lot of work in the backend, their impact on players is going to vary.

All in all, while the game was off to a rocky start this year, things seem to have stabilised somewhat by now, and I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say about the contents of patch 7.2 before my Christmas holidays are over. With all the updates they're making to things like the user interface, it definitely feels like Bioware are laying the groundwork for the next ten years of SWTOR, and that's nice to see.

If you want to make comparisons to how I felt at the end of the year on past anniversaries, feel free to check the links below:

Happy Birthday, SWTOR!
Happy 2nd Birthday, SWTOR!
Happy Third Birthday, SWTOR!
Happy 4th Birthday, SWTOR!
Five Years of SWTOR
Six Years of SWTOR
Seven Years of SWTOR
Eight Years of SWTOR
Nine Years of SWTOR
Happy 10th Birthday, SWTOR!