Looking Back at SWTOR's Patch History

Every time the SWTOR devs announce a new content release, part of the community inevitably complains that it's too little and not enough to be worth p(l)aying for. Now, I don't want to spend too much time on that argument because it's the same thing every time, and how much is "enough" is ultimately always going to be subjective. People are entitled to have their own opinions about that.

However, I do find the question of just how fast or slow SWTOR's content release cycle is interesting because while it's obviously true that we get less content nowadays than in say, 2012, when the game was new and still trying to be the latest WoW killer with a giant dev team to support it, when you compare things to say... 2017, I'm already not so sure. Lately I would even say that things have felt... pretty good?

I suspect that I may be biased due to my real life circumstances changing over time. Back in 2012 I was only working part-time two days a week, and then I was unemployed for several months, so I had a lot of time to play. Nowadays, with a full-time job keeping me busy to some degree (even if it's a pretty cushy one), I suppose it takes less for an MMO to give me the feeling that I'm getting good value for my money.

But still... I wanted to know whether there was anything we could look at with any degree of objectivity. The game has faithfully been documenting both its major and minor patches since launch, so I thought it would be interesting to go through them and note down the release dates for certain "big ticket items" such as story updates and operations, to get an idea of how much love that specific part of the game has been getting over time. I'm only comparing SWTOR against itself here, as I think comparisons with other MMOs are always going to be too flawed in terms of accounting for things like different business models, production values, size etc.

Let's start with looking at what's inarguably The Old Republic's main draw: its well-presented personal story:

Timeline of main story updates

• April 2013 (2.0): Rise of the Hutt Cartel
• April 2014 (2.7): Assault on Tython, Korriban Incursion
• August 2014 (2.9): Depths of Manaan
• September 2014 (2.10): Legacy of the Rakata
• December 2014 (3.0): Shadow of Revan
• April 2015 (3.2): Rise of the Emperor
• October 2015 (4.0): Knights of the Fallen Empire chapters 1-9
• February 2016 (4.1): KotFE chapter 10 
• March 2016 (4.2): KotFE chapter 11
• April 2016 (4.3): KotFE chapter 12
• May 2016 (4.4): KotFE chapter 13
• June 2016 (4.5): KotFE chapter 14
• June 2016 (4.6): KotFE chapter 15
• August 2016 (4.7): KotFE chapter 16
• November 2016 (5.0): Knights of the Eternal Throne
• April 2017 (5.2): War for Iokath
• August 2017 (5.4): Crisis on Umbara
• November 2017 (5.6): A Traitor Among the Chiss
• May 2018 (5.9): The Nathema Conspiracy
• December 2018 (5.10): Jedi Under Siege
• October 2019 (6.0): Onslaught
• February 2020 (6.1): Task at Hand/Signal from Noise
  
• December 2020 (6.2): Echoes of Oblivion, Spirit of Vengeance
• April 2021 (6.3): Secrets of the Enclave
• February 2022 (7.0): Legacy of the Sith
• August 2022 (7.1): Digging Deeper
• December 2022 (7.2): Showdown on Ruhnuk
• June 2023 (7.3): Old Wounds

The first thing that stands out to me here is that even though the game launched in December 2011, we didn't actually get a continuation of our character's personal story until almost one and a half years later. This was interesting to me because I remember those first couple of years as a cornucopia of new content every other month - and it was, but in the other categories (which we'll get to later). On the story front, there was silence - presumably because they were initially planning to continue the class stories but had to pivot when it became apparent that this kind of development was not sustainable with the existing subscriber base.

I do vaguely seem to remember some people complaining about the lack of story continuation at the time, but it wasn't an issue for me personally as I enjoyed the other types of content they were adding as well, and more importantly, the eight unique class stories took me ages to get through anyway as someone who wasn't in a rush. I didn't complete the last of them (which was bounty hunter for me) until October 2013.

It's also funny to remember that when we did get new story in the form of the Forged Alliances arc, it wasn't actually apparent that this was the main storyline at first, as we didn't know at the time that it was a prelude to Shadow of Revan and not just another random side story taking place in flashpoints like Kaon Under Siege/Lost Island (this was before we had the purple markers to highlight main story missions).

Things continued to be somewhat slow until the release of Knights of the Fallen Empire in October 2015, which briefly ushered in a period of near-monthly story updates. I honestly find it pretty impressive to this day that they managed to pull that off, regardless of what you may have thought of the quality of those updates. Of course, this is was also the period when players complained about there being "nothing to do" more than I've seen at any other point in time - and not entirely without reason, as the hyper-focus on story definitely resulted in a dearth of content in other areas (again, more on this later).

All of this came to an end with the release of Knights of the Eternal Throne in November 2016. Interestingly, while I remember those months as a very dark time for the game, mainly due to Galactic Command, in terms of story updates the devs actually maintained a decent amount of momentum, releasing three updates in 2017. The main problem was that after a year of near-monthly chapters, this felt incredibly slow in comparison.

And then things slowed down even more, with only two updates in 2018 (even if Jedi Under Siege was pretty major) and then almost a whole year of wait until the release of Onslaught.

Then we had the pandemic, which we know interfered with their work and with recording voice lines for story updates, meaning we had wait about another year until the devs were finally able to give us a big combo-patch in the form of 6.2's Echoes of Vengeance. Note that there were a few more, very short status update "chat missions" spread out over the Onslaught patch cycle which are considered part of the main storyline, but I couldn't even find those in the patch notes. I pretty much only know around what time they came out due to blog posts.

Then we had another year with only a single story update in April 2021, as Legacy of the Sith ended up being delayed. This was followed by three story updates in 2022, and we currently seem to be on track to finish 2023 with two story updates again.

So what does this show us, really? Honestly, the thing that surprised me the most here was just how slow things were from about 2018 to 2021. Yes, we can partially blame the pandemic for that I'm sure, but only partially. The thing is, I absolutely adored Jedi Under Siege and thought Onslaught was a great expansion as well, so I didn't even really notice how slow things were at the time...

The more recent pace of two to three main story updates a year actually seems pretty reasonable to me, assuming they also add other content during that time. Have they been doing that though? Let's have a look at how they've been doing with group content for example:

Timeline of small group content releases

• January 2012 (1.1): Kaon Under Siege
• April 2012 (1.2): Lost Island
• August 2013 (2.3): Czerka Corporate Labs, Czerka Core Meltdown
• February 2014 (2.6): Kuat Drive Yards
• April 2014 (2.7): Assault on Tython, Korriban Incursion
• August 2014 (2.9): Depths of Manaan
• September 2014 (2.10): Legacy of the Rakata
• December 2014 (3.0): Blood Hunt, Battle of Rishi
• October 2015 (4.0): Star Fortresses
• November 2016 (5.0): Crimson Fang, Done and Dusted, Firefrost, Fractured, Inferno
  
• January 2017 (5.1): Destroyer of Worlds, Divided We Fall, Landing Party, Trench Runner, Trial and Error
  
• August 2017 (5.4): Crisis on Umbara
• November 2017 (5.6): A Traitor Among the Chiss
• May 2018 (5.9): The Nathema Conspiracy
• October 2019 (6.0): Objective Meridian
• December 2020 (6.2): Spirit of Vengeance 
• April 2021 (6.3): Secrets of the Enclave
• February 2022 (7.0): Ruins of Nul
• June 2023 (7.3): Shrine of Silence

The thing that stood out to me here is that I can see now why the devs started to tie story updates to flashpoints: because it gave them an easy way to claim a two-for-one. Look, a new story update! Also, a new flashpoint!

With that said, I was kind of surprised that the periods where they added the most small group content at the most rapid pace were not when I would have expected them, with one high point being the run-up to and release of Shadow of Revan (since it crammed story updates into a total of six flashpoints) and the other one being (oddly to me), the launch of Knights of the Eternal Throne when they added all the uprisings. I guess the problem there was that these never really caught on as flashpoint replacements. As a commenter here once put it, they basically give you more boring trash and fewer interesting bosses.

Ever since then, we've had a pretty stable cadence of getting one new flashpoint a year. I wouldn't mind more, but at the same time I've got to admit with the way SWTOR keeps its old content relevant, I don't feel like we desperately need them to come out faster. If you queue for a random flashpoint right now, you've got a pretty big selection of valid destinations already.

What about large group content though? They do require you to subscribe for that one.

Timeline of large group content releases

• April 2012 (1.2): Explosive Conflict (4 bosses)
  
• September 2012 (1.4): Terror from Beyond (5 bosses)
  
• January 2013 (1.7): Xenoanalyst II (Gree event boss)
  
• April 2013 (2.0): Scum and Villainy (7 bosses), Toborro's Courtyard (single boss)
  
• October 2013 (2.4): Dread Fortress (5 bosses), Dread Palace (5 bosses)
  
• January 2014 (2.5.2? not actually listed): The Eyeless (Rakghoul Resurgence event boss)
  
• December 2014 (3.0): Ravagers (5 bosses), Temple of Sacrifice (5 bosses)
  
• April 2015 (3.2): Colossal Monolith (single boss)
  
• April 2017 (5.2): Tyth (Gods from the Machine first boss)
• July 2017 (5.3): Aivela and Esne (Gods from the Machine second boss)
• November 2017 (5.6): Nahut (Gods from the Machine third boss) 
• January 2018 (5.7): Scyva (Gods from the Machine penultimate boss)
  
• March 2018 (5.8): Izax (Gods from the Machine last boss)
• February 2019 (5.10.1): Geonosian Queen (single boss)
  
• October 2019 (6.0): Nature of Progress (6 bosses)
  
• August 2022 (7.1): R-4 Anomaly (4 bosses)
  

Here we can see where a lot of the dev's team resources went in those first few years when they weren't adding new story: making operations. Getting two to three new operations a year was certainly good times for a raider like me! Of course that all came to a halt when they decided to throw out all operations development in favour of monthly chapters. So far, these two content types seem most directly in opposition to each other when it comes to the tug-o-war for resources.

I'm glad that the devs decided to start working on them again, but this timeline shows that release of new ops bosses has been really slow. Back in 2016/2017, having to wait three years between Ravagers/Temple of Sacrifice and Gods from the Machine seemed like forever (I'm not counting the Colossal Monolith for now since it was just a single stand-alone boss), but nowadays, two to three years between operations releases seems to be the new normal.

I've got to say, that's pretty rough. While the scalability keeps old operations relevant to some degree like it does flashpoints, having to wait so long for a new one is not great, especially since access to operations is nominally still one of the game's incentives to be a subscriber. Assuming the devs will continue along the same track, I wouldn't expect a new operation until end of 2024 or early 2025.

Finally, the other major group activity in the game is PvP:

Timeline of major PvP additions

• April 2012 (1.2): Novare Coast 
• June 2012 (1.3): Ranked warzones (8v8)
  
• December 2012 (1.6): Ancient Hypergates
• October 2013 (2.4): Arenas, ranked arenas (4v4) replace ranked warzones
• April 2014 (2.7): Quesh Huttball
• April 2016 (4.3): Odessen Proving Grounds
• December 2017 (5.6.1): Yavin Ruins
  
• October 2018 (5.9.3): Vandin Huttball
• December 2022 (7.2): Removal of ranked, first PvP season track

I was kind of surprised just how little I could note down here. The only things I could have feasibly added and that I left out as not important enough were a couple of new arena maps.

Now, PvP in an MMO is a fairly self-sustaining mode of play, meaning the main appeal lies in coming up against new people all the time, not necessarily in getting new maps. In addition, seasons of some kind (first for ranked warzones, then ranked arenas, now the new track model emulating Galactic Seasons) have been coming and going throughout the years, so I don't quite know how to rank this.

Still, I didn't realise it had been five years since Vandin Huttball was added to the game (the last time we got a new warzone map). I feel we're kind of overdue for another one of these now.

Instanced group activities aren't all there is to an MMO though. What sets it apart from many a lobby game is the open world, so I think the frequency of the addition of new planets/zones is another relevant statistic to look at. These also often include other kinds of non-story content such as dailies, datacrons, achievements etc.

Timeline of post-release open world planets/zones added

• April 2012 (1.2): Black Hole
• September 2012 (1.5): Section X 
• April 2013 (2.0): Makeb
• August 2013 (2.3): CZ-198
• October 2013 (2.4): Oricon
• August 2014 (2.9): Manaan (stronghold entry)
  
• December 2014 (3.0): Rishi, Yavin 4
• April 2015 (3.2): Ziost
• October 2015 (4.0): Zakuul
• June 2016 (4.5): Darvannis
• April 2017 (5.2): Iokath
• December 2018 (5.10): Ossus
• June 2019 (5.10.3): Dantooine
• October 2019 (6.0): Onderon, Mek-sha
• August 2022 (7.1): Manaan Invasion Zone
  
• December 2022 (7.2): Ruhnuk
• June 2023 (7.3): Interpreter's Retreat

This is another area where things seem to go pretty much in the opposite direction from story content, with lots of additions during the first three years and then nothing for two years around the "Knights of" expansions. I only added Zakuul and Darvannis as technicalities, as in practice they are pretty empty and hardly worth mentioning.

I also didn't realise that there was an almost three-year gap after the release of Onslaught where we got no new areas to play in at all. Again, I liked Onslaught so much that I didn't really notice. Unlike with the voice acting, I also can't quite see how the pandemic would have interfered with the creation of new maps... either way, kind of shocking now in hindsight.

On the plus side, this is an area where the team has clearly upped their game again since last year.

Finally, there is one more category that I'd like to look at, and that's one I'm going to call "features and events". This is going to cover items that don't fit into any of the previously mentioned categories but changed the game in what I consider a major way and permanently added one or more new activities for us to do.

Features and events added to SWTOR over time

• April 2012 (1.2): Legacy system, guild banks
• June 2012 (1.3): Group finder
• November 2012 (1.5): Free to play
• December 2012 (1.6): Heroic space combat
• January 2013 (1.7): Relics of the Gree, reputations
• April 2013 (2.0): Achievement system, macrobinoculars, seeker droids
• August 2013 (2.3): Bounty Contract Week
• December 2013 (2.5): Galactic Starfighter, Life Day
• January 2014 (2.5.2? not actually listed) - Rakghoul Resurgence
  
• June 2014 (2.8): Nar Shaddaa Nightlife
• August 2014 (2.9): Galactic Strongholds, Conquest
• April 2015 (3.2): Outfit designer
• July 2015 (3.3): Togruta playable species
• October 2015 (4.0): Level sync, Odessen Alliance
• April 2016 (4.3): PvE/PvP instances on the same server
• November 2016 (5.0): Dark vs. light system, Galactic Command, chapter difficulties
• December 2018 (5.10): Guild perks and levels
• June 2019 (5.10.3): Pirate Incursion
• October 2019 (6.0): Nautolan playable species, Galactic Command removed
  
• June 2020 (6.1.2): All Worlds Ultimate Swoop Rally 
• October 2020 (6.1.4): Feast of Prosperity
• April 2021 (6.3): Galactic Seasons
• February 2022 (7.0): Dark vs. light system removed, combat styles, loadouts

Now this is probably the fuzziest category, as the items on this list are of varying importance. I could see some people arguing that I shouldn't even have included the new species for example, since they are just a cosmetic update, while others might say that I should have included server merges since they dramatically changed the environment in which people got to play. I had to make some choices and this is what I decided to go with.

We can see that the devs have been quite busy in that area! It makes sense that this is something that has slowed down over time, because a lot of the early additions were honestly pretty "basic" features for a modern MMO, such as the group finder or achievement system. Likewise, there's only so many repeatable events you can cram into an annual calendar after a while. Not to mention that once you add all these things, you then need to continue to maintain them, or else you end up like World of Warcraft at its worst, proudly adding features in one expansion and then discarding them the next. Nobody really likes that.

Either way, I feel that in this area the devs continuing to add things at a slower pace is fine. Combat styles and loadouts were pretty major last year, and while I didn't have anything to add to the list for 2023 at this point, they did make a lot of under-the-hood changes to the game, such as the upgrade to 64-bit and the move to AWS, which are not exciting for players but were still important.

Anyway, after all this - what is my verdict for how good SWTOR is at adding different kinds of content right now?

• Story: Faster than at launch, slower than during KotFE/KotET, probably a good middle ground
• Small group content: slower than in the past, but still steady and good enough considering the evergreen nature of the content once it's added
• Large group content: very slow, hard to justify a sub if this is the only thing you care about
• PvP: not really been a focus since the first year, so not much change there, but probably overdue for a bit of love
• Planets/zones: Slower than at launch, but currently better than during KotFE/KotET and the more recent past
• Features/events: Slower than at launch but still steady and good enough considering how many systems there are to maintain already

And with that I've also found the answer to why, to me at least, the content output actually seems pretty decent right now: while everything is somewhat slower - which is to be expected to some degree after more than a decade and with a much smaller team - the only area that really feels like it's in a bad place is operations. And while I like operations and am in a guild that is quite focused on them, to me personally they're not the primary reason to play the game. As long as everything else keeps rolling along, I'm good.

Plus I've discovered while writing this that if you make some content that I really, really love (such as Jedi Under Siege and Onslaught) I'll be happy to spend time on that for longer than usual, to the point that I won't even necessarily notice any delays or content droughts. I didn't know that about myself. The more you know!