I mentioned briefly in my 2025 in review post that Keith dropped a Producer's Letter for Q4 shortly before Christmas. I appreciate that he's been doing these pretty regularly for something like two years now, but most of the time they spend more time looking back than forward, and the little tease he tends to give about what's coming next is rarely enough meat to write a full blog post about.
This one was different though, as he actually gave us a pretty clear road map for most of 2026, something we haven't gotten in a long time. I couldn't tell you for sure when we last got a road map in fact - searching this blog for "road map", it looks like we got quite a few of them around 2017/18, and then the last mention of the subject is this post from early 2020 in which I cite a forum post from Eric Musco stating that they were going to move away from giving us full road maps. Huh! I'd forgotten all about that.
Anyway, the point is we did actually get a road map for the first time in six years or so, and that's definitely worth talking about. Instead of simply reproducing Keith's exact words (the link above takes you straight to the source if you so desire), I also wanted to add some commentary and context to a few of the things he said, to provide additional detail based on what we already knew and to manage expectations.
Firstly, the (in my opinion) most important bit that wasn't part of the actual road map itself was the update that they are still working on DirectX 12 and have made a lot of progress, but since it's still not quite ready they can't give us a date for when this feature will make it into the live game. I'm not the best person to tell you what DirectX is and why it's important to upgrade (in fact, from my understanding, players are unlikely to notice any major changes immediately), but all you've got to know is that it's a back-end system and that the game currently runs in DirectX 9, which came out in 2002. Yes, you read that right, that's oh two! To quote Wikipedia, "at the time of its release, it supported Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, and Windows XP". I was 19 years old and just out of school when this system came out! I bet some of the people reading this weren't even born yet! So I can damn well see why it's overdue for an upgrade if we want the game to keep running smoothly.
That said, on to the actual road map items. We already knew that the next patch, 7.8.1, will include date nights for Torian and Kira, the next Galactic Season, and (unusually for a point one patch, because of how the voice actors' strike previously delayed it) the next story update called "Master's Enigma". What's new is the comment that "this season will work a little differently than previous seasons" - we don't yet know what this means, but I think it's interesting to highlight, as I was wondering whether they had anything special planned for Galactic Season 10 due the round number. It could be related to that, or it could simply be that the devs felt it was about time to mix things up a bit since the last few seasons have all been very similar with pretty minimal changes. While you could argue that there's no need to change something that works, we MMO players do also get bored if things stay completely the same for too long.
Where things get spicy in terms of news coming from the road map is the sneak peek at the next story update coming after 7.8.1 - which is scheduled for summer and will be called "Legacy Reborn". It seems likely to me that this title refers to the expansion's titular "Legacy of the Sith" in some way, though I'm still not entirely sure what that's meant to be - Darth Nul's? Malgus's? We'll see. Though as a completely wild guess, I'd also love it if this was a double entendre of sorts that included some kind of update to the legacy system. (Speaking of features that have stayed 100% the same for a long time...) But that's just pie-in-the-sky dreaming.
What we do know about 7.9 for sure is this: "As the Legacy of the Sith story reaches its finale in 7.9: Legacy Reborn, we'll be introducing the next story Era just around the corner! Without giving too many spoilers, you can expect quite the shake-up across the galaxy. We'll give more details about the next Era in 2026."
This comment builds on the expansion tease from the last dev stream - it sounds like we'll be getting an 8.0 at the end of 2026!
Before excitement and speculation get too wild though - /Jawaface pointed out that it seems quite deliberate that Keith repeatedly refers to it as a new "era" and not an expansion. Back when I speculated about whether we were ever going to get an 8.0 at all, I said that if we're going to get another expansion, it's important that it lives up to what people expect from an expansion, considering many players' disappointment with the launch of Legacy of the Sith. Keith consciously using a different term may therefore be a deliberate choice to lower expectations - which is of course not something people ever love to hear, but I'm keeping an open mind.
I do think it might mean that we may have to be ready for 8.0 to not necessarily work like previous expansions. Maybe the level cap won't be raised, or there won't be a new operation, or - well, basically think of any feature you'd usually associate with an expansion and consider that this particular thing might not be included this time. To be clear, I have no doubt that 8.0 will still be a sizeable and exciting update and I very much look forward to hearing more about it! Just... attempting to set expectations, you know. (Ted from the SOTOR Podcast also noticed Keith's word choice here and discusses it in his latest episode.)
Either way it looks like 2026 might well end up being the most interesting year for SWTOR (in terms of content) that we've had in a while. I can't wait to learn more!
7.0 was definitely too ambitious (many bugs and lack of testing), so it would make sense for 8.0 to be lighter in the first update. One thing they could do is split up the expansion features over multiple updates. I think the core features would have to be New Story, New Level Cap, and New Gearing System. Later updates could layer on more features like New Operation, New Flashpoint, New Daily Area, New Dynamic Encounter Area (like Dantooine), Grade 12 Crafting, More Weapon Types for Combat Styles, etc.
ReplyDelete7.0 may have been ambitious from a technical point of view (I think they basically had to recode all the classes to make combat styles work? Something like that?) but it was extremely thin on content since neither the Manaan dailies nor the new operation were ready, so it was literally just get to 85 with the new story, run the new flashpoint, done. I do think 8.0 will have to launch feeling richer than that, even with adjusted expectations.
DeleteI think if 8.0 can be more like 6.0 launch (content wise) it will be much better received^^
DeleteI wouldn't be at all surprised if 'Era' was just a new catch-all term for 'Expansion'. They've certainly gone a decent way to retroactively refer to previous expansion (and then some) storylines thus through the Eras window, so it would make sense if it was just a way of adhering to new consistent terminology to minimise confusion rather than going back and forth between 'expansion' and 'era'.
ReplyDeleteAlthough this also would result in another conflict between playerbase and management given that everyone will just refer to 8.0 as an 'expansion' anyway.
Rehardless, I am confident that 8.0 will prove to be a full 'expansion'. They've had a lot of time to plan things out and work on things in the background, much more than they otherwise would have thanks to the strike, so it will be interesting to see what they have planned. I'm presuming at least one new combat style will be on the cards, as this has never been feasible before but now very much is.
I agree that consistent terminology has probably also been a consideration. I just think that it's also beneficial for them to finally curb those complaints about how SWTOR expansions are nothing like WoW expansions (or insert another MMO of your choice here for comparison).
DeleteI wish I could share your confidence in what 8.0 will bring, but the team is small and I definitely feel burned by how thin 7.0 was on actual launch content. We'll learn more soon, I hope!