Bye-Bye, Bioware

Yesterday news broke that Electronic Arts is shutting down Bioware.

First things first: If you came here wondering what this means for Star Wars: The Old Republic, the answer is: NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. Bioware hasn't been working on SWTOR for almost three and a half years. (I've got to admit I was not prepared for the sheer number of SWTOR players posting on social media who apparently still don't know who actually makes their game.)

Back in June 2023, when it first leaked that SWTOR was about to be moved to Broadsword, we were all quite worried about what that was going to mean. Going from being developed by a well-known, prestigious studio to one that was virtually unknown could only be a bad thing, right? However, a few ex-Bioware devs quickly spoke up on social media to tell us that nonono, this is a good thing for SWTOR, trust us.

As it turns out, they were 100% correct, because while SWTOR is still around and doing pretty well, the well-known and prestigious studio is no more. Who would have thought that an MMO whose shutdown people have been predicting pretty much every year since its launch would outlive its beloved creators? It certainly feels ironic.

Found on /r/swtor_memes

A lot of people seem to blame the shutdown on the EA buyout that was announced about a year ago, but... while I'm not saying that had nothing to do with it, EA had a reputation for shutting down beloved game development studios long before that, and people had already been speculating that Bioware would be next on the chopping block for years. That link goes to a meme of EA as the Grim Reaper knocking on Bioware's door and was uploaded four years ago. I'm sure I've seen more and similar memes around too; this was just the first example I found via a quick Google search.

That doesn't mean that the closure doesn't suck, just that it's not surprising. I know people who loved Mass Effect: Andromeda and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but neither came close to being as successful as previous installments in their series, so it seemed like only a matter of time until EA decided that Bioware was no longer "good enough".

I'm not the best person to be writing a heartfelt eulogy for Bioware though, because I haven't actually played a lot of their creations. I loved the first two Dragon Age games, and the original Knights of the Old Republic held up well enough when I came to it very late via the mobile port. But once I started playing SWTOR... it kind of scratched that itch and I didn't feel the need to play other games of theirs, as bad as that may sound. And since they in turn didn't actually seem to have the same level of appreciation for SWTOR (by all accounts it was always treated as inferior to the single-player games based on their own IPs internally), it kinda made me like the studio less over time. Based on various exposés about their internal processes, it also sounds like they had a lot of dysfunctional development going on in there, and not all of it was EA's fault either.

I kind of hope that Jason Schreier writes a book unravelling the history of the studio at some point, just like he did with Play Nice for Blizzard. In the meantime, I hope the devs affected by the studio closure land on their feet and can find new ways to continue doing something they love. Maybe Broadsword could even hire a couple of them?

Legacy of the Sith as an Expansion

I did a deep dive into Legacy of the Sith's story last month, but SWTOR is more than just its story updates. I was recently reminded that I did a full expansion review of Onslaught back in 2021, and I thought it would be interesting to do the same for LotS before we move on to the game's next era. Infamously, LotS was very thin on launch content when it released in early 2022, but the devs put out a lot of content in the years that followed, so I thought it would be fun to examine Legacy of the Sith from that angle too.

Story

As mentioned, I already did the deep dive into story so I won't go into that much detail a second time around, but I do think it's worth calling out that over the entirety of Legacy of the Sith, we ended up receiving nine pretty sizeable story updates (only Digging Deeper was kind of small). However, even if we discard the latter for a second, that still leaves us with eight story updates over the course of five years. Averaged out, that makes for a seven to eight month break between releases, but that doesn't really reflect reality because the voice actors' strike caused such a huge gap in 2024/2025. Realistically it was more like six months between story updates, which I'm usually pretty happy with.

In addition, Legacy of the Sith also introduced us to date nights, little mini missions to let you hang out with your romanced companion for a bit. We got seven of them so far (for Jorgan, Kira, Koth, Lana, Theron, Torian and Vette), but it's unclear when we'll get more. (If they had stuck to their previously announced release schedule for these, the most recent patch should have had two more but it didn't, and they haven't commented on the subject in a while as far as I can tell.)

MMO Content

Even as they delivered all that story, the devs didn't neglect the MMO side of the game either:

• Over the course of Legacy of the Sith, we got two entirely new planetary areas in the form of Manaan and Ruhnuk (I don't feel the previously existing bit of Manaan that only contained the flashpoint entrance really counted), as well as four new areas added to existing planets (the Interpreter's Retreat on Voss, Kessan's Landing on Ord Mantell, the Minboosa District on Hutta and the Dantooine Crash Site). These came with a lot of the usual trappings of new planets in SWTOR: four new daily areas, two new datacrons and two new world bosses.
• We also got a new type of endgame/evergreen content in the form of dynamic encounters, available on ten different planets at the time of me writing this.
• In terms of traditional endgame group content, we got two new flashpoints (Ruins of Nul and Shrine of Silence), as well as five new operations bosses: the four in R-4 Anomaly and XR-53 as a standalone boss.
• Spring Abundance was added as a new world event, rounding out the game's seasonal calendar.
• The new venture system gave us Bessi the Basilisk Prototype as a long-term solo grind that awards one of the most powerful companions in the game.
• The first Galactic Season technically happened in the latter half of Onslaught, but Season 2 was when the system really found its stride and the devs have been stringing us along keeping us busy with two new seasons per year ever since. 
• Finally, housing enthusiasts were not left wanting either, with the addition of three new strongholds on Mek-Sha, Copero and Dantooine.

Features/Quality of Life 

When I started compiling this list I was kind of shocked by just how much I had to add to it. These sorts of changes used to be few and far between, but in Legacy of the Sith, Bioware and then later Broadsword really went nuts with updating the game for the next decade and trying to subtly improve quality of life (the latter not always with a 100% success rate I'd say, but nobody can claim that they haven't been trying). Where to even start?

• After more than a decade without dedicated APAC servers, Broadsword launched the Shae Vizla server for Oceanic players in late 2023. It ultimately didn't do too well in terms of population... but its launch was very fun, and it's at the very least still around three years later.
• 7.0's big headline feature were combat styles, the splitting of "class" into origin story and combat style, which would allow for new combinations such as troopers with sniper rifles or Sith warriors that shoot Force lightning. In addition, every character got the option to choose a second combat style beyond the one they started out with. I didn't know how to feel about that feature when it was first announced, and funnily enough, I still don't have any strong opinions on it all these years later.
  
  Almost everyone in my ops team has happily branched out to play multiple combat styles, and I've seen plenty of people try out new combinations that weren't originally possible, but as far as my personal experience goes, I didn't really do that much with it. I only selected a second combat style on very few of my characters (on most of them I just untrack the automatically granted mission to choose a second combat style and leave it at that) and few of my alts have been created using any of the new combinations as I tend to think that the original advanced classes are still the best match for their origin stories. I don't mind the option, it just hasn't affected my own play that much.
• Now loadouts on the other hand... it's kind of funny that these were treated almost as an afterthought to combat styles but turned out to be super awesome in their own right. I used to be someone who hated respeccing... and okay, I still don't do it that often all things considered, but loadouts made it so easy that even I do it quite regularly nowadays. Initially, the system took some getting used to - I think the lack of a "save" button and every change just being auto-applied is a bit confusing when you first start out - but nowadays I wouldn't want to play without it. I wish similar systems in other MMOs were as sophisticated and user friendly. Probably my vote for Legacy of the Sith's best system update.
• Another expansion feature (that ended up being slightly delayed) was the addition of weapons to the outfit designer. I can't say this was a game changer for me as I tend to not pay that much attention to my weapons compared to my armour, but it's definitely been nice to have that extra option to coordinate outfits even more. 
• There were a lot of other UI changes that had a mixed receptions... though I'd like to give a shout-out to the new map system, which did vex me a little when it was first introduced but definitely grew on me over time. Also, DvL tokens and Nar Shaddaa Nightlife casino chips were finally made legacy-wide, which was a big plus for me.
• I'd almost forgotten that the Galactic Trade Network also received its big update this expansion. We didn't end up getting all the new features that were originally discussed (still waiting for those buy orders...) and also ended up losing some lesser used options, such as the ability to sell pre-augmented gear or many random world drops, but overall it was an improvement.
• Related to this, the big "Credit Economy Initiative" happened and massively deflated SWTOR's economy, which is still impressive to me considering how high inflation levels had been before this project. Returning players who haven't played since circa 2023 continue to be surprised by how cheap stuff on the GTN has become.
• We saw a number of graphics updates to old planets, the cinematic lighting update as well as updates to player character textures... though the latter suddenly stopped when they were only halfway done, with no explanation. I've heard it theorised that the devs may have decided that it's better to wait until the DirectX 12 conversion before making any more graphics updates.
• PvP is one area that hasn't gotten much love this expansion, with no new gameplay modes or maps other than the Onderon arena map added in 7.2. Ranked PvP was removed and we got the new PvP season system instead that follows a similar model as the Galactic Seasons. I think opinions are mixed on whether that has worked out well or not. 
• The final thing I'll add here is the addition of quest reset timers. Remember how at the start of 7.0, the devs had this idea of limiting the content we could run every week by only having a small number of flashpoints in the group finder and only having certain daily areas give rewards every week? They dropped all of that pretty quickly when people complained, but one side effect that stuck around has been the fact that daily and weekly missions now expire every reset if you don't complete them.
  
  I think this was originally intended to prevent people from saving up and sharing missions from the "wrong" week, which is obviously no longer an issue, though there may have been other reasons for the reset to be added. Maybe they didn't like people "saving up" PvP weekly missions for example, which is obviously relevant for the way PvP seasons work now. Still, this is another one of those changes that has never really grown on me. I enjoyed the way the forced reset cleaned up my mission logs at first, but four and a half years in I can't help but notice how it always makes me feel rushed when working on any daily or weekly missions, because if I don't finish before they reset, all my progress is lost.

Summary

As you can see, a lot has happened and been added during Legacy of the Sith. Some might call it SWTOR's biggest expansion ever... though it was also stretched out over the longest period of time (it looks like we'll finally move on after close to five years), and if you split all those updates out across those years, the view probably becomes somewhat less favourable in terms of content per year.

Still, it's definitely been an era that has had a huge impact on the game with all those system changes. For example it seems wild to me now to remember that before 2021, Galactic Seasons weren't even a thing. Or to think back to how we handled respeccing before loadouts. What has been Legacy of the Sith's biggest game changer from your point of view? 

My Most Played Characters

Earlier in the year, there was a thing going around in the World of Warcraft community that had people tallying up their total /played time to see which classes they liked playing the most, which prompted me to make a post about my own most played World of Warcraft characters. I vaguely recall thinking at the time that it was a shame that I couldn't do the same in SWTOR... which makes no sense, because the /played command in SWTOR is right there! I even posted about it in the past! I don't know when and why I suddenly switched to thinking that you couldn't check your characters' /played time in SWTOR. Sometimes I do worry that it's a bit early for my brain to start deteriorating when I'm only in my forties... either way, that random misconception has been corrected now, so I thought it was about time to check back on all my alts and finally do another post on the subject on this blog too.

Shintar - 239 days

I always like to say that I enjoy playing alts, and I do, but I almost feel like this kind of shows the opposite - that in reality, I'm a maining woman who mains. How else could Shintar the trooper have more than three times the play time of the second character on this list? (Interestingly, the ratio between first and second place was similar for my WoW characters.) Though I guess it does help that she was the first character I ever created, all the way back in 2011, and has remained my main ever since. I fully anticipate a future where I'll be able to say one day that I've spent an entire year of my life playing as her.

Golu - 76 days

I'm not surprised that my Twi'lek Sage is in second place, considering that she was one of my first alts and the second character on whom I hit the level cap of 50 back in the day. She also has remained my "main alt" consistently since then, but I am a bit surprised that her play time is that far behind my main. I guess I haven't spent much time raiding on her in a while.

Fali - 40 days

My first Jedi knight coming in third place is no surprise either - again, she was one of my earliest and most played alts for a while, even if she sees a lot less play time these days. What does surprise me is how quickly the numbers fall off from third place onwards, especially when compared to my WoW top five. I've played SWTOR since launch without taking any noteworthy breaks, and I've pretty consistently stuck to the same characters, so I would've expected my alt stable here to have much higher numbers than any of my WoW characters. However, it looks like those five years of absolutely insane World of Warcraft binge-playing back in my student days still beat close to fifteen years of slightly more moderate engagement with SWTOR.

Racelle - 30 days

I'm slightly surprised to see my second smuggler this high up. She is still an old character of course (created in 2012), but as the previous sentence implies, she wasn't my first smuggler (who ended up further down the list, in ninth place). I guess the first smuggler's Gunslinger play style never really clicked with me, so it makes sense that I ended up giving this one more love almost immediately. Plus there was a time when I did a lot of PvP with her, as she currently sits at valor rank 85.

Sigex - 28 days

It should tell you how firmly I am entrenched on Republic side that the first four spots are all in Republic hands, and only in fifth place do we have our first Imperial character. The "Shinquisitor" was created at the start of 2013 and levelled as part of a duo with Mr Commando. Even though she was relatively late to the party, I do consider her my Imperial main these days (she's also the GM of our Imperial alt guild) so having the most play time out of all my Imps lines up with that.

Looking at the full list of /played across my entire stable of alts, I would say the patterns I saw were very similar to what I noticed in WoW, in the sense that older characters get pushed up the list a lot simply due to the fact that levelling used to take so much longer in the game's early years. My knight and smuggler really haven't seen that much play recently, and yet here they are, in the top five still.

Comparatively, I've got to go quite far down the list to find a character created in the current decade, simply because levelling is so fast and once I'm max level I tend to play less (with the exception of my main, who raids regularly). Fangirl, my first character on the French server and the highest-ranked among these more recent creations (she was created in 2022 for seasons), only comes in 13th place with 13 days /played.

As a bit of a side note, I found that I had an old spreadsheet for this, and since it also had a column for valor rank, I checked that too while logging through all my alts. Turns out I have very few characters nowadays who have never done any PvP, and my average valor rank across the board is 47. Plus I have two characters in the mid-80s - I should really push them all the way to 100 to have a few more Elite Warlords... 

Star Wars Stuff I've Been Watching on Disney+

I haven't written about any Star Wars media outside of SWTOR in a while. In fact, the last post I made on the subject was about season three of Visions last year.

I meant to write about season two of Andor when that first came out, and I still have the empty draft for it saved, but even though I enjoyed it a lot, I somehow couldn't get myself to put down any words about it at the time. I'm doing a rewatch now to see if that sparks anything in me.

In the meantime, I thought I'd do a summary post to cover a few other Star Wars things I watched on Disney Plus over the last few months. I enjoyed all of these, but at the same time they didn't have a huge impact on me.

Maul: Shadow Lord

When I first heard about this show, I honestly rolled my eyes. Darth Maul was never among my favourite characters, but I guess he was kind of cool as this mysterious, quiet assassin type in Phantom Menace. The way they brought him back in Clone Wars though... oof. Even if they did end up doing some pretty interesting things with him towards the end, he still remains a character to me that has been horribly overused and about whom I needed another show about as much as I need a hole in the head.

However, then I realised it was going to be animated, and the animated Star Wars shows from the last decade have all been quite good to be honest, so I gave it a chance anyway and it was... indeed pretty good!

It does use a lot of known Star Wars tropes, so if the thought of seeing another young padawan of a wise old Jedi Master slowly getting lured to the dark side makes you want to puke, this show is probably not for you. But if you can at least tolerate more of the same old, it's done extremely well. In fact, I thought that was what really made the show interesting: it was always clear that the young Jedi and Darth Maul were going to end up working together somehow, the intrigue was in how exactly this was going to happen in a manner that still made sense.

I definitely enjoyed the end result, even if I still think it's funny that Sam Witwer's excellent voice acting has turned Darth Maul into an incredible smooth talker when he was originally introduced as a character who basically didn't talk at all.

The Ninth Jedi

So that one episode of Visions got a whole spin-off show! Like the past two seasons of Visions, it basically seemed to get zero marketing and I only found out about it via a random reddit comment.

As I mentioned in my Visions Season 3 post, I never thought that Kara was a particularly interesting protagonist, and after watching this show I would in fact go so far as to cite her - or rather, the fact that her English voice actress makes her sound like she's eight years old at all times - as my prime annoyance with the whole thing. Is that just one of those anime tropes? Because I noticed the same "problem" in other Visions episodes.

That's largely where my criticism ends though, because while I found her portrayal slightly grating, it wasn't enough to put me off the show as a whole, and I still found her journey and the plot as a whole quite interesting. Yes, it's once again a light side/dark side story, but with what I considered an interesting twist from approaching the subject a bit differently than canon Star Wars usually does. It also included the best use of lightsaber colour crystals reflecting a person's personality that I've ever seen.

I saw someone comment that they wished the sequel trilogy had approached Kylo Ren similarly to the way the antagonist was handled in this, and I've got to concur that that definitely would've made the sequels more interesting.

The Mandalorian and Grogu 

So this film had the dubious honour of being the first Star Wars movie I didn't go to see in theatres... not because I thought anything was particularly wrong with it, but because I had simply fallen out of the habit of going to the cinema (though I finally broke my nearly seven year streak of not going by seeing Nolan's Odyssey in August).

I was happy to watch this on Disney+ though, and there it lived up to everything I had been told about it months earlier, which was that it was basically... fine. A fun romp that feels like several solid episodes of the TV show strung together into a single plot. Grogu was cute, Mando was badass, and the new friendly Hutt character was likeable. I guess "fine" is not what people want to see when they go to see Star Wars on the big screen though, is it? I will say that I'm still not sure what exactly the goal was in releasing this as a big feature instead of "just" having more TV episodes.