Keith Kanneg has surprised us with the release of a new Summer Road Map for Star Wars The Old Republic.
Keith started off with some general statements again emphasising their focus to provide fun, story-driven gameplay with a variety of multiplayer battles and making ‘quality of life’ improvements.
He also noted that much of the upcoming changes are based on Player Feedback.
We’ve met with a lot of players, influencers, press, did Livestreams, held Cantinas, received lots of emails and private messages, and reviewed the feedback on our Forums and on Social Media. As a result, we’ll be making a lot of changes based on your feedback…
One of the key ‘quality of life’ improvements coming will be to give more players the opportunity to participate on the PTS in the testing of pre-release gameplay starting with some of the upcoming PvP changes.
Here is the rundown on the upcoming content release schedule.
Game Update 5.9.1 – Solo Fun – May 22nd
To celebrate the release of Solo: A Star Wars™ Story on May 25th, they’re bringing back the Nar Shaddaa Nightlife Event on and offering a variety of new Cartel market items (including a sale of Scoundrel specific items). There will also be a Double XP, CXP, and GSF reward event run at the same time.
Dates for the Events –
- Double XP, CXP and GSF Rewards – May 22nd – 31st(?)
- Nar Shaddaa Nightlife Event – May 22nd – June 30th.
Summer of PvP – July – September
They will gradually be releasing the following PvP related content and improvements over the course of the summer starting in July and concluding in September.
- Converting more, if not all, Warzones and Arenas to allow cross-faction grouping (queuing).
- A new Arena map – set in Shae Vizla’s Mandalorian Compound (see Vulkk’s interview).
- A new Huttball Map – set in the dangerous and dizzying heights of an industrial planet.
- The End of Season 9 Ranked in July – rewards being announced late June.
Content and Issues that they’re looking into:
- They’re investigating ways of improving the experience of all Warzones.
- They’re looking into the unranked matchmaking system to see if they can make some improvements.
- Exploring giving unranked players more queue control over which Warzones and Arenas they want to play.
- Focusing attention on exploiters, cheaters, and adjusting how Ranked Warzones complete. This will be an ongoing effort.
Plus! A new Stronghold with a beach-front view, set on Rishi (again, see Vulkk’s interview) with a twist!
For the first time, we are introducing a Stronghold designed around PvP which can be tailored toward Player-driven duelling, 4v4, or even 8v8 battles! We know there’s a passionate audience of PvP players who run their own duelling tournaments within their Strongholds, so we want to support that by making some under-the-hood improvements and by tailoring the spaces to support different styles of play.
Never fear, we’ll be able to decorate it how we like (within the hook system?) but, they’re also enhancing the Stronghold decorations to support PvP gameplay.
This means using decorations to hide behind, layout obstacles(?) which will allow the owner to create custom PvP layouts for battles amongst friends.
Beyond September
In the Fall we can expect the following:
- The return of some ‘very cool’ Companions.
- Big updates for Guilds
- The introduction of a new storyline
- That will kick off a new set of challenges and adventures that will continue into the new year
At the end of the year, we’ll introduce an exciting new storyline and multiplayer gameplay – all leading to an explosive conflict with new characters to meet and planets to explore in the new year.
What do you think of the new Road Map? Are you looking forward to any of these changes?
