Even in 2018, SWTOR is still present in the MMO market – but what does the year look like? How did the past year go? Does the game still have a future?
Star Wars: The Old Republic has survived the year 2017 and is still being developed. But was 2017 a successful year for the title? Or is SWTOR “dying”?
We look back and make a few predictions about where SWTOR will go in 2018.
2017 – the year of many mini-patches for SWTOR
In total, the developers managed to fit in 17 patches in 2017 – an average of one update every 3 weeks. Really big “feature” updates happened roughly every 2 months, so players were occasionally provided with new Flashpoints or smaller bits of story missions. Even the Galactic Starfighter, the “space PvP mode”, received a new map.
Essentially, 2017 was the year of major revisions. There were a lot of changes to the game’s balancing and even entire systems, like the Galactic Command, were revised multiple times, rewards adjusted and improved. Story missions received the new difficulty level “Master”, which was particularly challenging and offered even veterans a solid challenge.
Fans crave new content
Especially the last few months did not go particularly well for Star Wars: The Old Republic.
The year 2017 was primarily marked for Star Wars: The Old Republic by improvements. Instead of providing a lot of new content, the developers tried to change existing systems. For example, the Group Finder became the “Activities” window and now tempts with daily rewards for different types of gameplay content.
Many players also express disappointment that there was no full-fledged expansion last year, as the release of Knights of the Eternal Throne took place in 2016.
Instead of really big content updates in the form of an expansion, there were only small patches that continued the story, but could not satisfy the fans’ hunger for long.
Exploit ruined the economy of the servers
In December, there was even a particularly severe exploit that has severely damaged the economy of SWTOR. Players could buy special “gifts” for just a few credits and then sell them back at a higher price – to the same vendor. Billions of credits were created from nothing, and the global trade network (the “auction house”) was heavily damaged. The developers are still working to contain the aftermath of this exploit.
Future of SWTOR – salvation in 2018?
After the past year brought only a few innovations, fans are already fixated on the announcement of the roadmap for 2018. Basically, it’s about time for a full-blown expansion with a new campaign and perhaps a few new planets along with a hub. A larger operation would also do the game good, where bosses are not only released every few months.
2018 will be a decisive year for SWTOR – can it attract new and old fans again, or is BioWare slowly running out of energy?
In summary, one can say that 2017 was not exactly the best year for SWTOR, as there was little content, but many improvements. Perhaps the long breath will pay off, as the numerous updates will be beneficial in the future – only fresh content and more story are still needed to utilize the many improvements.
Especially the last patch 5.6 was rather a disappointment, according to the voices of the fans.
