Finally, it is clear what is behind the mysterious teaser trailer from two weeks ago: The free-to-play MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, short SWTOR, gets a new digital expansion called “Shadow of Revan”.
Popular villains never die
As the name suggests, the expansion revolves around “Revan”, who should be familiar to older players of “Knights of the Old Republic”, but one can also find out a lot about him in SWTOR.
The good man is back with his followers, who creatively call themselves “Revanites”, and wants to use the chaos between the Republic and the Empire to finally bring peace to both factions by simply wiping them both off the star map. You can guess whose job it will be to prevent that!
2 new planets, 5 new levels, lots of story
Similar to “Star Wars: The Old Republic – Rise of the Hutt Cartel”, the level cap is raised by 5, so it will now be possible for all players to advance to level 60. To make this possible without issues, there will be a total of two planets where you can roam. First, you will head to the pirate-infested tropical world of Rishi, and afterwards, you will go to “Yavin IV”, where the Massassi warriors live, who not too long ago served the Sith…
When dealing with a notorious villain like Revan, you naturally don’t want to miss the chance to showcase him epicly – therefore, the entire expansion will be quite story-heavy and is expected to feature a lot of cutscenes, just like we are used to from the main game.
If you are not interested in that and prefer “blunt PvE action”, you won’t be disappointed either. The expansion will offer you two new role-neutral Flashpoints as well as four hard modes of the already known Flashpoints and a total of 10 boss enemies in two new operations – plenty of challenges will be provided.
Goodbye, talent trees!
Together with the early access on December 2, BioWare is saying goodbye to the talent trees in the game, which will be completely removed and replaced by a new “Discipline” system. Each class will have three discipline paths and progress will happen automatically with every level up. The first impression is that the old talent trees have simply been cut together and the biggest talents will now be automatically accessible to everyone.
What at first glance sounds like “leveling the playing field” is ultimately intended to lead to more character personalization, because according to the developers, there were always only one or two options in the trees that players chose. To enable individualization, there will be additional “functional choices”, which can be freely selected between battles and offer practical advantages, making it easier to prepare for tough boss enemies or simply to take on solo content more comfortably.
More information about the new disciplines can be found on the official developer blog.
As usual: Pre-order bonuses
As is customary with Star Wars: The Old Republic, all those who choose to pre-order the digital expansion and meet certain deadlines will receive special benefits. If you decide to spend the €17 by November 2, you will get access to the new content a week earlier, a “large statue of Revan” as a housing decoration, and the first addon “Rise of the Hutt Cartel”. If you choose to pre-order by December 1, you will still receive the last two benefits.
If you are already a subscriber and decide to invest early, you will even receive a special bonus, as you will now earn 12 times the amount of experience while playing class missions – this should enable you to reach level 50 almost exclusively through these missions. The experience boost is valid until December 1, so anyone deciding to buy early will enjoy this bonus longer.
The digital expansion will officially be released on December 9, but pre-ordering starts on December 2.
