In a recent interview, Anthony Daniels who plays C-3PO in the Star Wars films had this to say about The Force Awakens, “The secrecy has been beyond ludicrous.” The same can be said for BioWare and their upcoming expansion for Star Wars: The Old Republic, Knights of the Fallen Empire.
As many of you reading this can attest the information regarding key system changes has been non-existent. The expansion is set to release in six weeks and there are many unanswered questions, most of which have nothing to do with the story.
Based on what we have been told, Knights of the Fallen Empire touches almost every aspect of the game. That doesn’t mean everything is getting completely overhauled, but nonetheless, players like myself will still need to overcome four years of muscle memory to adapt to the new changes. Operations and Flashpoints, Leveling, Companions, and Crew Skills are just a few of the systems that will be modified.
I understand not wanting to reveal parts of the story, which everyone knows will be fabulous, but ironically that’s all we seem to be getting at this point. The last live stream revealed some of the cinematics from chapter three, and there’s another live stream to show parts of chapter one. I don’t get how you can give away parts of the story, but not tell us about crew skill changes, companion changes, and leveling changes.
Actually I do get it. Knights of the Fallen Empire is available to subscribers only. By showing off parts of the story, you may lure in new subscribers who are hoping this is the closest to KOTOR III they’ll ever get. That’s fine, but there are many of us who have been subscribed without interruption from day one. We know that the story will be second to none. We’re more interested in seeing how the sausage is made, and want to know how the game is going to change mechanically.
Somewhere in the hallowed halls of BioWare they must have a QA team hard at work testing out the new expansion. I’m guessing that they aren’t just handed the new game and told to blindly play it and give feedback. Someone is probably giving them direction. In other words, the changes have to be written down somewhere. Case in point, here’s a response to a recent question someone asked about class stories.
 Eric Musco |
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If you start a brand new level 1 character, you will still be playing the Trooper Class story, the Planetary Arcs, and more. It is true that we have some changes planned for leveling in Fallen Empire, but we aren’t going to take things away from you! It just more about “streamlining” your leveling. I am actively working with the team on a blog/post which will describe everything in detail. So, more details to follow, but in short, you are completely safe. -eric |
At this point, the team should be working on bug fixes and not system implementation. This David they are carving should almost be done. They should be smoothing the edges, adding a little more detail, but as far as the pose, well that as they say, should pretty much be set in stone. It shouldn’t take that much effort to put together a blog post about the leveling changes because they are probably written down somewhere. A few extra minutes spent on that response would probably have been enough time to cut-and-paste the details of the changes that are planned. No special blog post necessary, just a super cool response to a player question.
I know that BioWare has been trickling out bits of other information such as the class changes, and conquest changes. It hasn’t been a complete dessert, but now it’s time to open the flood-gates and let us know what we can expect from Knights of the Fallen Empire.
Back in the release days I just accepted that Bioware does not talk to the community. Then when I took my first long break from swtor and went to wow I was amazed at how much I could learn each day on mmo-c. Other games seem to do similar from what I can tell (wildstar, eso, lol). It is disheartening to see how little Bioware chooses or is allowed to interact with us. All that being said, I’ve still resubbed for the sub goodies (Nico etc) and anticipate arguing with myself come release over whether to play destiny (their new expac is great), halo 5 (same release date as kotfe), wow, or the outlander chronicles that is kotfe.
I play both WoW and SWTOR and will continue to do so. It’s quite the contrast between how Blizzard and Bioware operate in terms of communication. Blizzard isn’t perfect, but they are a lot more open when it comes to their expansions and patches.
Blizzard does closed beta, but they do not have an NDA, so players are welcome to post videos, images, and talk about what’s going on. Bioware does closed testing but have a strict NDA so the information stays within that closed group.
I understand the need for an NDA because of the story, but then again Bioware has already shown us chapters one and three of KotFE.
I think Knights is going to be a very good expansion and introduce some nice changes to the game. Honestly, if it were not for the fact there are no new Ops or FPs, I think players would much more excited about it.
Hey, having trouble commenting here (trying for the 3rd time now); I guess because posting a link is not allowed? Anyway, thought you might wanted to know that SWTOR Strategies picked up this article.
I’ll check the settings regarding links, but thank you for the heads up.
I’m curious, but do you know how swtorstrategies is viewed in the eyes of the swtor community? Are they well regarded or considered a pariah? What they did with my post is straight up plagiarism.
They’re a content thief, pure and simple. I am not knowledgeable as to whether they use automated processes to skim content (which you could probably block) or not. My assumption is that if anyone knows a way, it’s reddit/r/swtor
They didn’t skim anything. They outright plagiarized the post. They actually had someone rewrite it essentially using synonyms of words that I used. Seriously it looks like a rough draft that I would’ve written in 8th grade. Maybe that can be automated, I don’t know.
To be honest, I’d almost preferred they did a straight copy and paste. At least that way they would have preserved the integrity of what I had written.
I don’t believe it was automated. I believe that it was outright stolen and the words swapped around to make it look different. It’s not difficult to find out the “author” information online and there’s a chance that they might be getting compensated for this.