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Producer Keith Kanneg posted his first official greeting on the official forums and announced the studio’s SWTOR 2020 Plans. First, we have official release date for Game Update 6.1. Next to follow will be two smaller patches. Keith also speaks of the Star Wars Celebration, what the dev team will focus on for this year in the game and teases “something major” for the 10th anniversary next year!

Keith Kanneg – the game producer for SWTOR over at BiOWare, is not big on words and he writes on the forums less and less each month and each year since he took the torch from Ben Irving in 2017.

In the very last week of January Keith posted a short message on the forums. Community Manager Eric Musco teased a bit earlier what we can expect from Keith and he did not lie.

The Thank You Note

The post opens with a thank you note to all of us, who stood by the game and enjoyed it in 2019, but also to all of those new faces that just picked it up thanks to the big success of The Mandalorian TV Show and the release of Rise of Skywalker movie:

“Happy 2020! It has been a little while since my last post and I wanted to kick the year off with a bit of an update. Before I do, I really want to say Thank You to everyone who has stayed with us and have joined us to play SWTOR. It’s been very exciting to see so many players on beginning and core worlds, participating with older expansion content, and joining us on Ossus, Onderon, Mek-Sha and Corellia.“

Keith also continues to claim that he constantly plays the game all these years. Perhaps this is the reason why he is never available for Developer Live Streams of why he doesn’t have much spare time to post on the forums and interact with the community.

“I continue to play the game a lot as I believe it’s vitally important to have the same type of experiences as our players. This enables me to leverage what I learn which helps guide future changes with our game.”

Joking aside, there are a few big questions that Keith attempts to answer with his forum post. While his answers are more on the hints and teases side, I will split each bullet point from his post and analyze it a big more to see what can come out of it.

The February Subscriber Reward

“Tomorrow! – The Umbaran Patrol Tauntaun will kick off of as a “February” sub-reward. Be a subscriber at any time before Feb 29, starting tomorrow, and you will have the Tauntaun waiting for you in your in-game inbox.“

Whether it’s because the end of the Fiscal year is near or because BioWare wants to simply reward its loyal fans and subscribers, I personally don’t care much for the real reason.

You can expect tomorrow (most likely) another post from me, detailing this new promotion – how, when, what, why, where and more words starting with “w”.

Game Update 6.1 has a release date

“Game Update 6.1 – Many of you had the chance to check out the Alderaan Stronghold and the upcoming class changes on PTS, and we really appreciate the feedback you provided. I am happy to announce (barring any emergencies), Game Update 6.1 will launch on Tuesday, February 11th.”

In my opinion the Alderaan Stronghold is the major feature coming out of the first update to the game for 2020.

The Sorcerer and Sage changes that originally had to be a part of this update have been pulled back, because of players’ feedback.

BioWare somehow did not realize on their own that the changes intended for healers will also affect the DPS disciplines in a negative way, so after it was pointed out by a lot of players, the studio made a decision to pull these changes back and save them for a later “Healers Balancing update”.

I spoke at length about what is coming with 6.1 in my previous few SWTOR articles, but let me just remind you here that this update will also feature some small story element on top of the class changes, the new stronghold and the usual bug fixes.

What’s next after 6.1

“Game Update 6.1.1 and 6.1.2 – Our next two game updates are currently scheduled to be pretty quick on the heels of 6.1. You should expect to see these updates in the next couple of months after 6.1 is live. They will include some new quality of life changes for Conquests, more class changes, Master Mode Dxun, and more! Stay tuned to the PTS forum for more details on specifically what is coming in each update.“

Keith only speaks of two additional minor fixes and quality-of-life updates after 6.1. Both of them coming quickly after the big patch.

Following their decision to change the Updates Naming Policy in 2020 and going forward, BioWare and Keith also revealed with this text that we should not expect any new story elements at least until May.

Story is usually tied to PvE, so the smaller updates may contain new PvP content. It’s been a quite some time since SWTOR saw a brand new Warzone or Arena (not a reskin).

The Master Mode (Nightmare – for the old veterans) of the Dxun Operation is coming, but I don’t think this will appear to a large percentage of the population and I am willing to bet that most if not all of the new mechanics for the bosses have been developed and established long before the Operation was even finished for Onslaught.

The Conquest changes are labeled as “quality of life”, which I understand as “we will tweak some of the values of some of the missions, yields and reward pools”.

We are once again excited for 2020

“2020 – The team is working on a lot of exciting things for this year. We will really have a big focus on quality of life, updated stories, PvP improvements and much, much more. We want to ensure your time in SWTOR is very enjoyable by having plenty of activities, goals, and rewards.”

That slogan doesn’t bear much of a meaning these days in live service games. The developers and their bosses are supposed to say these things in the beginning of a new cycle – in this case, a new year.

Keith implies that we should expect more quality of live updates than anything else with the way he worded this segment.

He doesn’t even speak of new content, but instead mentions “PvP improvements”, not “PvP content”. That kind of contradicts with what I wrote in the previous segment about the possible new PvP maps coming out of 6.1.1 and 6.1.2, but… oh, well.

I am a bit confused by the “updated stories” phrase. You don’t update stories, you write new ones. So, how should we understand this?

I sure like his last sentence from that quote. As generic as it is, it’s always nice to have some kind of a simple insurance like that. Or ar these just empty words? We will know at the end of this year, I guess.

UPDATE: 31.01.2020 ► Creative Director Charles Boyd stepped up to clear the confusion and reveal more details on what new story is coming to SWTOR with update 6.2 and beyond.

The Celebration Cantina 2020

“Star Wars Celebration- Right now we are also looking forward to this year’s SW Celebration! We are planning to have a Cantina there and would love to see you all in person. We’ll have some cool announcements, swag, and many SWTOR developers available for you to meet.”

What? Did you thing there wont be one? I may not be able to be there, but if you happen to grab an extra bad of “swag”, be sure to throw it my way!

“Cool announcements” is in plural, you know. One can only dream of a Cinematic trailer for the 2021 Expansion. A giant, real expansion (can be paid, I don’t care, as long as it’s big). Like… well… like the one SWTOR never had, really. Before you tell me – Shadow of Revan may have been $20, but it wasn’t a “real and big expansion” like the one I dream of.

2021 and the “something major” tease

“2021 – SWTOR’s 10th year! This seems like a great target to work towards doing something major…more to come, of course, but I wanted you to know we’re already starting to plan out the next few years.”

When Musco spoke of the tenth anniversary in his first post(s) for the year, I was a bit surprised. BioWare usually avoids talking things past the three to four months mark whene it comes to future plans.

Now Keith speaks of the game’s tenth anniversary too. And not only that be he teases that they are working on “something major”.

Hell, he even promises that the plans span in to the “next few years”. Really? I am glad to hear that. Whatever security and assurance they have received from EA, this is the first time in years I personally read such brave writings from the SWTOR staff!

Hey, for a finale, how about we take it up a notch! How would you react if BioWare announces later this year that with the multi-year plan they have for 2021 and beyond, the game will finally get a graphical over-howl and a new engine to support all of the new group content that is coming… Phew, enough dreaming.

That’s it. I said all I wanted about Keith’s letter regarding the SWTOR 2020 plans. Your turn!