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BioWare did great and incredibly poor at the same time when it comes to SWTOR in 2018. This is my retrospect of what I liked and where the game failed to deliver!

Did you know that BioWare’s Casey Hudson promised 2019 to be the best year for SWTOR? But that’s hope for the future. Today I want to turn your attention to the passing 2018, with a bit of hint to events from 2017 (that’s how empty 2018 was). At the end of the year I think it is time to do a recap of the quality of the content we got from the developers, what was good, where they failed, how and why.

This is my personal list. I urge you to add your own suggestions via the comments below or make up a completely different list of your own and share it with me!

Please, beware of spoilers in this article from both the text and videos below!

WHAT SWTOR DID RIGHT IN 2018

This is the positive list. Here I have my top four things I liked about the game in 2018. They are not ordered according to anything. I’m just listing them in random order.

OSSUS AND JEDI UNDER SIEGE

The whole update over all was a beacon of light in the looming darkness. With Anthem taking up what seems to be pretty much all of BioWare’s (and EA’s) resources, there was little left for SWTOR in the late Summer and Fall of 2018. Jedi Under Siege delivered new meaningful story content that is not copy-paste for both factions. Instead we have different approaches to the same event for Republic and Empire.

5.10 came with a ton of bugs related to the new features outside of the story – bugged daily missions, missing or doubled companions and companion Mission Alerts, broken Operations and the usual lag when it comes to massive gathering of players. The last one is not new, but many people were reminded of that issue when they went to defeat the Ossus World Bosses. Yet, all of these do not prevail. Every update for SWTOR has issues of that kind. It’s not good, but we are used to it by now. D’OH!

Where Ossus did great is in the story. I dedicated a whole article to explain why I loved Jedi Under Siege so much. It makes me feel like a veteran of SWTOR. Several of my viewers and readers have told me things like “I don’t get that” or “I can’t understand what’s happening, who is this?”. As someone who has gone through the origin stories of all classes multiple times and as a huge Malgus fan, I was most pleased to see how the events from Jedi Under Siege developed.

I don’t want to repeat myself, so instead I will forward you to my SWTOR Jedi Under Siege Story Variations, Choices and Consequences article. There you will better understand what I mean.

MOVING AWAY FROM THE ETERNAL EMPIRE

When it comes to Star Wars, you can always safely bet that the story revolves around a family drama or tragedy. The Eternal Empire chapters were exactly that. A step in the wrong direction that took way too long.

If it was presented as a regular update and the story continued shortly after that with what now we know is the return to the eternal conflict, I think nobody would have objected to the “Valkorion distraction”. Both Fallen Empire (KOTFE) and Eternal Throne (KOTET) expansions were good in their own pace, but they were dragged for far too long. It’s been three years since it all started.

It’s good that BioWare acknowledged this as a failure and decided to scrap the rumored “third season”. Maybe that’s where and how so many of our beloved class companions got lost. It took them ages to return with some of them still missing.

RETURNING COMPANIONS

I am not overly attached to any of my characters’ companions. Except for Doc maybe (not on a romantic basis :P). I could never completely understand why some of you are so obsessed with this or that companion and demand their immediate return.

The fact that my Returning Companions with Jedi Under Siege article is currently the most popular from the SWTOR 5.10 Archives, speaks volumes!

In 2018 we saw the return of many fan-favorite loyal buddies. Just in 5.10 alone we got four coming back and not just any four – Khem Val, Jaesa, Nadia and Doc. In 5.2 Elara and Malavai came back. Through the year may others appeared in various places – Felix and Akaavi in 5.9, Corso and Risha in 5.7 and so on. I’m just quoting by memory. If you want an exact list, check out the Companions Status List.

Some of them came with a short and pointless conversation that doesn’t fully explain why they were unable to get in touch with you. After all you are one of the most famous names in the Galaxy, having created the Alliance and becoming its Commander (I hate this title, but it’s at least better than Outlander!). For some of them it was clear that BioWare had bigger plans, but had to change them on the go. For others the devs seemed to have found a good way and spot to bring them back via a story.

Has your favorite companion returned yet?

NEW GROUP CONTENT

While I was strongly against the Gods from the Machine release structure, I was glad to see the Operation completed finally in early 2018. It never felt like a real SWTOR Operation to me, having to deal with one boss at a time. The weird schedule, however, proved to do one thing right – each boss encounter was well balanced and designed with interesting mechanics. Not all of them were innovative, of course, but most were interesting. Izax was way over-tuned for the whole difficulty of the Operation, but the small hard-core community let that one slide and even accepted it with open arms, because challenging content has been missing from SWTOR for a long time. Having a new Operation in SWTOR after three years of absence brought many old players back to the game and held some of them for longer.

Then… 5.10 brought an unexpected Master Mode Difficulty of the same operation! Whaaa? BioWare shared plans to move to new group content design instead of focusing on improving old existing operations to tune them for a higher difficulty. We were told GFTM will not get a Nightmare mode. It did! It’s still too early to tell how great a job have the devs done with the new difficulty, but having something to actually really progress through if you are a hardcore raider, is a huge plus!

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Flashpoints, anyone? In 2018 Keith’s idea of delivering story content via Flashpoints in an attempt to cover more ground with one hit, continued. The story from “War for Iokath” from Update 5.2 continued via the Umbara, Copero (in 2017) and Nathema (in 2018) Flashpoints. While nothing too difficult, each Flashpoint offered interesting mechanics and puzzles for players to beat. Remember, Flashpoints are middle-tier end-game content. They are not meant to challenge the progression players.

The new Huttball map was met with mixed impressions, by the looks of it. Vandin introduced a few key differences and features compared to the original, but it was still the same game on the more or less same map and game mode to many players. It came with 5.9.3 and was the last piece to the Summer of PvP puzzle.

The Mandalorian Battle Ring was a bit buggy at first. It’s nice to have a new Arena if you are a Ranked player and I appreciate its inclusion, however simple its design was.

The Rishi Stronghold can be seen as a group activity as well. Its PvP features are a very interesting innovation and should serve well when you or someone else wants to organize their own small-scale (or big) domestic deadly tournament. It’s also one of the biggest Strongholds ever designed, also very expensive to fully unlock.

WHAT SWTOR DID WRONG IN 2018

Ok, admit it! Did you just scroll down to find this segment, because it’s the more interesting one? It usually is, I know. Below I will list four things or places where I truly believe the SWTOR devs dropped the ball.

SMALL UPDATES, LACKING STORY CONTENT

I talked about how story was developed and delivered via Flashpoints, didn’t I? This is a bad thing. The big boss over at BioWare Austin – Keith Kanneg, announced several times in his roadmaps that he wants to cover more ground by delivering story via Flashpoints. This way we get both new group content and story in one update.

The Flashpoint was good. Copero was a bit meh, but once again – it came in December 2017, so can be excluded. The story in Nathema itself was very minimal. As usual, it consisted of a short cinematic before and after the Flashpoint, which you were required to run solo for the story purposes. A couple of scenes with dialogue here and there in the middle of the runs. Wrap it up and call it a Story Flashpoint? No, thanks. We (well… I) are paying our monthly subscriptions and expect more from the game. The price of SWTOR’s subscription is on par with all other classic MMOs that still use this model. The content here is lacking, spaced too far from one another and lower than the quality bar which SWTOR itself raised so high back in 2011.

I was at least happy to revisit Nathema once again and see how the planet has changed since the death of Valkorian (aka Vitiate, the Sith Emperor, Tenebrae)

5.10 was a huge step in the right direction, but it was not enough to wash out the emptiness many of us felt over the year.

The Summer of PvP was awesome for the PvP community, but so many of my readers and viewers have come to me to share that they are leaving and unsubscribing until new story content arrives.

It’s obvious that the team lacks funding and attention from EA. However, SWTOR’s own in-game shop – the Cartel Market – is performing reportedly good. Where is the money from all the shinies being sold going?

The thematic “major updates” are not a good idea. They alienate huge portions of the community with nothing to do and continue to wait for their turn to come.

I wish every SWTOR Update was like 5.10. *cough* With fewer bugs… On the other hand – 5.10 had no PvP in it, if you don’t count the new Masterwork gear, but it wasn’t PvP specific anyway.

BAD QA TESTERS AND MANY BUGS

In the second half of 2018 BioWare decided to listen to the fans and opened up the Public Test Server (PTS) for players once again. Its availability being limited to only Subscribers, obviously prevented many players from accessing it, though. PTS is not to be considered a privilege to be on.

It may be normal for SWTOR that every update is delivered with more bugs than new features, but it is not normal for the industry! 5.10 alone, because it’s so fresh and we all remember all of the flaws very well still, is a great example. Companions missing or double-appearing in your roster, missions bugged and/or inaccessible, operation bosses broken, the usual lag. All of these are ruining what could have been the perfect patch for the year.

I can’t tell who and how tests the content, before it is delivered to the players on PTS and later on the live servers, but the internal QA testers are not always doing a good enough job.

Opening PTS for the Summer of PvP and later for the Master Mode GFTM was a good idea. The players helped discover some bugs and provided valuable feedback to the developers, who were able to bring the amount of bugs down the a more acceptable level.

IOKATH OVERALL

The whole Iokath Daily Area experience was a disaster for me. There has not been another daily area that I hate going to as much as the Iokath one. I didn’t like the planet from the KOTFE chapter either, but the journey there was at least riddled with story and was over quick enough.

The Daily area is a mess, boring and uninspiring environments, silly and pointless mission objectives, no interesting reputation vendor contents – to name just a few of the biggest issues I have with this thing.

Talk about lack of content…

Iokath, as you may know, is technically an addition to the game from 2017. I am still so frustrated with the high expectations I had for this one and how hard it let me down personally. I wanted to include it here as well. I cannot believe how long ago it was when the daily area was released, but because it was the beginning of the “Theron Story Arc”, I still somehow consider it “new content”.

I should include the Gods from the Machine Operation released one boss at a time with great delay because of various issues. It started in 2017, but finished in early 2018. My grudge is not so much with the Operation itself, I actually admitted multiple times publicly that I liked the encounters, but the staged release cycle turned this from an Operation into a “lair boss” as it’s now modern to be called. It could be because of my negative feelings towards Iokath, but I never enjoyed the trash pulls in the Ops. I usually enjoy doing the trash pulls. This is time for relief and funny talk in the guild between boss pulls. On Iokath I was usually like “Come on, let’s get past that and reach the boss ASAP, please!”

CHAOTIC GEAR PROGRESSION

If you are a veteran of the game and/or have been around through the countless changes in the gearing process, you are probably fine with the latest installment of the Tier 5 Masterwork gear.

What if you are a new player? How the hell is a new player going to understand all the variables, all the possibilities and all the options they have for gearing up their characters?

One good thing is that when you start Ossus, the game provides you a set of gear for free that will get you through the story (and all follow-up stories leading to 6.0 probably).

But if you want to play SWTOR as a true MMO player, what then? There’s Galactic Command with its insane RNG from the gamble-crates. Then there are the Ossus dailies and reputation vendors. But also Master Mode Operations. And… PvP.. and crafting… but also the many tiers of gear from 1 to 5! D’OH!

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That is all awesome. I have so many options, you would tell me. I remind you, that’s awesome from your point of view. It’s hard for a new-comer to get the grasp of all this. BioWare did great when they simplified and combined the resources for gear. They deleted many of the commendations and special tokens. I felt weird about that at first, but a general simplification of the system was a good idea, I admit. Unfortunately, with the new Flashpoints in 2018 came brand new tokens. Different, unique to the Flashpoint. Then the devs also wanted to give us an incentive to go farm that “new Flashpoint” and stuffed new Augments in it, then something else in the next “new Flashpoint”.

CONCLUSIONS

I started writing this post with the idea of it being no longer than 1 000 words. Well, I failed! I am a passionate Star Wars fan. I’ve been playing SWTOR since before its official launch and was one of the first people to register on the old forums when they opened – October 2008.

The year was more or less bad for SWTOR in my eyes with a couple of updates shining like beacons of light in the darkness – the 5.9 and 5.10 to be more exact. Everything else felt like it could have been packed up in one or two updates, not stretched for 8-9 months.

I started the post with a mention of Casey Hudson’s blog post and the fact that he promises 2019 to be the best for SWTOR yet. As a fan of the game I truly want to see this happen! With Anthem‘s release looming on the horizon (February 22, 2019), I am a bit worried that EA may force the SWTOR devs to “take a break” and not release much content at least until the Fall of 2019. This is the time when I predict the 6.0 Expansion will drop, by the way.

That was not all I had to say about SWTOR in 2018, but I want to put a stop here, because it’s already twice longer than I wanted it to be.

What about you? Would you like to add your top RIGHTs and WRONGs to my list? I would like to hear your thoughts!