By John Walker on January 12th, 2012 at 5:01 pm.
Next week’s update for Star Wars: The Old Republic is to be called Rise Of The Rakghouls, and plans to add some major new content to the game, focusing on story-heavy features. Senior Creative Director James Ohlen explained to us in an interview we’re posting very soon that along with “a lot of bug fixes and modifications”, there would be the titular new story-focused flashpoint, as well as expanding Karagga’s Palace to have five times as many bosses (five). And this is just the first of many updates they’re already working on. March promises a new planet, warzone, operation, guild banks… And then there’s the updates they’re already working on for next year. You can see the accompanying trailer below.
According to Ohlen, the entire SWTOR team is still working flat-out on content for the released game. Next week’s update is just one of many they’re currently working on, with another much larger patch planned for March. It will contain part two of Rise Of The Rakghouls, and an entire new planet containing an operation and warzone, as well as “the second half of the Legacy System, which is the real meat of it.”
March will also see the game update with guild banks and PVP ranking systems, and Ohlen promises another sweep of bug fixes and tweaks.
And they’re already working on updates we won’t see until next year, with the story written out. Ohlen didn’t want to reveal how many are currently planned, but he let slip they’re already working on the fifth. The voiceover work is already being recorded for next year’s content.
There are also plans for something called the Event System, for which details are not yet forthcoming. However, we did manage to prise out of Ohlen that it may include something relating to Warhammer’s social quests – where you unofficially group with whoever is around at the time to complete a non-instanced task – something that we were surprised didn’t feature in the game at launch.
As for whether SWTOR means we’ll never see another single player KOTOR game, Ohlen was tight-lipped. For now, he said, the entire Austin team is only focusing on SWTOR. But he did hint that after six years on the project, there’s a chance he’ll be wanting to do something new soon.
12/01/2012 at 17:05 sneetch says:
“But he did hint that after six years on the project, there’s a chance he’ll be wanting to do something new soon.”
I’d be willing to guess that something new after spending 6 years on a Star Wars RPG won’t be a Star Wars RPG. :)
12/01/2012 at 17:21 admanb says:
It will probably be something at another company, because when he tells his boss he wants to work on something other than SWTOR they are just going to laugh and laugh.
12/01/2012 at 17:10 c-Row says:
The social quests were one of the best features in Warhammer Online, so I welcome their addition to TOR.
13/01/2012 at 22:33 Alceste007 says:
Yeah, I liked the social quests in WAR as well. I am really enjoying my time in Star Wars atm.
12/01/2012 at 17:11 2late2die says:
Zombies? Really? Come on BioWare, you can do better than that. I am disappoint.
12/01/2012 at 17:13 Tuskin38 says:
They’re not zombies, and they’re in the game already, this next update just expands on the lore.
12/01/2012 at 17:41 Snesso says:
Technically not zombies, but yea, it sure seem like they are trying to make it look like they are.
12/01/2012 at 17:57 mageta says:
Rakghouls are no invention for this game. They already appeared back then, when bioware still was doing good rpg’s – in Kotor.
12/01/2012 at 18:03 PleasingFungus says:
Even though they existed all the way back in KOTOR 1… it’s kind of hard to get excited when the ‘big new content update’ is a zombie planet.
Zombie planet! Woo.
12/01/2012 at 18:08 RakeShark says:
I’m sure Bioware’s zombies will be better than this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ915aEA1oA&feature=player_embedded
I was with it until the red “EXIT” sign.
12/01/2012 at 17:15 DK says:
Hope they get macro functionality in soon, because there’s a boatload of 1 minute cooldown general buff abilities in the game, that are way too much of a hassle to use without macros.
12/01/2012 at 17:20 Wreckdum says:
I’m more worried about the animations causing ability delay in pvp. I refuse to pay again until they fix that. How are you supposed to competitively pvp when half the time your interrupts work and the other half they have almost a full second delay because the previous animation is still playing.
Gameplay > animations
12/01/2012 at 17:22 admanb says:
its fine lrn 2 jump cancel
12/01/2012 at 19:43 caddyB says:
no seriously, animation based play looks good until you try to pvp. then it just doesn’t work at all.
12/01/2012 at 20:24 Khory says:
I have found that setting macros on my mouse works wonders. I use a naga and just list abilities in order by priority and they fire when they are off cooldown. Otherwise there would be wayyy too many keybinds to keep track of.
12/01/2012 at 17:16 killian101 says:
I hope they fix space this year…
12/01/2012 at 17:17 Tuskin38 says:
What wrong with space? Its fine.
12/01/2012 at 17:29 RakeShark says:
Honestly, I’m enjoying space. However, I would really like more space.
12/01/2012 at 17:33 mentor07825 says:
No it’s not. There’s just so much of it! It gets all over the place, full of clutter and things.
12/01/2012 at 17:46 RakeShark says:
According to science, space will expand to accommodate the clutter and things.
12/01/2012 at 21:15 Ross Angus says:
Perhaps they’ll add infinite space.
12/01/2012 at 17:47 Astatine says:
Blimey, I wasn’t expecting new content this fast.
Hooray!
12/01/2012 at 18:27 Hoaxfish says:
Well, they’re also know for day-0/pre-order DLC in their other games. Now, if they can keep it up, and fix the major bugs, then it might be a little bit more surprising.
12/01/2012 at 18:27 GIGAR says:
Now, where did I put that Death Star…
12/01/2012 at 19:07 ReV_VAdAUL says:
Nice homage to the Aliens trailer.
12/01/2012 at 19:10 vecordae says:
Looking forward to this. I just started playing SWTOR and have found it to be good times. It’s a bit slower paced than I’d like, but I generally find the overarching story for my character to be interesting enough to draw my attention for a few hours every other evening. Little about it is innovative, but it’s a nice, polished sort of experience so far. It might even keep my attention for more than two months if I manage to find a guild that doesn’t annoy me.
12/01/2012 at 20:30 Khory says:
I’m glad to see the updates keep rolling out.
It’s a fun, fairly polished experience when you consider the overall scope of the project. It sounds like they have plenty of good ideas coming down the road. Can’t wait!
12/01/2012 at 21:22 prowlinger says:
Seriously…. please add floating skill bars and windows… and add more skill bars… having fixed bars and the lack of room for many skills really is not fun…especially coming from the well designed Rift that allows amazing GUI customization.
I never player KOTOR… I am not a big Starwars fan… but I am hooked and really love it… it is a nice change of pace from typical fantasy mmos lately.
I just hope for the devs that are keeping a team going for new content… they keep another team to iron out the remaining bugs and also another team to implement new features missing such as –
* Floating windows / customizable GUI / more tool bars
* A barbershop
* Adding in some missing guides or tooltips (such as .. the item mod stations are useless now especially when you can mod items any time by right clicking on said item in inventory… )
* Adding that your companion (if out) will travel with you in the taxi instead of vanishing.
* Adding in the missing ‘shuttle’ or vanishing animation when using fleet pass or quick travel item.
*Ship customization and pvp with ship vs ship
*Many more warzone arenas (heck they are very simple maps… they should have about 25 of these for us to battle on …)
* 1 on 1, 2 on 2, 4 on 4 (can include companions for no more than 4 vs 4) dueling arenas that you can queue up for… best 2 out of 3… (faster and smaller gameplay than warzones to test your mettle).
12/01/2012 at 23:58 derbefrier says:
Man me and my buddies were saying how awsome it would be for some spaceship PvP. The on rails crap is a nice change of pace but this is an MMO not a single-player game I wanna blow up some Tie fighters controlled by real people. I wanna get some friends and assault an imperial space staion(instanced space flashpoints would be awesome too). I want a sandbox i can fly around in fighting other players. Would also be cool to customize the look of your ship or to be able to buy different ships if something like that was implemented in an expansion that would be awesome
oh yeah serious why the hell cant i move my action bars around the screen is that really too much to ask for? I love this game and i have been having a blast but this is 2012 dammit lets us move our action bars around!
13/01/2012 at 02:46 Vesperan says:
“* A barbershop”
…your number 2 requested addition to the game is a barbershop?
12/01/2012 at 22:19 Bugamn says:
How many Bothans died to bring this information?
12/01/2012 at 22:44 AnthonyJaxin says:
So nobody is going to make the joke about how the rakghouls and the trailer could totally be a Dead Space joke?
12/01/2012 at 23:11 bleeters says:
B-b-but… I helped make a rakghoul plague cure whilst questing on Taris.
Oh, fine.
12/01/2012 at 23:53 ffaann says:
(http://url7。me/c6i4 )
(http://url7。me/c6i4 )
13/01/2012 at 01:41 Jez says:
It’s definitely unfair to criticise it so early. There are definitely problems with it, and the interface is immature and limited, but even so they’ll get there.
One particular annoyance with melee combat is the slower animations that delay the contact and thus the damage registration.. really annoying for stuff like Ravage and Vicious Slash.
I guess that’s the punishment for playing the TOR equivalent of a fury warrior in PVP! Gah!
Professions are bad, too.. I just crafted Might Hilt 924 and I almost threw up. Borefest.
BUT STILL… early days.
13/01/2012 at 05:19 jrodman says:
it’s totally fair to criticise it, but it may not be realistic to expect it all to be polished at this point.
13/01/2012 at 09:18 miopmiop says:
◢████████████◣
http://mcaf.ee/ly0pt
██████████████
██ ◥██◤ ██
◢███ ◥◤ ██◣
▊▎██◣ ◢█▊▊
▊▎██◤ 2●0 1●2 ◥█▊▊
▊ ██ █▊▊ shopping for new year!!!
◥▇██ ▊ ▊ █▇◤
██ ◥▆▄▄▄▄▆◤ █▊ ◢▇▇◣
◢██◥◥▆▅▄▂▂▂▂▄▅▆███◣ ▊◢ █
█╳ ╳█ ◥◤◢◤
◥█◣ ˙ ˙ ◢█◤ ◢◤
▊ ▊ █
▊ http://ygn.me/hENu17p
▊ ◢◤
▊ ⊕ █▇▇▇◤
◢█▇▆▆▆▅▅▅▅▆▆▆▇█◣
▊ ▂ ▊ ▊ ▂ ▊
◥▆▆▆◤ ◥▆▆▆◤
13/01/2012 at 11:24 longjjh says:
(http://url7。me/c6i4 )
(http://url7。me/c6i4 )
13/01/2012 at 13:25 ericks says:
I feel like I’ve seen this exact same trailer fifty times already.