The Republic: Expanding -- The Star Wars: The Old Republic Show

Written by: GAMEBREAKER.TV (@gamebreakertv) | May 1, 2012 8:24 am

53 Comments

During the weekly Q&A for Star Wars: The Old Republic, Game Designer Daniel Erickson spoke of new species coming to the game by the end of the year.

This kind of major change to the game prompted the panel to think of an expansion.

Is it possible for SWTOR to release an expansion by Christmas? Larry Everett was quick to point out that BioWare still has its full development team, and Ed Park explained that the majority of the team has to be working on new content now because as the game ages there are less and less bugs to fix. Those two points coupled with the company being extremely under budget, make the possibility of an expansion even more likely.

Each week, our panel of SWTOR experts discuss the latest ins and outs of BioWare’s sci-fantasy MMORPG.

The regular panel consists of Gary Gannon, Massively columnist Larry Everett, Darth Hater Editor-in-Chief Justin Lowe, and PvP blogger from Taugrim Ed Park. Tune in as they discuss this week’s news on a show we call the Republic!

The Republic: Expanding -- The Star Wars: The Old Republic Show

AdventureQuest Worlds

Gannon Plays Ep6:
Total Domination

Gannon Plays has a new home!Read more »

Comment
1:00:41

Live Call-In Show

After Dark Ep33:
“Xbox, Go Home”… You’re Drunk!

Microsoft has pulled back the veil on it's new console the Xbox One!Read more »

24 comments
45:20

World of Warcraft

Patch 5.3: Blizzard’s First Ever Live Video Interview!

Legendary is joined by Blizzard's Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street and Brian Holinka for a live video interview!Read more »

27 comments

Mike Johnson

Not gonna happen

They’ve been dumping all their developers into making free monthly content, EA wouldn’t be willing to dump another 100 mill into this game

And beside, you know by “new species” they mean “human with skin”
- http://www.facebook.com/chaz.rpg Chaz Davis
  
  Elves are Humans with pointy ears and Dwarves are just short humans with beards…
  
  But hey, all the cool kids like to hate on TOR so lets keep trash talking the game!
  - Mike Johnson
    
    You’re adorable
    Dwarves have a different body structure than humans. They’re shorter and bulkier
    What’s the difference between a Chiss and a human?
    
    We could have had playable Wookies and Rodians, but hey, I guess that would require EFFORT on Biowares part. Wouldn’t want to overload them or anything
    - http://www.facebook.com/chaz.rpg Chaz Davis
      
      Different body structure, yeah, fancy way to say they are just short humans, and again I didnt hear any rebuttal that elves look like humans with pointy ears.
      
      A lot of games have spieces that are near-human in their appearance, either very similar complexion or facial features, not just Swtor. Would it be cool to play a Rodian or Wookie? sure! But it would actually take some work to do, not just a reskin like in the other games.
      
      I mean if they really wanted to make justice to the Wookies they would have to add Kashyyyk as the origin planet, change the voiceover of the playable character and all the NPCs that interact with you to aknowledge the fact that you actually are a Wookie.
      
      Maybe some people dont care about that at all and they just want a Wookie reskin, it would look hilarious but I dont really think that is the approach they are going to take with the new species
      - Mike Johnson
        
        If you think a dwarf is just a human scaled down by 50%, you’re the dumbest person I’ve ever talked to.
        
        And secondly, you seem to be under the impression that I think it’s fine when companies just make elves look like humans with pointy ears.
        
        And lastly, we MIGHT have been able to play, you know, INTERESTING races if Bioware didn’t dump all their money into 5 billion hours of dialog that people space bar through
      - http://www.facebook.com/chaz.rpg Chaz Davis
        
        I enjoy the dialogue, is the selling point of the game, If you dislike the dialogue and still bought the game you’re just a dumb consumer.
        
        If you didnt buy the game, then congratz you didnt waste your money on something you already knew you didnt like, that doesnt mean there are players out there that actually enjoy the voice acting and the story.
        
        In fact, ragarding some of the things Justin Lowe said, while I agree Bioware has realeased some buggy Operations when the game came out, I dont think they should be focusing on pleasing the Raiding crowd any more, they burn through the content anyway and they are always demanding more, I’d like to see more class stories, this is a story driven mmo, not a raiding centric mmo.
        
        Bioware cant outwow wow, they should try to do their own thing.
      - Mike Johnson
        
        All I read was:
        “Hi, my name is Chaz and I enjoy paying 15 dollars a month to listen to people talk for 5 minutes at a time”
        
        I knew gaming was dead but Jesus Christ I didn’t think gamers were THIS easily entertained.
http://www.facebook.com/jono.bradley1 Jono Bradley

Possibly… think about it this way, a new update each month? So this month it’ll be 1.3 and so on for the next few months. I imagine Game Update 2.0 will be a first paid for expansion. That doesn’t only gives them 7/8 months?!
- Mike Johnson
  
  1.2 came out 2 months after 1.1
  
  Game updates are slowing down.
http://www.facebook.com/people/You-Lilphucker/100003567602561 You Lilphucker

so they are finally going to give you the rest of the release candidate, all that stuff they stripped out of the game beta just before release. You just gotta pay for it, lol.
Kristinn Heidar

The game still has HUGE amount of basic issues that need to be fixed before thinking about expanson.
H S

Sounds to me more like 1.4 will be the new 2.0, only you will have to pay for it. EA just wants the customer to pay for the games needed fixes, move along, move along.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000979667979 Matthew Simonton

Exlosive Conflicts Hard Mode is one of the most fun and difficult raiding experiences ive had in an mmo.
- http://www.facebook.com/chaz.rpg Chaz Davis
  
  Meh, according to Justin, that is already on “farm mode” and many raiders already left and are not coming back, not sure why Bioware is keeps trying to please that crowd, they should release chapter 4 already, I want to know what happen to my Agent.
http://www.facebook.com/Gurgletus Hannu Kankaanpää

it seems to me like you just jam when you need to talk about swtor now, just ditch the show and focus more at GW2
Kristinn Heidar

I can’t belive Im listening to this. PPL think that 7 year old WOW content would be up to scratch if it hadn’t been updated? And ppl are NOT looking for quantity. They are looking for quality. Way to many of these latest MMO games are only thinking about quantity and forget the quality.

WOW has the quality rather than the quantity. Compare WOW zones vs SWTOR planets. ALot of maps in SWTOR but they actually offer LESS than WOW in terms of quest variables. Every SWTOR looks nice and detailed but thats it. The MOBS are just crappy developed and unintrested in these groups we are seeing. And we are talking human AIs standing 20 meters away that dont agro. Stupid and badly designed. WOW doesn’t do this and it makes the game more quality and more fun to play.
Jay

LOL everyone on the show has GW2 bags under their eyes…
- http://profile.yahoo.com/ADEN6X6TYCORSSGEHKWMBIHDHY Eclipse
  
  Except for Justin, he’s a true TOR fanboy and didn’t prepurchase.
Avan Gore

Netflix does not like my country or my money. Probably partly the fault of infamous GEMA. (
http://twitter.com/Zedris Zedris

hahaha game thats at 1.7 mill subs and dropping steadily is thinking of a expansion. how about they try and pay off the costs for 1.2 then launch and then fixing the crappy game and then we can talk about a new expansion maybe.
- Kicknpups
  
  I was wondering the same..I had a great comparison to how DAOC still has subs but then I thought. DAOC was and still is 10 times a better game then SWOTR. I played SWOTR Till I G2 came for sale and I won’t ever go back..I just wish people would buy my account..Sad when gaming accounts sites won’t even touch them!
swtorftw

I wish you guys could find a serious raider or min/max person for when you talk about class changes. All you guys talked about with the sniper changes was pvp. Marksmanship was under performing in pve and now is much more even with the other 2 specs.

As for pvp, yes marksman is more bursty than the other specs but it is also mitigated by armor. And the abilities that were buffed were all abilities that were mitigated by armor (as well as being avoided by tanks) unlike the damage from the other specs. In the end I am not a big pvp person so I can’t really say that marksman (and their hybrids) needed this for pvp, but it seems like it was the 1 spec that could take the buffs without making them OP.
swtorftw

Completely agree. No bugs that I have noticed, and the hard modes are quite challenging and complex.
izola

i dont think this game is gonna make it
kyle robinson

Yeah the more info BW releases on this fail game the more i’m convinced i’ll never be back.
izola

i should edit my previous post, what i meant to say was, i dont think this game will ever attract the massive pvp crowd. it had the potential but pvpers are finicky creatures and it seems most of them are already gone.
Kicknpups

I honestly could not sit threw this video. Usually I love GBTv videos but I have no idea why you guys are wasting time on this game? It’s honestly a failed game.The subs are falling SO fast. When I tried to login into my two diffrent servers @ peak time PvP wait was over 2 hours. My guilds of around 20 peeps on avg peak time have disbanded… I know not all servers are the same but this seems to be the case…I would rather watch an hour of Tera info and Im not a Tera fan actually far from it.
- kyle robinson
  
  Yeah I think they still cover this game due to relationships and politics. I’m sure the guys know this game is terrible. I was really shocked when they discontinued the sanctum. Rift is still going strong has a healthy population amazing updated ect..still the best mmo on the market. Swtor fails in comparison. BW should of used the TRION blueprint.
  - Epilo
    
    “this game is terrible”, “Rift…still the best mmo on the market”, both unverifiable statements delivered as facts. I love playing SWTOR, and would never even try Rift, but I’m happy you think it’s the end-all.
    
    Maybe you can explain to me why you are spending time commenting about a show that covers a game you find inferior? (And try to do it without using the word “fanboy”.)
Bwcultist

people play swtor still? thought that thing had sunk long ago
- tehixe
  
  Nope. Just because WoW loses 800k subscribers and is still huge doesn’t mean an MMO needs to be that big to succeed. SWTOR is still the only MMO with a story and people still like that.
  - Mike Johnson
    
    ”
    SWTOR is still the only MMO with a story”
    
    You CAN”T be THAT retarded…
    - tehixe
      
      You CAN’T be THAT rude. Right? You probably meant to act like a human being, NOT an animal. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here.
      - Bwcultist
        
        spacebar through the “only” thing they have… is what everyone does, class story is good rest are kill 10 rats with talking
      - tehixe
        
        As far as I’m concerned SWTOR’s story is an order of magnitude beyond what they have in other MMOs. In other MMOs, it’s “block of text, doesn’t matter who cares” interspersed with the very occasional cutscene. While the non-class quests don’t have as good of stories, many of them are still very interesting. You miss out on some good stuff if you just skip it.
      - Mike Johnson
        
        I hate to break this to you, but a lot of the stories in SWTOR… Are CRAP.
        
        They’re poorly written and full of plot holes.
      - tehixe
        
        Yeah, not nearly as good as WoW’s “HERE IS BLOCK OF TEXT NOW KILL 10 RATS.”
      - kyle robinson
        
        Hey buddy how old are you 12 lol .
      - tehixe
        
        Well there’s one animal. Congratulations on figuring out how to type before evolving opposable thumbs. You’re a credit to subhumans everywhere. Also remarkably free of shame as to your pre-evolved status given that you apparently post under your real name.
  - Timothy Eng
    
    I agree with this.
    
    WOW was the generic fantasy MMO that has brought the game to be considered mainstream. I would like MMO industry where the games are very diverse instead of all aiming for the biggest cut of the pie, because it does seem to stunt originality and we tend to get bored of them quick. That’s why I’m kinda of glad that it seems TERA is doing pretty ok, because of how different it is from the tab targeting of GW2, SWTOR and WOW. While its focus is action combat, another game might have a focus like say story.
- http://www.facebook.com/chaz.rpg Chaz Davis
  
  wow, people still hating on the swtor videos? I thought the trolls already moved on
  - kyle robinson
    
    Na no one hating just telling the truth. Sorry fanboy
    - stevmcw
      
      its pretty much dead my server has 17 people at peak times in the fleet.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Furulund/580865650 Robert Furulund
        
        was pretty much worst endgame game ive played since wow launch endgame… not going back..
David Sherwood

Rather than the 4 tv wall have you considered like 3 screens and 3 camera angles, and you can just change the camera for different backgrounds. also you could have an ad screen this way.
kyle robinson

SWTOR is the DCUO if 2012 it had a great beta a lot of hype but when the product was released it fell short. Fanboys then deceided to defend all the flaws which turns off the majority of the player base(which is needed) because when ever some one brings up a valid point for need improvments fanboys swarm in to the point where the non-fanboy say screw this game so many other MMO’s on the market i’ll just go play something else. Eventually you have a mega server for a game still filled with bugs and fanboys, the game goes f2p to p2w. I can honestly say I enjoyed the KOTOR series more than SWTOR.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  Not all of them are fanboys. Some of them are shills using multiple accounts to ‘manage expectations’.
  
  It is part of the business.
  
  MMOFringe
http://www.facebook.com/davidallmighty David Cohen

An expansion would suck. I would not dish out another 50 bucks this quickly.
John Yavenue

I’ve been a supporter of Star Wars the Old Republic since
2010 so this is not a flaming for Bioware. First off I believe that 1.2 million
from 1.7 million shows a huge decline in people playing. I don’t know about
anyone else but seeing 13 people on the fleet at prime time is quite
discouraging. I understand that Cowen and Company cannot back these accusations
by numbers. Also I believe you will see EA pad the numbers on subscriptions due
to opening new regions. But going by people playing the game you can see a huge
downturn. Many of the friends that I have in game are not canceling the
subscription hoping that Bioware will pull something out of there but.

As for an expansion by December I honestly would be so
fuming I don’t think I could speak. Reason being is that there are so many
issues with the current engine such as cast times of abilities not being picked
up by the server, end game content not being polished and very little of it, and
other issues like server population which was said not to be addressed until mid-summer.
Therefore August and only for select to and from servers and later for pay transfers.
Personally I have four level 50s and 12 million in legacy stuck on a dead server,
so I think this gives me good reason in wanting current bugs and engine fixed
prior to a new expansion.
http://profile.yahoo.com/R5LCXTKOQ23X3N3PT2APUFUS3I dave

For all intents and purposes if your server is dropping in population wait for character transfers and move to a more populated server.

if you have to take a break until then, play another brand new MMO, and experience the same thing as all people experience: Bug Fixes, rushed content, class balancing based on player perception.

by the time character transfers come out you should be willing to come back and try again on a larger server, and experience the new content and availability of people to group with.

losing Subs is part of the formula with new MMOs. The vocal minority fails to see this or understand it, i guarantee that this game will maintain a healthy population, and will continue to run. I play on a high population server and i have never experienced 13 people on fleet at prime time. as a matter of fact the only time i have seen such small numbers is at 730 am EST.

Over time SWTOR will continue to flourish and make many people happy, and the rest of the gaming world with the demand of instant gratification will move on to the next new thing, constantly being disappointed that it is not as polished or complete as the other games they played in the past.
Timothy Eng

From the discussion of panelists, it does seem like the limitation of MMOs nowadays really is lack of end game content.

This kind of asks the question whether the millions of dollars and years are worth it in developing the infrastructure of the game for content that people are people will burn through in a couple months. It seems like I spent more time following the development of SWTOR over actually playing it!

To top it off, theres like a window of time after launch where you have establish yourself as a MMO thats doing well, avoiding news like server merges, providing good customer service to justify the need for a sub! I think if youre not already playing the game, new content really doesn’t bring people back in because people are already looking to the horizon for the newest game.

It’ll be interesting to see games that require subs like TERA and Secret World after a couple months and see if their population is unsubbing in record numbers because the community is yelling “There’s nothing to do!” We’ll see if Gary’s “TERA will be free to play in 6 months will pan out!”
Timothy Eng

I agree with Ed. Played a Sniper / Gunslinger since launch, and it is wreckling ball if played correctly (I did watch Ed’s video months ago, but it took actually playing it in all types of situation to really understand it well).

People have said that it seems like most boring classes, while that might well be true in PVE (which i did extensively), PVP snipers are amazingly fun and dynamic to play, as well as to a point, almost overpowered.

Other ranged dps don’t have the luxury to face-tank melee when the situation calls for it, since cover makes your cast time nukes uninterruptable, unchargable, and hunker down/entrench gives 20s of CC immunity, perfect for preemptively stopping people from knocking you off the bridge before capping the ball or gain a 4 second advantage from inquisitor / bh’s stun resisted.

The drawback is indeed its not for everyone. I’m glad that Ed was astute and have enough real PVP experience to represent us snipers/gunslingers.
GamersDenTV

sry Mr. Gannon.. Hookem Horns are not “devil horns” .. is ref to longhorns in Tx.

The Republic: Expanding -- The Star Wars: The Old Republic Show

Gannon Plays Ep6:
Total Domination

After Dark Ep33:
“Xbox, Go Home”… You’re Drunk!

Patch 5.3: Blizzard’s First Ever Live Video Interview!

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Sign in to your account