WoW never advertised itself as a Story-MMO though, and neither do Blizzard devs pride themselves in high storytelling. But yeah, the story in SWTOR is WoW-level nowadays. Can't believe this is coming from the same company that did KOTOR, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, original SWTOR or KOTFEET. Ossus-Onslaught-Malgus "arc" is the lowest tier reductive rehash you can think of

Great, part 27th of the nothing-burger Malgus "story". Don't think Bioware writing team could get any lazier, unimaginative and predictable than this

Lmao. The saddest part is that they won't even read the actual first post and just take the title and pat themselves on the back for job done well plactating the playerbase with tiny changes to 70 PTS while everything else is left in the same disastrous convulted mess state it was

Small improvements to the grind aspect, but overall this is exactly the same convulted mess it's been from start and all of the core issues players had were left untouched. So yeah I guess thanks to listening to 5% of the feedback, the most important 95% remains ignored.

7.1 will release in February 2023 as part of a year-long 11th Anniversary celebration! Why just release a microscopic expansion on time when you can delay it, split what's little in it in half and celebrate for 2 years? As you can see the future of SWTOR is bright, this will be the decade of SWTOR! Stay tuned for 7.1 to find out what Darth Malgus is planning!

Such a grand 10th Anniversary celebration... And we're talking the SMALLEST expansion to date here...

I realize that and of course controller mapping itself is not an issue at all, but as you said, its all unofficial stuff. SWTOR controller gaming (and by extension console ports) wil never become mass-popular or possible without a built-in official controller default button map (which can be then modified) that people outside hardcore PC crowd will use. I mean, it's the same set of issues that plagued PC gaming for years compared to accessabilty of consoles. Stuff needs to be ready, working and available to use right after star screen without having to do anything. Hardcore crowd will always find a way but the more casual mass audience simply won't bother if there's any hassle involved making a game work.

The where's the official controller support and setup? Ain't that way WAY more important to have ready for February's Steam Deck launch than ability pruning? I would love if they had this kind of ambitions but there's really zero evidence of that whatsoever so far...

Definitely prefer this idea too and still trying to convince myself they will do console ports but... there's simply been NOTHING actually indicating that. No leaks, rumors, mining, nada. Ability pruning is like the only possible clue we have yet its so unsubstantial... heck, WOW got official controller support in recent years and we don't even have that for SWTOR I honestly lost hope at this point. Game is already halfway there in maintenance mode to me considering how much new content we're gettig these days, EA doesn't care to give it a higher budget but neither does Bioware seem like they wanna fight for this game. So yeah... it won't be TORtanic memes type of death but it's really far removed at this point from any definition of an active MMO that still aims to attract large number of new players and compete/eclipse the competion in the genre.

EA owns the particular product - the game itself, it's functional technology etc. They get to decide when/if they feel like shutting it down and if they feel like passing it to another developer/publisher (which they won't anyway). But Disney owns the Star Wars IP and they can decide to get another studio to literally remake the whole thing if they ever felt like it, or make a brand new MMO, they own the franchise. They got Aspyr to create KOTOR remake which is a part of a completly different company than Bioware/EA and no one had to ask Bioware or EA for permission. tl;dr SWTOR's fate is in EA's hands but Disney decides if there will be another Star Wars MMO and who would develop it

Let's net get hysterical here, this "expansion" that SWTOR's getting a decade after launch is smaller than previous content PATCHES, and even the last expansion (Onslaught) was barely larger so yeah. And EA's the most cut-throat publisher out there when it comes to shutting down servers, games and whole studios the second they dont bring in enough profit (let alone no-profit or even losses). So let's enjoy it while it lasts but don't expect SWTOR running for very long when /after it enters full maintenance mode (and well, we're clearly not far away from that unless something changes), this is EA we're talking about, not Valve, SOE, Blizzard etc.

A lot actually. At this stage, all the post-vanilla story updates and expansion content combined is probably 3x longer than any single class story. However, majority of it is the same story with tiny differences regardless of starter-class, some of it has faction-specific story (and each class gets a single class mission on Rishi). 2 playthroughs on 2 characters (1 Imp and 1 Rep) will cover you on pretty much all post-class story content.

Nope. No major publisher is even THINKING about developing any new AAA MMO. These proved to be far too risky investement considering required cost and gamer expectations. Maybe it will change one day, or quasi-MMOs/GaaS games will nearly morph into MMOs eventually, but there will be no new major one releasing this decade if ever.

The constant reinventing of the wheel and failing at it (and then taking months to fix it) is also one of the key reasons why SWTOR never GREW after the initial player exodus. ESO did and keeps growing despite having similar disaster launch, titanic memes, hardcore Bethesda fans swearing it off, dropping sub model etc. Yet years of quality improvements that had some coherent vision turned the playerabse around and developed positive WOM. Same goes for FFXIV which probably had the worst AAA MMO launch in history, yet now it's poised to become #1 MMO on the market (if it hadn't already). Bioware never had a coherent vision, constantly bumping from alienating one group of players to another and shifting their strategy 180 every year or 2. With 7.0 they seem to be going for a hat-trick of turning off literally evey type of a player still left in the game...

Wait and see responses lol... We can already see all of it on PTS and 99% of it is horrid.

And if they update the (starter) planets first your old characters will also stand out negatively in new/updated content so...same issue? Actually not the same, as updating character models first would mitigate your concern much better because the environments are viewed at a MUCH greater distance than character faces. So even if outdated, the far-away perspective masks the detail of sorroundings well enough versus outdated character faces seen up close 90% of the time

Or literally 3 devs left. It's the SMALLEST expansion to date, yet the first one to get delayed, despite the lowest amount of content released in prior year. And we're talking the second year of pandemic (which means already after most of the world figured how to make work environments function even if stuck at homes), a year of no other Bioware game entering crunch phase and Anthem 2.0 getting straight out cancelled in early 2021. So yeah, if that doesn't say skeleton crew remaining then I dunno. And I dunno how come upper Bioware management can allow this. SWTOR is the only ongoing Bioware project with some goodwill and active players left and will remain so until 2068 when Dragon Age 4 or Mass Effect 4 finally release. Anthem got canned, Mass Effect Trilogy is just a remaster, why don't they try and start rebuilding their reputation right away (or maintaining what's left of it) by caring for 1 last active project? Especially with KOTOR remake incoming... Obviously Bioware as a group has some pull with EA, they were allowed to spend hundreds of millions developing Anthem for years and years with little to none results so why not use that to help a game that managed to survive this long already....

Different tastes once again but your argument goes for basically every companion though, Im sure every player got some comps they hated with passion from the start and wish they were never forced to take them onboard. So being fair it's fair I guess that we were ALL forced to take all of them regardless heh. I mean, in an ideal world we would be free to pick, reject and kill any one of them but that would get extremly messy and costly developement wise. Then again, there WERE options in beta to kill comps and people did it and then complained they were short of that companion... which happened again in KOTFE until they just gave in and made them all returnable in Odessen terminal

Or that Bioware takes way too long to react, just like they did with first mergers. Really, you think heavy cries for mergers, dead queues and stuff since 3.0 were just overreactions or players making stuff up for lulz? Bioware had to cancel Ops Timed contest themselves during 3.0 because there was to little people playing lol. They always reacted way too late to pleas for server mergers and they will do so again this time. And like I said content release is the best indication when the population really starting plummeting.

Cries for servers mergers were ongoing since 3.0 and before. You're making up stuff based on no evidence. The biggest relative evidence is the amount of content getting released and it started going massively downhill since Ossus/Onslaught era. It doesnt' matter if only solo content was getting released during 4.0. Developement and resources-wise it was still a lot of content and continued throughout KOTET and then Iokath, Umbara, Copero, Nathema and Gods from the Machine OP.

That's why I said upscale&update, NOT replace. Any work done to Player Character face assets should be just about improving the resolution and details, not changing the style, colors or shapes.

As in the title. I don't get why Bioware's focusing on updating starter planets which still look at least decently, while Player Characters, vanilla armors or the Republic Fleet are all in much MUCH more dire need of a graphical update. Please focus on those areas first! 7.0 is getting a shiny new Character Creator yet the original 1.0 face textures, plastic hair or low-res complexions remain the same. It looks jarring and THIS is the first experience for any potential new players! Tenebrae's model in Echoes of Oblivion shows how well original models can look simply with higher-res skin assets. Players Characters often look comical standing next to core high-quality NPCs like Arcann, Tau or Malgus. In such a cinematic game like SWTOR our Character's faces are the most prominent in-game asset we are looking at most up-close, not plenetary details... That being said, if there's one map that should've been updated first/long ago it's the Republic Fleet. It had a wrong architecture and textures from Day 1 and you know it, as evidenced in the Republic Penthouse stronghold sporting the correct (and completly different) white&dark-red texture set that all other Republic vessels have. And when you actually get to updating starter planets (hopefully AFYER fixing Player Characters or Rep Fleet first...) then please DON'T overdo it. No one wants a Mek-Sha style "pretty and super laggy experience" on starter worlds.

Yeah, whole 1% will now do NiM instead of 0,5% Look, I get all the "gaming principles" stuff. I don't want the game industry constantly getting streamlined, dumbed down, casualized and trivialized to the point there's zero challenge or goals and pressing 1 button could complete an entire game. But there's a biiiiig difference between that and what 7.0 is doing. 7.0 is going MORE hardcore when it comes to gearing than even 1.0 did. How in the freaking world is this sensible for SWTOR in 2022??? - SWTOR was never Ops-centric in the first place - SWTOR was never big enough to sustain huge raiding playerbase even if it wasn't Ops-centric - SWTOR is at its lowest playerbase it ever was, EVERY player remaining is now critical - SWTOR's direct competion succeeded the most in the past (WOW) or succeeds the most currently (FFXIV, ESO) by attracting and respecting both story/casual and hardcore (raiding) players, not straight out dumping all over casuals and being proud about it - SWTOR adds less content than ever. In 6.0 cycle, easy gearing was at least one of the thing even casuals could and in many cases wanted to do in between massive content droughts. It became one of the casual grind activities. What will replace it for 7.0? Tons of new content which didn't happen in the past 3 hears but now suddenly it will for some mysterious reason? Even in the classic MMORPG scene, raiding decreased heavily in relevancy and imprtance in the past decade, so going after that crowd and formula NOW while disregarding other type of players/content/hooks/incentives is just mindboggling. It would at least make sorta sense in say, 2013 or around then, but not nowadays...

Actually, between 2013 and 2017ish the content release cadence was pretty similar and stable, indicating that the playerbase (and thus the game's revenue) was rather stable as well, or declining very slow. It's from Ossus/Onslaught period that thing started going downhill at a rapid pace. But as you said, if the playerbase's been decreasing from Day 1 then obviously the "breaking point" is bound to happen one day. I say most of the people on these forums (paying subscribers still here after 10 years) are not so much gloating and counting on the game's death just for kicks, lulz or prediction bragging rights but rather because they are heavily concerned that the amount of awful design decisions in 7.0 may turn it into that breaking point for SWTOR, which they do NOT want to happen to the game they like and supported for so long.

Yes it's still here. And barely releasing any new content in the past few years. You think that's not a sign of a shrinking playerbase?