So...Is KoTET the Last Expansion?

[Shepird]

Feels more like Mass Effect but with a Star Wars element instead. I have been around since beta. This is a completely different game than when it was released. I feel like the game has gotten worse with each new iteration. First time I have seriously considered unsubbing. I think I will and wait to see if they ever fix the game. Tired of running the same flash points over and over. At least you used to get crystals to get the gear you wanted. That's gone. I feel like there is no reason to keep playing after I finish the story.

[DarthDymond]

Actually I was thinking about it... They surely can't make a full-scale war against YV, because YV were pretty unknown in the Galaxy when they arrived (and other characters from the era were pretty well known - even after Palpatine eradicated most of the Jedi lore, Tionne had no problem singing songs about Naomi Sunrider) but they can have some conflict in the Wild Space and use it to get Zakuul out of the picture (Vong tech could possibly give Zakuul technology run for its money).

I always thought the Vong would make for a good one-off enemy in a pair of linked Flashpoints, like Kaon / Lost Island, or maybe up to the scale of CZ-198 with a daily area as well. There's a line in the original KOTOR that makes it sound like Canderous Ordo ran into a Vong coralskipper ~350 years before this game, so a smallish advance/scouting force would fit the lore and be about right for a pair of Flashpoints, give or take a Daily Area.

 

Of course SWTOR seems to be moving away from FPs and Daily Areas, and the Vong are somewhat... divisive, to put it mildly, among SW fans, so I doubt we'll ever see that actually happen.

[FlavivsAetivs]

We know the Chiss knew about the Vong and were even fighting them by Thrawn's time (shortly after the Phantom Menace). We just don't know how long the Chiss had been fighting the Vong.

 

But yeah... KotET looks like it's the last expansion. The story had a pretty intense ending (I gotta say I was far more impressed with KotET than with KotFE), and the story of Revan and the Jedi Knight is finally over.

 

~ Eudoxia

[Kyrrant]

KOTET isn't the last expansion. While Bioware might say otherwise (...because marketing), the purpose of KOTET is to clean up after KOTFE and get the galaxy to a stable, fertile state where new stories can be more easily told.

 

I mean, lets face it, KOTFE was just a mess of a storyline. While many of the ideas were interesting, there were just too many of them and clearly no real plan to resolve all of them cleanly. Sometimes you have to stop teasing stuff, stop creating new arcs for the future, stop making new plans and just spend a few hours tying all all the loose ends...

 

It's prolly not the end of SWTOR, but it's definitely the end of the Zakuul arc.

[Simpanx]

This epansion however does feel like a maintenance mode.

 

Take LOTRO for example when it went into maintenance mode:

"LOTRO now recycles. It recycles mechanics, in the form of simply upping the level limits to old content when they raise the level cap. It recycles art, sprinkling lovely new vistas with seven year old building textures. The community recycles itself, in the form of the decadent arguments and discussions, repeated over and over until any meaning other than the repetition is lost." source

 

Just look at all the reused textures. animations, sounds etc. that they claim to be new content in Kotet.

Also see my previous post of some of the reused *****t<-- Feel free to add other reused content.

Edited December 1, 2016 by Simpanx

[Alssaran]

I think Bioware already confirmed that they are drafting the next expansion, and that technical work on the first aspects of the new expansion will start in January. That was during one of the November live streams.

 

The ending of KotET didn't actually leave me feeling as if the galactic story was complete. It much rather felt like Zakuul was no issue any longer, and you're part of a galactic standoff with three powers instead of two. Essentially, it's the Cold War all over again. Once one of them breaks the peace, all will start a war with each other once again.

 

There were also some genuine hints at a following expansion that will involve forces from outside the galaxy/unknown regions of space. Here are some of these clues:

 

 

Valkorion directly states that we should remember him once the alliance burns to ashes. He wanted to create a "perfect society", and bring perfect order to the galaxy. This has something of that nonsensical "Palpatine knew about the Vong invasion" feel. Fans have stated that Palpatine tried to raise the Galactic Empire in order to counter the Yuuzhan Vong invasion a few decades later. I don't believe this story at all, but Valkorion hints that he knows something we don't. This might be simple paranoia and manipulation though.

 

The second hint is the mail you receive from the Scions of Zakuul. They say they will return once the time is right, and that they had another vision after you claim the throne. The Outlander stands "in the middle of a maelstrom, bracing the chaos."

 

The third hint is Satele sensing something else. As if the Force is trying to prepare you for something greater. I think that was part of the last bunch of messages you receive after completing KotET.

 

The fourth hint is the Outlander's final speech as Peacekeeper of the Eternal Alliance/Emperor of Zakuul. He says that with a relative peace fullfilled, the Alliance must now turn their sight to the stars around them. It's not clarified whether he means "the known galaxy outside Zakuuls sphere of influence" or "an entirely different region". Both are possible.

 

 

It is possible that Bioware will come up with a new race that invades the known galaxy. The Yuuzhan Vong are controversial, but their hatred for anything technological could be a great adversary to Iokath and the completely robotic Eternal Fleet. If they encounter a scouting vessel in unknown space and examine it's datacore, they would pretty much know about the dangerous fleet of mechanical warships in a yet unconquered part of the universe. This could directly pit the Vong against the mechanical forces of the Eternal Alliance and Iokath/the two older factions.

 

Those are obviously just some "What if..." thoughts. Authors of continuing games rarely write themselves into an unsolvable corner. Espescially when you have an entire unexplored cosmos to work with. I remember when the biggest threat in Warcraft was Sargeras. He was that uncomprehensible monster, destroying worlds for the sake of it. Now they introduced an entirely new adversary. Those guys are the reason Sargeras sleeps with the lights on - Void Gods and their attempts to create a Void Titan.

 

You don't even have to look at Blizzard. Just stick with Bioware games. The known galaxy in ME defeated the Reapers. They are supposed to be the most destructive enemies to ever have existed. Millions of years of harvesting, and one of them could wreck a good portion of a fleet. The galaxy destroys them (which I assume is the canon ending), and they reverse engineer Reaper technology. The citadel is rebuild, technology is enhanced, and the galaxy comes together in an unprecedented peace.

 

How can we make a new game? Exactly! Just travel to another galaxy and introduce a new threat. The essence behind that is not very "Star Wars", but there is a ton of tricks to write yourself out of a difficult corner.

 

The ending to KotET felt more like an Avenger deal to me. The Avengers have assembled. Now sh*t is going to hit the fan somehow, and we have to use the Eternal Alliance to keep it away.

[Nocturnalchemy]

I feel like it's worth noting that, even when you've gone to every planet in the game, there are still some fairly large gaps in the galaxy map, containing presumably unexplored space, full of who-knows-what kinds of potential threats. And all of this is above and beyond the possibility of an extragalactic threat (which, if it happens, I deeply and sincerely hope is not the Yuuzan Vong).

[Vaerah]

If SWTOR is shut down, you won't get a replacement Star Wars MMO. EA has the exclusive rights to developing Star Wars games, and they're not going to roll out a new Star Wars MMO if the one that preceded it was losing money.

 

Nothing lasts forever, even in SWTOR was the dream MMO, one day it'd get so ancient, mechanics just to outdated and it's lose most of its playerbase until it's not profitable any more.

 

That's why MMO companies can do and really do "sequels". See GW1 => GW2, EQ => EQ 2 and so on.