20th December 2011 was the official launch of my favorite MMO. So much has happened before and after it. I want to share some of the many memories I keep.
If you have missed it, you can find PART 1 HERE!
In the first article and video I shared a lot of old and rusty memories from the years leading up to the launch of SWTOR. Mostly my personal experience and struggle – the confirmation of the game’s development, the long years of waiting and finally the moment of launch.
In Part 2 of my “SWTOR in Retrospect” I will share more memories, facts and stories from my time in SWTOR after its launch. Once again, sit back and enjoy this article/video. The time span for this one is 2012-2015.
The Video Version
Since the script became way too long for one video, I split this article into 2 videos each one covering 2 years of time. Part 1 takes a look at the events and patches in SWTOR from my PoV from 2012 and 2013, Part 3 of the video talks about everything most important from the more recent times – 2014 and 2015.
Both videos contain old clips, some I have never shown to the public, some are from my older YouTube channels, some you may remember if you have been following my channel for long enough. There’s something different between the videos and the article before you, so I hope that both reading and watching will be fun.
2012 – The Dark Age of SWTOR
The crazy Launch
I covered this briefly in Part 1, but now I want to show some examples and talk more in depth about the game’s performance and its player-base.
Yeah, everything was booming in the first few months, the servers were all full through the roofs and especially in December 2011 and January 2012 things were more than perfect. Everybody was noob(ish), everybody was excited, everybody was living out their own personal Star Wars adventure.
Patch 1.1 – The most unexpected update
“A mysterious outbreak of rakghouls threatens the worlds of the Tion Hegemony, a strategically important sector of the galaxy that has remained neutral to both Republic and Imperial advances. Now Republic and Imperial forces race to the besieged world of Kaon to eliminate the threat, desperate to secure the allegiance of the Tion Hegemony for themselves”
I think very few actually expected the first major update to the game to arrive so soon. Only ~2 weeks have passed after New Year. Most of us were still enjoying the explorations, PvP, side quests, new planets and regions and Bioware added a brand new content, EndGame content at that. I, myself, as a huge zombie fan, welcomed this very happily. My sentinel had been lvl 50 for almost 3 weeks when this patch landed, so I had the chance to get to Kaon immediately. Wow, the story inside, the choices, the atmosphere, it was all so great. I still remember how I loved the little touch and effect of the light balls that you pick up upon entering the dark areas of the instance. The 2nd boss was a hell of a challenge until we figured out the mechanics. The bonus boss in HM was a death spreading machine. The final conversation after the 3rd boss was very interesting and the options we had seemed meaningful and provoking to do the instance 2-3 times with different characters so we can see what happens next (when the next one, Lost Island, would eventually be released) with the story depending on the different choices we made.
Patch 1.2 – My Legacy and the 4-man Operation
“The galaxy is in turmoil. War rages across countless worlds as Republic and Imperial forces struggle for control of critical resources. Amidst the chaos, threats emerge from all sides. The planet Denova, known for its extensive deposits of baradium ore, has been seized by a band of mercenaries and veteran Imperial defectors with mysterious motives.”
When Bioware released this patch, we believed a new era of challenge is introduced. For the first time ever a Flashpoint was so hard and unbeatable for casual players, that the developers rightfully placed it as the first of many (we hoped) Tier 2 Flashpoints. Lost Island proved a decent upgrade to Kaon Under Siege and an exellent ending of the mini story arc with the Rakghouls. Or so we thought… The world event, the first one I mean, from April 2012, about the Rakghoul plague on Tatooine just blew our minds and made us believe that Bioware is capable of truly turning the game into something unseen for both casual players as well as hard core raiders and PvPers.
A new operation was introduced and the need for new EndGame content was covered, for a while. Explosive Conflict (or Denova as I call it, for short :P) was a good step up in challenge compared to the already desperately boring Eternity Vault and Karagga’s Palace operations. It was here and in this patch when the everybody’s favorite monster/boss/villain was born – Warlord Kephess was a great final encounter of the new operation in all 2 modes SM and HM.
Patch 1.3 – Enter, Group Finder!
No new story content with this patch came to our homes, but the introduction of the Group Finder was a very needed addition to the game as many players had already left due to boredom and/or due to the fact that they expected something different from Bioware. At this point the game was already struggling hard with active player base, the subscriptions were dropping fast and hard core raiding guilds were fading away and disbanding. There was just not enough EndGame content to feed the starting one-character raiders, who only cared about the next boss kill and the loot drop. Story was not enough, as expected.
The lack of active players on the PvP front was also noticeable and that’s why Bioware allowed same faction battles in the Alderaan Civil War Warzone. Patch 1.3 was the first one to introduce Ranked PvP into SWTOR.
Patch 1.4 – Kephess returns
TFB was new, different and interesting. It presented the players with a fun “puzzle” boss and great new place to visit, explore and conquer or clear. The mysterious Gree came to warn both Republic and Empire about the incoming danger.
Aside from the big new operation, Bioware gave all of the classes a nice spin with quite a lot of alterations, changes , nerfs and improvements.
Oh, I forgot to mention… Kephess came back! He was bigger, uglier, grumpier!
Patch 1.5 – F2P for the win?
On 15th November 2012 the game saw light in the end of the tunnel. Subscriptions kept dropping during the Summer and despite the cool new operation added with the previous update, it was still not enough and the hate and troll trains were gaining speed.
The first mode, or version if you prefer, of F2P introduced a very limited demo of the real game. Bioware restricted the new players who didn’t subscribe, so much, that the negativity prevailed in the first reactions. Slowly, but very steady, the developers corrected many mistakes with this original mode of the F2P and turned it from a crazy restrictive SWTOR-Demo into a very tolerable, but still a demo mode.
Along with this huge change (nearly 5 months passed with no big updates since 1.4) we also received a new Nightmare mode for Explosive Conflict. Section X was added to the game as well as the option to recruit a brand new companion – the HK-51 droid. It’s quest was quite fun, and long!
The game started feeling alive again! We finally began recovering from the server merges from 2 months ago and the rage from all leaving players who joined at launch, not having a clue what they should expect from SWTOR and, naturally, felt betrayed and disappointed soon enough. Well, I am not saying EAware didn’t deserve the rage aimed at them with the crazy greediness they keep showing not only with SWTOR, but with any other game they have produced in the past… 10 years.
Patch 1.6 – PvP is back on the map
In the very late 2012, finally, a new Warzone was released. It was following the theme of the previous patch. The Ancient Hypergate introduced new PvP mechanics, well, at least they were new to SWTOR.
2013 – Waking up and F2P
Patch 1.7 – Aliens on Ilum
After a very long break with no world events, this patch brought is the first Gree event. I still remember how long and hard I farmed it for these first 2 weeks when it was active. I ended up with more tokens than I needed. Bioware added a new feature to the legacy system – Galaxy Reputation. Now we had one more thing to farm and achieve!
It was here somewhere (May 2013) when my own YouTube channel VulkkSWTOR was born, inheriting my ORA Guild and DR Guild channels, dedicated to the 2 guilds I was a member of previously!
Patch 2.0 – They called it an Expansion
The Hutt Cartel has emerged from the shadows to challenge the Galactic Republic and Sith Empire for control, unleashing never-before-seen Droids and monstrous battle stations to serve as powerful weapons of destruction. Join your faction and explore story-driven missions with explosive combat to save the future of the galaxy!
Makeb was a very different experience for all of us. The planet presented interesting new environment, new story, though, not personal, but most of all – a new way of leveling. The quests were rewarding so much XP and there were almost no side quests available, except for some dailies on some of t he messas, it felt like we could have gone from lvl 50 to 55 in no time. And that was the reality.
I don’t want to even mention the Macrobinoculars and the Seeker droid quests as I still have nightmares from those, especially the 2nd one.
Scum and Villainy was a brand new operation, available at lvl 55 in SM and HM. Terror From Beyond was also re-scaled to lvl 55 with its SM and HM.
2.0 was actually separated into 2 smaller updates – one for the game changes, including mechanics, Operations and Flashpoints changes, class balancing and another one for the story. Obviously, PTS only had the first one available to the players. It truly was a great update, but still somehow not enough to call it a real expansion. Well, considering what we got as an expansion after it, 2.0 turned out to be a good one, hehe. But I am going ahead of myself. It contained a lot of other things, but I am trying to just highlight the most important ones, else we’ll have to stay here until tomorrow.
Patch 2.1 – Outfits
Finally, we were allowed to look different and unique. Appearance designer helped us a lot and dyes just gave us even more options and possibilities. Cathar came to the world of SWTOR as a playable species and I quickly created my 2nd Marauder to experience it.
Patch 2.2 – Nightmare struggles
In the Summer of 2013 the starvation for quality EndGame content was again topic number 1 for most of us. Bioware attempted to answer with the Nightmare modes of TFB and S&V. Well, how they did it… oh my… At the time my guild Soltice was a semi hard-core 16 man raiding guild with 20-22 active raiders who swapped spots each week. It was the Shadows/Assassins nerf combined with the Dread Guards being nearly unbeatable that, unfortunately, made many more players leave the game instead of buckling up and charging again and again. Weeks passed by after Drop it like it’s Hoth killed the 2nd boss and cleared the instance first before a 2nd guild finally managed to clear the operation as a world 2nd and Bioware didn’t stay inactive to answer the call for TFB nerf. Was it a good decision, well… for some it was, for others it was a bad idea making things easier. This was, in my opinion, the first time we ever witnessed a trully challenging content being seriously nerfed while it’s still EndGame. I am not counting the Lost Island dumbass nerf that came with Patch 2.0. Lost Island was a just Flashpoint after all.
Patch 2.3 – Czerka
Along with the 2 new Flashpoints, we now finally had a chance to hunt (or buy, ugh!) our own Tauntain mounts! Best mount ever introduced to the game… until the Wings (Brontes NiM from DF Ops)!
Patch 2.4 – The Dread Masters
Oricon was a new zone, added as a stand alone moon, but in reality it was just another small daily area with entrances to the 2 new ops – Dread Fortress and Dread Palace. We’ve been waiting for real new content for so long, when Bioware told us we will get not 1, but 2 new ops, we were out of our minds, filled with happiness. Both were challenging with some really cool ideas for boss mechanics. Unfortunately, the level cap remained 55 and with most of us wearing NiM gear from the previous content, clearing the new HMs was a lot quicker and easier than we hoped for. By the end of the first week most raiding guilds were done with the 10 new bosses and had them on farm already.
Around this time is when I honestly had my best time in the game, together with my guild Solstice. Here are a few examples of the fun and joy we had during raids:
- Solstice Goofs and Spoofs, Volume 1
- Solstice Goofs and Spoofs, Volume 2
- Solstice Goofs and Spoofs, Volume 3
2014 – The EndGame Struggle
In the beginning of the year my guild slowly faded away as players left the game out of boredom and due to the lack of new content. This was the time I moved from Republic to Empire and started playing Skorks, my Marauder, as my main character. I spent about 9-10 months or so like this before returning back to Vulkk and the light side.
Patch 2.5 and 2.6 – Space PvP
This free expansion was so not my type of content that I would play and enjoy, I barely played 2-3 games of Space PvP during the early access. Never have I returned to it later. No, don’t get me wrong. It’s not bad at all. It probably still is, if anybody is playing it in the end of 2015. Would not be a surprise if the space PvP is totally dead. It had not received any, I mean ANY, updates ever since its repease. Good enough patch for the middle of the Summer!
Patch 2.7 – The beginning of something awesome
DF received a new Nightmare mode and it was truly and really challenging. Following the previous style of creating NiM content, Bioware introduced 1 new mechanic for each boss encounter.
The title of this section is as such, because in this update Bioware began the Forged Alliances Story arc. At first it seemed like a nice casual stroll aside from the main conflict, but later on we realized how important this all was. More on that in Patch 3.0’s story.
Hey, look, a new PvP map appeared. How months have passes since the previous one, Ancient Hypergave? Really, that long? Not possible. But, then again… delaying new content has already become a standard for Bioware. The company was really struggling in the whole 2013 to provide new content on regular basis.
Patch 2.8 – The DP NiM Disaster
When 2.8 landed on the live servers in June 2013, players were shocked how unfinished, buggy and crappy the new patch was. This was the time when next NiM content was served – DP. Best guilds were lining up for endless raid nights only to discover that half of the players could not enter the instance, others were unable to even download and update the game in time. It was then, when I witnessed the biggest number of EndGame progression guilds disbanded and tons of raiders simply left the game. This time, I am sad to admit, Bioware deserved the rage coming their way. They released an unfinished and untested product. Hell, many of us reported game breaking bugs on PTS, yet the devs moved on to deploy the patch to the live servers as planed.
Patch 2.9 – Welcome Home!
In the middle of the Summer we got our new personal Strongholds, to decorate and show off. The Conquest system was released and caused the birth of a new type of guilds in SWTOR – casual Conquest focused ones. The new Flashpoint, located on Manaan continued the story of Forged Alliances and brought a nice old memory to our minds with the introcduction of Manaan – a very small transition place, that we wanted to call a planet, but somehow couldn’t.
Patch 2.10 – Revan is alive!
The final chapter of Forged Alliances took players to Rakata Prime, also known as Lehon, where the mastermind behind all of this was finally revealed. Revan is not only alive, but he has a brand new plan for the universe and life over all.
Patch 3.0 – May the Lag be with you!
Many of you, watching or reading this would probably be familiar, because Patch 3.0 was one of the more recent ones and also the 2nd expansion to SWTOR. It gave us 2 new worlds – Rishi and Yavin 4. During the 1 week of early access, I somehow managed to beat the lag and severe ability delay to complete the story twice, but when on the next Tuesday the servers opened up for everybody else, the game became unplayable. Some of you may still remember the ability delay I experienced on Tython when I decided to create my 2nd Sentinel Sabrosa, whose purpose was to experience the Dark Side of the Knight Story and give me a chance to test all the new changes Bioware made to the game with the introduction of the Disciplines System.
The 2 new FPs on Rishi were available as solo, tactical mode and hard mode. They were… fun… but after the 3rd or 4th run they were already getting boring. The dialogues and different options inside were below the zero count. Forged Alliances transformed from a great side story arc into a prelude to the Shadow of Revan expansion and story. The 4 FPs it included received Hard and Solo Modes too.
Let’s not forget that yet again after nearly an year of waiting, EndGame was back on the map. Phew! Or… should I say Wohoo!
The Ravagers and Temple of Sacrifice (SM and HM) saw the big wild world together with the release of Shadow of Revan. We, of course, got 5 new levels. Running through Rishi and Yavin 4 with enough buffs and Legacy perks was more than enough to get us from 55 to 60, so many were just skipping on the side quests and the dailies.
It’s sad that even today in the end of 2015 Ravagers and Temple are still EndGame and the most challenging operations. They never received NiM mode, but the mechanics inside were unforgiving enough, Bioware just decided there’s no more room for upping the challenge.
Along with this patch, a huge game breaking bug leading to a huge exploit outbreak happened. Bioware took a break for the Holidays, which allowed players to exploit the Ravagers loot endless times. It all resulted in the first in the history of SWTOR massive ban event.
2015 – More of the same
Since this is the most recent year, I will be more brief here. Most of you have experienced already the events that happened and know what I am talking about, so no need to prolong it.
Patch 3.1 – Nothing much
The 2 new Flashpoints on Rishi received their Hard Modes, and, oh boy, were they hard at first.
Here are some videos as a proof of how different they were before Bioware’s nerfs in the next couple of patches.
- Blood Hunt HM Full Run with commentary
- Battle of Rishi HM Full Run with commentary
- Commander Mokan HM Guide (Battle of Rishi Bonus Boss)
Patch 3.2 – The Emperor Returns
Ziost was a great new story and world. Well, it was more of a mini area, kind of like Oricon, but a lot more.. silent and calm. The story about Vitiate was thrilling and entertaining, but only the first 2 times. After we explored the different light side and dark side options, farming it, became a bit boring. And to make things worse, the content was only available at lvl 60, so despite of the easy fights on Ziost, we were unable to use the area to finish leveling our characters there.
Patch 3.3 – The Delayed Togruta
While the new species was great in its female form and variations, the male characters didn’t really meet the hopes and expectations most of us had after such a long period of developing the species. It’s been more than 6-7 months since Bioware mentioned them as next playable species in the game.
The Yavin 4 Stronghold was a true masterpiece, hands down! The best designed Stronghold I have seen. By far.
Patch 4.0 – More of the Same
When I say “More of the Same” I don’t always mean it in a bad way, not at all. The story we received with Fallen Empire in the Fall of 2015, was beyond any of our wildest dreams. We had drama, interesting new characters, great cinematic storytelling, well masked fake choices and.. did I mention the Story?
Along with that, and pushed by EA to leave more space for Battlefront to shine (not that the 2 games have any thing else in common besides S and W letters in their titles), the developers of SWTOR re-scaled all old operations and flashpoints to make them accessible to new players and to cover the huge gap they left yet again for more than 1 year in the hearts of the progression oriented players.
No new ops for another year, stacking it up to nearly 2, unless they surprise us in the Summer of 2016, means a lot of struggle for most guilds to keep their ranks and active players. Well, the good news is that we are going to receive a new story chapter each month, filling up 2 seasons of Fallen Empire before the end of 2016. That’s Bioware’s plans for now. We know very little about what’s coming next year beyond the monthly chapters and the new coming warzone.
The future is bright, though. I know many have concerns. I do too. But these 2 articles and videos I have created are to tell the story of the game with some heavy stains of my personal experience during the years.
I am here to stay. I love the game, still enjoy it. Even though I recently expanded the content of my channel with another game in the roster (Witcher 3), and I may expand it further in the future, my main focus will remain Star Wars The Old Republic as my big passion is Star Wars.
