SWTOR creative director Charles Boyd and community manager Eric Musco were on the Passionately Casual Podcast to provid a few updates on returning companions, the new Rishi Stronghold, plans for The Summer of PvP and more.
The show was originally recorded on 8th of June (I apologize for the late update, blame E3 :P) and featured Part 1 of 2 of the Passionately Casual’s interview with the Bioware devs. In this part they revealed a bit more about what is coming to the game this Summer and until the end of the year. They have also confirmed that the 6.0 expansion, which was confirmed back in January 2018, is still very far away.
You can listen toPassionately Casual Podcast’s Episode 46: “Roadtrip”.
The following are my notes from their interview
In a previous update we learned that there will be a new Stronghold coming to the game and it will be located on Rishi. This will also be the first player stronghold designed with PvP in mind. The “Space Pirate” themed complex will be by far the biggest we have seen so far. In fact, Eric Musco mentioned that in his first tests, he managed to get lost and needed help to find his way back out.
This stronghold will have unique features integrated in it to allow players to create their own PvP arenas or 1v1 tournaments. Large scale battles (even 8v8 was teased at some point) will also be possible inside. The environment and newly designed decorations (specifically for the Righi GSH) will be used as line of sight blocking elements to help players create unique experiences for each match or tournament.
According to the devs, setting all of this up will require some specific work and patience as there wont be a flashy and easy to use UI like the classic tool for placing decorations. Anything and everything you create inside your own stronghold is going to obey your rules.
The Summer of PvP lost one of its most appealing features that were teased as a possibility – random events happening during Warzones and Arenas will not be possible. At least not for now. The team has been discussing these for months, but for now they haven’t been able to find a good and proper way to implement such things.
The community seems to be split on their opinions regarding the Summer of PvP content plans. This is natural, of course. Bioware considers this to be the perfect time for some PvP love, since they have been neglecting the PvP players for the past couple of years by only provinding some minor fixes and class balance. The previously announced new Huttball Warzone and new Shae Vizla themed Arena are expected in the coming months with the Arena coming first.
As promised with the Summer Roadmap, Bioware is opening up once again their Public Test Server (PTS) for players to be able to check out all of the upcoming changes to existing warzones as well as some of the new PvP content that is coming later this year. It is not known yet when exactly the PTS will become available, but if you want to be ready for it, check out my Tutorial Video. The one major requirement that we know will be an obstacle for many is that you need to be an active Subscriber in order to install and log in to PTS. I’ve got a handy guide in case you want to check out what are the current best deals and promotions on SWTOR Subscriptions.
Along side the already announced companions – Kira, Dark Side Jaesa and Lord Scourge coming in (hopefully) Update 5.9.2, Khem Val is also in the works. Yes, that’s right! Your favorite beast will return later in 2018. Finally. The thing with Khem Val is that his potential recruitment mission will only appear for players, who sided with him in their origin Inquisitor storyline. If you sided with Zash, Khem Val’s return may not be available. This specific mission is still in the planning stages and things may change.
Charles repeated what he told me a few months ago, that his goal is to bring all of the classic companions back this year. There are plans for absolutely all of them in one way or another. The only exception is Zenith.
UPDATE (August 2018): I spoke to Eric Musco about Zenith’s status and he was able to confirm for me that he will come back too: “Zenith is currently in the plan for return, but he will be coming back at some point. Just no ETA right now.” – he told me.
UPDATE (September 2018): The SWTOR Fall 2018 Roadmap does not mention Khem Val, Kira and Scourge at all. It seems their return has been pushed back for 2019.
Update (October 2018): Khem Val returns for players, who sided with Zash! It has been confirmed by BioWare and happens in game update 5.10 “Jedi Under Siege”.
In the next episode of the show (date still unknown… to me at least) they will air the second part of the interview, where Charles Boyd is expected to go deeper into the lore of Star Wars: The Old Republic and talk about both new and old content and its relations to all of the events that we have experienced in the game.
You can find the Passionately Casual Podcast crew on Twitter and listen to all of the show’s past episodes on their Website.
