BioWare announced a week delay for the release of SWTOR Game Update 6.1.1, originally planned for April 14. The Story Content Update 6.2, targeting June has also been postponed for an unspecified amount of time. 6.1.2 is going to replace it! The June update will also bring back the Nightlife event as well as a new monthly recurring event!
Creative director for SWTOR Charles Boyd announced expected, but still unpleasant news regarding the next few updates to the game.
What you are about to read (or watch/listen in the attached video) may also be treated as an improvised roadmap for SWTOR’s next few updates up until the end of the Summer or early Fall as I do not expect a true roadmap to be posted for this period following this announcement.
Everybody from EA, BioWare and the SWTOR team now works from home. It’s been like this for a couple of weeks.
The same goes for me, probably you too. It’s also valid for the voiceovere and recording studios as well. “Like us, the voiceover studios where we record dialogue around the world are also eager to ensure the health and safety of their staff and actors, and have postponed all in-studio recording activities” – Charles explained on the forums. “As y’all know, our cast is pretty huge; some actors do have in-home recording capability, but unfortunately, many others understandably do not“
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This new situation would take some adaptation time, obviously. I work from home now too and all our projects started moving forward at a much slower pace than when we are at the office (Architecture is my field of work, in case you were curious).
“In order to adapt to these unexpected changes and challenges, we’ve made some updates to our upcoming releases.” – Charles wrote in his posts. “Naturally, this is very much subject to change as circumstances unfold; we will keep you all updated in the coming weeks if any additional changes become necessary.“
Update 6.1.1 was originally expected to release this Tuesday, on April 14. Instead, some changes have been made due to the “working from home” situation and some issues that need to be adjusted before the patch is ready to go live.
6.1.1 has been available for testing on the SWTOR Public Test Server for about a month now. Not all that you saw or heard being included in PTS is going to make it into the live patch.
The new release date for Update 6.1.1 is April 21st. – next Tuesday. This patch has shrunk in size compared to what we originally expected.
The move of the release date also means that the Double XP event will also be postponed. Its new duration is now from April 21st until June 16th.
Chales answered the popular question of “Why do you need to do this, can’t we have the Double XP sooner?” with a statement in another comment: “a patch is required to update the in-game event schedule that activates and deactivates double XP on specified dates. So if double XP isn’t already scheduled, a patch is required to add it to the schedule, at which point it then activates on whatever date we specify – in this case, the same day the patch goes live, because we want it to kick on as soon as possible for y’all“
Reminder: Double XP affects XP, Renown, GSF, Valor. it doesn’t boost Conquest points.
The new Nightmare Dxun Ops (Master Mode as per the new SWTOR dictionary) also has new armor sets with new set bonuses to offer to the players. These will not be included in the upcoming patch.
“[…]we have made the difficult decision to delay Master Mode of the Dxun operation out of this update. Based on our testing on PTS, we believe that holding this portion of the content back for further iteration and improvement will lead to a higher quality experience for all of you to enjoy a bit later” – Charles told us.
What will be in 6.1.1 are the Conquest changes and they are a handful. The Class Balancing Changes will be included in the April patch, though. These are actually first of several class changes related mostly to the Healing balancing in the game, but not only. The usual quality of life changes and bugfixes will complete the list for 6.1.1.
Interesting fact is that at some point Dxun NiM and the Class Changes were supposed to be part of the next update 6.1.2. Shortly before PTS opened for 6.1.1 the dev team made a decision to include all of them together in one patch. Now they are splitting them again due to the current situation.
Update 6.2 was targeting a release date in June. It is now replaced with 6.1.2 – an incremental patch that will add the Dxun NiM ops, the new set bonuses and a new recurring monthly event.
At this point this is the first official announcement (or rather a tease) of this new event. All we know is what Charles told us in his post: “Update 6.1.2 will introduce a unique new in-game event that will join the weekly rotating schedule alongside Dantooine, Gree, etc. The event will be themed around the ultimate Swoop biker rally spread across multiple planets in the SWTOR galaxy. We’ll share more info about the insane obstacle courses these daredevil riders are setting up very soon“
Update from May 9. 2020: BioWare released an unfinished version of the new SWTOR Swoop Racing event on the PTS for testing. Officially called All Worlds Ultimate Swoop Rally this event will finally allow you to pilot a unique swoop bike and earn reputation points for three new swoop bike gangs (factions)
The beginning of the Summer is the time when the Nightlife event returns to Nar Shaddaa. This season will not be an exclusion.
The reason this June Update is changing its numbering from 6.2 to 6.1.2 is because of a decision BioWare made in the beginning of 2020. From January this year all updates that include continuation of the story will be labeled as major updates – 6.1, 6.2 and so on. All incremental updates in-between that offer other new features, but no story will be labeled as 6.1.1, 6.1.2, then 6.2.1, 6.2.2 and so on.
6.2 was supposed to offer is the conclusion of the Kira/Scourge/Satele storyline that started at the end of Onslaught with game update 6.0. It continued with 6.1 through a short story cinematic. Funny enough the Kira/Scourge return was teased by Charles in an interview he gave me way back in the Spring of 2018 – a little over two years now. How time flies!
The dialogue for this story segment was not yet recorded when the world went upside down and everything closed or stopped working.
It seems that for any new story and narrative to be added to the game, we will have to first endure these hard times and “wait to release it until recording operations are back in full swing” as Charles told us.
This patch will then become 6.2 and any other updates leading up to it will be either lettered 6.1.1 and 6.1.2 or perhaps 6.1.3 even. The new current target time frame for the release of this story is Summer or early Fall.
These sure are unpleasant news as we are all waiting and hoping for new content to be added to the game so that it may help pass the time quicker. Unfortunately, BioWare is in the same situation as are all of us – working from home is no easy task, believe me. While I hate commuting to and from work, I’d personally prefer to go to the office and meet my colleagues rather than use Skype, Viber, Discord and any other digital tools at our disposal.
In short, here are the bulletpoints that you need to remember from BioWare’s announcement:
- SWTOR 6.1.1 has a new release date – April 21
- The Double XP Event will launch together with the patch
- Update 6.2 is postponed for an unspecified duration
- Update 6.1.2 replaces 6.2 as the June Update for SWTOR
- Patch 6.1.2 will bring Nightlife and a new recurring event
While we all wait for the new SWTOR stuff to be ready, may I recommend you my favorite Sitcoms to rewatch! I do that even now – watching a Simpsons episode as I write this. These would keep you company if you are waiting for the new patch to be deployed to return to the game.
Find out everything you need to know about SWTOR 6.1.1 from my collective preview article.
Stay safe, stay healthy!
