BioWare announces new SWTOR 7.1 Release Date Timeline

BioWare has elaborated on the new timeline for the release of SWTOR 7.1 and their plans for the upcoming final phase of 7.1 PTS testing!

BioWare expects to release the entire R-4 Anomaly Operation in SM and HM as well as the Manaan Daily Area to the PTS by the end of this month.

Below is an excerpt from Jackie’s (SWTOR community manager) forum post.

“First up, PTS will be opening back up soon. We are planning to go live before the end of the month. This phase will feature all of the R-4 Anomaly Operation and the Manaan Daily Area effectively letting you all see what will be included in 7.1.

Second, this will be the final PTS phase for 7.1. Once PTS closes, the team will be working away on polishing the content you all saw. All that said, we can confirm that 7.1 is targeted for mid-summer!

Lastly for this post, wanted to let you all know that when we get closer to launch for this game update, we will be hosting a livestream focusing on the content of 7.1.”

Remember when we thought that 7.1 content was gonna come out as part of the expansion or within 1-2 months of release? 7.1 itself is targeted for release in “mid-summer”.

Clues from Galactic Seasons

Galactic Season 2 will end 47 days from the time of writing. That’s Tuesday, July 5th, which happens to qualify as mid-summer. In many other games, the battle pass/seasons system that Galactic Seasons is modeled after, major content updates only come with each new season.

I expect that we’ll also get a Galactic Season 3 with the launch of 7.1 and 7.2 probably won’t come until Galactic Season 4, which would be late in the year. If it’s the same length as Galactic Season 2, that would put a 7.2 launch towards the end of November.

I want to be clear that the release date and connection to future Galactic Seasons are not confirmed. They are pure speculation.

We know that BioWare wanted to do a PvP revamp for 7.2 and as of now, we aren’t expecting any major story content out of 7.1, so it’s unclear when the next story update will be.

Charles Boyd, the Creative Director for SWTOR, somewhat recently announced on Twitter that the next stage of voice recording has begun, but I don’t believe that is very indicative of when the story content will actually be done.

Over-Hype, Under-Deliver

There was a lot of hype around 7.0 as the 10th-anniversary expansion and a more acceptable amount of content with the story update, raid, and daily area. Then there was the CGI trailer “Disorder” and images that heavily featured the Twi’lek Padawan Sa’har Kateen while she’s basically just a cameo on the story we have, at least on the Imperial side.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not interested in content being released before it’s ready, and I strongly prefer delays to buggy, half, or even mostly-baked content, but companies shouldn’t be generating unreasonable amounts of hype either.

If the Manaan daily area were going to be like Ossus and the Jedi Under Seige storyline, all this waiting might have been a little more palatable, but it seems like the Legacy of the Sith story was the Jedi Under Seige equivalent.

Unless BioWare is also working on something major behind the scenes that we don’t know about, they just don’t have enough resources to put towards modernization and the already limited amount of new content we get.

Balance and Gearing Woes

A lot of people have (rightly) complained about the new gearing system in 7.0, but the problem goes deeper. Even if you do manage to gear up to 330, there’s nothing new to play, and at least for raiding, a lot of content is either too hard or too easy. NiM requires perfection while SM can be done with 8 DPS.

This is a frustrating and impractical environment for prog and it’s really annoying when most of the gearing process is built around weeklies that require you to complete every single boss.

To make matters worse, there’s an insane amount of variation in terms of capabilities, particularly with DPS whre the best classes capable of doing over 30% more DPS than the worst. Combat Styles like Mercenary and Commando are so far behind with DPS that they’re effectively incomplete.

I understand that BioWare has limited resources and can’t afford to constantly rebalance content. It’s not the end of the world if things are just gonna be messed up for a month or two, but we’ll have been experiencing this for about 5 months by the time 7.1 is likely released and that’s flat out unacceptable.

I haven’t played MMOs outside of SWTOR, but it’s my understanding that some games release entire new raids in that amount of time. In my opinion, it’s been hard to justify a level cap and additional gearing for the past few expansions anyway. We should have stayed at level 70 or 75 with new gear only being brought out and when there was actually a new raid for it with retuning happening each time a brand new raid is released.

The Future of SWTOR

Despite the current dire state of the game, the fact that BioWare is focusing so heavily on modernization gives me hope for the future. I know the game has had buggy rough patches in the past, but it’s also had some periods of great smoothness. The end of 5.0 is a good example of that in my opinion.

We also know that BioWare is continuing to hire for this game with recent postings for a couple of level design positions.

Let’s not forget that 7.0 did bring about some awesome new things. Weapons in Outfitter has been high on a lot of players’ wishlists for a long time. The Combat Styles system greatly enhances the RP possibilities and, I know it’s controversial right now, but I really like the new Ability Tree system too, especially the new solo content builds and potential for a far more balanced game. 

I’m excited to see what’s in store for this game in the coming years, even if it isn’t in a good place right now.

And if you are curious to learn what the Daily Manaan Area might offer us in terms of environmental design and rewards, check out the preview of all currently available Manaan Reputation Decoration items available in the game right now.

UPDATE: BioWare has confirmed the SWTOR 7.1 Release Date to be August 2nd, 2022.