SWTOR’s Executive Producer Keith Kanneg published his letter for Q3 2024, summarizing what’s released since his previous producer letter in Q2, though he gave us a few teases of what’s to come this time around.
UPDATE: We added a section to the end of this article covering the native Mac launcher technical test.
Why Producer Letters Matter
While these Producer Letters may seem pointless to you, as they primarily contain old news, they’re significantly more valuable for people who aren’t playing the game right now and might be looking to return.
They stand out because the information is provided by the person in charge of everyone else and presented in a way that’s a lot more digestible to potential players who aren’t familiar with the current state of the game.
Over time, these producer letters build up as a public record, one that is a lot easier to read than the patch notes if you’re trying to get a sense of the history of the game or what content was released while an individual was confirmed to be working on SWTOR.
Old News
Keith Kanneg, SWTOR’s Executive Producer, began by going through the highlights from the most recent game update, 7.5.1. He covered Galactic Season 7 “The Greatest Bounty”, as well as the return of Dark vs Light world bosses as weekly objectives and that the Bounty Contract Event will be active for the entire season.
He also noted the recent CM items inspired by The Acolyte™, Star Wars™: Visions™, ™Ahsoka, ™, And™or™, and The™ Book™ of™ Boba™ Fett™. There are several new CM items from 7.5.1b, including a couple of swanky blaster pistols, a Corporate Security outfit, accompanying orange/teal dyes, and a full-length retractable training saber.
Sadly, the Retractable Training Saber does not become practically invisible with the proper modifications like some of the other sticks and swords can, though it’s still great if you want your Padawan companion to look extra apprentice-y.
Speaking of companions, there are new Date Night cutscenes for Vette and Aric Jorgan, with another pair expected to come and take resources away from the main story expected in 7.6.1. My money is on Torian Cadera and Nadia Grell.
He finished off the section with mentions of current promotions, including Twitch Drops and the Master the Fight: Firebolt Edition Bundle.
Funnily enough, he referred to the enhanced dyes offered as part of the Master the Fight Bundle as “red/black metallic dyes”, when in fact, they are individual Primary and Secondary Metallic Red Dyes. The marketing image directly beneath it says so!
Perhaps Keith should check out our Enhanced Dyes Catalog to refresh his memory about what all of these fancy-schmancy shiny dyes look like.
New News
Unlike past Producer Letters, we got some more substantial information about what’s ahead. Keith mentioned Update 7.6, announced the existence of a Mac launcher, and addressed DirectX 12 again last month.
Update 7.6 “Galactic Threads”
The next major update is 7.6 “Galactic Threads”, which will come with more story content, including cutscene animations that are hopefully finished on release this time.
Game Update 7.6 will also include a new Lair Boss, which is a single SM/VM instanced Ops boss, like Toborro’s Courtyard or Colossal Monolith, along with PvP Season 8, and more art modernization efforts.
Art Modernization and DirectX12
We don’t know what their end goal is for SWTOR’s visuals, after they’ve finished catching up with their backlog of art modernization. They seem to be using a new shader, and they’re moving to DirectX 12, which Keith posted an update about earlier this month
Hi folks,
You’re right, It has been a while since we initially mentioned DirectX12 (DX12)! Development has taken place for the better part of the year and it is still ongoing. We’ve also added several graphics-focused features and made other adjustments in the last year. The metallic, chrome, and pearlescent dyes, new cinematic lightning and shadows are examples of what’s included in this initiative, along with some changes in 7.6 we’re excited to share with you soon.
With that work completed, the team is back to getting the engine to handle DX12 architecture changes to support object and texture types and a new shader management system. Although we do not have a large announcement to make about DX12 right now, we have been discussing putting an alpha implementation into players’ hands sometime before mid next year. We will share more details closer to when we’re ready to begin that testing.
As a reminder, DX12 sets a new technology baseline enabling us to make visual improvements over time. Similar to when we rolled out the 64-bit upgrade, changes will not be super dramatic right out the door, rather, this tech provides a solid foundation for us to build on, and we’re all pretty excited to see what’s possible once it’s here.
Keith
There’s been a general emphasis on improving lighting across the board and updated textures to fit a materials-oriented approach. We’ve seen Nar Shaddaa get a lot of attention with holograms being plastered over every surface.
Mek-sha continues to be a location for new content, way more than any other location released in recent expansions.
There are places popping up where light is actually emitted from the physical light sources inside of the building instead of the entire room being illuminated by lies, like Ardak Point, the city at Kessan’s Landing, or this room on Makeb leading to a shielded landing pad for a daily mission.
On top of that, practically all of the Lights decos in the game were recently updated to emit light when only some did before. Why bother to do that now unless there’s something more on the horizon?
Yes, it could be a step towards simply more accurate shadows, but the industry is already moving away from rasterization in general. You can’t even fully turn off Ray Tracing in Ubisoft’s latest title, Star Wars Outlaws. Attempting to modernize while remaining one step behind seems foolish if it’s avoidable. Is SWTOR with RTX On in the cards?
Mac Launcher and 7.6
The biggest announcement from today was that SWTOR will finally be getting a dedicated launcher for Mac. The days of feeding your Apple hamster Wine or Whiskey to run SWTOR are finally coming to an end!
Based on the fact that they said “late model Mac computers”, I suspect that they’re only planning for it to be officially compatible with M-series Apple Silicon chips, not Intel CPUs from the previous decade.
We’ll be getting more information about 7.6 as a teaser trailer in mid-October followed by a livestream in early November. I suspect players will be able to test the Mac launcher as part of the next PTS.
Stay tuned for more SWTOR coverage. While you wait for 7.6, I highly recommend you check out Star Wars Outlaws; it seems tailor-made for SWTOR fans.
Hi folks!
We’re now in the second half of 2024, and here to give you all a snapshot of Game Update 7.5.1 and what players can look forward to as we prepare for Game Update 7.6.
Game Updates
Game Update 7.5.1 “The Greatest Bounty” launched on August 20 and contains Galactic Seasons 7, the Vette and Aric Jorgan Date Night Missions, a plethora of Cartel Market offerings, and we kick started the beginning of our Twitch Drops campaign.
Galactic Seasons 7 (GS7) is aptly named, The Greatest Bounty, as it leans into the playing the role of a Bounty Hunter. Our recurring Bounty Contract in-game event has been enabled for the duration of GS7 and it features the return of the 16 Dark vs Light event world bosses. More info can be found here.
Game Update 7.5.1 also features two new weekly repeatable Date Night Missions starring the Sith Warrior companion, Vette and the Republic Trooper companion, Aric Jorgan!
We collaborated with our friends over at Lucasfilm Games to bring even more “inspired by” items to the Cartel Market. This update brought items such as the Deadly Outcast Armor inspired by The Acolyte series on Disney+ and weapons inspired by Star Wars: Visions™. All of the items can be seen here.
We were also excited to announce the start of Twitch Drop campaigns. For 28 days post 7.5.1 launch, players who watch 4 hours of SWTOR content on Twitch could obtain the Orlean Voidstream mount. We have a variety of Drops planned out for the future, so stay tuned on further announcements.
Game Update 7.5.1b launched on September 10 and included a number of bug fixes and additional Cartel Market offerings including the Corporate Security Outfit, weapons, and a new teal/orange dye module inspired by Disney+ series Andor and Ahsoka.
In late July, we released the limited time offer Master the Fight: Firebolt Edition bundle. This bundle includes:
- 5,500 Cartel Coins
- 180 Days of subscription and 600 Cartel Coins each month
- A Vectron 240R Firebolt Mount has a quick hotrod burst mode and is rideable at level 1
- 5 Primary and 5 secondary Metallic Red dyes for each character
This bundle (valued at over $150) is available for a few more days. Be sure to pick it up before September 23, 2024, if you want to get your hands on the speed boosted new mount, the red/black metallic dyes, and have extra Cartel Coins available for a variety of new items.
What’s coming up?
We’re heads down on development for Game Update 7.6 “Galactic Threads”. This update is jam packed and you should expect to hear from us quite a bit! First up, in mid-October we’ll be back with a video showcasing our new content type we teased on the 7.5.1 live stream along with the new Lair Boss as both of those head to PTS.
Then just a short while later in early November we’ll be back for the full livestream you’ve come to expect where we reveal everything else coming in 7.6! We’ll talk about where the Galactic Threads story is going, details on our art modernization efforts, and more so stay tuned!
Last up, to close out this quarterly letter I have something really exciting to announce on the tech front. We are working on a native Mac launcher for SWTOR!
We have been doing extensive internal testing for some time now on late model Mac computers and we are getting close to being ready to roll out that testing externally soon. Keep your eyes peeled to the forums in the next couple weeks as we will be posting more details on the technical requirements and testing plans for exactly how everything will work.
This stays directly in line with one of the key goals I have talked about when we added Steam as a platform and when we came back to the APAC region, that we are going to keep pushing SWTOR onto new platforms and to new audiences wherever and whenever possible. And the cool thing about the Mac Client is it is the same game, on the same servers as the live game is now, so all of your existing data will be available!
That’s it for me today but thank you all for reading and I’ll see you all soon.
-Keith
Source: swtor.com
Update: Mac Launcher Technical Test Sign-Up Details
Jackie Ko, SWTOR’s community manager, took to the forums to announce a closed technical test for the SWTOR Mac launcher. As expected, the launcher is only compatible with M-Series Apple Silicon (M1, M2, etc.) and MacOS 14 Sonoma or newer.
If your Mac is using an Intel CPU, an older OS, or is not otherwise from this decade, you will not be able to participate in the technical test.
She also clarified that they’re only releasing a native Mac launcher, not a client. We don’t have a sufficient understanding of the differences and implications to offer an explanation, but a SWTOR player darienkd offered the following clarification, replying to Char_Ell in Jackie’s post.
Linux guy here, but the process is relatively the same; Windows software can be run on either platform (or several others) through the use of compatibility layers. wine is the major one — you call a piece of software through wine, and it translates the instructions into something a POSIX system can handle. It’s not flawless, but it does work. Valve’s proton is a wine extension specifically designed to work with Steam games (the Steam deck, after all, is a Linux machine), and I can confirm first-hand that SWTOR runs fine through proton. I imagine what’s being discussed here is a launcher that properly configures a wine environment to run SWTOR on a Mac.
The test will only be available in English and will use the live environment. Jackie reassures us that there won’t be any loss of data in the event of crashes or being unable to log into the game. That stuff is all saved on their servers, not locally.
I would expect a (bumpy) experience similar to the rollout of the updated launcher back in 2022. However, there are far fewer hardware configurations they have to contend with, so maybe it won’t be as bad.
If you’re interested in participating in this closed technical test, they need you to fill out a Google form. You’ll need to provide your email, SWTOR account name, Mac model, its RAM capacity, and the number of monitors you use.
The deadline to submit the form is Tuesday, October 8th, 2024, and everyone will find out if they’ve been selected on the following day.
