Star Wars the Old Republic: Everything We Know About Knights of the Fallen Empire .

Star Wars the Old Republic was released in December 2011 and did not really live up the hype. While this matter is highly debatable, what we know for sure is that the player base declined rapidly in the beginning, forcing the game to go free to play one year later. Since the free to play launch, the game has grown to receive a steady community of players making the game strive. While no numbers have been officially released, SWTOR has an estimated 1 million players, making it a profitable MMO.

Since the free to play launch, Star Wars the Old Republic have managed to pump out four digital expansions; Rise of the Hutt Cartel, Galactic Starfighter, Galactic Strongholds and Shadow of Revan. While these have been very varied in how much content they have brought, both the first and the last brought with them a lot of new content through new storylines and new planets. To top this, Knights of the Fallen Empire will be the biggest and baddest of them all, and it will come to all whom subscribe, no need to buy this one separately.

 

Story Focused

Knights of the Fallen Empire is going for one thing and really one thing only, bringing a new epic story to the Star Wars universe. While SWTOR has been getting a lot of critique in general for being a single player game in an online setting, it has also been getting a lot of praise for its different and wonderfully written storylines for each class. With Knights of the Fallen Empire, Bioware is moving even further away from trying to be a massively multiplayer online game and is instead focusing on what they do well, the story. This is a step that most players acknowledge and want, even if it is a step back for the pvp players. It is also a step forward for Bioware showing that they are one of the kings of making choices that impact the story. In Knights of the Fallen Empire, your choices will matter to a much higher degree then vanilla SWTOR offered, making your decisions impact the story more than just your dark\light level.

Chapters and Future

With the launch of Knights of the Fallen Empire the world is changing, and the fallen empire is spreading its claws everywhere. It will launch with nine new chapters, and over the course of the coming year increase to sixteen chapters. While these chapters won’t be as long as the ones in vanilla SWTOR, they will still add a huge new story arc to the Old Republic universe. The story itself is about the immortal emperor and his son, the dark prince who wants to rule the universe and watch it burn, very Star Wars-like. To stop it, you will take the role as an Outlander, a veteran of the Great Galactic War, leaving your previous alliance behind to fight against a bigger threat. While the original factions will be there, there is one story line to play through now, with differences in dialogue depending on who you fought for before.

With a clear story focus and future chapters already planned for SWTOR, we can expect them to continuously push out new content surrounding the story at an even higher pace than before, which is great news. Instead of only having the dailies and weeklies to do, you will be getting new story content on a more regular basis, with the fully voiced questing that makes the game unique. Until the expansion launches, there is also the 12x experience boost from story missions. While this will be removed on October 19th, a new system will be implemented which lets you level through the game by playing just the class story and planet story missions, maintaining the fast leveling momentum and letting you focus on the great stories available. So if you haven’t played through all the class stories yet, you will still have the chance to do it without all of the other “exploration” quests, they are even adding a feature that allows you to not see exploration quest givers.

Getting to 65

With Knights of the Fallen Empire comes a new level cap. This time you will be able to reach 65, granting you the opportunity to further evolve your character. While no new skills have been confirmed as yet, you will at least have the opportunity to use a new skill-tree point as you like. With a new level cap also comes also new planets to explore and progress the story forward. While Bioware is keeping very quiet about which planets we will see, one we do know will come is Zakuul; the Fallen Empire’s capital, but hopefully we will see some more. There are no new flashpoints or operations planned for the release of the expansion, but Bioware is promising that after this year, those will once again be the focus, together with pvp. But they are promising that something similar, and still completely new, will come with Knights of the Fallen Empire.

4.0 Changes

Like always with expansion comes the next big update and this time Bioware is rolling out 4.0 which comes with a massive amount of changes, both big and small. While you will read all about them when the patch hits, I will give you some of the bigger ones here:

• Level sync feature – Automatically lowers your level to the level of the planet you are on.
• No more weekly commendation limit.
• Legendary status – You get an icon next to your name after finishing all eight class stories.
• Temporary Ability Bars – These pop up when playing Huttball or Heroic Moment.
• You can gather materials of any tier no matter the skill level.
• New experience system lets you focus on class missions and the planet’s main story.
• A terminal for heroic missions, and rewards based on your level.
• Much much more!

 

Star Wars the Old Republic’s Knights of the Fallen Empire hits on October 20th if you have been a subscriber since August 10th, and October 27th for everybody else. With it comes a new epic piece in the Star Wars saga, one that will appeal to the players who play for the story, and hopefully it will bring something new and unexpected for the rest. Keep your eyes on MMOGames for more news on Star Wars the Old Republic and its newest expansion.