SWTOR Knights of The Fallen Empire Details

You’ve got to love E3 and the lead-up to it. BioWare have not surprisingly been busy behind the scenes working on the next large expansion for SWTOR and they’ve unveiled it in a big way to coincide with E3.

First, the trailer:

For mine, this is easily the best trailer for the game since Hope back in 2010.

Other details we know so far:

1. Release date is October 27th, free for all SWTOR subscribers. Subscribers will also get up to 7 days early access.

2. You can become The Outlander, starting the story at Level 60. You can also play your class storyline throughout. The new level cap is 65.

3. Subscribers get a bunch of rewards including Nico Okarr as a companion. He’s the guy you met in the Hope trailer. They also get a 12 times XP boost until early access starts October 19th for levelling between 1 and 50.

4. Eleven story chapters come with the expansion, with five on the way after that.

Check out the official Knights of the Fallen Empire sub-site for more details.

Over to you: do you think this expansion looks to be one of the more promising ones? What do you think about the more single-player approach this seems to be? Others are already saying it’s KOTOR 3. Would love to hear your thoughts.

BioWare unveil new planet and content in SWTOR

With E3 underway, BioWare have unveiled a nice video showing off a new space mission (Space Station Assault), new Operation (Terror from Beyond), new companion (HK-51 Assassin Droid), a new level cap (details unconfirmed), a new Warzone (Ancient Hypergates) and arguably most exciting of all, a whole new world to explore, Makeb.

Have a look at the video for yourself here.

Seeing all this content is encouraging, in that it puts some meat on the bones of BioWare’s claims post-layoffs that there’s heaps more content to come.

On the downside for me, there doesn’t seem to be a great story emphasis on the new content. What I mean by that is that this update doesn’t seem to fall within an overall story arc. It doesn’t even have a name as such, probably because the previewed information isn’t a bundle that’ll be released as a single update. Even so, if there’s a new level cap, there’s obviously a new storyline, and I find it interesting that that’s not the focus. It could be because of the criticisms around end-game content, but surely story should still be the driver?

Of course, there’ll be lots more information drip-fed in coming months, and story may become central to that. In the meantime, it’s good to see what’s up ahead.

Over to you: of the new content revealed, what excites you or leaves you a bit cold?

All we know about this content is that it’s coming in the ‘next year’

New SWTOR cinematic trailer: preview

Thanks to the Jedi Archives Online, the sneak preview of the cinematic trailer launching at E3 in a few days, is available for your viewing pleasure. As you’ll see below, not surprisingly there’s not much given away but it certainly provides a taste of what we can expect. There’s already a huge discussion thread running on the preview on the official forums.

Onto the viewing:

Twi’lek, Chiss and E3 predictions


With the E3 Games Expo imminent, the pre-expo information has picked up in a big way. One of note is an in-depth piece over at Gamespot.

Although a playable Rattataki race was confirmed back in May, I don’t believe Twi’lek and Chiss have been confirmed prior to now. The article also contains some great descriptions of initial quests for each class as well as some more detail on game mechanics. One thing’s for certain – the next seven days will see the biggest influx of SWTOR information to date.

With my crystal ball fired up, here’s a couple of predictions for E3 and Bioware / SWTOR:

1. There’ll be no change to the launch window although hints may be dropped on things progressing well.

2. Indicative pricing will be announced.

3. There’ll be some in-depth display of game mechanics, limited to initial stages of the game.

4. A boss fight will be shown.

5. PvP combat will be shown.

What say you? What are your predictions for E3?

Oh, and one other thing: we have someone on the ground at E3 chasing SWTOR news for us. No guarantees but watch this space for some interesting info in coming days.