‘Star Wars: The Old Republic’ Not Going Into Maintenance Mode, BioWare Reassures More Future Content On the Way
As BioWare continues to shift the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic over to a third-party studio, the developer has reassured that more content is on the way, and that the game is not going into maintenance mode. The news was shared on a forum for The Old Republic where the game’s director, Keith Kanneg, addressed some of the concerns and rumors surrounding the game’s move.
We reported on June 7 that The Old Republic would be switching development over to Broadsword Online Games. The online MMO-RPG, which launched over 11 years ago, was originally developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts (EA). However, with BioWare shifting its focus onto the development of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, and the next Mass Effect, EA has made an agreement to move development to Broadsword.
On June 20, Keith Kanneg provided a development update on Star Wars: The Old Republic. He stated “This isn’t the beginning of the end,” but rather, “This truly is a new beginning.” When asked if The Old Republic was going into maintenance mode, the director had this to say:
“Absolutely not. As I’ve said before, we are working on future plans including more story and modernization initiatives for the game. We’ve upgraded the game to 64-bit, and are working on moving the servers to the cloud, and there are more content and tech updates on the way.
Moving to a third party studio would allow us a lot of creative freedom, and we’re very much looking forward to the opportunities that will be open to us.”
It also appears that Kanneg and his team, soon to be working under Broadsword, have many plans for the game, including story content for the next few years. The game just launched its 7.3 update, but as he also stated, more updates are coming as well:
“You can expect [update] 7.3.1 towards the end of the summer, with the story continuing in 7.4 on its heels as we enter the holidays. Also on the tech side, we are working on further updates such as improved integrations with Steam and updating to DirectX 12. We’ll start talking about all of this and more in the coming weeks.”
Star Wars: The Old Republic recently launched the “Legacy of the Sith” expansion last year that included a new storyline, planets, and an update to the class systems. We can most likely expect even more attention drawn to The Old Republic era in the future as Lucasfilm also made it part of its official new Star Wars franchise timeline which was unveiled at this year’s Star Wars Celebration.
Born and raised in Hawaii, Jay Goodearl runs the YouTube Gaming channel “Good Games, Dude” His channel aims to open up video games to beginners and immediate players and help them understand what makes games the art form that it is.
