Remember when Star Wars The Old Republic’s last update fell a little flat and we said we hoped that the promised influx of updates for the game in the wake of Anthem Next’s cancelation really brought the goods? You can be the judge of whether that’s the case, as as BioWare announced 6.3: The Dark Descent on its official livestream this afternoon.
At the heart of the update will be the latest flashpoint, dubbed Secrets of the Enclave. “Players will be joined by faction characters to follow the footsteps of Darth Malgus and journey to the ruins of a Jedi Enclave hidden away on Dantooine,” the studio promised on Twitter. Aryn Leneer will return for the Republic version (in fact, an interview with her voice actress took up a large part of the stream).
The other major news to come out of the livestream is that BioWare is dropping a new system called “galactic seasons.” According to the devs, these five-month spans will see players marching through 100 tiers that come with specific rewards as players progress.
“To progress, players will receive a set of Daily and Weekly challenges, called Priority Objectives. Comprising of existing and/or new Conquest Objectives, Priority Objectives will require the player to complete specific Conquest Objectives to receive Galactic Season Points. Priority Objectives are indicated by their new Conquest icon and are filtered to the top of the Conquest Objective list. Players can also earn Galactic Season Points through the Login Reward system by logging into the game any 4 days of the week. All Reward Levels will require the same amount of Galactic Season Points to progress. For example, going from Reward Level 1 to 2 takes the same amount of effort as going from Reward Level 99 to 100.”
It does appear there will be two different tracks: one for everyone, even F2P players, and a second one for subbers-only, meaning subbers can work through two tracks at a time. F2P accounts can also sub partway through and pick up the sub rewards they’d have gotten had they been subbed all along, although subbers progress more quickly. Really, the whole system appears to be designed to get you to sub and to play, but it might actually be worth your while, since rewards include everything from lockboxes to cartel coins.
