So is Star Wars The Old Republic still moving to a new studio? Yes – but the open secret that the studio is EA’s subsidiary and home for aging MMOs, Broadsword, is still not settled. Last night, BioWare’s Keith Kanneg addressed the situation for players, referring to the move as a “shift of SWTOR’s development team to a third party studio.” For starters, he’s emphatic that the game is not “heading into maintenance mode.”
“With 7.3 now live, our priority is continuing to prepare for Game Updates 7.3.1 and 7.4 along with planning for 2024 and 2025 with a focus on content and continued modernization initiatives. […] [W]e 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.”
He also notes that little will change once the swap is done. Austin will continue to serve as homebase for devs who are not already remote, EA will continue to publish the game, accounts and cartel coins will continue as they are, the forums will stay up, and EA will still be running support.
“I know that when something like this happens it can bring on feelings of doom and gloom,” Kanneg admits. “This isn’t the beginning of the end, this truly is a new beginning for us. As you can imagine there are quite a few moving parts right now but we have a lot to talk about in our future. You can expect 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. In the meantime, Game Update 7.3 is now live, and I’ll be right in there with all of you going through the new story and Flashpoint on all my characters.”
Indeed, patch 7.3b is set to go live later today.
Patch notes for Game Update 7.3b are now available here: https://t.co/rhuO8yXqY1
— The Old Republic (@SWTOR) June 20, 2023
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