Star Wars: The Old Republic expansion 'Galactic Strongholds' announced

BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic is getting a new free-to-play digital expansion this summer. It's called Galactic Strongholds, and as the name suggests, it allows you to expand your influence by acquiring and customizing personal houses, called Strongholds.

[akurtz]

Lots of people (and some friends of mine) Will be happy to hear this!

[Ikonic]

As a founder it might make me come back and see what's changed. Couldn't have been worse than what it was in 1.3

[BongSmack]

They're still throwing money into that?

[Rumb13stiltzkin]

At a recent Community Cantina event, BioWare revealed they have 10 million casual players with over one million playing each month.

Additionally, the Cartel Market made them $139 million (the equivalent of 772,222 subscriptions @ $15 per month) in 2013. Keep in mind, that money is from F2P players, not subscribers.

SWTOR was the #3 top-grossing F2P MMO on the market in 2013.

So yes, despite how you may feel about it, SWTOR is an extremely lucrative and very successful MMO that they're going to continue "throwing money" into.

[aliengmr]

Its a nice addition, but SWG still did this better. Sure, it didn't look as good (being over ten years old) but you were free to put your house nearly anywhere on planet and could decorate it any way you like. Same went for the ships.

For all its faults (and it had many) SWG was way ahead of its time. I would have taken SWG 2 over fully voiced dialog in a heartbeat. Just bugs me that a game with a fraction of the budget and over ten years old had far superior mechanics than a newer game with one of the highest budgets of all time. You'd think think the SWTOR space expansion could at the very least match SWG's, but it hardly comes close.

Don't get me wrong, KOTOR fans probably outnumber SWG fans by a lot and in that way SWTOR is great.

[Rumb13stiltzkin]

It's probably a little too early to compare the two, given the few details BioWare has disclosed so far. Considering there's a Prestige system attached to housing which awards players points based on the items decorating their homes, I would imagine that it'll be very customizable; especially if they're looking to compete with titles like WildStar.

Open-world housing is a nice idea, but everything I know about SWG's player cities indicates that they were veritable ghost towns - even before the mass exodus.

[aliengmr]

No they weren't heavily populated, but they were big and spread out. It really depended on the location. Our server had a town right next the Krayt Canyon (high level spawn area) which had a lot of traffic. Also when you set up a vendor people had to go to it to buy stuff. So you visited towns quite frequently. SWG didn't jam a whole bunch of people into one space.

There were limitations back then, but player towns were visited quite often. And a merchants popularity was earn based on the community rather than some stat. People gained notoriety the old fashioned way, by doing stuff others talked about.

I would be very surprised if the customization comes close to what SWG had. SWG had dozens of house models, a range of sizes, and different styles based on the planet (all player-crafted). Then pretty much every object in the game could be dropped and put on display. Even junk items were used.

I'm happy they are doing this and SWTOR is a good game, but SWG got a few things right despite its limitations, namely space and crafting. I just wish those things would make a return.