Star Wars: The Old Republic received its latest expansion, Legacy of the Sith, just recently. Heralded by another epic cinematic trailer the game was known for in the past, that blip of hype was quickly replaced by no small measure of controversy – but what is everyone so angry about? The latest 7.0 patch notes, posted to the game’s site by BioWare, holds many of the answers.
On the surface level, 7.0 brings with it the kind of features and additions you’d expect from an expansion. The storyline continues on Manaan and Elom, adding a new zone, daily area and Flashpoint to SWTOR. The level cap has been increased to 80, the second Galactic Season has kicked off, and the highly anticipated combat styles feature lets players further customize the ability sets of their characters.
So far so good, right? The new features added to the game sum up the positives of 7.0 – but if you read on in the patch notes, you’ll start seeing where widespread displeasure and calls from fans to revert to 6.0 are coming from. Much of the rest of the notes are dominated by the word “removed” – items, secondary progression systems, abilities and features have been “streamlined” out of the game.
The Renown system, designed to give players some sort of progression goal to work towards even after hitting the level cap, is gone with no replacement, as are social points. Social points were a bit of a pain in the rear, since they weren’t Legacy-wide, but the replacement relies on Group Finder achievements – except 7.0 disabled Group Finder for characters below the level cap.
The Dark vs Light system has also been removed, meaning missions and non-Diplomacy crew skills no longer award Light Side or Dark Side points – you can only progress on the morality system path with conversations or the Diplomacy crew skill, which will make it much harder to max out either if you haven’t already.
Daily and Weekly missions are now also on a Weekly rotating basis. While still available if you walk over to the quest giver, whichever missions aren’t in the current rotation will provide decreased rewards and won’t be available via quick access – previously one could immediately travel to any planet on the Heroic Mission list.
Most of the rewards for completing your weekly Conquest have also been removed or reduced – Solid Resource Matrixes are no longer awarded, and credit rewards have been greatly reduced in what BioWare claims is an attempt to curtail inflation.
These are just some of the notable removals of content from SWTOR as part of 7.0 that have resulted in major fan backlash, but aren’t the full extent of the issues the game is currently facing. We’re eager to see how BioWare will respond to this controversy.
