I don't think they could do a cataclysmic event completely like WOW, but something in the same idea and give the game a new beginning. One thing they could do is destroy both factions, since Republic and empire are still a major government, if they were to fall that could spawn terrible things for the core worlds, and empire territory, along with the rest of the planets align with them or count on them. Because for thousands or millions of worlds, could depend on those factions for safety, military, money, food, supplies, trade, responsible for keeping peace on planets, or protection from pirates, or smuggler for transportation. That would really change the galaxy Planets could be left valuable for the Hutt Cartel or warlords to claim. The Hutt Cartel could slowly try to take over the galaxy again, but with a bigger army and no one to stop them. crime rate across the galaxy could rise, civil wars on planets could occur more often, other factions could start wars on other planets with no one keep them in check, diseases or viruses could spread easier. as an example on what could happened on specific planets. Balmorra could focus on repairing themselves with both factions gone, the white maw could take control of the republic super dreadnought on Hoth and attack several trade routes, pirates and criminals could completely take over Taris, tatooine, and Belsavis with no one to stop them. Hutts invade former imperial and republic territory like Manaan, or onderon. Gormak could finally beat the voss. Alderaan could finally end the civil war, with no empire helping the Thuls and funding the war. Stuff like that could change the planets in the galaxy a lot and they could start the game over with new a player character, and new NPCs, and companions.

There not that many revealing armor sets at all imo, and with outfit designer it's fine It's fine to have revealing clothing so long as skimpy armor for both genders are available. I would like in the future to add more revealing armor sets for both male and female Like adding a male slave outfit to a vendor like they have for female characters

This is just my opinion, I agree characters should drive the story not the player. The player is not an interesting enough to drive an entire story line. I think these new characters have potential but are being wasted or not explored. Busk was my favorite character and the one with the most potential in the mando story is thrown aside, before he could even be explored as a character, and a much more interesting leader. IMO Heta is boring Anri, did she have a family? which officer did she serve? (thank you SteveTheCynic for the correction) was she born a slave? how does she actually feel about rep vs empire. whats her motive to stay in the empire? nothing about her is answered Who was Tau and Arn original master, where did they grow up? What happened to Tau feeling horrible for killing people despite being imps, on ossus? there is a lot of potential but it's never explored We really know very little about rivix. Lana is also character really we know very little about, it at least in terms of backstory, depth, she never does anything important besides agree or disagree with you. She let theron die if you let him die. She has no depth, well do anything the player says. they also sometimes put entire backstories in codex entry instead of explaining a character in cutscenes Admiral Rava from 7.0, his whole backstory is put in the codex entry and not in the cutscenes, which most people will not read, and won't understand why Rava is determine to kill imps at all cost. Nothing about his story is in the actual cutscenes so he comes off as a 1 dimensional jerk. Kodom from the voss storyline is not expanded upon, he kind of boring, his backstory is put in codex entry and not in cutscenes, and they never explain why he wanted peace with the voss in the first place when his family was killed, not even in the codex entry. Why would someone raised as a warrior, whose family was killed by the voss, grew up hating the voss, want peace? Not to mention they do sometimes make characters completely meaningless, like in the latest story, Tau vs rivix could of been a interesting and a good cutscene, but the outcome of who would win is just whichever side the player is on, which is extremely boring, and it is not interesting. Sa'har has potential, but still she is not explored, the last story does not really explain her actions in helping these mandos. For her brother? That's not enough to help a group that whats to conquer. To bring balance to the force? Was does that mean to her, does she think heta is good? None of these things are being explain. In the end these characters are concepts who are never expanded upon in personality, depth or backstory. Who cares about the player being the center/chosen one (according to the voss) in the new story, we did that already. They need to focus on expanding these characters in a lot of ways. Imagine this in 7.0 empire story, instead of player deciding to destroy the guns or not, Anri decides, and betrays darth Norok, that's way more interesting then another "choice" that literally won't matter. It reveals a lot about Anri, shows how far she would go for the empire, and shows her as brave, and want she stands for. Not to mention the player had so many choices and the fact is the player character is not interesting to drive a story.

Thank you keith for the update, I am excite for the dx12. I have been negative in the choices made in development since 7.0 (gearing, hurting the poor with credit sync choices, ect) I will hope that the devs learn from the mistakes made. I will look forward to the next update for swtor and hope for the best

I think that the relic can possibly make every force user in the galaxy that is weak or have no training like her brother have the power level of an average jedi/sith. It won't make them powerful then the average jedi/sith just put them on the same level and create thousands, millions, of really weak force users across the galaxy more powerful. That's why I think the emperor killed her, because that could destroy his empire.

I don't have a problem with going to places with doing very little, like if the story was just helping the voss and defeating czerk, that would be completely fine for me. The problem is the mystery of Malgus's mega, super secret, grand plan and darth nul they keeping dragging on, the mystery for me was one of the reasons it brought the story down a lot. Should of just focus on the Voss and Gormak, and just helping them out imo, and fully voice acted. It would of been a lot better imo. If the story does lead to restart of the game, ( I am not expecting it at all) then I would look at the story at a better light, but right now I am expecting nothing huge to come out of Malgus's storyline, so I am more negative towards it. That being said but I don't think the story is bad, in fact some of the writing in the beginning of old wounds, for Torian, Arcann, and malgus was probably one of the best writing in the game. In my honest opinion, one of the reasons I don't really like a lot of the stories in vanilla there very basic and lacks any meaningful character progression for most companions imo. Now for me to talk about my unpopular opinions. On class dialogue and content, for me personally I don't really care about class specific lines, it never encourage me to play any expansion or updates on alts because of it. On class missions, the problem is that swtor has 16 voice actors (48 in total for all languages) just for the player character, I think none of the studios whether it's BW or anyone else, would continue doing class story with so many VA, for a 11 year old game imo, even one off class missions like SOR. The class stories took so much budget that there was no endgame at launch and the game lost most of their subs and went F2P. I do think they should of just done 4 class stories, it would of been better long term imo. I don't think it would be a good idea to do class content, because of the cost but also I think there are better ways to increase replay value. I prefer something that old wounds did at the beginning of the story, where picking different dialogue option leads to different dialogue choices that you didn't get the first time. As an example in Old Wounds telling Malgus that "attachment is a good thing" leads to other dialogue options I didn't get in my first play through where I ask about Heta. It leads to different options, where one of them you can threaten to kill him. Then he talks about the sith emperor, which didn't happen when I first played it. That was cool, and I did the story again because of that. I also like that Arcann greets you coldly in Old wounds if you were mean to him in a past update. I take more of that over class dialogue, just my opinion. At this point I would like a restart where they get less voice actors maybe 6 (3 male, 3 female) for player (18 in total for all languages), instead of 16/48. I know this is probably unpopular I just think it would be better long term.

Hard to tell for sure, but it sure feels like it. The story was most likely written with them knowing the game would transfer to another studios. It would make sense if they wanted Broadsword (assuming they continue doing story) to chose the ending to the Republic, empire, Malgus mando, the galaxy as a whole. That's why part of me thinks why the story being dragged along, but that's just pure speculation. Not expecting it at all but it would be cool if we had WOW cataclysm or Final fantasy reborn expansion. Where everyone starts on square one with a new story.

So after I played it for the second time on the republic side. and in the end my opinion has not changed, but I found more stuff I liked and disliked. Liked Just my opinion, I still love Sa'har and her brother model, I just wish they did the same thing for Anri, RIvix, and the player models and upgrade the textures. Dislike the kotor conversation in the main story, I am find with it in the side story but not in the main story. While I don't like being treated as a god or a amazing hero, however in this case we did save Voss in kotet, that should be enough to meet the three. So I feel that it was unnecessary forcing the player to go through the no voice part of the story, just to meet the three, for useless answers. If the player character was voiced then I would not care, but it's not. I also dislike the ominous "malgus is awakening something as he dreams" it's vague, boring, answers nothing, is it a metaphor or is he actually awakening something? it just creates more questions then answers. I am really tied of these breadcrumbs. Lack of character progression with sah'ar or her brother. He still mad and she just wants forgiveness. We only get two big story updates every year, I feel like progression and story should move faster. I disliked the lack of reason Tau or rivix won the fight depending on which side your on. Everything was the same until the end of the fight, which ever side your on wins and I am not sure why it changes who wins, in the past the player character is the one who changes the outcome of fights, but here there is no reason. I was disappointed because I was actually looking forward to Rivix vs Tau fight, when they hyped up "who would win" in the livestream, but they chose the boring route.

They wasted Bask and he was one of the good mando characters in the story every other mando are kind of meh except for Rass.

Since the thread named "Old wound was disappointing" was deleted, I thought I make a new thread then. I liked The beginning I thought the dialogue was great. Arcann, Sana-rae, Malgus had great parts. The middle part, doing the voss quest was okay, not great but not bad overall. I like the lore in the sidequests, like learning about the first voss mystic. I like that there was no world ending threat to the voss and the story was simple. I felt the ending mad it worse. I think Shae acting irrational made sense, because she put in a position were she could lose everything, and now she desperate Learning about nul was great as well. Disliked The ending made the story worse and pointless since we learned nothing. We have already been told that the galaxy would change before by Malgus, and we been told many times for years that we would "change the fate of the galaxy" since kotfe so it had no impact for me. So meeting the three was pointless and disappointing I am tired of the chosen one being put on the player character. we already were the chosen one many times before including in kotfe. Let someone else be the chosen one, let Sa'har decide the fate of the galaxy not me again. Learning about Nul scene was great but it was not worth two years of waiting for the answer. Gormak and voss story don't really feel like there at a truce, it just feels like some of them agreed to align with each other. It makes the story feel unimportant, because it feels like me going there to help them has no impact in making the alliance between them better in the end, which worsen the story for me. I like the scene with Darth Malgus but at the same time I am really tired of him Sana-rae since post Kotet for 7 years has not really felt important until this update. Sure she is in an update once per year, but she still felt unimportant, it doesn't feel like she anything off screen.. The problem with this is that it may be years before she even feels important again and I feel it would of made her more important if she returns to voss as a mystic and be part of the three, imo anyways. Not really expanding on the voss character and the gormak character (I forget their names) in the main story. Overall I liked it but at the same time there were many disappointing parts that I felt left me seeing the story in a negative light.

This is the internet! When something big happens we come to baseless conclusions, that is our way! In all seriousness thanks for the response! Hoping the deal is signed soon, so you can talk about it.

There is a lot of uncertainly at this point about the future, on content, plans, unsure of a lot, but one thing that is 100 percent sure, that there transferring the devs to an existing studio to work on swtor, so I can say with certainly right now they will keep the game online.

Completely agree Overall I think since 7.0 the game just went downhill in every aspect communication to content. Everything handle in 7.0 for me was bad and screams of bad management. no communication, no listening to feedback, out of touch decisions. Like BW not telling players nim r4 was cancelled, or delaying a lot of 7.0 content, making promises and hyping up the "year of swtor" in 2022, and not delivering. Not to mention bugging content, bad gearing system and everything launching in 7.0 was half done. I could go on, but I stop their. I just want dev leadership who play their game, see the perspectives of their players, communicate and come to a middle ground with the players on unpopular decisions. Which BW does none of that. What's worse is that I feel most of the problems come from BW themselves and not EA. I think of BW in a negative light at this point, I started player in 2013, took breaks, but been so disappointment since 7.0 I was considering for the first time uninstalling the game, in which I have never done. I think now I will wait and see what happens. At this point I'm just hoping for good content and good decisions being made. Hopefully the deal can be made soon, so they can let us know their plans.

Also if anyone cares here is EA response to IGN article IGN: After the publication of this story, EA addressed the news in the following statement: “Almost 12 years after launch, Star Wars: The Old Republic remains a success and continues to grow its dedicated and passionate community. We’re so proud of the work the team has done, and the future of the game and the community continues to be very bright. We’re evaluating how we give the game and the team the best opportunity to grow and evolve, which includes conversations with Broadsword, a boutique studio that specializes in delivering online, community-driven experiences. Our goal is to do what is best for the game and its players.”

From quick research, Broadsword has about 26 devs and for the past few years have maintain mmos, it's added new content, but mostly they fix bugs, make changes, but nothing massive. This is just from a quick search so maybe i'm wrong. it's not connected to EA I don't think. No idea on if they be able to maintain it, that will be a wait and see thing.