We don't know what Anthem is. Not to mention, it's gameplay is nothing like Destiny. It's more similar to Mass Effect Andromeda. Secondly, I seriously doubt Lucasfilm has that much oversight on SWTOR. It's not canon anymore and they likely don't care very much about this game. It's the new games that fit into the new canon that are bogged down in development because of Lucasfilm. Visceral's Ragtag game was scrapped largely because Lucasfilm was so slow to approve everything related to the game. I think the problem is more so a lack of budget, resources, and man power. BioWare Austin has been seeing its staff shrink consistently since the game launched. What is left is likely no more than a skeleton crew just trying to keep the lights on. The only facet of the game that continues to get "content" is the Cartel Market, as that's all EA really cares about anyway. We'll see what this alleged "expansion" will bring whenever its announced, but I wouldn't be surprised if this MMO is nearing its inevitable demise. Lucasfilm would likely prefer a new MMO that fits into the new canon anyway.

If you've been following his remarks rather consistently in this thread, he only cares about raids and nothing else. No, I don't believe SWTOR would ever be successful solely catering to that play style. Why? Largely because most of those players left years ago and woulldn't come back for scraps. This game needs to focus on what it does well, not what it does poorly. Truth be told, if all I cared about was raiding, I wouldn't be playing SWTOR. I'm not sure why some alleged raiders here are still begging for that content when it hasn't been good or frequent for years.

Truth be told, MMOs have been dying, as we know them, for a very long time. While a lot love to claim they are all about "group content," that's not really the case anymore. That's how MMOs started out 20+ years ago, but the genre has become far more solo-friendly and accessible over time. In Star Wars Galaxies, there was no such thing as "solo play." If you did not group, you could not play the game. That is not the case for SWTOR, as the game, even at launch, was built around a solo experience. The group content was optional. The biggest mistake BioWare could ever make is isolating solo players and only appealing to group players, and this is coming from someone who loves to PvP most of the time. I'd wager the amount of solo players from SWTOR far outpaces the amount of group players by miles, and that's the trend this genre has been moving towards for the last 15 years. The reality is this game is far more likely to succeed catering to the solo experience than trying to appeal to group players, whether it's a new raid, a new flashpoint, or a new warzone. As you said, especially regarding raiding, it's a huge time sink that not everybody has time to commit to or is willing. That makes solo play, in many cases, far more desirable. That's not to say that further group content should be eradicated, although I think raids should be cut for practical reasons, but the focus should always be on the solo experience. When most gamers think about what SWTOR did well, it's the class stories that come to mind. It's not the raids. It's not the dungeons. It's certainly not the PvP. It's a no-brainer what BioWare should invest in if they want this game to remain relevant.

Technically, Karagga's Palace was released at launch (Bonethrasher was available, but he was broken). The rest of the bosses to complete the raid did come in January. Either way, you are spot on that there are a lot of inconsistencies in his/her dates regarding content releases. We can only speculate based on ex-BioWare employee actions and the direction the game took. Since there was a mass exodus of employees and the studio made a pivot to story, that would lead one to believe SOR did not meet financial expectations. If I had to guess, considering it was also the largest expansion and the longest one in development, it was BioWare's last chance from EA to finally release a successful expansion. It under-performed, and EA forcibly turned the game's direction into something else. I didn't personally care for the expansion myself, so it doesn't really surprise me others share my views on that. The lesser of the two evils, in my opinion, is 16 story chapters, mission alerts, star fortress, and don't forget the one wz map and arena map. Not being able to release a full op in one year is unacceptable. Dailies, in my opinion, are a waste of resources. Flashpoints are only worth developing if they are good, and we haven't had a good, new flashpoint in a while. Some might argue otherwise, but I felt KOTFE's post-release content strategy was far better than what we are receiving with KOTET's post-release content strategy.

Yep. Something has definitely changed, and we are purposely being left in the dark. Quite a lot, actually. As I've stated several times already, we've had an expansion release on an annual basis since 2012. We also knew many months ahead of time before a new expansion released. This is why it's unlikely that a new expansion is coming Spring 2018, as some are hopelessly praying for. There just doesn't seem to be any cohesive plan for this game, and we've never had this kind of drought in the six years this game has been online. Something is definitely different.

Most of that is for this year. The scraps are for "early 2018," as I already pointed out. I'm talking about beyond what the road map obviously already illustrated. We don't know anything, other than empty promises that BioWare has made. Again, until we actually know more than what's coming in the next few months, this game looks "dead" from a development standpoint.

Incorrect. KOTFE concluded in August of 2016. KOTFE launched in October 27, 2015. In other words, Gabe left the studio a few months before the studio's pivot to story, which they had been obviously working on KOTFE for many months before its release and Gabe's departure. As someone else had indicated earlier, there was a massive exodus of BioWare staff after the lackluster showing of SOR. EA pivoted SWTOR to focus more on the Cartel Market, and a lot of BioWare employees left as a result. This would lead one to believe that any sort of endgame team was likely dead shortly after SOR's release. That might also explain why the two operations for SOR were in such pitiful shape as well. For whatever reason, Gabe stuck around, even well into KOTFE's development. He probably assisted with the Odessen WZ, the Rishi arena, and perhaps Star Fortresses and the Eternal Championship. Outside of that, he left (or was removed) shortly before KOTFE released.

I see that quite a few posters are getting hung up on semantics of defining "death" for this game, so I'll make it very simple. MMOs are a living, breathing service. In order for an MMO to continue to thrive and progress, it must continue to be updated and receive content. An MMO that stagnates content-wise, even if it is not shut down, is as good as "dead" from a development standpoint in most cases. No, I'm not counting updates with re-used assets on the Cartel Market as "content." The reason this thread was created, and the questions I was posing, is whether this game has a legitimate future regarding content updates. Next to nothing has been confirmed for early 2018, and there is no official confirmation of an expansion. This is rather troubling, as we've had an expansion on an annual basis since 2012. Until we actually know that a "6.0" really exists, this does look like a "dead" MMO in terms of development.

SWTOR's direction is like a candle in the wind. It's unpredictable and it sways one way and then back the other. It's a game with a constant identity crisis, and because it refuses to commit to anything it fails at everything. There was a strong pivot to endgame group content with ROTHC and SOR, which backfired. Then there was a strong pivot to KOTFE and initially KOTET, which seems to have backfired. Then again, KOTET hasn't really produced much of anything, so it's difficult to really know what's going on at the studio. Perhaps its just internal politics, studio turmoil, and publisher pressure that's causing this stagnancy that we are all feeling. We'll never be able to know the full story, because BioWare and EA don't want us to know. If we truly had a sense of what the future of this game looked like, it would make it far easier for all of us to determine whether to remained subscribed or not. Instead, it's far more lucrative for EA to keep us in the dark and to nickel and dime as much as they can until they cut the power. That's not to say that amazing won't come at some point in 2018, but I doubt we'll see it in the next six months at this point. We are being hopeful and optimistic about a Spring 2018 release date for a potential new expansion, but history has shown BioWare generally only releases expansions in the fall. I also would expect BioWare to market an expansion either at E3 (June 2018) or whenever the next Star Wars Celebration is held. To my knowledge, none of these expansions have just released without a big ramp up in marketing to advertise and promote the game. This is why a Spring 2018 release, especially since we still haven't heard anything, seems like a long shot at this point.

I discredited you regarding what, exactly? If you are referring to Visceral's game, we don't know how that's going to turn out. It's too early to tell and that game has been indefinitely pushed back from being released. That's true, although it won't necessarily protect SWTOR from an untimely fate. Especially if Anthem ends up being a huge success next year, EA might just pull the plug on SWTOR and expect most to either play Star Wars: Battlefront II or Anthem until potentially the Visceral game is released. This is of course assuming the Visceral game is going to be the kind of experience that could, in theory, replace SWTOR.

This is a really good post, and it doesn't just apply to raiders either, but also PvPers. BioWare has never truly cared. Lazy and uninspiring raid design that pales in comparison to other MMOs. Horrible instanced PvP with terrible class balance, not to mention the removal of open world PvP on Ilum and 8v8 ranked. Lets not forget "resolve," the dumbest CC immunity mechanic in an MMO that has never worked well. BioWare attempted to cater to raiders and PvPers because they felt they had to. WoW tried to cater to everybody, so SWTOR had to do the same if it was going to be a "WoW killer." But the truth is, raiding and PvP was never BioWare's concern. In fact, BioWare had nothing to do with either. They brought in the endgame content team from Mythic to handle operations and PvP. BioWare did what they knew: story. In hindsight, it really shouldn't be too surprising why things turned out the way they did. BioWare wanted to make a theme park MMO, but they weren't truly committed to making a good one. They thought they could just focus on story, and the Mythic guys would handle everything else. Too bad Mythic hadn't made a competent MMO since DAoC released in 2001. Now we find ourselves in a situation where barely any content is being added for anyone. Raiders won't be pleased even when this raid is complete. PvPers have been begging for class balancing for over a year... What does BioWare focus on? "Galactic Command" and now server merges, which aren't going to help things anyway (most players transferred off of dead servers years ago). I don't believe BioWare is truly capable of supporting an MMO, because they've never had to actually bother until now. Maybe the illusive "6.0" will just blow us all away, but I doubt it. BioWare is riding this project out until EA shuts it down and replaces it with something else. I won't be surprised if BioWare Austin is shut down in a year or so with EA only keeping BioWare Edmonton afloat for Anthem. If that game tanks, then I think BioWare may be going the way of Visceral, and that will truly be a sad day for all BioWare fans in the world.

He was arguing that because so many characters did not have player ships, that meant that most players at launch apparently didn't go through the class story. That somehow translates to them not caring about story and only caring about endgame. Of course, if he was actually there at launch, he'd know the class story was the only decent way to actually level your character. Not to mention the fact that this statistics sheet was created in 2014, three years after the game had been launched and after it went F2P... In other words, it means nothing and was a pointless attempt at trying to say "everybody left because of no raids."

Assuming it's not shut down. It wouldn't surprise me if EA was planning on replacing SWTOR at some point. Not necessarily with another WoW clone, but "games as a service." Destiny 2, and games similar to it, are the current trend. With what just happened to Visceral Games and its Star Wars game, I won't be surprised if SWTOR is shut down in favor of something like that.

That's possible, although it's too early to tell. I'm sure Amy Hennig is not happy either way. This game was essentially supposed to be Uncharted, but Star Wars. Who knows what it's going to turn into now.

No. This won't be an MMO. It probably just means it won't be focused on the scoundrel main character that was leaked, and they'll make it a more general and broad Star Wars experience. That's definitely a bummer. Visceral was one of my favorite studios.