The Kestrel Minority

Some more light on this from Dulfy.

Seems the Republic and the Empire as we know it NOW are dead.

And the very real consepquence of losing or killing your Comps sounds...interesting.

What this will do to crafting we will see.

But then back to the things that are confirmed...

http://dulfy.net/2015/06/15/swtor-knigh ... sion-info/

Some new info about that....

"New Info from IGN Post-Show Livestream

Very early on in Knights of Fallen Empire, you are frozen in carbonite. When you are awoken, years have passed and you quickly learn that Empire/Republic as you have known have all fallen.
You have to find your old companions and adventure with new companions in a very personal story.
The story picks up right from end of the trailer. You are an Outlander. You can either use existing level 60 characters or create a new level 60 character right from the start.
Brand new companions and new stories with new companions.
New iconic abilities for each class, everything you can expect from a Bioware RPG when you level up.

New Info from Polygon Article

Article link: http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/15/873655 ... -expansion
Five new companions will be available, with very different allegiances
You are able to recruit help and additional companions from an expanded cast, including companions who were previously exclusive to other classes.
To recruit help, you will need to travel around the galaxy and do missions to make yourself favorable to them.”If you want to recruit a character who’s favorable to the Mandalorians, you’ll be able to do missions for them. You want to recruit a character who hates the Hutts, you’ll do missions to build your alliance standing against them."
Still a MMO, just very streamlined.
We are still doing flashpoints, operations, raids bosses, and pvp but it is all about story this year."


My guess there will be some kind of merger for the Factions.

Meaning some FP or OPS will have BOTH factions coming together. Through the Q.

When they were asked for Super-Servers there was a "Wait and see..." answer.

Guess like in the Revan Part we will see more cross-faction things.

Also it will be interesting what the Companion thing means.

You will now need to think very hard:

Do I kill him, do I betray him, do I want my old comps back?

What this will do to crafting is anybodies guess.



But I like having companions and their story.

I did like Mass Effect 3's way of closing the companion stories.

Some died - some went their own way.

And seeing that was bittersweet at times...

If they were to merge both factions in to one that could be kind of interesting... Bet some interesting RP could come out of that merger (not that I'm exactly participating)

How would you handle the creation of new characters though? Or just characters below 60. Still playing the old content but locked out from interaction with 60+ characters and the new merged faction hub (you can't merge the factions without giving us a new cooler and better thought out space station).

They have talked about the old story missions being improved though so obviously they're doing something there... They could scrap all pre lvl 50 content and get you to 50 with just the story mission (already doing it with the XP boost) thus freeing up the other planets for this new alliance stuff without needing copies of the planets... They're going to allow people to start at 60 anyway so who is going to grind those levels anyway? Sure would be a lot of content to throw out though and it is at least somewhat enjoyable the first time around...

In any case, I'd kind of love to see the factions merge... I really like the Bounty Hunter and Imperial Agent, would be cool to play those while still playing with the Kestrels


EDIT: Huh, these are interesting.

9. What if I unsubscribe from Star Wars: The Old Republic after October?
If you unsubscribe after October 27, 2015, you will keep the first 9 Chapters of Knights of the Fallen Empire, but will not receive any additional Chapters when they are released.

10. What if I don’t subscribe until all the Chapters are released?
If you subscribe after the launch of Knights of the Fallen Empire, you will receive all the content that has been released up to that date. However, as a subscriber you are eligible for great benefits that you don’t want to miss out on such as a monthly Cartel Coin grant and access to the full spectrum of character species.

So you get the expansion for subscribing, but if you unsub you won't get more chapters, unless you resub in which case you get all chapters released to that point. Odd way to handle it. No way for F2P accounts to just buy the expansion? Not that I'd deal with the F2P limitations anyway but still.

LOL!

Well, they do know that it is not kind of new but I was laughing when they posted this "Spoiler"



Valkorion: who is this guy? What happened to that other Emperor? Aren’t they both actually Jadus, who’s secretly Kephess, who’s actually a mutated clone of Kai Zykken created by Fez Burba for the Star Cabal’s secret war against the Shroud? OK, so I actually haven’t seen that theory, but IT’S ALL TRUE TELL EVERYONE BEFORE IT’S TOO LA----


[Charles had to take a few days off to relax, but he’ll be back in time to answer more questions at our Community Cantina event at San Diego Comic Con next month! - Musco]

Wow, I've got to say that this all sounds very exciting! Though whether they can pull this off is the real question.

Regardless I'll definitely log on in Oct

We are waiting you back

Hehe, good to hear Liss; I'll definitely pop by sometime before Oct to level my toon to 60 and complete the story missions

Some more info about the Expansion and what they envision.

http://massivelyop.com/2015/06/22/e3-20 ... -of-kotor/

And here's another post on that same site, talks a bit about companions and the Fallen Empire, all quite vague though.

http://massivelyop.com/2015/06/23/e3-20 ... shes-more/

“We’re also going back to the original game and we’re evolving the eight base class stories so that leveling up takes a fraction of the time it once did, with an epic story guiding you the whole way. It is a Knights of the Old Republic-inspired BioWare RPG experience in each of those eight class stories without the ‘go kill eight womp rats’ side quests.”

So they really are planning to make it so that all you actually have to play from the base game is the story mission.

Frankly, I think this might be a very smart move, basically end up with a game that has a "single-player" component more like typical Bioware game by cutting out all the generic side quests but also has multiplayer components such as dungeons, raids and a player market. It'll make SWTOR feel more unique.

What happened to the Empire and the Republic? That, too, is in the story, but suffice it to say that they were conquered and now folks from both those sides are working together to get you

A faction merge is starting to sound more and more likely... We'll see what they do but I would actually like that. For one, the playerbase isn't as large as it used to be, having all on the same faction means more people for the group PVE content.

Since new players can be granted an instant level-60 toon to start straight into the expansion, it’s hard not to consider the SWTOR and Fallen Empire two completely different games instead of a game and its expansion.

It's an interesting point. I wonder if they'll have some kind of new-player experience (tutorial) when you start a lvl 60 character. Think about it, you start SWTOR with what, 2 or is it 3 active abilities? I logged in to SWTOR for a short moment last week and even picking a level 30 character that is a lot of abilities to figure out how and when to use (granted a lot of them are various CC, CC breakers and defense abilities, but still)...

Well, they definitely have me intrigued about the expansion.

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2015/06/23/e ... -expansion

Raiah - Number 5 mentions that new lvl 60 chars get abilities piecemeal.

Though I really feel they could cut half of the abilities out of Swtor; I'm back in playing Jedi Guardian DPS, and I've so many damage dealing abilities that are practically the same but I have to use them all because they're on cooldowns... It gets tiresome reaching across for Keyboard number 9 every 8 seconds...

Kotfe is really looking good in my opinion; though I'm really hoping it survives the hype-test...