Despite moving to a third-party studio, Star Wars: The Old Republic will continue to be supported into “2024 and 2025”, BioWare reassures fans.
The first week of June brought word that BioWare was to move development of its long-running MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic over to a third-party studio, Broadsword Online Games. Understandably, players might have wondered what this might mean for the online RPG’s long-term future; could it be that The Old Republic faced a period of what amounted to managed decline?
Perhaps sensing this, BioWare’s Keith Kanneg took to the game’s forum to provide a bit of reassurance. In an FAQ (as spotted by Eurogamer), one line asks, “Is the game heading into maintenance mode?”
“Absolutely not,” Kanneg’s reply reads. “As I’ve said before, we are working on future plans including more story and modernization initiatives for the game. We’ve upgraded the game to 64-bit, and are working on moving the servers to the cloud, and there are more content and tech updates on the way.”
Elsewhere in the post, Kanneg writes that, with update 7.4 now live, updates 7.3.1 and 7.4 are in the works, as well as “planning for 2024 and 2025 with a focus on content and continued modernisation initiatives.”
And while The Old Republic isn’t being supported directly by BioWare itself, the move to Broadsword allows “us a lot of creative freedom,” he adds.
“It means nothing changes. The SWTOR team continues to be in control of the development and direction of the game, with EA providing publishing and player support.”
At launch in 2011, The Old Republic was one of the most expensive games of its day, with its budget reportedly in the region of $200 million. The MMO never quite received the groundswell of players enjoyed by, say, World of Warcraft at its peak, but it’s evidently received a dedicated enough fanbase to keep it going where numerous other online games have withered from view.
