Star Wars: The Old Republic 'Allies' update announced

While the SWTOR 1.2 update ("Legacy") launched only a month ago, Electronic Arts and BioWare have announced plans for the next content update, titled "Allies."

Andrew Yoon

May 7, 2012 1:30 PM

As with every online game, Star Wars: The Old Republic must constantly offer something new for subscribers to come back to. While the 1.2 update ("Legacy") launched only a month ago, Electronic Arts and BioWare have announced plans for the next content update, titled "Allies."

Little else is known about the update, other than it will be available in EA's fiscal "Q1" time frame--or before the end of June.

Shacker limpossible notes that the 1.3 update (which "Allies" likely is) will include "a dungeon finder, expand the legacy, and include a new raid."

EA's recent financial report notes the overall health of the SWTOR community. EA says the community now has 1.3 million subscribers, a significant drop from 1.7 million in February. EA previously said that subscriptions were stable, but active logins were in decline. Could "Allies" possibly stop the downward momentum?

Andrew Yoon

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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May 7, 2012 1:30 PM

Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Star Wars: The Old Republic 'Allies' update announced.

While the SWTOR 1.2 update ("Legacy") launched only a month ago, Electronic Arts and BioWare have announced plans for the next content update, titled "Allies."
- limpossible
  
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  May 7, 2012 1:31 PM
  
  AFAIK, its been confirmed that 1.3 will include a "dungeon finder", expand the legacy, and include a new raid.
- kiloblaster
  
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  May 7, 2012 1:47 PM
  
  How is the community with this game now? Is it still going strong or are servers low pop?
  - yAak
    
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    May 7, 2012 1:57 PM
    
    Low server pop with no options to move to other servers. I think there's plenty of players to make a healthy community, they're just spread across too many servers, and I don't think even the devs have tools to merge servers. It's sad.
    - Downforce
      
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      May 7, 2012 1:58 PM
      
      it would be really interesting if they did a player and faction balance, consolidate things.
    - walker270
      
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      May 7, 2012 1:59 PM
      
      Apparently the game has about as many servers as WoW, but with less than 15% of the population.
      - deathofrats
        
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        May 7, 2012 2:07 PM
        
        This was EA's big thing. They honestly believed that this would be a WoW killer.
      - scatterblack
        
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        May 7, 2012 2:27 PM
        
        Ouch. I wonder if they have lost money on this endeavor?
        
        deathofrats
        
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        May 7, 2012 2:53 PM
        
        no doubt, they put at least 6 if not 7 years into this game already.
        
        deathofrats
        
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        May 7, 2012 3:02 PM
        
        actually now that i think about it, it could be 8 years at this point..a coworker of mine joined the bioware team in austin back in 04 I think. i might be getting this confused with DC Online though. Good golly what happened to that game.
        
        scatterblack
        
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        May 7, 2012 3:19 PM
        
        It is F2P on PS3. I tried it but couldn't get into it.
- walker270
  
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  May 7, 2012 1:48 PM
  
  The 1.3 mil was at the end of EA Q4, right? That's end-of-March?
  - AndrewYoon
    
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    May 7, 2012 2:05 PM
    
    Yes, that's correct.
  - LoioshDwaggie
    
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    May 7, 2012 2:25 PM
    
    Keep in mind those numbers were including all of the free-month people. The next update will be the real one.
    - jacobvandy
      
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      May 7, 2012 2:35 PM
      
      No... Game came out in December, the first sub count of 1.7 mil at the end of the year was your "includes the free month" figure. There will always be some part of their sub count that includes new purchases on their first month as long as people are buying it (which they are with the heavy discounts lately I'm sure), so you can't keep saying it's not a 'real' number.
    - walker270
      
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      May 7, 2012 3:22 PM
      
      Not if it's the March number.
      
      The legacy promotion was announced mid-April, and took effect at the end of April. This was from EA's Q4 financial call, which runs until the end of March.
      - LoioshDwaggie
        
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        May 7, 2012 4:53 PM
        
        Oops, sorry, I missed that this was Q4 call!
        
        Darn my customer calls.
- Entity
  
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  May 7, 2012 2:29 PM
  
  Shame they haven't introduced the comforts from WoW yet. After experiencing all the things that make WoW so accessible, TOR endgame is painful and led me to quit.
- IncursionZ
  
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  May 7, 2012 2:51 PM
  
  But “Star Wars: The Old Republic” showed signs of weakening. EA said active subscribers totaled 1.3 million at the end of the quarter — down 24% from the 1.7 million reported at the end of the December period, when the game first launched.
  
  http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ea-sales-beat-targets-star-wars-takes-hit-2012-05-07
  
  Q1 2012 Earnings release