From Star Trek to Star Wars.
Going from Star Trek Online to Star Wars The Old Republic, I'm struck by the fact that both of these MMOs launched at a time when their respective franchises were in the doldrums. Star Trek (2009) had come out the previous year, but the movies have come and gone now and, give or take a Romulan homeworld, have as much lasting relevance to Star Trek as Peter Cushing has to Doctor Who. It would be another nine years before Discovery aired, and longer still before the prime universe timeline finally advanced with Picard. Meanwhile, The Old Republic went live a full four years before Star Wars returned to the big screen with The Force Awakens.
(Yes, I know I'm ignoring Clone Wars, but I think it's far to say that it was Episode VII and what followed that really put Star Wars back on the pop culture radar.)
STO seems to be in a pretty good place right now, but SWTOR has just been handed off from BioWare to Broadsword, a developer whose other main title is Dark Age of Camelot, which launched in 2002. It's hard not to see this as a downgrade, but personally I don't see this as an indication that the game is about to enter maintenance mode or shut down. It may even be a good thing, given that BioWare's heart hasn't been in SWTOR for years. Better to be the big game of a small studio than one project among many for a large one.
Of course, this is assuming Broadsword aren't starved of the resources required to deliver new content. I've seen a lot of speculation that voice acting will be dropped to save money, and while I daresay it's not cheap it's also literally the last thing I'd remove from this game. SWTOR's story sequences are the best thing it has going for it, but the writing isn't good enough to stand on its own merits. It really does need the voice actors to give it some punch.
Whatever the future holds for the game I do think SWTOR remains safe from sunsetting... at least until EA decides to launch a new Star Wars game in or adjacent to the MMO genre. Once that happens I do think it's going to be Star Wars Galaxies all over again.
But for now I'm in no greater rush to get through all of the game than I was before this news broke, which means I can take a trip to the only starter world I haven't visited for the blog yet: Hutta. Here's my Bounty Hunter, and no, I still haven't watched The Mandalorian.
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