We're on the Road to Somewhere

After a few weeks of promising the Roadmap at the end of this month, it seemed for a brief amount of time that Keith Kanneg would unfortunately be unable to deliver it within his promised schedule. The exact reasons for the delay were not specified, which is a shame because it would have been nice to know at least some specific details regarding the various hoops which he had to jump through, but there it is.

Thankfully, he was able to circumvent these delays and posted the Roadmap earlier today. So, as several bloggers will doubtless be doing, I'll be diving in to take a closer look.

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Operations

Plain and simple; this section discusses only the plans regarding Gods from the Machine and not any future plans. It is too soon to concretely say "there are other new Operations coming!", so I don't think there could have been much else for them to say. We have a rough estimate on when Esne and Aivela will be released, though; sometime in July.

Otherwise, the Platinum-rarity drops being introduced to specific bosses sounds nice. I'm a huge fan of them finding multiple ways to get a rare item to players, particularly if it allows people to circumvent the Cartel Market's RNG nature. Curious to see which drops come from which bosses.

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PvP

A new WarZone is on the way!

Yes, there's other things such as Class Balance and Unassembled Components hopefully being made Legacy mentioned as well, but c'mon; the mention of this new Warzone is pretty much what most people will be celebrating above everything else. We don't know when this new Warzone will be coming, but, hey, something new!

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Story and Companions

It's been known since the Orlando Cantina that a new Flashpoint set on the planet Umbara - previously seen in a Vietnam-style Clone Wars episode - would be coming, and now we have a prospective date for it; August.

Otherwise, in terms of Companions there's a fair amount of interesting things here. More ways to increase Influence are on the way, as is a review of which Companions are accessible via Alliance Alerts, but I'm sure that most people will have zoned in on the fact that they intend to make all main-story Fallen Empire Companions (save for Arcann) customisable.

This last detail has certainly piqued my interest because Lana, Senya, and to a lesser extent Koth all share very unique body-frames; of the remaining humans only Arcann, Theron, and Shae Vizla are built on 'pre-existing' player body-types. A fair amount of work is thus needed to allow the former three to be customised, but I'm pleased that they're doing it even if only for the sake of everyone who wanted it.

I won't be indugling in customising their looks and I am really not looking forward to the amount of Lanas and particularly Senyas and Shaes who may get punished by skimpy gear. People will be people, though.

In terms of Alliance Alerts, I'm curious as to whether Zenith's long-lost Alert will finally surface at this point. Otherwise the only Companion left who could realistically benefit an Alliance Alert more than a story appearance is Tharan Cedrax, so maybe we'll get him back as well...?

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QoL

Again, relatively simple. Some of this section discusses what we knew was coming already, such as the increased mount speeds and new Legacy Perks, but then we get mentions of fixing long-term bugs, adding Tunings to Collections (finally), and simplifying various unspecified "things to do in-game", which are also nice to see.

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Summer of SWtOR Re-Cap

More details from the next immediate patch have been revealed via this summary. Notably, we now know that one of the new rewards from the Nar Shaddaa Nightlife Event is a Gamorrean Companion, Shae Vizla will once more be customisable, and that Tier IV gear will be craftable in 5.2.2. Otherwise, everything in this patch is as previously reported.

For future patches, we know that in 5.3 we'll be seeing balance changes to all Classes except for Guardian and Sentinel, an option to search Decorations will be added, and a brand new Stronghold will be added. From the hint of "with a great view of the ocean" it is fairly obvious that this is the long-clamoured-for Manaan Stronghold which even had its own fan-made 3D representation created.

5.4 is kept very much in the dark at the moment, which is rather fitting considering that Umbara, the planet featured in this update, lacks sunlight on its surface so is kept in permanent night. Presumably this patch will not include the third boss and logical fourth God, Nahut (Scyva and Izax, as mother and father of the pantheon, are undoubtedly going to be the last two bosses), as it would definitely be too soon after the twin sisters to introduce another Operations boss with their proposed schedule.

Finally, we have a promise from Keith that he'll keep in increased communication with the fanbase and hopefully deliver a roadmap each quarter. These will be very welcome.

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All in all, while it is a very simple update, I like what I see a great deal. It mentions enough details to pique interest whilst not revealing too much until its ready. I'd imagine that getting the "okay" on some of these details proved slightly more troublesome than originally intended, but then this is the first Roadmap in a very long time, so I think that this uncertainty can be somewhat excused.

So, yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing the mentioned updates becoming realised, no matter how long it takes in actuality. 5.2.2 seems to be quite a solid little patch from what we know so far, and 5.3 looks to be even more so.