The next major update for the Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) is coming to servers tomorrow morning, June 26. Patch 1.3 brings a feature the SWTOR community has been clamoring for since the game debuted: a group finder tool. The update also brings a host of smaller changes to the game, including new legacy perks.
The new group finder will help players quickly find a group for Flashpoints, Operations, or Heroic planet missions. The legacy perks unlocked in the new patch include advancement perks that give experience boosts for Warzones, Flashpoints, Story Missions, and Space Missions. The crafting system has received some changes as well, with new augment kits that unlock an augment slot on already-made armor. Take a look below at all of the features announced for patch 1.3:
Though patch 1.3 brings some needed features to SWTOR, it doesn’t bring any new content, in the form of new Operations or Warzones, the way patch 1.2 did. The free server merges that Bioware offered two weeks ago have significantly consolidated the remaining SWTOR player base, but questions remain about just how many subscribers the game still has. Back in May, when the Electronic Arts’ quarterly financial results were announced, it came out that SWTOR had lost 400,000 subscribers since its release. Though EA tried to spin this number as simply players who only played for the free month that comes with purchasing the game, anecdotal evidence suggests that since then the Diablo III launch hit SWTOR’s population hard, meaning EA will have a lot to explain in their next financial report. The massive layoffs that hit Bioware only weeks after the EA announcement were more evidence that the game was in financial trouble.
With the group finder finally implemented, the SWTOR developers will now have to turn their attention to expanding the game’s content if they want to extend the amount of time it has before going free-to-play.