Leveling In ‘Star Wars: The Old Republic’ Becoming More Streamlined With The ‘Knights Of The Fallen Empire’ Release

Once Knights of the Fallen Empire releases, members of the Republic and the Empire will find themselves leveling a little easier in the existing one to 60 content. BioWare announced a few major core world changes in a development blog that outlines how players will be leveling up faster, and with better focus, after the expansion releases.

Like the changes coming to the Cartel Market that the Inquisitr previously reported, the changes to the leveling experience are happening to improve the quality of life for players enjoying Star Wars: The Old Republic. The new world changes will offer players a chance to experience level one to level 60 by completing only their class quests and each planet’s core story quests. These missions are now part of the Critical Path and are identified by their purple icons and text.

Missions that are not a part of the Critical Path will be denoted with the classic gold icon and text. These will be known as Exploration Missions and are not required to be completed in order to level comfortably to level 60. Moreover, the changes to the core leveling experience will also change the way Star Wars: The Old Republic players complete Heroic Missions. All Heroic Missions will now be surmountable with only two players, instead of four, and those players will no longer have to return to an NPC or mission dropbox after their completion. Returning to complete missed Exploration Missions or stock up on new rewards from Heroic Missions will make use of the new level sync feature that bumps players down to the level of the mission to complete it.

Knights of the Fallen Empire will be free to players that purchase a Star Wars: The Old Republic game subscription, which grants access to the initial nine chapters of the new story. Cancelling a subscription does not take the chapters available away from the player; however, new chapters can only be obtained by subscribing to the game while they are available. Players that do subscribe after Knights of the Fallen Empire releases will also have access to the Rise of the Hutt Cartel and Shadow of Revan expansions, as well.

As the Star Wars: The Old Republic FAQ points out, this means that a player can subscribe after all the chapters are released and cancel shortly thereafter to play and retain the chapters of “Knights of the Fallen Empire.” This setup is different from previous Star Wars: The Old Republic expansions in that there is no outright way to purchase it and the story-driven content will slowly roll out to players over the next several months. In fact, the first nine chapters of Knights of the Fallen Empire will be available on the October 27 release date with at least seven other chapters to be released incrementally over a year or so, starting in early 2016.

The expansion will also accompany a new item in the Cartel Market that allows players to purchase level 60 characters. Knights of the Fallen Empire will include a “Start at Level 60” character and more can be purchased after its release. The free level 60 that comes with the expansion must be used on a new character according to a post on the BioWare forums, but additional purchases can be used on existing characters as well. A price point on the boosted character has not been revealed; however, other games often sell high-level characters like these anywhere from $35, in the case of Everquest 2, to $60, as seen in World of Warcraft.

Luckily, the server maximum amount of characters will be going up when Knights of the Fallen Empire releases. Players will be able to house up to 40 characters on one server. Characters that are created using the “Start at Level 60” feature will not count against this limit because the purchase comes with “an additional character slot.”

Are you looking forward to the story-focused content of Star Wars: The Old Republic‘s upcoming expansion?

[Images courtesy of BioWare]