Episode 140: A New Class in SWTOR?

This week on the show SWTOR dropped a new patch — and while it looks like your standard bug‑fix update, there are a few changes hiding in there that are pretty impactful. I’ll have the details ahead.

Also, this week, I’ve talked about how adding a new Combat Style is a real possibility for Star Wars: The Old Republic. This week, I’m looking at something bigger: the idea of a brand‑new Class. Is it possible? Sure. But don’t hold your breath. 

Chapters

• 0:30 Intro
• 1:56 Game Update 7.8c
• 4:11 Changes to Story Skip Points
• 8:08 A New Class in SWTOR?
• 21:24 Wrap-Up and Outro

Transcript

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Episode 140 of the State of the Old Republic podcast was originally recorded on February 6th, 2026.

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It's the State of the Old Republic podcast.

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This week on the show, Swotor dropped a new patch, and while it looks like your standard bug fix update, there are a few changes hiding in there that are pretty impactful. I'll have the details ahead.

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So this week, I've talked about how adding a new combat style is a real possibility for Star Wars. This week, I'm looking at something bigger. The idea of a brand new class. Is it possible? Sure. But don't hold your breath. And with that, it's time to make a jump to Lightspeed and cue the moron. Welcome to episode 140 of the State of the Old Republic podcast. I'm your host Ted. And as you heard in the opening,

I have another great show lined up for you today. While major updates for Star Wars The Old Republic aren't expected until sometime in March, we did see a minor patch released on January 27th. Game Update 7.8c contained several bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and a very impactful change to how we skip story. Let's dig into that and some of the other changes in Game Update 7.8c.

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Game Update 7.8c is one of those patches that doesn't come with fireworks, but it does come with a clipboard, a reflective vest, and a very determined QA team. This is a maintenance patch. A tighten the screws, sweep the floors, fix the weird gap between the countertop and the wall on Corellia kind of patch. So let's start with the high level summary. No need to buckle in. This part is quick. We've got the removal of the old subscriber event tokens and vendors.

I hope you managed to spend all of yours. And then roughly a small novel's worth of bug fixes across Dantooine, Illum, and seemingly half the galaxy. There were some important changes definitely worth noting. One of the biggest quality of life improvements in this patch is the mission tracker update. And I know UI changes doesn't sound thrilling, but this one is genuinely helpful.

Through the interface editor, you can now adjust the font size of all titles and tasks. You can change the font color of non-critical mission titles and tasks. Critical missions will still be purple because purple is awesome. You can also change the mission tracker background color and adjust its opacity. If you go to Hoth or anywhere for that matter and can't read the missions, well, that's on you now.

Now, sometimes the best patch notes are the ones that quietly let people play the game again. If you play Suotor on a Mac, there is a new Mac launcher that fixes the infamous infinite black screen issue. And one more UI note that deserves a shout out, there is now a dedicated mission icon for planetary arc missions and it shows up in the world map Legend. This is a small thing, but also a smart thing. Planetary arcs are major story beats.

They're the backbone of each world and they were once part of the critical story path. Stripping them of their purple icon visually buried them under the sea of side missions. They once again stand out and it's a great clarity improvement, especially for new players trying to figure out what's important and what's that one mission where a droid asks you to collect some power converters. Well, all right, let's get into the big one. This patch quietly made a major structural change to Swotor's story flow.

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You now must complete Illum and Makeb before you can start Shadow of Revan. And the mission Welcome to Rishi is now locked behind completing the Shadow of Revan Prelude. Two small bullet points that reshape the entire story experience. Illum and Makeb were always meant to be the bridge between the class stories and the Shadow of Revan. But for years the game let you skip them. You could go straight from, I just finished my class story.

Two, Revan is back and everything is on fire with absolutely no connective tissue. This patch fixes that. It restores narrative cohesion and it finally aligns the game with the Eras window which presents Svotor as a chronological saga instead of a choose your own adventure buffet. But there's a trade-off. Veteran players, the folks who have done these stories a million times lose a skip point. If you want to play Shadow of Revan on an alt,

you must now run Illum and Makeb first. And the bigger mechanical consequence is this. If you skip ahead to Knights of the Fallen Empire, the game now autocompletes Illum, Makeb, and Shadow of Revan. Previously, it only autocompleted Shadow of Revan, and you could still go back and play the others. That's no longer possible. So why would they do this? Well, here's my thought. First is consistency.

It was always odd that when you skipped ahead to Knights of the Fallen Empire and beyond, that it completed your origin story and Shadow of Revan, including the Prelude, but left Illum and Makeb alone. As far as I could tell, there was no rhyme or reason for this. So this change makes things cleaner, but obligates you to play more of the story. While this feels like punishment, I actually think it's groundwork. I don't think you tighten the story order and take away some convenience

unless you're preparing for something bigger. You see, in a perfect galaxy, Swotor would let you skip ahead to any era, not just Coffee, Kotet, or Osis, but all of them. And what if in a future update, say 8.0, they were planning to allow us to do just that? And what if it worked something like this? Once you completed an era for the first time, you could skip it on your other characters. This would force new players to experience the entire saga,

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After all, why wouldn't you want to do that if you've never done it? Veterans would earn the ability to jump around and even skip Osis, Onslaught, and Legacy of the Sith once Edo drops. It's clean, it's intuitive, and it respects both the story and the player's time. And if they wanted to take this a step further, instead of just skipping ahead once you've completed an era, what about being able to go back and replay it?

Swartor ever moves in that direction, this patch is exactly the kind of foundational change you'd expect to see. A little inconvenient for now, but perhaps with a bigger payoff down the road. And that's game update 7.8c. Small on the surface, but with some surprisingly meaningful shifts under the hood. Now if you think being able to replay all the arrows on a character is a go big or go home kind of move, then you'll like this next segment. Coming up...

I'll look at the possibility of getting a new class in Star Wars The Old Republic.

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There's a question that comes up every few years in the Star Wars The Old Republic community. A question that feels both exciting and impossible. And it goes something like this. What if SWTOR added a brand new origin story to the game? A ninth class, a new fantasy, a new hero's journey, a fresh voice in a galaxy that's been telling the same eight stories since 2011. It's a thrilling idea, but today we're going to explore why

being technically possible, Swotor will almost certainly never add a new origin story to the game. Not because the developers lack imagination. Finding a new hero and archetype that truly fits within the Star Wars The Old Republic universe is a monumental decision. It's a choice that shapes the game's identity and legacy, but I'm confident the developers can do better than simply responding to fan requests for an SAS agent or a black ops soldier. They are smart.

creative and capable of crafting something fresh and meaningful. This decision is hugely important, but it's not the real barrier to adding a new origin story. That challenge lies elsewhere. It won't happen because the logistics, the structure and the very DNA of Star Wars The Old Republic make it nearly impossible. Let's start with the most straightforward version of this dream. A full origin story. A brand new class that starts from the beginning of the game.

and follows the same structure as the original eight. You know the pattern. A starting world, then off to the fleet and capital world. Balmores or Terris, Narshadah, Tatooine, Alderaan, and so it goes. Five companions, each with their own arcs, conversations and romances. A class villain, a handler, a class fantasy, your own personal starship, and of course, your own theme music.

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This is the gold standard, the thing that makes Swotor unique. But if Broadsword were to do this today, the first question they'd have to answer is, which faction does this new class belong to? Republic or Empire? While the risk of alienating players over this decision is miniscule, we all play everything these days, a new origin story that matches the others would have to belong to one faction or the other. It can't serve both.

Even if the story is for just one faction, it's already a massive undertaking. But what if Broad Sword tried something smaller? An abbreviated origin story, one that perhaps could serve both factions. You choose your faction during character creation, the classes available for the Republic and Empire, and the character starts at level 75. The story is short, but not too short. You want it to feel epic and not constrained.

During the story you get a single companion and ship. And it's a story that begins in the current timeline. Maybe there are flashbacks, hints that this character has been around since the beginning. A way to stitch them into the fabric of the galaxy. It's clever, it's efficient, it's workable, but it's also awkward. Because Suotor assumes at every step that your character has lived through the entire saga. The rise of the Hutt Cartel.

Shadow of Revan, Knights of the Fallen Empire, Knights of the Eternal Throne, Onslaught and Legacy of the Sith. Every hero becomes the Alliance Commander. Every hero has a history with Valkorion. Every hero has a relationship with Lana Beniko, Theron Shahn and the galaxy-spanning events of the last 14 years. A new origin story would have to inherit all of that, especially if it starts today.

But here's the real problem. The thing that makes SWOTOR special. The thing that makes SWOTOR expensive. It's fully voiced. Every line, every choice, every grunt, shout, whisper and sarcastic aside. And that means a new origin story isn't just a new story. It's a new player character. It means new actors who must become part of the permanent roster. But it's not just about recording new lines for future content.

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they'd have to go back and record lines for every piece of existing content where the player character speaks. From the earliest planetary missions through bonus series to all of the flashpoints and operations and Knights of the Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne chapters and more. This new player character has to function exactly like every other player character. Anything we can do on our Jedi Knights or bounty hunters, we need to be able to do on this new class.

and Swotor lets us go back and replay a lot of content. It's a massive ongoing commitment, and that's just for the player character. Swotor has class-specific moments scattered throughout the game that are not part of any origin story.

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There's the bestial seeker, a dissolute gambler, the spiteful revolutionary, a foolish idealist, and your naive acolyte. Why do

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or simply inertia.

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I follow the will of the Force where it leads. It guided me to join them. And if the Force pulls you apart again, what then? I will accept that if I must. Each day they drift further out of reach, without a center to hold. Without us, the galaxy and all within it spiral into chaos.

That was a clip from Knights of the Fallen Empire chapter 2, A Dream of Empire. Emperor Valkorion comments on your companions differently depending on your class. And there are also other class moments in this chapter. Your ship and story villains all appear there. Then there are the intro cinematics for the other expansions. Rise of the Hut Cartel, Shadow of Revan, and Knights of the Fallen Empire. They are all class specific as well.

Here's the intro to Rise of the Hut Cartel for the Imperial Agent.

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This is an intelligence frequency. Who's calling? I am Darth Ma, the Dark Council. You are the agent who erased all records of our existence. I've spent many resources to find you. Now, we talk. I cut my ties with the Sith after you dissolved Imperial Intelligence. We have no business with each other. We share common enemies. Independent or not, you have not forgotten the interests.

of the Empire. In another lifetime, I would seek your execution. Today, I propose an alliance for the sake of all Imperial worlds. I have no intention of answering to the Dark Council. But neither of us wants the Empire destroyed. Tell me what's going on. Before his removal from power, the former Minister of Intelligence ordered surveillance of the planet Makeb on the edge of hot space. That surveillance has finally borne fruit.

The course of the war is changing, and Makeb's secrets may be our key to survival. Even from beyond the grave, Imperial Intelligence is all that keeps the Empire together. Enough. I require a leader for our operations on Makeb, one to whom I can entrust the security and secrecy of the mission. I have no other options. Rendezvous in the Makeb system and perhaps we can save the Empire from total destruction.

I'll set course for the Makeb system immediately. am transmitting military security codes to grant you the authority of Special Project Commander. Use it or not, but I will not have you slicing my data, and it will facilitate my people's cooperation. They are not trained to obey ghosts.

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As you can see, this entire introduction is specific to the Imperial Agent. It's not just a one-off line. It's the entire conversation in the cinematic. And there is still more retrofitting that needs to happen. Remember, in Knights of the Fallen Empire, our companions are taken away from us when we get frozen in Carbonite. You would have to remove them from this new class and then create Alliance Alerts to bring them back. And then you would need to decide if they just returned for this new class.

or if they should be available to the other classes, which would mean a different return story for them. There's a lot to consider here. And one of those considerations might be locking the new class out of certain content to sidestep these challenges. But that approach quickly feels clumsy and unsatisfying, breaking the seamless experience players expect. To make a new origin story work, Broadshored would need to have the new player character actors record tons of legacy dialogue

and they would need to bring back NPC actors and have them record new lines. And they would need to do it for every language the game supports. And if we really want to get into the weeds, there's even more to consider. Each planet's story isn't just a backdrop. It's a carefully crafted sequence of missions, maps, and instances. Adding a new origin story means deciding exactly where on each planet the story unfolds, whether existing maps and instances can be reused,

or if new ones need to be created from scratch. Then there's the cast of characters. Every mission giver, every story NPC needs to be accounted for and integrated into this new narrative. Companion influence gains must be carefully balanced to align with the existing classes and the story must offer meaningful dark side and light side choices that fit seamlessly into the game's moral framework. All of this adds layers of complexity that go far beyond just writing new dialogue

or recording voice lines. It's a massive design and production challenge that would require a deep planet by planet, mission by mission overhaul. And yes, they do this today with each story update they create from Manon to Galactic Threads, but as great as those stories are, they are nowhere near the scale of an origin story. And this brings us to the conclusion, the haymaker, the truth that sits quietly behind every forum thread and every Reddit post.

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every hopeful wish list. Swotor will never add a new origin story to the game. Not because it's impossible, but because the cost in voice acting, in cinematics, in narrative continuity, in production time is simply too high. The game was built in an era when BioWare had the budget for a blockbuster film. When fully voiced MMOs were the future.

when eight classes felt like the foundation of a decade-long storytelling experiment. Today, Swator is a different game, a smaller team, tighter focus, a more sustainable model. And that's okay. Because the eight origin stories we have are rich, beloved, and complete. They are the backbone of the game, the reason many of us fell in love with it. And while it's fun to imagine a ninth,

The reality is that Svotor's future lies elsewhere, in new stories, new planets, new characters, new eras, not new beginnings.

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As Swotor prepares to turn 15, I wanted to mention an award that it received from the gaming site Massively OP. They gave Star Wars The Old Republic its Lifetime Achievement Award. The purpose of this award is to honor an MMORPG that has made a significant contribution to the genre over the course of its lifetime and the genre's history. This is what they had to say about Star Wars The Old Republic.

Star Wars The Old Republic has felt like an also-ran ever since the moment it launched. It didn't wind up being the biggest thing ever during its first year of life, and you could kind of feel that suck the oxygen out of the room when it didn't become a runaway success. This wasn't helped at all by the largely accurate perception that its presence had helped kill Star Wars galaxies, even if not directly or intentionally. And yet it absolutely deserves a lifetime achievement award. Why?

Well, we're still talking about it, aren't we? I can't stress enough how big a deal that is. Not only did SWTOR not curl up and die after its launch petered out, but the developers kept knuckling down and working on it, expanding the game to include more features, more reasons to go back to older planets, housing, new stories, new options, and so forth. It's been running for 14 years and been rehomed to a different studio that will keep it alive.

And I very much promise you that even though there are parts of the game that are cringe or not great or whatever, it has also produced some very good content over that span of time. So here's to you, Swotor. You're in this for the long haul. A little bit of a left-handed compliment, but still a nice accolade for Star Wars The Old Republic. And now that we're into 2026, you can still expect to see a slew of videos asking if Swotor is worth playing in 2026.

Or if Svotor doesn't do this, it will die and so forth. You know, someday it will end, but 2026 is not that year. We're going to see the game celebrate 15 years and enter a new era. It's safe to say that this baby still has a few surprises left in her. A couple of items before I let you go today. There are only two events for February. First is the radical resurgence on Tatooine.

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This began on February 3rd and will end on February 10th. If you're looking to recruit Dr. Locke into your Alliance, this is the time that you can do that. Then on February 17th, the Relics of the Grie event will kick off. And just as a reminder, we should start hearing about the 7.8.1 Developer Livestream soon, which I hope will give us more details on SWOTOR's plans, not just for Master's Enigma in Galactic Seasons 10, but also for 8.0.

And finally, this wasn't the first time I talked about a new class for Star Wars The Old Republic. A long time ago in episode four of this podcast, I talked about the possibility of a new class for an upcoming expansion called Knights of the Eternal Throne. I wasn't too optimistic about it happening back then either. And that's the State of the Old Republic for today. Let me cut in the sublight engines and cue the music and congratulate you on surviving another half hour.

listening to episode 140 of the State of the Old Republic podcast. I'm your host Ted, and I thank you for tuning in. You can find this podcast on Buzzsprout and iTunes and wherever else you find your podcasts. I'm also back to putting these up on YouTube. You can listen to this show directly from the show site, is sotorpodcast.com. And there is an RSS feed where you can subscribe to the podcast directly. If you have a question for the show, you can email me at sotorpodcast.gmail.com.

Thank you so much for listening and until next time remember the Sith Code cake is a lie