Star Wars: The Old Republic - The Dark Descent Update and Galactic Seasons Announced

During a recent livestream, BioWare revealed The Dark Descent - an upcoming content update for Star Wars: The Old Republic. The update will introduce a new flashpoint centered around a hidden Jedi Enclave and some story to go along with it. It will also kick off a new ranked PvP season and introduce the so-called Galactic Seasons that will act as this game’s take on the Battle Pass system.

Here’s the big announcement livestream:

And a general overview of Galactic Seasons:

Building upon the Login Rewards system that we launched in Game Update 6.2, we are now unveiling Galactic Seasons! While the Login Rewards are an easy method for collecting rewards by simply logging into the game, Galactic Seasons feature new high-value rewards based on playing the game.

Players will be able to monitor their progress along the Reward Track, including how many Galactic Season Points they’ve accumulated, how many Points they need for the next level, when the current Season ends, and more. Our tentative timeline is to have each Galactic Season last about 5 months.

Each Season allows players to advance through 100 Reward Levels, which grant rewards through their progression. To progress, players will receive a set of Daily and Weekly “challenges”, called Priority Objectives. Comprising of existing and/or new Conquest Objectives, Priority Objectives will require the player to complete specific Conquest Objectives to receive Galactic Season Points. Priority Objectives are indicated by their new Conquest icon and are filtered to the top of the Conquest Objective list. Players can also earn Galactic Season Points through the Login Reward system by logging into the game any 4 days of the week.

All Reward Levels will require the same amount of Galactic Season Points to progress. For example, going from Reward Level 1 to 2 takes the same amount of effort as going from Reward Level 99 to 100.

Players may progress through two Reward Tracks: one which is free and available for all players, regardless of their Subscription status, and a bonus Reward Track for Subscribers. So long as they maintain their Subscription status, Subscribers will be able to earn the rewards from both Reward Tracks as they progress through the Galactic Season. While Free-to-Play and Preferred accounts will initially only have access to the Free Reward Track, if they subscribe, they will unlock all Subscriber rewards they are eligible for. For example, if a Free-to-Play account subscribes after reaching Reward Level 50 in Galactic Seasons, they can immediately get all Subscriber rewards from levels 1 through 50. Conversely, if the player unsubscribes at Reward Level 90 and proceeds to reach Reward Level 100, they would need to resubscribe to receive the Subscriber Reward Track rewards for Levels 91 through 100. In addition to the bonus rewards, Subscribers also earn bonus Galactic Season Points, allowing them to progress at a slightly faster rate than Free-to-Play or Preferred accounts.