An upcoming update for Bioware MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic will increase the credit cap, provide additional quickbars and allow unlimited quick travel and revives for non-subscribing players. The SWTOR update provides these quality of life improvements for free-to-play and “preferred” players (those who have subscribed in the past or spent cash on in-game items).
Previously only available to free-to-play and preferred players as consumables via the Cartel Market, SWTOR‘s in-game store, medical probes will now provide on-site revival to all players, according an official post about the update. Prior to the update, these players were instead forced to revive at a medical station and backtrack to the location they died in order to continue playing. Along with the addition of unlimited quick travel (also formerly locked as a consumable for non-subscribers), on-site revival should remove some tedium from free-to-play and preferred gameplay.
The SWTOR patch will also raise the in-game currency caps for free-to-play and preferred players from 200,000 credits and 350,000 credits, respectively, to 1 million credits. This changes comes because, according to the official post, SWTOR‘s developers planned the credit caps for these player categories at a time when the in-game economy meant credits could buy more than they can now. The addition of one extra quickbar per player type follows a similar logic. When Bioware initially decided to give free-to-play players two quickbars and preferred players four, the maximum number of quickbars available to subscribers was only four. Now, subscribers have access to six, so the developers decided to increase free-to-play and preferred quickbar counts to three and five, respectively, allowing these players to quickly select more abilities.
Free-to-play and preferred players will still have to deal with other restrictions, regardless of the update. Only preferred players and subscribers are able to sprint from the time they create their character, for instance, and free-to-play players can only level their characters up to level 50 and complete the (still substantial) base story, according to EA. If players want to experience the game’s various expansions — including the upcoming Onslaught — they’ll still have to subscribe, but this new update will at least make playing the base game a little smoother. SWTOR‘s update 5.10.4 launches in July.
