Knights of the First Expansion

Yesterday the trailer was not the only star wars news. Early access finall began for Star Wars: The Old Republic: Knights of the Fallen Empire. When I call it the first proper expansion, I mean it is the first one sufficiently packed. Galactic Starfighter and Galactic Strongholds were each just one gimmick. Apparently when Bioware thinks of a new gameplay idea they name it an expansion and give it out. What I still don't understand is why we still can't play pazaak, sabacc and dejarik? Nar Shaddaa is playable, damit.
Not that I am complaining, at least we have housing, with neat added teleport features. Taking notes, Blizzard?
Rise of the Hutt Cartel on the other hand had no gimmicks. Instead it increased the level cap by five and continued the story with the magestic rise of the Hutt Cartel that ended before you even realised the Cartel is supposed to be rising. Finally someone on the dev team figured out it is time to give the game some actual plot again and gave us Shadow of Revan. SoR gave us the longest story arc since the class storylines and even revamped the progression system. It was the perfect warm up for KotFE.
Remember how I said sufficiently packed? Well Knights of the Fallen Empire is as packed as expansions can be. The catch is? Most of those are gameplay tweeks and not playable content. Nevertheless it is pretty impressive how every aspect of the game got changed.

• Polished character selection screen? Yep
• Added visuals to character creation? Yep
• New graphic options? Yep
• Several interface changes? Mhmmmm
• New GUI editing functions? You better believe it
• Revamped crafting? Also yes
• Revamped companion system? Yes again
• Revamped leveling experience? Sure thing
• Class skill tweeks? Why not
• Stat changes? Of course

And the story didn't even begin.

Wether the game is as good as it was intended to be will be revealed in a new series of articles about my early access experiences.