Swtor How to Track Story Line Continuation
Wondering when the stories told in SWTOR take place? Learn in which in-game year each story takes place in the Star Wars Universe
The SWTOR Story is a rich timeline of events and a ton of events described in the whole span of the game's nearly ten years of existence. It is built on the back of the thousands of years of ancient history from other games, comic books, video games.
Recently creative director Charles Boyd stepped up to clarify the game's exact timeline and confirm in what year do all major story events and updates happen. In the span of several forum posts he revealed his own interpretation of when each significant event in the game happens according to the Star Wars Legends and the movies canon time line!
The MMORPG Star Wars The Old Republic follows the Star Wars Expanded Universe timeline and continues to build on events described and detailed by various projects and sources from years before Disney took over the franchise.
Today we have the new and official Star Wars Canon, established by Disney and the Star Wars Legends, combining everything outside of the first two trilogies of movies and the Clone Wars animated series.
SWTOR started in 2011, but the game has been in development for over five years prior to that. By that time Disney had not yet scratched everything created and put together by tons of authors in the span of over three decades.
SWTOR follows the Star Wars Legends and is built on that platform. It references events spanning thousands of years before the game's own timeline, which starts around 3640 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin).
I have a popular SWTOR Timeline of events article here on VULKK.com that lists all major events up to the current update with as closely pointed years of when they happened as possible.
Until recently I was lacking the exact years for the most recent events in the SWTOR history – Updates 5.0 and 6.0. Now I was able to correctly fill in the gaps, thanks to Charles Boyd's forum posts, which almost precicely detailed each major story content release and tied it to that timeline.
BioWare said it years ago that the events of KOTFE (Knights of the Fallen Empire, Update 4.0) and everything that happened after this expansion follow roughly the same time table as the time when they were released in the real life. This means that we have roughly one year between KOTFE and KOTET (Knights of the Eternal Throne, Update 5.0)
Charles did more than just introduce a bit of a semi-official order to the recent events. He actually went as far back as the original stories for each class.
Charles was not the person responsible for the origin class stories, so he could not pinpoint exact dates of events for each one of them. He did provide, however, an year to which we can all point.
What is The Treaty of Coruscant
The Treaty of Coruscant was a major event shown and described in BioWare's cinematic trailers and lore videos. It happened in 3653 BBY and is also used as an alternative calendar using this event as the beginning. 0 BTC/ATC stands for zero years before/after the Treaty of Coruscant. This was the end of the Great Galactic War. The Empire was victorious.
The treaty divided the galaxy into two and forced the Republic and all Jedi to halt the open conflict following the Sacking of Coruscant. The Repulic had to also agree to revoke its control over a number of worlds.
Several other events occur in the years to come that are not officially part of SWTOR, but related and referenced in the game in various ways.
In the same year when the treaty was signed the Battle of Dantooine occured, in which the Republic was victotious. When the war came to an end, Republic commandos on Dantooine refused to comply and continued the war effort on their own.
The end of the Great Galactic War also marked the beginning of the Cold War between the two factions.
In the years to come worthy events in relation to SWTOR were the moment Satele Shan discovered Tython in 3651 BBY. Two years later the Imperials attacked Voss, but the locals prevailed.
In what year does SWTOR Story begin
Charles could not clarify exact dates for each little event in each individual class during their origin stories. He was not the person designing them, so he decided to instead point out a common year in which all stories start and end.
Some of the stories are shorter in relation to the timeline, others have larger gaps of nothing happening. Not all origin class stories start at the same time, but they all end roughly in the same year.
Some time during the year 3640 BBY, which is also known as 13 ATC (After the Treaty of Coruscant), is when all origin class stories end. To refresh your memories – these are the stories the game launched with. They all ended on or around Corellia and brought your first characters to level 50, which was the cap at the time.
Chapter 1 of the origin stories for most classe start around the tenth year after the treaty.
These are the beginning of the SWTOR Storyline and were available with the game's launch in December of 2011.
Chapters 2 and 3, however, don't exactly follow the same time table structure.
"[…] some chapters of some class stories definitely wouldn't have taken exactly 1 year; some perhaps a bit more, others significantly less. […] if we look at them as a collective group of stories, it seems reasonable to say that they all generally start and end around the same time." – Charles Boyd explaining when exactly the origin class story chapters occur in the global timeline of events.
Dates of all major events in SWTOR after the origin stories
Please note that from this point on there are events and characters that some players would consider spoilers and may wish to avoid. I have done my best to describe the things in a way so this article will not ruin your experience, but if you prefer to be on the safe side, you'd better turn away and come back to read it after you go through the narrative yourself.
One of the first major updates to SWTOR, Patch 1.2, introduced the Black Hole daily area on Corellia.
The events in Black Hole along with the Terror from Beyond operation (Patch 1.4) on Asation happened in 3639 BBY, fourteen years after the treaty.
Later the same year the Section X events took place. Section X was another daily area, added with game update 1.5, which also brought HK-51 to us. It was in 1.5 when Free-to-Play was first introduced. November of 2012.
All other story-related updates that occurred in patches released in the same year 2012, happened historically also in the same year in the timeline – 3639 BBY.
The first real expansion Rise of the Hutt Cartel, which is now also free by the way, released in 2013 and the events it describes and allows us to experience also happened a year in 3938.
The storylines on Makeb take place in early to mid 3638 BBY or fifteen years after the Treaty of Coruscant.
By the end of the same year we saw the conclusion of the Dread War with the release of the Oricon story update. These all happened in 2013 in the real life (3638 BBY, 15 ATC)
Another year passed before the Tython and Korriban Invasion happened. These took place in early/mid 3637 BBY, sixteen years after the treaty was signed.
Near the end of the same year (both for the game and also in real life) the next digital expansion of SWTOR was released. The Game Update 3.0 brought Shadow of Revan is also free-to-play today. It takes place in the end of 3637 BBY.
In the beginning of next year (3636 BBY) the Emperor consumed all life from Ziost. This happened in another major story update, part of Patch 3.2, released in late 2015.
A few months later the events from the first chapter of Knights of the Fallen Empire take place. Game Update 4.0 marks a long process in SWTOR's history where everything is about Vitiate, now called Valkorion.
Our characters fell asleep in carbonite in the seventeenth year after the treaty (3636 BBY). They spent there five long years to wake up in a vastly different world in 3631 BBY or twenty-two years after the Treaty of Coruscant.
It is roughly from this point where the real life releases of game updates to SWTOR are nearly identical with the timeline of events described in the stories they bring:
"I like to have the in-game years roughly match IRL years, as it makes keeping track much simpler, and is generally (though not always) in keeping with the intent of the content flow as written. So if Ilum is near the end of 13 ATC, that lines up nicely with the launch of SWTOR being near the end of 2011 IRL." – Charles Boyd wrote on the forums.
Note: Ilum is the follow-up story ark that comes after the main origin class story wraps up. It's still part of the original SWTOR and was accessible on "day one"
The following events from KOTFE's Chapter 9, which gave birth to the Alliance Alerts system in-game, took place an year later – in 3630 BBY. In real life this happened in late 2015 to mid 2016.
Chapter 10 of KOTFE comes up in August of 2016 and the events taking place there mark a short time span in which a lot happens.
All the stand-alone KOTFE follow-up chapters along with the whole Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion depict events from later part of the year 3630 – twenty-three years after the treaty.
Update 5.2 brought The War for Iokath. The events from this storyline take place in the first half of year 3629 BBY, twenty-four years after the treaty.
The next two SWTOR updates offered us a journey through two flashpoints. Umbara and Copero release later the same year (2017 in real life, still 3629 BBY).
The final flashpoint of this miniseries, called The Nathema Conspiracy, came with update 5.9 in early 2018. This is also the twenty-fifth year after the Treaty of Coruscant or 3628 BBY.
In the later part of the same year the Ossus storyline took place. Released in the end of 2018, the Jedi Under Siege game update 5.10 told one of my favorite stories in the whole game since its creation.
Ossus was stuffed with lore and the narrative was very well presented. It was an update worth of its timing – December, just in time for the Holidays.
The events on Ossus marked the return of the eternal conflict between the Sith Empire and the Republic.
A few months after the invasion of Ossus, the events described in Hearts and Minds story update took place. Kira and Scourge arrived on Odessen to observe the Commander and their Alliance.
Charles, with the help from forum user BenKatarn, pointed out that Kira and Scourge's mission to destroy Vitiate's body, which they share with the Commander when they first meet after years of separation, takes place around the same time as the final chapter of KOTET happened.
After they destroyed the Emperor's body, Kira and Scourge took some time to observe the Commander before they returned and joined the Alliance.
The renewed conflict between Empire and Republic deepened in the Onslaught expansion, which arrived in late 2019 with patch 6.0. The events described in Onslaught happened in early to mid 3627, the twenty-seventh year after the signing of the Treaty of Coruscant.
The Task at Hand story update took place in the beginning of 3626 BBY (27 ATC). In the aftermath of the Sith Empire's assault on the Meridian Complex Shipyard, both factions formed elite organizations to carry out key objectives that could tip the balance of the war. Representatives from the Galactic Republic and Sith Empire arrived on Odessen to discuss plans of attack with our character.
Game Update 6.2 was originally scheduled to be released in June. However, the events of this Spring that took over the whole world and changed it quite dramatically, forced all of us to work from home.
From here on now the events take place in what we can only assume to be real-life matching in-game years. Charles' post was up before the release of 6.2, so until we get a confirmation of exact dates, we will count the time as he suggests – real time matching in-game time.
SWTOR Update 6.2 "Echoes of Vengeance" released in the end of 2020 and delivered the next story content, which kind of shook all players. It contained two kind of separate storylines – one about the Emperor Vitiate and one about the Mandalorians.
The events from 6.2 occur within a couple of weeks of Task at Hand. This means Echoes of Vengeance is also set in early 3626 BBY or 27 ATC.
SWTOR Patch 6.3 saw us following the renegade Sith Darth Malgus, who went to Dantooine's Jedi Enclave ruins in search of a mysterious ancient relic.
The story was released in July 2021 and it serves as a prelude to what we might be witnessing in SWTOR 7.0 The Legacy of the Sith expansion. According to Charles' own timeline, this should be marked as happening in 3625 BBY (28 ATC).
What is next for SWTOR in terms of story
This was a brief overview of all major updates and story events that take place since the beginning of your story in Star Wars The Old Republic. The current story (!) update at the time of this publication is 6.3.2.
BioWare accepted a new way of labeling game updates in the beginning of 2020. Going forward only major updates will contain story content. They will be labeled with 6.X. Incremental smaller updates, marked with 6.X.X will deliver new content that does not directly relate to the main plot or doesn't progress it in any significant way.
There is no SWTOR Update 6.4 announced yet. I believe the next major story content will be the expansion itself. As always – check up on VULKK.com often for the latest news and updates about the game!
SWTOR is a direct descendant of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and we recently got the official confirmation about the KOTOR Remake project. If you want to learn what happened few hundreds years before SWTOR, then KOTOR is your best chance and soon you will be able to (re)play the game with modern graphics and updated systems.
Source: https://vulkk.com/2020/06/18/when-exactly-swtor-story-take-place/
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