Star Wars: The Old Republic First Update Announced - Rise of the Rakghouls

Almost a month has passed since Star Wars: The Old Republic was officially launched on 20th December to general acclaim and with a massive, record-breaking response and the development team are already set to release the first game update. Set for launch next week on Tuesday 17th January, Rise of the Rakghouls will introduce new, higher level group content, game feature additions and continued balancing and bug fixes. And going forward, throughout the year, BioWare plan to release game updates to subscribers regularly, with the next update scheduled for March 2012 and set to include new Flashpoints, Operations, WarZones and new game systems. Dr. Greg Zeschuk, General Manager of the BioWare Label€™s MMO Business Unit and Co-Founder of BioWare launched the update with the following comment:

A month ago when we launched the Early Game Access program for Star Wars: The Old Republic, we promised our fans that this would just be the beginning of our journey together. Rise of the Rakghouls adds a lot of the things our community has been asking for €“ additional higher level group content, features like anti-aliasing, PvP bracketing and more. In the future, game updates will be even more substantial, as we promise to continue to not only add to The Old Republic, but to also improve and refine the experience with the full Legacy System and new Guild features.

Rise of the Rakghouls features both a new Flashpoint and a new Operation as well as various changes made throughout the entire game, including level 50 bracketing for PvP WarZones, the addition of anti-aliasing and changes to Open World PvP on Ilum. Here's the details of the new content as announced today: Flashpoint: Kaon Under Siege is a completely new and unique group combat experience located on Kaon, a planet in the Tion Hegemony, a strategically important sector of the galaxy that has remained neutral, groups of up to four Republic or Imperial players must race to Kaon to eliminate the Rakghouls outbreak, securing the allegiance of the Tion Hegemony for their respective sides. This Flashpoint will be available for level 50 characters only and will feature Normal and Heroic modes. Operation: Karagga€™s Palace, is a continuation of the game€™s second launch Operation. In the Operation, teams of 8 or 16 players will face off against Karagga and the Hutt Cartel after the Hutts abandon their famous neutrality and breach agreements with both the Republic and Empire. Concerned by the threat of another combatant in the war for galactic control, both factions send teams of their most powerful heroes to confront Karagga and determine his intentions. This Operation will feature Normal, Heroic and Nightmare difficulty modes.