Star Wars: The Old Republic Developer Blog Update

BioWare Austin’s official Star Wars: The Old Republic website is featuring a new developer blog entry penned by the game’s lead flashpoints and operations designer regarding the addition of Nightmare Mode to Operation: Explosive Conflict. In short, they’re putting more time into it this time around:

For Explosive Conflict (and all Operations going forward), we wanted more control over the challenge and the rewards offered by the content. So, starting with Explosive Conflict, we’ve improved Nightmare Mode in the following ways:

‘¢ Bosses are balanced individually, rather than with a universal buff. They should pose a serious challenge to players who are working on their Dread Guard set.
‘¢ Mechanics have been modified or introduced in every encounter, in some cases requiring some pretty significant changes to strategy.
‘¢ Each boss now has a unique loot package in nightmare mode, including the rest of the Dread Guard set, increased commendations, and a chance for a very cool mount.

These changes are not retroactive for Eternity Vault and Karagga’s Palace, but if players are interested, it is possible that we may revisit them at some point in the future. As in previous Operations, players who manage to complete Nightmare Mode Explosive Conflict in under 2 hours will receive a special title. This should prove to be quite a bit more challenging than before.

I’m sure the next question I’m going to hear is: (Why did this take so long?) My answer is two-fold: first, we prioritized development on Operation: Terror From Beyond, and second, we wanted Nightmare Mode Explosive Conflict to provide meaningful rewards. Since the entire set of Campaign gear had been distributed, we weren’t in a good position to justify the difficulty with rewards worth chasing, and moreover, the difficulty gap would have been fairly small it just wouldn’t have offered much value. With the changes we’ve made, not only is the content fresher, the rewards are shinier.

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