BioWare delays Star Wars: The Old Republic Galactic Strongholds early access

The Old Republic's Galactic Strongholds expansion adds player housing and a bunch of other stuff , giving bounty hunters a place to hang their boots, their Wookies and their sarcastic Han Solo-style grins between missions. If you're a subscriber you were probably looking forward to the expansion's Early Access period on June 24th - so you'll be disappointed to hear that it's been delayed to August 19th, just one month before Preferred Early Access begins in September, and the content launches for free-to-play players in October. As a reward for your patience, the DLC will be getting a new stronghold location (Tatooine), conquest events and a few other things, as detailed in this announcement post . Hey, remember when games/expansions had a single release date? Simpler times.

"We have been listening to what you, our players, were hoping to see from the Galactic Strongholds expansion. When playing early builds of Galactic Strongholds it became that clear that our June Early Access date was simply not enough. For this to truly feel like an expansion, it needs to include the full set of features, including those originally coming later in the year. So what does this mean? We are moving the start date for Subscriber Early Access from June 24th to August 19th in order to deliver to you the most features at the highest level of quality. The result will be a far more compelling experience, including additional features such as the ability to place your vehicles and pets in your Stronghold and for Guilds to conquer planets."

With the new content, Galactic Strongholds will now comprise

3 unique Player Strongholds, one on each Capital World plus the Nar Shaddaa Sky Palace
2 faction-specific Guild Flagships (Valor-class Cruiser for the Republic and Harrower-class Dreadnaught for the Empire)
Legacy Stronghold Storage
Ability to gain Prestige tracked on Prestige Leaderboards
Hundreds of Decorations to discover and collect

There's all sorts of bonuses on top of that too, if you pledge with your wallet to become a monthly subscriber by certain dates, but I won't pretend to understand what Cartel Coins are, and how they differ from credits or Itchy & Scratchy Money, which I believe is the official currency of the Star Wars galaxy as of Lucasfilm's recent breakup with the Expanded Universe .

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.