Star Wars: The Old Republic is getting an expansion called Onslaught in September

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New planets, abilities, items and a good chunk of story.

Star Wars: The Old Republic, Bioware's Star Wars MMORPG, will get its first expansion in nearly three years this September, the dev team has announced. It's called Onslaught, it'll be free to all subscribers, and it will add a new story, two planets, a new Flashpoint, a new Operation and new abilities.

Onslaught's story "puts you at the center of the reignited war between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire," and you'll be given the choice of remaining loyal to your faction or sabotaging their war efforts. 

You'll visit Onderon, a planet of "untamed jungles and savage beasts", where the allegiance of a new King could prove crucial in the war. You'll also visit Mek-Sha, a fuelling station built inside a mined-out asteroid—it's a "den of smugglers, pirates, mercenaries, traders, and refugees". The finale of the story will be a Flashpoint on a new area of Corellia, and the new operation, which can be played at any time, will be on Dxun, one of Onderon's moons.

The expansion is also adding a new type of gear slot called tactical items. They're described as "build-defining items" that alter your abilities and playstyle, although Bioware didn't give any specific examples. Onslaught will also add new general item sets that players can obtain via PvP, PvE Galactic Command and crafting.

Lastly, Onslaught introduces a new playable species, Nautolans (pictured below), and raises the level cap to 75. Every advanced class will receive a new ability on the way to this new cap.

Read the announcement post in full here. 

Update: I initially wrote that the update would be free, but it's only going to be free to subscribers—the game also has a free-to-play option up to level 50. I have updated the headline to reflect that.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.