SWTOR Backs Out of ESL Competitive Ambitions

Things seemed to be going well for BioWare and Star Wars: The Old Republic. PvP was still a mess, but the latest expansion seemed to refocus the team and the free-to-play MMORPG on what it arguably does best; story. If you were looking for something of a more competitive addition to the game, you may have welcomed the announced Electronic Sports League (ESL) competition that BioWare had planned.

Sure, it wasn't PvP focused as the competition was a timed raid run instead of actual combat between 2 groups, but maybe it meant that BioWare was moving in a direction a lot of players wanted them to move in a long time ago (I'll skip the "galaxy far, far away" joke there).

The problem? One specific raid encounter. The Coratanni encounter in the Ravagers operation can be bugged a bit. This bug, while not game breaking for everyday players, could seriously impact anyone trying to do a speed run for competitive purposes. While BioWare did attempt to fix the bug in a patch that dropped today, the unsure nature of the fix led BioWare to drop their competitive intent outright.

Sometimes it just seems like BioWare can't quite get this whole "competition" thing down, in game or out of it. For a true player's perspective on what this backtracking means, check out Larry Everett's breakdown on MassivelyOP. You can also find the official forum announcement here.